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Understanding the Alt-Right
Actually, I’m not terribly interested in understanding the alt-right as a movement; what I find fascinating is the evolution of the term itself. There are two wildly different definitions being applied, and I believe that the left is using that confusion of terms, intentionally and with malice aforethought, to denigrate a large portion of the population as racist, right-wing oppressors.
I first heard the term during the 2016 election cycle, when I started getting a large part of my news and analysis from various YouTube channels. Although I was not aware at the time, the meaning of the term had already morphed away from the original. In those days, the term alt-right was said to refer to a loose collection of people who, while generally of the right, were not happy or satisfied with the established leadership of the Republican Party and the mainstream conservative movement. Given that public polling routinely shows about twice as many people identifying as conservative as identifying as Republican, it seemed this had the potential to be a large and broad coalition.
And as far as I could tell, it included me; by that definition, I am alt-right, being of the right, though not mainstream, but rather representative of an alternative point of view.
It was only after the election that word began to filter out about an earlier, original definition for the term. We found out that the name was originally coined by a guy named Richard Spencer, the leader of a very specific, fringe group of white nationalists. Looking at their actual policy proposals, in that case alt-right seemed to refer more to being, well … leftist. It is a variant of socialism, essentially identical to several other identity-based movements in this country, populated by people who are black or Hispanic. But, while all those other movements are considered left-wing, this group, apparently for no other reason than them being white, are labeled as part of the right.
Spend any time listening to this group, and you’ll quickly come to realize that the reason it is a small, fringe group is that it is a toxic blend of white supremacy and socialism, the sort of movement that has been unable to gain any meaningful level of traction in this country since about the time I was born.
I’m more than fairly certain that I’m not one of those.
Thus far, the evolution of the term had followed a fairly typical path. A term starts with a specific meaning that applies to a small group of people with a specific set of beliefs or characteristics. Then over time, the term is generalized to refer to a much larger group, many of whom do not share those original beliefs or characteristics. This is something that happens with almost any movement that becomes a sizeable group of people. Most political movements start with a small, dedicated group of hardcore believers. If it grows to significant size, over time the original beliefs are usually watered down and tempered, to appeal to a larger audience. It is not unusual for the original beliefs to disappear almost entirely.
This is the point where the evolution of the term takes an unusual, and in my experience, unique turn. After having been generalized to a much broader meaning, it was retracted back to the original belief set, so that it no longer legitimately refers to anyone outside of Richard Spencer’s group.
I promised malicious intent on the part of the left, and here it is. They use the two definitions almost interchangeably, but with a very distinct pattern of usage. They use the broad, generalized definition when assigning membership to the alt-right, but the original, specific meaning to ascribe beliefs to the people so labeled. The practical result of this is that if you are not an elected Republican official, and are also anywhere to the right of Che Guevara, they will call you alt-right. And that membership justifies their certainty that you are a white supremacist follower of Richard Spencer’s loony white socialist utopia.
It would be as if we labeled large numbers of random Democrats as communists, and therefore in favor of killing off a substantial portion of the US population to achieve their communist paradise. Of course, for a valid comparison, we would have 90 percent of the media repeating those claims and having earnest panel discussions about their plans for genocide.
So, am I alt-right? Are you? It depends who you ask, and what they intend. And the left isn’t really interested in your opinion; they’ll be deciding for you.
Published in Group Writing
Frank is right, when people wear ignorance as a badge it makes discussion here pointless.
Ok so I invested entirely more thought on this weird issue than I ever really thought I would.
The Urban Dictionary, Dictionary.com, Merriam-webster and Wikipedia all have looked at the word Cuckold. This range of sources should cover both traditional sources for the meaning of a word and how the word is used now.
https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Cuckold
https://www.dictionary.com/browse/cuckold?s=ts
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuckold
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/cuckold
If there is a real and clearly known racial competent to this I would assume that there would be some source stating it is a racial term.
Again I don’t use any of these words but if this was widely understood to be not just rude but racist, it should show up someplace as a racist term.
Ah, well, you should feel ashamed then for your woeful lack of knowledge of the fetish porn oeuvre. Put away your badge of ignorance (and your evidence) and just agree with Jamie and Frank already.
Another sweeping declaration of Your Truth. I din’t see that coming.
RicoComment of the Day!
Why wouldn’t you advise it?
[EDIT: never mind Tom. I’m unfollowing the thread.]
Well then screw it – I can’t improve on that! I’ll take my trophy and get back to work. Thanks Simon.
That was my problem, too. I’m not as innocently naive as I should be, and even so I didn’t know there was a newer sense of the term. Learn something new every day, I guess.
If I am wearing a badge of ignorance, it is about fetish porn. I have never watch cuckold porn, don’t think I am willing to start just for this conversation.
I remember when everyone knew that the main reason people disagreed with Pres. Obama was they were racist. Is this that same type of thing. Did some one at Salon or the NY Times hear a word that they did not like (possibly for good reason) and decide to call it racist? OR are the people using this word actually meaning it to have a racial component?
I don’t follow the ‘alt-right’, so I legitimately don’t know what they mean when they used the term. I had been hoping to be convinced/ given some way to learn. So far the people saying this is racist don’t seem interested in helping, what I assume is, a significant number of people who don’t have any knowledge on this issue.
I plan to take your advice to heart, but I live in the modern world (perhaps a different one from yours) and have heard the term used in its traditional sense. It’s not an everyday term, but it’s hardly non-existent.
I don’t see why or how.
Early 13th century.
Why would you take HuffAndPuffPo as an authority on anything?
Only a cuckold would do so.
de nada
To be fair, I was first exposed to the term when a bunch of alt-righters (I’m talking about the people who act like Richard Spencer or even worse online, not the broader and contested definition) troll-bombed a Matt Lewis* article. Given that and the fact that ‘cuckservative’ was an epithet frequently used by the more rabid Trump supporters against Ted Cruz and his supporters, I was quite prejudiced against the term myself (and still am, so far as ‘cuckservative’ is concerned).
Then I became more immersed in Youtube culture, and noticed that the term ‘cuck’ was frequently used in a non-racial context by clearly non-racist individuals. Its actually almost ubiquitous among the anti-SJW commentators and within gaming culture**, where much, if not most, of the conservative recruitment of young people is occurring today. Its origins (at least as far as popular use is concerned) seem to be from the Red Pill sub-culture. Stigmatizing the term as ‘racist’ (it can still be stigmatized as a vulgar personal attack) at this point seems hugely counterproductive to me.
*Off topic, but Matt Lewis seems well on his way to becoming a Democrat, if his latest Daily Beast article is any indication (and writing for the Daily Beast is usually a good indication in and of itself).
**Mutahar from SomeOrdinaryGamers, for instance, would probably be quit surprised to learn that he’s a white nationalist.
There are are two definitions on urban dictionary that mention the racial component on page 3 and 4, from 2011 and 2008 respectively, so in the vernacular culture there is evidence that the racial component was known for a while. In fact if you look up the shorter term “cuck” you will find a number of mentions towards the racial component of the word on urban dictionary and elsewhere.
The term is used racially in the gaming community. Not by everyone, in fact most gamers I know don’t use the word and people who do are told to shut up (because it is almost always trolls using the word), but in the game genres that I play frequently enough I have witnessed it used, and described in the racial definition. To be fair this phenomena is probably seen in certain game genres and not others.
I don’t think stigmatizing the word would lose any “gamer conservatives”. They tend to be the live and let live types, not your rank and file Republicans.
I disagree, I believe it would hamper recruitment in much the same way that the stigmatization of people playing D&D, listening Heavy Metal, etc made many people write-off Republicans and the conservative movement. Precisely because they felt they were being unjustly demonized by ignorant outsiders. At best, it would be laughed off as another ‘conservative’ Satanic panic. The whole point is to make apolitical people turned off by the Social Justice cult into full-fledged conservatives and Republican supporters. Take the site I mentioned at the bottom of my last post, for instance: the host himself is a determinedly apolitical Canadian of Indian descent and usually sticks to apolitical gaming and internet content, but he will also casually use the ‘cuck’ term, usually in relation to PC culture and its attacks on games and areas of interest to him. The comment section is overwhelmingly anti-PC, ripe targets for recruitment if handled correctly. There are several gaming sites like this (as well as popular and clearly non-racist anti-SJW political sites, again with a largely apolitical fan-base that is motivated by antipathy to the progressive Left, but is currently without (or unaware of) any particular ideological affinity for conservative principles.
And the first page of the urban dictionary comprising 7 definitions lack a racist element to the term, the worst that can objectively be said about it is that its a contested term with a wide range of disagreement as to its meaning.
I can’t say anything about on-line gaming communities, I vastly prefer single-player games (and suck at most of the competitive online games I do enjoy).
I concede that user Cockkmongler’s entry referring to a racial component comes in at post #20 on page three of the Urban Dictionary and it received 70 up votes and 89 down votes. I further concede that user TataThomas’s entry referring to a racial component comes in at post #27 on page four and it received 72 up votes and 171 down votes. I also concede that there might be an entry on page 86 with 1 up vote and 54 down votes, but I’m too chastened to go on that far to find out if my humiliation is complete.
I take it all back: Frank and others are vindicated that this is how “everyone” uses the term now. Who could argue with cockkmongler (except for the 19 net down voters on his entry who are obvious bubble dwellers unfamiliar both with how archaic they are and with the range of kinks in the porn industry)?
I’m unfollowing the thread again. Good luck all.
A few years ago I had to explain to some conservatarians that homosexuals’ appropriation of the word “bear” didn’t mean that word had lost all the perfectly innocent uses it had previously enjoyed. It was a waste of breath, or rather, pixels.
I am not submitting my mother tongue to the reinterpretation of HuffAndPuffPo, the illiterates at Vox, or the basement dwelling nosepickers whose intellectual output is memorialized by Urban Dictionary.