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Say It Loud and Clear: The Alt-Right Has No Home in the Conservative Movement
With the ongoing controversy about alt-right figures appearing at speaking events for TPUSA and Daily Wire staff, it’s been encouraging seeing how these young leaders of the conservative movement are handling their presence. While I am disappointed in Michelle Malkin’s (which I wrote about previously), the next generation are handling the alt-right exactly as they should be. I am by no means a fan of Charlie Kirk, or his organization TPUSA, but I’m nonetheless uplifted to see how he handled this situation:
People who openly identify as white supremacists came to my event tonight
They have no place in the conservative movement
We must unequivocally denounce this vile ideology whenever it shows it’s ugly head
— Charlie Kirk (@charliekirk11) November 14, 2019
Published in General
No, the accusation by the alt-right troll kid aren’t fair at all. He took a 3 year old list of 20 people that Ben called out as “alt-rightish”…….found maybe 5 of those names that are dubious (so 15 of them are right on.)…..and then jumps to the conclusion that Ben calls everyone racist and a homophobe and won’t debate anybody, including their Holocaust denier leader. That is crap.
“Legitimate conservatives”? These are baby Trumpists……who after 3 years of trying to gather thought leaders for their garbage movement…have annointed a 20 yr old punk Holocaust denier. It makes me happy to know baby Trumpists are following such losers. And I’m glad people like Bethany are finally rejecting Trumpism’s relentless push to the sewer.
Another example of someone ready to purge the party through his own broadly applied purity tests. Yeah, no thanks.
Doesn’t much matter who created it. The question is who controls it and what will they do with it?
Answer: the left and malign all Republicans.
They are called Piccolo Trumpets, you philistine.
Are we for free speech or not? I thought we were for the marketplace of ideas. Sometimes those are really offensive ideas. The concept is to talk about them rather than suppress them, it’s not like those people will stop thinking those ideas. It is just now they will be relegated to their own maligned echochamber and be further radicalized. They aren’t going to go away.
Also, it’s a bit hypocritical that the people complaining about being deplatformed and disinvited want to do it to others. It’s hard to advocate for free speech when you suppress others speech.
Thousand likes!
I disagree with this comment very strongly.
No one has annointed Nick Fuentes.
Shapiro has slandered legitimate conservatives, and should apologize.
You should not conclude that, if you find 5 obvious errors on Shapiro’s list of 20 names, the other 15 are legitimate. Actually, there are at least 6 errors, as I listed 6 who were unfairly slandered by Shapiro. I didn’t know most of the other people listed, so I’m not in a position to judge. (I believe that I did say that Richard Spencer was fairly classified as a bad guy, as I am sufficiently familiar with him to judge. I believe that Milo was unfairly categorized as a bad guy in Shapiro’s tweet, though Milo is pretty obnoxious sometimes. I’m less certain about Alex Jones, as I do not know enough to classify him as a reprobate like Spencer or an obnoxious provocateur like Milo).
rcbact, your attitude seems to be that Trump supporters (you say “Trumpists”) are all terrible. You and our buddy Gary may hold to this fringe Bulwarkian belief if you wish, but this makes you the unreasonable ones, in my estimation.
As a follow-up: I don’t actually object to classifying Nick Fuentes as a pretty bad guy, as I’ve seen sufficient evidence of nasty anti-Semitism on his part to reach this conclusion. He does make some good points on other issues, but I’d prefer a different messenger, and I do agree with Shapiro’s decision not to debate Fuentes. Frankly, Fuentes appears, to me, to be a silly and obnoxious kid with insufficient accomplishment to be worth of a debate with Shapiro.
The “alt” is short for “alternative”.
So anyone claiming to be alt-right is saying, in effect, “my views differ in some or many respects from what people understand to be the mainstream Republican views as described or as practiced and I will not be signing on to just any old thing (for example) the GOPe says; I am a free citizen, not somebody’s plankenstein monster.”
Or words to that effect.
Did you miss Michelle Malkin calling him a “leader”?I haven’t heard these baby Trumpists demand that Ben debate anyone else besides Fuentes. So, he’s their appointed grand poobah “intellectual”. Listen, I wish Trumpers had better……but this is their annointed guy.
Btw, I don’t consider “alt right” a smear. Its a faction in the GOP. You yourself detailed its “alternate” views(#60). You yourself stated it has some bad elements(#24). And now you’re saying that for Ben to use the term was a “smear”? And all you’ve got is 5 out of 20 people from three years ago? And with that…..you’ve then jumped to accusing Ben of calling everyone thats disagrees with him a racist and a homophobe?
Can I have the context of that word, thanx.
This is the first I’m hearing of him. I’m going to assume the worst and say there are nuts in every group.
Based on those five criteria, I am alt. As to the other positions you lament, I have not seen racism or antisemitism. It has been my impression that the David Dukes of the world have latched on to the alt right because of the limit immigration position. But they have latched on. It does not seem like the alt right has absorbed their values. After all Trump has a daughter who converted to Judaism. But frankly I don’t keep up with details of political groups these days.
I share your disturbance over the mindset of twenty year olds, but here’s the thing: why would they be for fiscal conservatism, when they’ re told 40 or 50 times a day that once the Dems win in 2020, everything will be free?
This has been an inherent feature of the philosophy of those who follow Bernie Sanders or Liz Warren. Even three years ago, when I expressed my concerns about how much social programs for newly arriving immigrants cost, and how having rampant immigration means wages are slashed, I was told “No, you will see – once a $ 15 an hour minimum wage is effected, no one will ever be poor again.”
And since these young people don’t even understand rule one of economics, that is, supply and demand, how could a person hope to have them understand?
Any explanation you offer just makes you seem more and more out of date. After all, in the new and shiny world of progressivism, everything will be free!
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The Alt-Right maligns itself. Its connections to Republicans is also self inflicted. The Left pointing this out is no less fair than the Right linking Antifa to the Democrats, which people do all the time on this site. The Republican party isnt conservative it is Trumpist, and Trumpism is not incompatible with the Alt-Right. Heck it’s probably closer to them than to Buckley conservatism.
Are you suggesting that Antifa has no connection with Democrats?
That speech was so disappointing. Yeah, disappointing.
http://michellemalkin.com/2019/11/15/america-first-the-torch-is-being-passed/
OK, I have now learned a little bit about Nick Fuentes. He’s probably not someone Michelle Malkin should have defended. He’s only 21 or 22 but he’s said a number of things that paints him as an anti-Semite. I don’t know for sure if he is or not, but I’ll give him the benefit of the doubt. At that age, he can’t probably tell how wrong his words are. But yeah, I wouldn’t defend him and neither should have Malkin. When you’re a public personality or speaker, you have to be more careful with who you associate with.
Agreed. If she’d stuck to her original statements — about working to address the legitimate questions of the alt-right instead of just denigrating them and seeking to get them deplatformed — then I think by showing grace, she’d have ended up in the right place. I think she got too defensive when the smugs began attacking her, and now she’s gone too far.
I am suggesting the Alt-Right has connections to Republicans. It certainly has their instinctive sympathy.
Looks like Townhall Media , which has close ties with Malkin, is completely avoiding this story. I don’t even see anything on Breitbart. Who will be the Trumpian pundit to declare support for Malkin and Fuentes.? Kurt Schlicter, where are you? Or Dan Bongino?
I would think this incident shows that it really doesn’t. The Republican instinct is to recoil in horror at anything that isn’t straight-down-the-middle RINOism.