The “Alternative Right"

[Searcher08]

Same shit, different package. Definitely not taking the world by storm...

I'll leave you in peace to your share your critiques.

[American Dream]

How the Alt-Right Is Attempting to Hide Its White Supremacist Ties

Thursday, 15 September 2016

By Shane Burley,



Alt-right writer Milo Yiannopoulos in a photo taken on May 5, 2014.


The alt-right has recently splashed into mainstream view like a surprise tidal wave, only expanding after Hillary Clinton made criticisms of it a key part of her campaign against Trump. Based in intellectual-sounding right-wing rhetoric, a "fashy" (fascistic) rewriting of science and history and a palatable white anger, it is a subculture that has been defined by Internet trolling and online argumentation about everything from the "problems of feminism" to the "invading hordes" of Syrian refugees. At the core of the alt-right is a white nationalism that advocates for white ethnic homelands, traditional gender roles and the repression of Black people.

The alt-right has differentiated itself from other right-wing groups through its distinctly middle-class and intellectual character. Hoping to shed the stigma associated with white nationalism, the alt-right espouses philosophies that sound more fitting for university halls than for Klan rallies. But while the alt-right may be seeking to leave behind the baggage of the Ku Klux Klan and neo-Nazi skinheads, in reality it is part of the same tradition. Indeed, many of the same people both identify as neo-Nazis and occupy alt-right Twitter handles, today.

The alt-right cannot remove itself from other white supremacists' patterns of violence and terrorism because it is part of the same neo-fascist lineage, tracing its key ideas and philosophers to the interwar European period and through the white supremacist street battles that have ensued in the decades since.

Continues at: http://www.truth-out.org/news/item/3761 ... acist-ties

[Wombaticus Rex]

The alt-right has differentiated itself from other right-wing groups through its distinctly middle-class and intellectual character. Hoping to shed the stigma associated with white nationalism, the alt-right espouses philosophies that sound more fitting for university halls than for Klan rallies.

Seems a consistent thing with Leftist critiques - leaders and organizations are taken as inseparable; bad guys march in lockstep.

What I've been seeing is guys like Jared Taylor and Richard Spencer attempting to make themselves the Official Spokesmen of the Alt-Right, while simultaneously pivoting toward respectability. However, that's not where the momentum -- or recruitment -- is coming from. These recent press conferences have had a really deleterious effect on their already marginal reputations within the movement they're claiming to speak for.

Indeed, they're setting themselves up for the same rude awakening that defined the Tea Party Experience for elected legislators: you can't turn your back on your base without swift, terrible consequences in an environment of 24-7 media insurgency. So while Taylor & Spencer are thinking about how to frame themselves to Washington, DC and Academia, their movement has already turned on them. They won't just get abandoned, they'll become targets for bullycide. (What enemy is worse than a traitor?)

Meanwhile, the actual Alt-Right is still recruiting and gaining momentum, and those White Supremacist roots ain't going anywhere.

Yet. That'll come in 2017, once Alt-Right has to face up to the same internal schisms #NRx did. It's always nice while it lasts; it never does.

[American Dream]

Anti-fascist writers and analysts who have a radical left position- and I'm thinking here of folks like Matthew Lyons, Don Hamerquist, Shane Burley and J.Sakai in particular- are all about differentiating between different tendencies within the far right, locating it within in a larger right wing ecology, and highlighting the tensions between grassroots and leaders, etc. etc.

[Wombaticus Rex]

Anti-fascist writers and analysts who have a radical left position- and I'm thinking here of folks like Matthew Lyons, Don Hamerquist, Shane Burley and J.Sakai in particular- are all about differentiating between different tendencies within the far right, locating it within in a larger right wing ecology, and highlighting the tensions between grassroots and leaders, etc. etc.

Ah, sorry, I was getting them mixed up with the thoroughly right-centrist Truth Out.

[American Dream]

I'm not sure what your familiarity actually is with radical leftism but Truth Out seems to me to have its center of gravity somewhere in the liberal to progressive range with some inclusion of writing from oices more to the left, for example Shane Burley, Roar Magazine, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz etc.

It seems like you are spinning anti-fascist leftists so as to give a somewhat distorted view. Which is ironic, given that your concerns seem to rrevolve around the same sorts of thing happening to various far right tendencies...

[Wombaticus Rex]

It seems like you are spinning anti-fascist leftists so as to give a somewhat distorted view. Which is ironic, given that your concerns seem to rrevolve around the same sorts of thing happening to various far right tendencies...

Yes, I'm quite concerned those poor lily-white flowers will get misquoted, or worse - mis-attributed.

Or, I'm offering commentary on a shitty post you served up. But it's probably my pro-Nazi advocacy roots, yeah?

Meanwhile, everything you've contributed for pages now exemplifies exactly what I was talking about. So maybe up the quality control on your end and start posting material from the people you respect who are "all about" doing analysis right.

[American Dream]

Shane Burley wrote a good piece but all you can come up with are lazy slurs. I still think you are capable of better...

[Wombaticus Rex]

Shane Burley wrote a good piece but all you can come up with are lazy slurs. I still think you are capable of better...

Shane Burley thinks the "Alt-Right" are big fans of a gay British man. It's all downhill from there.

[American Dream]

Whatever, dude...

[Luther Blissett]

I saw a great comic the other day with two people on a train and someone standing in the aisle talking to them. One was a fascist describing what they believe, about white supremacy, nationalism, military might, suppression of women's rights, etc. The anti-fascist seated next to them tells the standing passenger, "I'm against all that." The passenger says "You sound the same to me."

[Luther Blissett]

Also, it would be worth everyone's while to check this site for your name and any aliases you might frequently use - they've been profiling a lot of activist connections I have with fairly robust overviews of their political activist work. Sorta creepy.

http://keywiki.org/Main_Page

[Sounder]

American Dream wrote....

Hmm, funny to to some but many of us are not laughing...

Wombat wrote...
And that's why y'all stay losing, frankly. Humorless hall monitors.

I am somewhat ignorant as to what 'radical leftist positions' are and should no doubt be better informed.

But damn, given the engaging manner of it's chief proponent, why would one be inclined to check it out?

Could AD be a deep cover right winger? (kidding)

[stefano]

I'm a bit Yank-politicked-out (also Brexited up to here), but happened to read this one today and thought it was interesting. It illustrates why the alt right is completely bulletproof against the dead-earnest tut-tutting style of leftism. Extracts.

Milo Yiannopoulos Is the Pretty, Monstrous Face of the Alt-Right
by Joel Stein

Heidi Beirich, who directs the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center [...] says she’s not even sure if Yiannopoulos believes in the alt-right’s tenets or just found a juvenile way to mix internet culture and extreme ideology to get attention. “It’s like he’s joking: ‘Ha ha, let me popularize the worst ideas that ever existed,’ ” she says. “That’s new, and that’s scary.”
...
Despite being the alt-right’s mouthpiece, Yiannopoulos won’t say for certain if he’s one of them. Earlier that day, lounging on a couch in the living room of his apartment, located in a huge residential complex a good 45 minutes from Central London, he replaces Wagner with Chopin so he can talk more easily. He turns to Allum Bokhari, a 25-year-old half-Pakistani Oxford graduate, who used to work for a Liberal Democratic member of Parliament and now writes for Yiannopoulos at Breitbart, and asks, “Am I a member of the alt-right?”

“No,” says Bokhari, who wears a white dress shirt, gray blazer, and gray trousers to work at a desk next to a garment rack in Yiannopoulos’s living room. “Because they wouldn’t have you. You like Israel a lot more. Some on the alt-right would describe you as a degenerate.”

Yiannopoulos, wearing a pearl bracelet, a huge diamond in his ear, and a necklace with a gold dog tag, nods in agreement. His nods shake his blond extensions. He likes to brag that he’s a bottom for tall black men and that he used to hold a paint sample called Pharoahs Gold 5 to men at clubs to see if they were dark enough to have sex with. He wants to self-publish a Kindle e-book so he can go on television shows with the chyron “Author of Satisfying the Black Man Sexually,” though he’d need to alter the title slightly, because the book Satisfying the Black Man Sexually is already on his shelf. “That’s why I don’t like Planned Parenthood. They kill all those black babies. In 20 years, they could be my harem,” he says. He sees no room for white gay men in liberal parties anymore, because all white men, he says, are treated as enemies of multiculturalism. Plus, he says, being a gay Republican reinstates the illicitness that homosexuality has lost.

Yiannopoulos’s favorite political tactic is trolling. In the alt-right worldview, nice, normal white dudes are told they’re racist and sexist by “social justice warriors.” In retaliation, they’ve adopted a strategy Yiannopoulos calls “double down, don’t back down.” He explains: “If someone calls you an anti-Semite, you go to their page and put up swastikas.” Then those he’s offended, he says, use this prank as false proof of the original accusation of anti-Semitism to gain power through sympathy. Yiannopoulos’s mob of trolls then mock them for taking the prank seriously and whining. Nobody’s actions can be taken at face value. “Everybody is trolling everybody, and nobody knows who is winning,” he says. And at least his side is enjoying it.

“We live in a post-fact era. It’s wonderful,” he says, pointing to various web pages on his giant computer screen that show photos of, supposedly, Bill Clinton’s grown black son. “The Washington Post gives a truth check, and no one cares. Now you have to use the truth and other strategies. You have to be persuasive. Dumpy lesbian feminists and shrieking harpies in the Black Lives Matter movement are not persuasive,” he says, digging into the egg, turkey, and avocado scramble prepared by his full-time trainer.

In this Kafkaesque troll war for America’s soul, Yiannopoulos believes that all offense is performed rather than truly felt. “I have never been offended. I don’t know what it means. It’s not that I disagree with it. I don’t understand it. I’ve never had that feeling,” he says.
...
Tonight, Hillary Clinton is in Reno, Nev., delivering a speech on the alt-right. Yiannopoulos loads it up on YouTube, where the alt-right has taken over the comments section, a furious scroll of swastikas, “nigger”s, and “build the wall”s. The speech has been postponed by three hours, and Yiannopoulos is convinced [God, Joel Stein, have you not been paying attention to your subject?] it’s because Clinton is gravely ill. “Is that a catheter in her shirt?” he says as soon as she enters the frame. “Listen to her voice! She’s sick!” he yells about her hoarseness.

Halfway through her speech about the conspiracy-pandering and racism of Trump and the alt-right, Clinton reads four Breitbart headlines. Two of them are from Yiannopoulos articles.

“Birth Control Makes Women Unattractive and Crazy”

“Would You Rather Your Child Had Feminism or Cancer?”

He stands up, claps, and spins around. Yiannopoulos has hit the troll jackpot: He wrote outrageous headlines trying to provoke liberals, and the world’s top liberal read them with head-shaking seriousness, falling for the prank. He directs Bokhari, sitting 5 feet away, to quickly write an article for Breitbart about this. They give it the headline “Milo to Hillary: You Did This.” As crazy as that sounds, once you understand troll logic, it’s pretty much true.

Milo as we know him is not even a real person, any more than Kim Kardashian. Clinton's behind the curve, well behind Obama, who essentially beat her in 2008 because he's better at being this kind of shape-shfting ideal to his supporters, and anti-ideal to his adversaries. This is only going to get weirder.

[backtoiam]

huh, thanx for that Stefano. I suppose due to my age I have never understood this alt-right mentality trolling thing with much clarity but only a foggy notion. This article didn't make it crystal clear but it filled in some blind spots.