The “Alternative Right"

[Wombaticus Rex]

Tell your neighbors the truth. Change the narrative that they will try to spin on the media.

LMFAO, what truth? There's so many questions about that incident even days later.

Nobody knows anything yet -- but fundraising never stops. Money matters.

[American Dream]

RESPONDING TO THE FASCIST CREEP: AN INTERVIEW WITH ALEXANDER REID ROSS

Below is an interview conducted with anti-fascist author and organizer Alexander Reid Ross addressing many of the themes raised in his upcoming book, Against the Fascist Creep. We discuss what the idea of “creeping fascism” is, where it has become prevalent, and what organizations have begun to confront it.



Anti-Fascist News: Could you explain a little bit about this concept of “creeping fascism” that you built the book on?


Alexander Reid Ross: So the idea of creeping fascism is the emergence of fascism on the global stage through its tacit and often concealed acceptance either organizationally or in theory. So, for example, when leftwing movements in, say, 2009-2010 started trading in a very conservative language of ethnic nationalism and separatism, you know, like “white people deserve their own place because people of color are naturally inclined towards one another,” that was a sign that there some kind of influence and networking that was going on, and, again, if not organizationally, then in the ideological terrain. And I’m not saying that all left wing organizations were doing that, but I did notice a marked pattern in some of them. There was a sense in some sectors, even when Occupy came around, that we had to defeat the liberals in power even if that means letting the fascists in through the back door. I think that’s been proven false, and we need to learn from those mistakes through material analysis.



AFN: What kind of movements was that showing up in?


ARR: I think I saw it emerging in the anarchist movement and, to an extent, in some of the left wing issue based movements where Marxists were more prevalent, whether anti-imperialist or anti-war or whatever. Then there are the non-left or post-left radical groups that are just as vulnerable, if not more so. I found out, for example, that the national anarchists had been trying to affect an influence, like in Earth First! even, in the northeast, which came as kind of a surprise to me. It did sort of open my eyes to the fact that because as an editor of the Earth First! Journal during that period, I had been sort of unwittingly implicated in this process.

I think there was also a point after 2008 and the market crash that radical movements experienced an influx of people and didn’t have a filtering process that was equipped to handle the parsing through of different ideas that exist in the radical milieu, and that’s really where it takes place. Fascism emerges from the radical milieu as a combination of right and left wing ideas. If you just want to say, “I’m neither left nor right but I’m radical,” then there’s going to be a lot of territory that is contested, and that is very vulnerable to a sort of fascistic proclamations and ideological positions.



AFN: How do you respond to that then or how should left wing movements respond to that creeping influence? What are effective strategies I guess?


ARR: I think first and foremost is education. That was one thing that I started to do for myself after the news about Earth First! came out. The fact was that this one national anarchist had helped to schedule a fundraiser for Earth First!, and then they used that to speak very loudly to a European national anarchist audience about connections between Earth First! and national anarchism.

Any single move like that can be blown up into direct coordination, which is terrible, but you can always immediately quash that openly. What’s more difficult is that you have to be careful about the world of ideas in order to recognize how left wing intentions and ideas can be twisted by racists or sexists, and how that is connected to organizational affinities. So it’s equally important to recognize both the intellectual history of fascism and the trajectory of different fascist organizations. Both have fostered new movements and ideological currents that have also segued into the left wing.

The organizational factor is particularly important when talking about national anarchism because a lot of people see broader radical subcultures or milieus as more safe or secure from fascism than the left. For example, people embrace queer culture as distinct from the left, denying that fascism can have queer folks, suggesting that if there are queer people in a particular group or movement it can’t be fascist. Of course some of the most important fascists have been queer, from Rohm to Kuhnen, Nicky Crane, and Douglas P to David McCalden and perhaps Roy Cohn. The same thing goes for environmentalism, vegetarianism, avant-garde music and cultural scenes, punk, and other subcultural milieus.

Without any kind of introspection, the left or subcultures can safely say that Fascism is ultranationalist and administrative, so you would never have a fascist talking about breaking down nation-states and building up anti-hierarchical communities or, rather, communities who function through “organic hierarchy.” But, in fact, if you look at fascist organizations in the past, that is precisely what’s made them more radical than their conservative antagonists—that they have attacked nationalism in a bureaucratic or technocratic form, saying that what’s necessarily in politics is a nationalism of energy and vigor rather than a nationalism of intellectuals and functionaries, and what’s necessary isn’t a nation-state at all but a “spiritual empire” with a grand patriarch at the helm who makes the law through decision.

Without understanding the way that those ambiguous ideas are applied in different milieus, like with national anarchism and autonomous nationalism and those sorts of things, radicals can fall for easy platitudes. Pan-secessionism is another great example. When radicals start talking about the need for separatism without a clear, cosmopolitan follow-up strategy, they leave ourselves wide open to their influence and the insinuation of fascism and the ability for fascist ideas and movements to gain ground in the radical milieu and also in the broader subcultures and in mainstream cultures. When they start talking about ethnic separatism—particularly white separatism, whether de jure or de facto—they’ve basically given up the field.

I think that people in the radical milieu are very disconnected from the impact and effect that they have and their ideas actually have on the mainstream. People often look to radicals to get a sense of direction, particularly vis-a-vis subcultures, so if fascists are given a pass to influence subcultures then the mainstream is far more likely to accept them piecemeal on the basis of accepted ideas and attitudes which are very deleterious. For example, you’ve probably heard of people who you might have thought of as a left wing or a radical saying things like “I don’t believe in equality” or “equality is nonsense” or “I don’t believe in freedom,” or that kind of thing. These kinds of statements seem geared to impress people or shock them or both, but does all that really work for us?



AFN: As there has been a rise of white nationalism, what movements or organizations do you think have really effectively started to counter organize that?


ARR: It is great to see all of the Antifa groups springing up, the first of which I think was Rose City Antifa, but New York City Antifa and a bunch of others are equally important. When it works, it’s one of the best models for channeling the popular reflexes and spontaneous movements towards confronting fascism in organized and focused ways. I think networking these horizontal groups will provide important support bases for people down the road.

In the long run I also think that groups Public Research Associates and Searchlight have done great watchdogging, and more recently the One Peoples Project has been excellent at pinpointing National Policy Institute and American Renaissance. The alt-right. They were really the first group to identify these sort of “mom’s basement trolls” as wielding a significant power in todays Internet 2.0 or in todays intellectual circuit, academia even. And they’ve done a really good job at confronting it as well, not just through massive protests but through pressure campaigns; calling, getting their events shut down.

Continues at: https://antifascistnews.net/2017/01/23/ ... reid-ross/

[JackRiddler]

Binary horse, you say? You mean like this?

Well, imagine that, a lefty shot a fellow lefty. Where have we seen that before?

The encouragement of violence will not end well, especially for beta boys, what with their decided lack of discernment (and puny biceps).

They will be mincemeat to people that actually practice hitting targets. Welcome to reality.

Don't change the subject to me. That's what you wrote.

On the basis of few facts released in text form by the police, relating to whatever happened with some guy shooting some other guy at or near a protest -- a shooter who soon after was released from custody! -- you ran straight to rhetoric about how "lefties" are out to start a shooting war. But it's okay, you tell us, since they can't shoot straight, are "beta men," and have small biceps, unlike the "reality" of Big-Biceped American Real-Man-Men who grew up sucking on pistols as pacifiers and can just shoot and shoot shit all day and hit every time.

So this is good, because it is completely divorced from anything to do with the story and actually a pure projection. And lucky for you wrote it down. This can be really useful to you, because a projection can give you insights into your own soul.

So fine, let's not call it alt-right, this is pretty much also the reflexive old-right-wing vocabulary and projection on a certain hate object of theirs, the "lefties" of their imagination. Well, except for the "beta." That's alt-right talk, fer sure, but it's out in the air now, everyone knows it. So it also fits with more old-fashioned AM talk radio. And you know, none of this is prohibited as words or ideas here. And there are a thousand paths to get to the same place, right?

And believe me, I'm speaking solely in the interest of your healing and integrity. You may as well get in touch with your inner asshole, be true to your self! Stop camouflaging with this weasely New Age bullshit about how you're above or beyond or three dimensions tilted off the left-right continuum in some Hibble space. That's not becoming of a hippie-punching big-biceped rifle-toting straight-shooting real-man-man, like yourself!

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[Sounder]

Tell your neighbors the truth. Change the narrative that they will try to spin on the media.

LMFAO, what truth? There's so many questions about that incident even days later.

Nobody knows anything yet -- but fundraising never stops. Money matters.

I'm pretty sure that we know that a Milo protester shot a fellow Milo protester.

But yes, what truth? I had a grin at that too, given the agenda driven concern for 'narrative' expressed in the next sentence.

Our current dominant narrative always takes the other to be the threat that must be destroyed, yet here we see, if we care to look, a different narrative sourced from reality that says the 'threat' is ones inability to relate properly with the other.

Money matters, yes funny that. But really the guy did get shot and we all hope and pray for good recovery and minimal financial strain, so hopefully funds raised do serve that purpose.

[Wombaticus Rex]

I'm pretty sure that we know that a Milo protester shot a fellow Milo protester.

Based on what, though? That's every bit as conjectural as the Anti-Fa narrative. There are no data points except 1) the name and affiliation of the victim and 2) a police statement that an unnamed suspect, along with someone else, turned themselves in.

[Sounder]

Yer a hoot Jack. Look, I am an observer and I see quite a bit of misdirected anger and the poor targeting that goes along with it.

I'm saying that endorsing violence always leads to negative outcomes and that given leftys generally more 'conflicted' relationship to violence they are likely to come out on the short end of that stick. That in no way suggests that I support violence coming from the right.

Sorry if I missed a relevant point if you made it, I only skimmed it as your words seemed to be mostly blather.

[JackRiddler]

.

Based on what, WR? Long as we're on pure conjectural reason, here's mine:

It's important to immediately get out the talking point that will be repeated ad infinitum by the dittoheads (sorry for using old terminology, I guess I'm not that Alt). You can't wait for confirmations, that would be a lost opportunity, especially if it turns out that the projection is false. You wouldn't want some inconvenient truth to establish itself, would you? All that matters is what people repeat, not what actually happened. You know, cos Alinsky. Soros. SJWs. That stuff.

Based also on his latest (which came in before I submitted), Sounder's got the standard playbook. When you're seen, deflect.

Say, that was too much to read!

.

[Sounder]

Hmmm, I thought the following was some kind of data point, no? My bad.

From Seattle Times...

But one of the law-enforcement officials said the man who fired the gun claimed he had been assaulted before shooting the other man, whom he believed to be some type of white supremacist......

Here, more unfounded conjecture, the guy that shot the guy that he 'thought' was a white supremacist saw a swastika tattoo on that guys arm but did not see the red circle and bar that surrounds the tattoo because of poor light and/or poor thinking.

Let me know if I am wrong.

[JackRiddler]

So do you need a tl;dr?

When you talk out your ass, the subject is not what is, but who you are.

Well, imagine that, a lefty shot a fellow lefty. Where have we seen that before?

The encouragement of violence will not end well, especially for beta boys, what with their decided lack of discernment (and puny biceps).

They will be mincemeat to people that actually practice hitting targets. Welcome to reality.

[Sounder]

Perhaps the whole article should have been posted.
Seattle Times...

Two people who said they are friends with the wounded man disputed the characterization of him as a supremacist. One said his friend supported Bernie Sanders in the Democratic presidential primary, and both said he sports an anti-hate tattoo that consists of a black swastika surrounded by a red circle with a slash through it.

Max Vohra of Seattle, who has known the man for seven years, said his friend got the tattoo more than a decade ago “when he was living in California, and had to deal with a lot of racists in the punk scene.” The idea for the tattoo, Vohra said, came from a NOFX song called “The Brews,” which references “anti-swastika tattoos.”

Daniel Herrera, who has worked and socialized with the man for three years, said he’s never seen his friend be aggressive.

“He has always been of the mind to be compassionate, empathetic and to educate. That’s his goal,” Herrera said.

Yer a hoot Jack.

[American Dream]

It's not Jack that is a hoot here.

Perhaps the whole article should have been posted.
Seattle Times...

Two people who said they are friends with the wounded man disputed the characterization of him as a supremacist. One said his friend supported Bernie Sanders in the Democratic presidential primary, and both said he sports an anti-hate tattoo that consists of a black swastika surrounded by a red circle with a slash through it.

Max Vohra of Seattle, who has known the man for seven years, said his friend got the tattoo more than a decade ago “when he was living in California, and had to deal with a lot of racists in the punk scene.” The idea for the tattoo, Vohra said, came from a NOFX song called “The Brews,” which references “anti-swastika tattoos.”

Daniel Herrera, who has worked and socialized with the man for three years, said he’s never seen his friend be aggressive.

“He has always been of the mind to be compassionate, empathetic and to educate. That’s his goal,” Herrera said.

Yer a hoot Jack.

[SonicG]

Max Vohra of Seattle, who has known the man for seven years, said his friend got the tattoo more than a decade ago “when he was living in California, and had to deal with a lot of racists in the punk scene.” The idea for the tattoo, Vohra said, came from a NOFX song called “The Brews,” which references “anti-swastika tattoos.”

NOFX!? What a poseur...

[Sounder]

It's not Jack that is a hoot here.

OK, pray tell AD, what do you think happened here? Did some Milo guy with a gun shoot a protester and make like a protester to make protesters look bad? Or did a protester guy shoot a fellow protester?

Because you are not a conspiracy theorist, the second answer must be correct.

[American Dream]

I think a very right wing person who sometimes poses as a philosopher here and who constantly denies their reactionary allegiances, has been going off about things they don't really know or understand.

[Sounder]

I think a very right wing person who sometimes poses as a philosopher here, and who constantly denies their far right allegiances has been going off about things they don't really know or understand.

One would have to have 'far right allegiances' before they could 'constantly' deny it. But I suppose that is the purpose of your typical weasel words.

Anyway, simple questions AD, can you answer rather than evade?