Stavros
01-31-2017, 05:30 PM
People may disagree with the extent to which the Trump administration and many of its supporters are directly linked to the so-called 'Alt-Right' movement, if it is a movement. Indeed, those who are not sure what it actually refers to, can read an article which offers An Establishment Conservative's Guide to the Alt-Right, written by Allum Bokhari and Milo Yiannopoulos [hereafter BY], and published by Breitbart on the 29 March 2016.
The article draws on a range of 'thinkers' some of whom, like Julius Evola, shall we say 'evolved' out of Italian fascism after 1945 to make an attempt to restore the 'traditional' aspirations of the Italian people which appears merely to have been a less strident form of Fascism -Steven Bannon having cited the 'traditionalism' of Evola as one of his inspirations. The article makes the by now standard dismissal of academia and the media, cheerfully ignoring the extent to which the Moral Majority and related Christian Evangelists infiltrated US universities in the 1970s precisely to combat 'the left' through the creation of think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute, while many of us wonder how Rupert Murdoch and the Koch Brothers get a free pass when their media outlets have been instrumental in undermining 'the left' and led a relentless attack on the Obama presidency from Day One. Who would have thought Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity are on the wrong side?
Ultimately, buried in this interesting if confused article is a simple argument -America is a White Christian Nation, a tribe of people who built it for themselves and no-one else. Immigration is thus crucial to preventing the further erosion of that identity, for the US -and by implication Europe- is facing a long term crisis as non-white non-Christians seek entry. Thus, an article which condemns identity politics, ends up endorsing its own version of the same.
What is striking about their presentation is that BY offer an argument that rejects the Conservatism associated with Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, arguing that Culture rather than Economics determines the fate of countries like the USA.
The emphasis on Culture allows them to insist that its most perfect expression, The Nation, exists as an all-inclusive body which, rather than acknowledging social diversity, seeks to erase it in favour of one all-consuming identity. Indeed, is is because identity politics appears to subtract from the whole a mosaic of groups that is has undermined that most solid and essential of the building blocks of America -the nuclear family led by A Man. Thus, BY quote approvingly 'Gas Masculinist' Jack Donovan who combines the alleged attack on the family with bad economics:
It’s tragic to think that heroic man’s great destiny is to become economic man, that men will be reduced to craven creatures who crawl across the globe competing for money, who spend their nights dreaming up new ways to swindle each other. That’s the path we’re on now.
An additional perspective has been offered by 'NeoReactionaries' (#NRx) who have subjected the 'secular religions of the establishment' to a severe critique to argue-
Liberal democracy...had no better a historical track record than monarchy, while egalitarianism flew in the face of every piece of research on hereditary intelligence. Asking people to see each other as human beings rather than members of a demographic in-group, meanwhile, ignored every piece of research on tribal psychology.
Perhaps a key passage in BY is its endorsement of the views of Jonathan Haidt where they identify the true Conservative instinct-
The conservative instinct, as described by Haidt, includes a preference for homogeneity over diversity, for stability over change, and for hierarchy and order over radical egalitarianism. Their instinctive wariness of the foreign and the unfamiliar is an instinct that we all share – an evolutionary safeguard against excessive, potentially perilous curiosity – but natural conservatives feel it with more intensity. They instinctively prefer familiar societies, familiar norms, and familiar institutions.
It follows from this that difference becomes a threat to the 'familiar norms' of society, but is shaped by 'Race' and therefore requires 'separation-
The alt-right’s intellectuals would also argue that culture is inseparable from race. The alt-right believe that some degree of separation between peoples is necessary for a culture to be preserved. A Mosque next to an English street full of houses bearing the flag of St. George, according to alt-righters, is neither an English street nor a Muslim street — separation is necessary for distinctiveness.
Crucial to the argument is that it is 'establishment' conservatives who have enabled the rot to set in -
It’s arguable that natural conservatives haven’t had real political representation for decades. Since the 1980s, establishment Republicans have obsessed over economics and foreign policy, fiercely defending the Reagan-Thatcher economic consensus at home and neoconservative interventionism abroad. In matters of culture and morality, the issues that natural conservatives really care about, all territory has been ceded to the Left, which now controls the academy, the entertainment industry and the press.
And thus we arrive at the point of departure -
For decades – since the 1960s, in fact – the media and political establishment have held a consensus over what’s acceptable and unacceptable to discuss in polite society. The politics of identity, when it comes from women, LGBT people, blacks and other non-white, non-straight, non-male demographics is seen as acceptable...
Any discussion of white identity, or white interests, is seen as a heretical offence...
The solution is thus to reject all of the accepted prejudices that the Alt-Right claims have undermined the essential integrity of The Nation. It rejects what it perceives to have been both the 'cultural hegemony' of the 'left' as managed in academia and the media, but also the market-obsessed conservatives whose pursuit of the dollar left 'their own tribe' behind.
Needless to say, it has gone far enough and what Trump has crystallised among the ignored masses is a belief that it is not too late, and that they can both fight back against identity politics, and succeed in restoring a sense of purpose to The Nation. What they cannot present is a coherent solution to the rights that people from diverse backgrounds have not to be discriminated against, just as there is a bizarre assumption that all of those angry white Americans loathe queers and Blacks, when the same people have gay children, and admire Black people and may even count some among their friends.
Nevertheless, a useful presentation of dead-end politics, for those keen to take a trip on the road to nowhere.
http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/03/29/an-establishment-conservatives-guide-to-the-alt-right/
The article draws on a range of 'thinkers' some of whom, like Julius Evola, shall we say 'evolved' out of Italian fascism after 1945 to make an attempt to restore the 'traditional' aspirations of the Italian people which appears merely to have been a less strident form of Fascism -Steven Bannon having cited the 'traditionalism' of Evola as one of his inspirations. The article makes the by now standard dismissal of academia and the media, cheerfully ignoring the extent to which the Moral Majority and related Christian Evangelists infiltrated US universities in the 1970s precisely to combat 'the left' through the creation of think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute, while many of us wonder how Rupert Murdoch and the Koch Brothers get a free pass when their media outlets have been instrumental in undermining 'the left' and led a relentless attack on the Obama presidency from Day One. Who would have thought Bill O'Reilly and Sean Hannity are on the wrong side?
Ultimately, buried in this interesting if confused article is a simple argument -America is a White Christian Nation, a tribe of people who built it for themselves and no-one else. Immigration is thus crucial to preventing the further erosion of that identity, for the US -and by implication Europe- is facing a long term crisis as non-white non-Christians seek entry. Thus, an article which condemns identity politics, ends up endorsing its own version of the same.
What is striking about their presentation is that BY offer an argument that rejects the Conservatism associated with Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, arguing that Culture rather than Economics determines the fate of countries like the USA.
The emphasis on Culture allows them to insist that its most perfect expression, The Nation, exists as an all-inclusive body which, rather than acknowledging social diversity, seeks to erase it in favour of one all-consuming identity. Indeed, is is because identity politics appears to subtract from the whole a mosaic of groups that is has undermined that most solid and essential of the building blocks of America -the nuclear family led by A Man. Thus, BY quote approvingly 'Gas Masculinist' Jack Donovan who combines the alleged attack on the family with bad economics:
It’s tragic to think that heroic man’s great destiny is to become economic man, that men will be reduced to craven creatures who crawl across the globe competing for money, who spend their nights dreaming up new ways to swindle each other. That’s the path we’re on now.
An additional perspective has been offered by 'NeoReactionaries' (#NRx) who have subjected the 'secular religions of the establishment' to a severe critique to argue-
Liberal democracy...had no better a historical track record than monarchy, while egalitarianism flew in the face of every piece of research on hereditary intelligence. Asking people to see each other as human beings rather than members of a demographic in-group, meanwhile, ignored every piece of research on tribal psychology.
Perhaps a key passage in BY is its endorsement of the views of Jonathan Haidt where they identify the true Conservative instinct-
The conservative instinct, as described by Haidt, includes a preference for homogeneity over diversity, for stability over change, and for hierarchy and order over radical egalitarianism. Their instinctive wariness of the foreign and the unfamiliar is an instinct that we all share – an evolutionary safeguard against excessive, potentially perilous curiosity – but natural conservatives feel it with more intensity. They instinctively prefer familiar societies, familiar norms, and familiar institutions.
It follows from this that difference becomes a threat to the 'familiar norms' of society, but is shaped by 'Race' and therefore requires 'separation-
The alt-right’s intellectuals would also argue that culture is inseparable from race. The alt-right believe that some degree of separation between peoples is necessary for a culture to be preserved. A Mosque next to an English street full of houses bearing the flag of St. George, according to alt-righters, is neither an English street nor a Muslim street — separation is necessary for distinctiveness.
Crucial to the argument is that it is 'establishment' conservatives who have enabled the rot to set in -
It’s arguable that natural conservatives haven’t had real political representation for decades. Since the 1980s, establishment Republicans have obsessed over economics and foreign policy, fiercely defending the Reagan-Thatcher economic consensus at home and neoconservative interventionism abroad. In matters of culture and morality, the issues that natural conservatives really care about, all territory has been ceded to the Left, which now controls the academy, the entertainment industry and the press.
And thus we arrive at the point of departure -
For decades – since the 1960s, in fact – the media and political establishment have held a consensus over what’s acceptable and unacceptable to discuss in polite society. The politics of identity, when it comes from women, LGBT people, blacks and other non-white, non-straight, non-male demographics is seen as acceptable...
Any discussion of white identity, or white interests, is seen as a heretical offence...
The solution is thus to reject all of the accepted prejudices that the Alt-Right claims have undermined the essential integrity of The Nation. It rejects what it perceives to have been both the 'cultural hegemony' of the 'left' as managed in academia and the media, but also the market-obsessed conservatives whose pursuit of the dollar left 'their own tribe' behind.
Needless to say, it has gone far enough and what Trump has crystallised among the ignored masses is a belief that it is not too late, and that they can both fight back against identity politics, and succeed in restoring a sense of purpose to The Nation. What they cannot present is a coherent solution to the rights that people from diverse backgrounds have not to be discriminated against, just as there is a bizarre assumption that all of those angry white Americans loathe queers and Blacks, when the same people have gay children, and admire Black people and may even count some among their friends.
Nevertheless, a useful presentation of dead-end politics, for those keen to take a trip on the road to nowhere.
http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/03/29/an-establishment-conservatives-guide-to-the-alt-right/