The 'Alt-Right' in their own words

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/2016/0...the-alt-right/

If natural conservatives merely wished to isolate themselves from other cultures as, for example the Amish do, one might be able to accommodate their choice (as long as such accommodation doesn’t unduly disadvantage their children or overlook abuse). What natural conservatives want (at least those who aren’t the ‘intellectuals’ of the movement) is to universally institute their practices. It is not enough for them that a woman who might be a ‘natural conservative’ may choose to carry her pregnancy to term, rather they insist there should be no choice: all women should carry to term. It is not enough that a ‘natural conservative’ man can choose to deny his homosexuality, but rather there should be no choice: all homosexuals should deny their nature - there should be no place for gays, lesbians or transgender in our larger society.

Those who accuse the left of playing ‘identity politics’ have cleverly coined a term whose literal meaning is exactly the opposite of how they use it. On the face of it “identity politics” means a political stance that favors a particular tribe or identity over others. But it is repeatedly applied as a description of liberal politics which in fact attempts to treat all people fairly regardless of their tribe. The alt-right, on the other hand, quite clearly is all about maintaining the political supremacy of the tribe of white Christian males - and that is ‘identity politics’ par excellence.

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Originally Posted by trish

If natural conservatives merely wished to isolate themselves from other cultures as, for example the Amish do, one might be able to accommodate their choice (as long as such accommodation doesn’t unduly disadvantage their children or overlook abuse). What natural conservatives want (at least those who aren’t the ‘intellectuals’ of the movement) is to universally institute their practices. It is not enough for them that a woman who might be a ‘natural conservative’ may choose to carry her pregnancy to term, rather they insist there should be no choice: all women should carry to term. It is not enough that a ‘natural conservative’ man can choose to deny his homosexuality, but rather there should be no choice: all homosexuals should deny their nature - there should be no place for gays, lesbians or transgender in our larger society.

Those who accuse the left of playing ‘identity politics’ have cleverly coined a term whose literal meaning is exactly the opposite of how they use it. On the face of it “identity politics” means a political stance that favors a particular tribe or identity over others. But it is repeatedly applied as a description of liberal politics which in fact attempts to treat all people fairly regardless of their tribe. The alt-right, on the other hand, quite clearly is all about maintaining the political supremacy of the tribe of white Christian males - and that is ‘identity politics’ par excellence.

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From a UK perspective, I can see the way the alt-right argument presents demographic change in the USA as the greatest challenge to the historic dominance of one social group over another, notably in politics and the economy. Immigration is being used in Europe as well as the US as the litmus-test for the loyalty of the political class to 'their tribe' and it is because of immigration that alt-right uses words like 'betrayal' to describe what others would call 'human rights', but as we know the alt-right loathe and detest the very concept of human rights, because if they exist, everyone has them, and what they want is to limit rights, not extend them.

The danger is that part of the alt-right agenda is a rejection of the international political system which, though rooted in the UN that succeeded the Second World War, dates back centuries to the treaties of Westphalia in 1648. And yes, at various times between then and now there were international agreements which prevented wars and promoted economic co-operation and these broke down, but what I see in alt-right is a deliberate attempt to break down both international organizations like the UN and the EU, and the agreements that go with them, which range from co-operation on health and communications to technology and economics. The view is simple -instead of a world of trading blocs and trade deals and international bureaucracy, states should be free to pursue their own interests without reference to any other authority, the USA being big enough and rich enough to go it alone without being responsible for other people's problems, and without surrendering its 'sovereignty' to bodies it cannot control.

The UK used to have an Empire and took the same attitude when it declined to join the nascent European community at its origins in the 1950s, but we now have the spectacle of leaving the EU from which we have benefited at every level, to see the Prime Minister in effect go cap in hand to the USA to beg the right to sup at its table. I just don't see how the world will be a better place if the EU is replaced by states competing for the same prize, and in any case expect if the EU in its present form were to dissolve a new format with many of the existing states would replace it. But what it would do is enhance the powers of states such as Russia and China, it would lift sanctions and other pressures on states like North Korea and Saudi Arabia, and cause more problems than we have at the moment. It is this indifference to the rest of the world and the USA turning inwards that undermines everything we achieved since 1945 because of what went before it, and it is no surprise that David Irving is delighted that a new generation of people no longer take for granted what they have been told about Hitler and the Holocaust, and are prepared to reject the evidence of history as at the very least an 'alternative fact' if not a lie.

But the Nationalist movement -there is no such thing as populism- wants to have its day. It wants a France pour les Francais, a narrowly conceived Dutch for the Dutch and so on, it wants to halt immigration, in some cases to begin 'sending them back' and my view is that even if we have to endure this backwards glance to a nostalgic Europe that never existed, the reality is that in the world we live in we cannot survive without co-operating, on trade, on human rights, on health, on climate change and so on. Trump may be taking all of us, not just the USA into a dark place, but we have been there before, and it doesn't work and in time people will see that, just as we do not know if Wilders will win in the Netherlands, or Le Pen in France.

One also notes in the article I cited in the op the delight BY take in citing the 'internet pranksters' and their irreverent attitude to established norms and values, but this also leads to a deterioration in the use of language and a general tone of hostility and rage that makes genuine debate impossible, so that one side ends up shouting at the other and there is no hope of dialogue or agreement. That confrontation and intimidation is the result makes this whole situation nasty and ugly, but is the chosen vehicle for those for whom democracy is a failed experiment. Ultimately, in the US either the separation of powers will eat away at Trump's long term ambitions, or the system itself may buckle with who knows what consequences. And we are just 10, let alone 100 days into this experiment.

More people need to consider the Libertarian Party. It offers more freedom than your typical Red / Blue conundrum. Who wants 50% of their paycheck taken? Nobody really? Who wants marriage open to all? A lot of people. So have your cake and eat it.

More insight into the 'alt-right' has emerged with a Memo written by Rich Higgins, until recently on the staff of the NSA before McMaster decided to sack him. The memo identifies the seven groups conspiring to have the President removed from office. All the usual suspects here, Marxist Academics, the Media, the Republican leadership, Global corporations and bankers, Islamists etc ...read and enjoy-
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...n-rich-higgins

"cultural Marxist themes that dominate the prevailing cultural narrative" - so the communists are still pulling the strings and all of these people are their stooges? What exactly were this guys qualifications to be on the NSC staff?

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Originally Posted by filghy2

"cultural Marxist themes that dominate the prevailing cultural narrative" - so the communists are still pulling the strings and all of these people are their stooges? What exactly were this guys qualifications to be on the NSC staff?

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Higgins was in the military where he developed expertise in explosives, went to the Justice Department and from there to the Pentagon. I assume at some point he left, possibly in the transition period between the Bush and Obama administrations and then was hired for the NSC earlier this year. His interview is worth watching, albeit a tedious half hour, in that he makes it clear that he believes the US has lost the 'war on terror' and that the Muslim Brotherhood is winning it, primarily because the Obama administration has capitulated to the political correctness brigades, secondarily because they have formed a strategic alliance with the left. Political Correctness is the greatest threat to the USA and, indeed, to Western Civilization.

What Higgins does is underline the extent to which this 'alt-right' perspective believes that 'American philosophy' is right and good but is under sustained attack from its enemies who have captured the commanding heights of domestic and foreign policy. There is no discussion as such of issues such as 'race' and intellectually, it appears that these particular conservatives have no time for the inherited conservative lineage of William F. Buckley, Irving and Bill Kristol, and never mentions 'Neo-cons' like Donald Rumsfeld or Dck Cheney, indeed, Higgins suggests they too capitulated to the Muslim Brotherhood through the Council on Islamic American Relations and the widespread use of the word 'Islamophobia' after 9/11 -because the PC brigades attach the word 'phobia' to the 'narratives' of oppression that smuggle cultural Marxism into the language of everyday politics. The constant reference to the Muslim Brotherhood as the major enemy helps explain, in part, the alliance the administration made with Saudi Arabia in its attempt to isolate and destroy the emirate of Qatar recently.

The full text of the memo that led to Higgins' firing is in the first link. Note the point made early on:
' "Transgender acceptance" memes attack at the most basic level by denying a person the right to declare the biological fact of one's sex'.(page 2)

For a memo that says if you oppose the President you oppose America, there is a bizarre twist toward the end where he argues that the cultural Marxist agenda needs urban development as this makes it easier to extend the powers of government and control the people which results in

"population control by certain business cartels in league with cultural Marxists/corporatists/Islamists who will leverage Islamic terrorism threats to justify the creation of a police state" (page 5).

I can think of a German immigrant called Drumpf who created an urban real estate company -ok not a cartel- but let's not go there.

Full text of memo is here:
http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/10/...ew-up-the-nsc/

Interview with Higgins (February 2016) is here-
http://dailycaller.com/2016/07/02/fo...-terror-video/

Attachment 1024466 "The Resistance"
I think this is what the alt right might reply to all the lefties here.

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Originally Posted by nitron

Attachment 1024466 "The Resistance"
I think this is what the alt right might reply to all the lefties here.

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I was going to respond with a condemnation of these people and a distinction, but my first thought is holy shit how the hell are the men with torches, steel shields, metal poles and half a dozen guns going to defend themselves against these women?

By the way, that ignoramus Cantwell from the vice documentary of Charlottesville was pictured on the first evening spraying someone in the face at close range with pepper spray. Now, those who watched the documentary will recall him rolling on the floor begging for milk on the face while his buddies yelled "heil Cantwell". Might he have gotten his own pepper spray in his eyes? You know that saying don't piss into the wind, it applies to pepper spray as well.

Anyway, it's a feeble response since it doesn't explain why these clowns are yelling racist slogans to begin with.

Personally, I found this upsetting.....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C7i6gtUGGHI

And , although she forgot it or over looked it, Hitchens was a viral anti Islamist.

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Originally Posted by nitron

Hitchens was a viral anti Islamist.

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Herpetic I think.

Steve Bannon was interviewed for BBC-2's Newsnight programme last night. The full 50 minute interview is in the link, not sure if it is available to viewers outside the UK.

On the one hand it is of interest to hear Bannon defending the record of the President he served, he claims for the year that was agreed upon (ie, he wasn't sacked), but on the other hand it appears that he uses words to conceal truths, that he has no real understanding of the historical forces at work, and has little or nothing to say about the abusive and insulting way the President belittles his fellow citizens other than to claim he moderated it when he joined the campaign.

He does dismiss the BBC, the Financial Times, the Wall St Journal as willing tools in the hands of the 'globalists' he detests, and puts in a spirited attempt to defend 'economic nationalism' on the simple basis that it works. He thus insists that the proof is in the numbers of people in work, at one stage claiming Martin Luther King would praise his former boss for putting more Black Americans and Latinos into jobs with the bonus of rising wages -but not sure if they would agree.

But -unemployment in the US has been falling year on year since 2008 but he can't say that or it undermines the case against globalization. He blames globalization for the loss of manufacturing jobs to China, but technology has been eroding the industrial base in the US since the 1960s long before the liberalization of capital began in the 1980s, where there is no mention of off-shoring in the Reagan era. And crucially, as he attacks China, no recognition that the 1980s was a moribund decade that was transformed in the 1990s through the growth of China without which globalization would have been the lesser being that it became, and without which Bannon himself would not have become a rich man as China's growth and the end of the Cold War led to expanding markets and demand that benefited the US to the tune of trillions of dollars.

If he can't prove the economic nationalism, he makes it clear that the USA's hostility to Iran is only partially about the Nuclear Deal for he adds in the claim that Iran backs the 'terrorist' Hezbollah in Lebanon, without offering any evidence, a point on which Emily Maitlis did not challenge him.

He wears two shirts at the same time, he doesn't shave, he looks like he just crawled out of bed, he ridicules the Democrats as the Impeachment Party though he thinks the Republicans will retain control of the House and Senate in the mid-terms because it will be an 'impeachment' election and in effect, the re-election of his buddy.

It is not comfortable viewing, and while wrong on so many things one hopes he is also wrong about the mid-terms but that is a long way off.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episod...night-23052018

Unlike Steve Bannon, Ann Coulter has lovely hair. As someone who loves lovely hair, I wonder why it is that I don't love Ann Coulter, and can't even bring myself to forgive her so-called political views in the hope that I might experience the hair (I will spare you the details even though HA is mostly a porn forum).

The link below is to a long read an interview with Coulter. She strikes me as being the media figure people turn to for an outrageous comment, something she will manipulate to attract attention to her 'real agenda' which is political change. Some of the outrageous comments are:

-at a public meeting to promote a book: “The main thesis of my book,” she says, “is that the media are liars – every one of them.”

-“For democracy to live we must kill the media,” Coulter says. “There may be a rash of reporter suicides – have no sympathy.” We must destroy the media, and rebuild it on “more ethical lines”.

On Trump’s alleged obstruction of justice: all Trump has done is lie to the media, which is legal, and “there is nothing wrong with lying to the media. In fact I recommend it.”

But what interested me was this-
In 2004’s How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must), she offered 10 rules: “Outrage the enemy”, “Never apologize”, “Never compliment a Democrat”, “Never show graciousness toward a Democrat” – some of the rules overlap – “Never flatter a Democrat …”
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...ould-we-listen

Reading this put me in mind of one man: Lenin. What is is striking about her comments is that what appears to be an aggressive posture designed to give libertarian ideas their strength undermines the whole purpose of politics, which is to create, promote and challenge ideas, to contest their meaning and value when transformed into policies, so that in a democracy people can weigh up the alternatives and vote accordingly.
The problem for Lenin and Coulter is that democracy means losing power as well as obtaining it. We know that once Lenin obtained power the Bolsheviks never relinquished it, but at its heart is the critical idea AJ Polan advanced in his 1984 book Lenin and the End of Politics:

From the vantage point of the working class (and the Party), Lenin is incapable of viewing dissent or difference as anything but error. And since the Bolsheviks know the irrefutable truth, Lenin (and not just Stalin) is incapable of tolerating politics. To Lenin,

“[p]olitics is private self-interest made public. Thus Lenin’s first move is to abolish any possible distance between the gross economic position of an individual and his motivations; to abolish any space for ‘values’, and consequently, disagreement over values” (p. 175).

Lenin does what politicians of any age have done to their opponents: label their views as merely self-interested, and without principle or merit
http://lexiconic.net/wheatfromthechaff/archives/184

Thus to me Ann Coulter's position is simple: there is only one truth, and it is what she says it is. Any dissent from that truth is to be dismissed as 'liberal', 'left-wing' and so on, which by definition means worthless. But just to underline how dangerous this is, it can be also be observed in the politics of Newton Gingrich and Mitchell McConnell and their absolute determination to destroy Bill Clinton by any means, and in the case of Barrack Obama to effectively obliterate any record of his two terms as President 'like it never even happened' as registered in this bleak roll call of spite and revenge:
http://collegian.csufresno.edu/2018/...ever-happened/

But when politics comes to an end, dictatorship is all that remains.