Saturday, November 19, 2016

What is alt-right?


The Red Ice people with a video fisking of a recent CNBC interview of Milo on the subject of  'what is alt-right?'

Should settle the issue of whether 'alt-right' is a racially oriented political sect.





7 comments:

GLH said...

Thanks for posting that because I have been asking the same question. I don't have time to watch it now but I will get to it later in the day.

Noah Way said...

Blah blah blah, couldn't get past the first 5 minutes.

It's too early to define the 'alt-right', and its very name may in fact be pandering, just like a good portion of both parties election campaigns. From what we've seen so far the so-called alt-right combines elements of the GOP platform (which Trump coopted and extremified as a GOP candidate), the DEM platform (really just the GOP platform with a domestic smiley face stuck on it), a libertarian platform (eliminate regulations and wars), as well as an overlap with elements of a true progressive platform (end 'free' trade, anti-war).

So to try and define alt-right racially is I'll-conceived and seems to take a lot of noisey pandering as factual agenda. If one thing is crystal clear at this point, it's that the public has been played (misinformed, lied to, manipulated) by both candidates (no news here) and more critically a corporate media that is in reality little more than the propaganda arm of the deep state / corporate-financial-military complex. That system is now trying to define this new movement in a way that marginalizes it in the same way that the GOP turned 'liberal' into an insult or in the way that Hillary defined herself as heiress to the throne. Perception is everything.

The rules of the game are changing and the power structures are going to shift. IF Trump is successful. The huge and very powerful system that has had near absolute control of BOTH parties is now fighting for it's very existence and all bets are off. Or so it appears.

I'm not rushing to judgement on any of this. At this point what I see is mostly mountains of dis- and misinformation.

Tom Hickey said...

The Alt Right is loose grouping for convenience, like "Alt Left." The Alt Right ad Alt Left are similar in being populist, that is, anti-establishment. Right and Left have come to mean Establishment Right and Left.

Alt Right comprises conservative populists of all stripes and Alt Left comprises liberal populists aka progressives of all stripes, but in both cases these terms tend to be applied to the extremes, and have therefore become caricatures.

Moreover, Alt Right and Alt Left more more internet memes than social realities.

Here is Wikipedia on Alt Right. There is no entry on Alt Left. The query is redirected to Regressive Left.

William F. Buckley and Pat Buchanan are considered intellectual founders of the Alt Right, and Noam Chomsky and Post Modernism are taken as intellectual founders of the Alt Left.

Here is a link to a Breitbart article one the Alt Right, which is a more articulated version of the POV of Milo Yiannopoulos than the caricature in the video clip above.

An Establishment Conservative’s Guide To The Alt-Right

It is difficult to say what either the Alt Right or Alt Left are because many Internet proponents associated with each are in your face types that are trolling the establishment, and the establishment is fighting back by attempting to tar these vocal populists as "extremists."

So I would not get too bound up in these labels.

One thing that seems to be true of the Alt Right that is important, however, is that it is the dialectical response to the identity politics and political correctness of the establishment "left," I.e., the Democratic Party. The identity of the Alt right is traditional (therefore conservative) and European (white). It is not quite correct to call the Alt Right only nationalist. For many if not most it is nativist, with the European colonists replacing the indigenous population as native to the US.

But Steve Bannon is far far closer to Pat Buchanan than David Duke. In fact, with Bannon's appointment as WH chief strategist, he is assuming a role similar to that played by Pat Buchanan in the Nixon administration as WH speech writer, and Buchanan was vilified then, too.

Tom Hickey said...

Ooops. Blogger striped the links. Oh, well, it's free.

All Right at Wikipedia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alt-right

Regressive Left at Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regressive_left

An Establishment Conservative’s Guide To The Alt-Right
http://www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/03/29/an-establishment-conservatives-guide-to-the-alt-right/

Matt Franko said...

I would say these people are the true alt-right as they were the ones that coined the term about themselves first and many now are trying to glom on to it for some reason .... maybe commercial reasons as they are an audience..

Bannon isnt in it... and it looks (to me anyway) a 'racist' or at least a racially oriented group...

Kristjan said...

That's my impression too Matt, racial realism comes to mind when I think about alt-right.

Jake C said...

I very familiar with the alt-right,


I liked them at first because they wee critical of neocon foreign policy,isreali-lobby and seemed to favour a fiscal pro jobs approch to the economy.
They may have even been critical of the financial sector.And they were un-pc and essentially anti internationalist neoliberal.


But Ive come across some real race focused people and traditionalists,im too old for that wase of time.


But the real question is :@matt franko what did you mean when you said you were to the right of facism??

:)that always mystified me