I got an e-mail from someone asking me questions about the alt-right. At first I thought it was a joke, but a little research revealed the person to be a reporter for a legitimate media site. Some guy from the Washington Post did a story on the hate think community the other day and he followed up with a primer for the good thinkers. Hillary Clinton is planning to bravely take on the alt-right in a speech somewhere, assuming they can sober her up and keep her from toppling over. Now that the Cloud People have a label, they plan to demonize anyone that opposes them as members of the alt-right.
I’m not sure of the protocol on these things so I’ll leave the identity of my correspondent out of this, but the query had the feel of an e-mail blast hoping someone would respond. One question was “When did you join the Alt-Right?” It’s the sort of question asked by people who have spent their life accumulating credentials in order to advance in the bureaucracy. “Comrade, I joined Party after leaving University, where I got degree in ideology and policy.” Managerial class types just assume everything works like the exam system of the managerial class.
I don’t consider myself in the alt-right, but I suppose that depends upon how you define it. If memory serves, Richard Spencer coined the term Alternative Right and his thing is white identity and white nationalism. I have no interest in those things and I don’t write much about race. I’m a biological realist and I think most of what we are as humans is in our genes, but I think forming a white ethno-state is about the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. The only thing dumber is the blank slate nonsense that comes from the managerial class through the mass media.
On the other hand, big foot journalists are now applying the label “alt-right” to anyone outside the government approved Left-Right orbit so maybe that does place guys like me in the club. John Derbyshire coined the term “Dissident Right” which is probably a better label. I don’t dream of a honky paradise. I just want one of the political parties to be slightly to the right of the Democrats of 1960. Half a century of cultural lunacy is enough. Let’s go back to what used to work for the bulk of the citizens.
None of that is important. What is important is the people in charge feel they need to do something about the growing hate-think community. Having Clinton waddle out in front of other humans is a high risk stunt, given her brain injuries, but having her take on the alt-right suggests the Cloud People are worried. As Hitler said, “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” Maybe it was Gandhi who said it. I get the two mixed up all the time.
The reason the Cloud People are suddenly concerned about the hate thinkers is the numbers. In the 1980’s, Official Conservatism™ included people like Joe Sobran, Sam Francis, Peter Brimelow and Steve Sailer. The people outside the sphere of acceptable opinion were the sort of people who handed out literature on street corners extolling the virtues of the Albanian political system. The hard core racists and radicals were small in number and comfortably outside the tent so no one paid any attention to them.
Over the last thirty years or so, one group after another has been cast out of the increasingly narrow sphere of acceptable politics. Conservatism is basically low-tax liberalism now. It’s not just on the right either. Old school progressives like Bernie Sanders are now outside the realm of the acceptable on the Left. Cesar Chavez would be a hate thinker today, simply because he strongly opposed illegal immigration on economic grounds. The difference between the Left and Right today is over patronage and how often to bomb the muzzies.
The result of several decades of purges on the Right is that the “alt-right” is now bigger than the Official Right™ and it certainly is where the cool kids are hanging out on-line. The hate thinkers are also younger, on average, than the old farts in the mainstream media. One of the strange things about the alt-right is it is populated with young guys with everything to gain from a rebellion and old eccentrics with nothing to lose from a rebellion. The young guys are clever and funny, while the old guys are brilliant at noticing patterns in society and human behavior.
The safe bet is the increased attention to the hate thinkers will result in a holding of hands and chanting of lines from the liberal catechism. Howls of racism and antisemitism will echo through the halls of officialdom. We got a taste of this in the primary when guys like Jonah Goldberg tried to slime Trump as a closet Klansman simply because David Duke said nice things about him. Among the Cloud People, being called a racist is the worst thing imaginable, so it is their most powerful abracadabra word.
The trouble is the hate thinkers really don’t care and they seem to relish this sort of attention. The gag you often see is “When I was a conservative they called me a racist. When I was a libertarian they called me a racist. When I was a Tea Partier they called me a racist. Now that I’m alt-right I don’t care what they call me.” Often, the response to the charge of racism is mockery. It’s really hard to shout people down when they are laughing at your efforts. That and the old guys have been called these things so often they don’t pay any attention to it now.
I’m probably one of the older guys. Not at all as brilliant as I once thought I was, but I do have two science degrees and an MD that I no longer make use of. I do consider myself part of the Alt Right, but this is rather awkward because I have no membership card or decoder ring, and I often have to ask my sons to decipher some of the jargon for me or look it up in the Urban Dictionary. I think that to a certain extent that the establishment types can in part blame Trump for a… Read more »
re: “You guys had better.[Change]” teapartydoc
Ryan in charge of the House puts paid to that hope. After Trump fails, better learn Spanish and Arabic as the Democrats will continue their election of a new people.
Dan Kurt
You’re singing my song, Doc. I wrote much the same thing on Hot Gas. When Reagan was elected, I figured conservatism had turned the corner, and the future was bright. Sure, there would be struggles, but we’d demonstrated that the Left could be beaten, and eventually we’d come out on top. I thought the people at the top shared this view, and so I never took a second look at them. Basically, I sort of fell asleep in the 80s, feeling sure that conservatism was in good hands, and the work would continue, with my support. I awoke from my… Read more »
No, I think you, TeaParty, me, we are still conservative. It is the Party (R) who left us and changed their color/flavor/bent/religion. And that is still treason in my book.
The Alt-Right is the human equation balancing itself out. It at it’s most pure has nothing to do with the the cultural marxism in all it’s forms, neither will it have anything to do with it, the Alt-Right is relevance in the form of something that is coming home to roost. The A-R exists not only in spite of the statists, it is beginning to flourish in spite of them. It those “bitter clingers” somebody ranked on a bunch of years ago and has tried to turn into Kulak’s, those who hold to traditions, ways long established, things that worked… Read more »
Your words remind me of C.S. Lewis’s “Prince Caspian” in the Narnia series. The Alt-Right, or conservatives, or reactionaries, or whatever we are now, are Old Narnia, the land of the talking beasts and living trees, the fauns and satyrs and giants – overthrown and suppressed by usurpers and living in hiding. But as Doctor Cornelius says, “something has warned Miraz that Old Narnia is not so dead as he had hoped, and he is on the move.”
Ya, as you say, the usurpers are the cucks, their numbers are vast, they have traded being productive dirt people for the baubles of modern society and it’s social network, it is about remaining relevant to the social herd. It’s like SHTF, everyone asks when will it happen, what will happen. SHTF while ago numb nuts, you where just too absorbed in all the social constructs to notice when the fundamental matters of life where relegated to the lowest class status of your fantasy world of avoiding being a productive member of a long traditional culture of liberty where self… Read more »
The whole neocon war in the ME has also come to be a problem for me as well. We were attempting to fight a war of forced conversion, but we didn’t like ourselves nearly enough to pull it off. There are two things we can do to win, and that is kill them all, or forcibly convert them, but we refuse to do either, but we also refuse to leave. It’s insanity.
Yours may be one of the best reader Comments I’ve ever seen anywhere! You cannot imagine how encouraging you and your words are. We who had a similar awakening about Donald Trump (we were looking for his ideas and his strength and his plain old patriotism in others, and had come up empty) have been told that we are stupid. Cult members. “Fans”. And worse. And here you are. A grownup like us. Educated AND wise. Smart as a whip. Very pleased to meet you!
This reply was to teapartydoc.
Absolutely right! You said it perfectly in your comment about the Z man “and here you are, a grown-up like us – educated and wise and smart as a whip”.
My sentiment exactly and it for that reason that I read Z-Man’s post regularly!
Omg it’s like I just read my Dads story. You just nailed it. I was proselytizing my Dad all primary season. Usually I’d just say look at Ted Cruz’s face do you really think you can trust that guy? Being from the Chicagoland area, everything turned around for my pops after Trump tried to have a rally at UIC and it looked like a race riot went down. Cruz blamed Trump just like the shitlibs were doing and my Dad threw his hands in the air and never looked back.
The sad thing is many of us still have quite a bit to lose. Which is why we must remain anonymous.
One slip-up and we could be rendered instantly famous and unemployable.
I hope I live to see that dynamic destroyed. Erased entirely.
Most important comment on this page.
It’s life if a theocracy. I’m pondering a post on this topic from the perspective of academics who suffer more than anyone from the morality police.
Oooh! Oooh! Ooooh! [Waves hand frantically] Call on me, teach!
@ Aquinas “The sad thing is many of us still have quite a bit to lose. Which is why we must remain anonymous ” Which is precisely why so many polls show cankles with huge leads. Anyone with any functioning brain tissue knows that there are no “anonymous” polls out there. These people/ machines have your number and a nice, big database operation, and they want to fill in your record line. That would be your permanent record line. (a fine reference to use when picking who gets audited or who gets hired for some cushy gubmint job –depending on… Read more »
re: “Methinks the polls are very skewed.” Crispin
Don’t worry about the polls. Worry about who counts the votes. Tired Hillary or ?Biden? will at worst win in a squeakier. The Democrats have imported enough aliens and control enough Precincts to win the electoral college from now until the collapse.
Dan Kurt
I think the polls are just not very good right now. Most of the polling being done is just for public relations. There’s also a Trump effect in the polls and it varies from state to state. In the primaries, he under-polled by double digits in some states. Part of it is people lying, but part of it is non-voters coming out to vote for the first time. In a couple of weeks we will start to see some better numbers and I suspect a closer race. I also suspect a few strange results like PA and NJ being better… Read more »
Polls are just another tool of the Ministry of Propaganda AKA “mainstream media”. Nobody in their right mind pays any attention to them.
“People do not expect to find chastity in a whorehouse. Why, then, do they expect to find honesty and humanity in government, a congeries of institutions whose modus operandi consists of lying, cheating, stealing, and if need be, murdering those who resist?”
— H.L. Mencken
There is something vaguely feminine emanating from the clouds. It is hard to quantify, but you know it’s there. It smells like grandma’s house did when you caught a whiff of aging, diseased flesh beneath the perfume. It’s like when your girlfriend first told you she didn’t like your shirt and maybe you shouldn’t hang out with your friends so much. Or how your rich friend’s Mom never allowed you to enter into her perfect parlor where she kept all of her delicate decor and fine furnishings. I believe it was Ayn Rand who once described Man as viewing himself… Read more »
. . . men have faced the world logically and practically with very little use for feelings.
You don’t know anything about football fans or college basketball, do you? ( Modern man with a television. Attempt at humor. Not a comment on your thinking skills. )
Good point! But for the most part, when it comes down to business, the athletes keep their cool. Especially in the good ole days. But everything changed when Joe Namath first wore pantyhose.
Actually, I meant the rabid dedication of fans to a team, sometimes to the point of violence in the South.
I have long objected to being nurtured by the state. You hit on something very important here. Much of recent lawmaking has been to separate men from their nature. The feminization of society, it will not stand, God decides our nature, not legislatures.
Uncola; I’d say it’s not all that vague, it’s full-on feminism in the cloud now. Think Middle School Mean Girls if you want to understand their behavior patterns. With no adult supervision to check the excesses. Female elite solidarity (+ maybe Daddy Issues) explains a great deal of the stupidity/silliness that passes for progressive thought these days. Since evolutionary biology is the new all-purpose explainer of social behavior now, it’s not hard to posit that in the bad old days your brood’s survival depended on collective help from your fellow females while their dad was away hunting. So staying on… Read more »
“I think forming a white ethno-state is about the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. The only thing dumber is the blank slate nonsense that comes from the managerial class through the mass media.” Unfortunately, the other ethnicities being brought in by the millions each year to the usa DO believe in ethnic solidarity, and therein lies the problem. I dislike identity politics, but they’re voting their ethnic imperative, and the left has convinced them their ethnic imperative is to overwhelm, dispossess, and “pay back” whites, whom they blame for all the world’s ills. I’m not even white, but if whites… Read more »
And that’s the good scenario.
The worse (and more realistic) scenario is the South African plan for whites: elimination.
“Unfortunately, the other ethnicities being brought in by the millions each year to the usa DO believe in ethnic solidarity, and therein lies the problem.” Well, there is an element of truth in this – but it is also collective-speak. Clearly, some people do as you say, others differently. My own wife is Chinese and revels in it particularly when we have her family over, yet she is perfectly at ease with all other ethnicities as long as they work and produce (she calls herself a “social butterfly”). She doesn’t have much use for worthless lazy bastards. As to ethnic… Read more »
That was my working belief most of my life and on some level still is. As I sat around a table at work earlier today I was one of 4 white people, 4 South Asians, a black man, and an Israeli woman. I suspect all were far more left than me [it would be hard to find anyone not] but for the matters at hand we were professionals and citizens on common wavelengths in a freeish country. That’s the country I grew up to believe in and would still want. On the whole, the idea of cultural assimilation never really… Read more »
PJ
One need only look at Yugoslavia, Celyon, pre independence India, current Africa to see hoe wrong your argument is. If one believes all men are good, kind, industrious, I could agree with you. But men are sinful, greedy, evil and violent, and some societies far worse than others. This is why some areas are still mired in the stone ages and always will be. You haven’t travelled much have you?
After thirty years overseas I cry when I see what the US has become and where it is going.
I don’t know exactly when it was (or how it came to be) that I found the alt-Right on Twitter. But Trump is pretty much the reason. And whatever happens, I am grateful to him for that. It’s been painful in that I now know I am neither part of, nor can depend on, many of the folks I used to trust and idolize on the Right (even lost one in real life friend over that person discovering I’m alt-Right). But I am happy that I am free to say the things that were formerly unsayable, declared so by those… Read more »
Right on.
After what I’ve seen in Boston and elsewhere, I don’t really care if anyone calls me a racist. I’ve worked with Negros and had no problem with them and I’ve had to put up with individuals that had no business being employed at their level but were protected. If we don’t fight now, stop this insanity now, then the next generation of Americans will be reduced to the level of slaves or serfs. But I don’t think that will happen, at least not without bloodshed on a scale that will surpass the Civil War. In the town that I was… Read more »
Everyone notes that there’s no membership card for the “alt right”. Perhaps a simple test will do. You’re a member if find the following funny:
As Hitler said, “First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win.” Maybe it was Gandhi who said it. I get the two mixed up all the time.
Good test.
I have my moments
Jonah Goldberg used to talk about “anti-left” versus “anti-state” conservatives. I always thought the latter was nonsense — being “anti-state” in the 20th century is like being “anti-chieftain” in the Bronze Age — but the former had some merit. As the Left wants to destroy ambient civilization because they’ve confused it with their Daddy, who either spanked them too much or not enough, I’m against whatever they’re for. Which I guess these days makes me “alt-right,” too. You’re a much better man than me for not having some wicked fun at that turd’s expense. “When did I join the Alt-Right?… Read more »
Me, I’m a racist – I hate the race of stupid arseholes. Their skin colour is irrelevant, as is their language and even their IQ or education.
That’s actually my real hope for the future. There seem to be statistical differences between the genetic races as to how many stupid arseholes we drag around like a brake on the victory chariot. There are plenty of good, decent people in every race and I predict we will soon get together to oust at least some of the stupid arseholes.
Alt-Right? That’s so vague I can easily see how it could apply to all sorts of standards. From white supremacists to conservative evangelicals. Bottomline for me is that when the liars who got elected in 2012, as champions of conservatism, who promised to fight Obummer and his agenda, but did exactly the opposite, I hit the brick wall. When someone lies to me and then throws me under the bus, I say fool me once shame on you, fool me a hundred times, shame on me. They can lie, they can try all sorts of labels on me but I’m… Read more »
This is Vox Day’s definition of the Alt-Right: https://voxday.blogspot.com/2016/08/what-alt-right-is.html?m=1 I don’t see how this could have played out differently. I stopped voting as a Democrat because I recognized that every Republican candidate was called “stupid”. You can only do that for so long. When they call you a racist, they expect you to shut up. But how can you ignore the racist language of La Raza and BLM? Why do they get a pass for completely bigoted statements? There’s the same overuse of “anti-Semetic”. Are we supposed to believe that Trump hates his grandkids because the Left calls him anti-Semetic?… Read more »
I’ve always been torn on VD. I sometimes wonder if his politics are driven by a desire to make a buck, more than conviction. I’ve been wrong about him in the past so I could be wrong here too, but I wonder.
I don’t have an opinion on him yet. I find that he has some interesting commentators and I have learned some things from reading his site.
His heart’s in the right place (as it were), but he’s too abrasive/combative, and he’s not as smart as he thinks he is. The first fault is venial, but the second one can really get you into trouble.
“I’ve always been torn on VD” I feel the same way ’bout you, Zman, not necessarily always, not necessarily even often, and not that you’ve a desire to make a buck, just sometimes, in my opinion you do hit a foul ball but… when you are on, your batting a thousand, hence I keep coming back here.
Point being I’ve also reservations about Vox but reading the link presented by Notsothoreau I felt he, Vox, provided a good 16 point start in defining the alt-right and as he noted, it’s just a draft open for discussion.
I think it was Alan Watts who said the word is not the ting. The word water for example tells you nothing about the direct experience of water. But putting your hand in it or jumping in it and splashing around do. Labels are limiting but the CULT loves them for that reason, they are less afraid of something once they label it. Aha! it’s this thing called the alt-right that’s the problem and that has to be killed immediately, lest it bring the real world into our lives! What they’re really afraid of is direct experience of just about… Read more »
Alfred Korzybski.
Thank you, just ordered Manhood of Humanity.
If you’re ever unsure whether Conservative Inc. types (like those at NRO and TWS) and Government Party Elitists (like liberal Democrats and the media) are on the same side, consider the redundant nature of their tactics over the past year:
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/08/clinton-ad-kkk-trump-227404
…and…
http://www.nationalreview.com/corner/432228/trump-thinks-kkk-are-conservative
There is a Government Party in this country, and they do not tolerate threats to their power in any way, shape, or form.
Jonah Goldberg got mad at me for comparing him to David Brock, but Goldberg was doing to Trump the same slimy stuff Brock did to Bush. It was almost word for word.
In the end, class loyalty trumps national loyalty and party loyalty.
“…..Old school progressives like Bernie Sanders are now outside the realm of the acceptable on the Left….” I thought (and still do) that the lefty cloud elites totally embraced the policies and ideology of Sanders, but they were opposed to his candidacy only because they were convinced he could not win. A Sanders ruled nation, like all lefty ruled nations, is the absolute nirvana for the ruling elites. It is a nation of, by and for the ruling elites because it provides a rationale for the incredibly wealthy and powerful to justify and maintain their wealth and power. This is… Read more »
The people calling themselves Progressives these days thing the bread and butter socialism of guys like Sanders is backward and crude. Calling Progressives “socialists” greatly misunderstands socialism. Socialist truly believed that their economic polices would make everyone better. Modern Progressives don’t think their preferred policies will improve America. They reject the concept of countries so why should they care about Americans? Anything resembling an economic plan aimed at Americans is just a residue from the past. It’s what has to be include to trick the rubes into voting for them.
Thinking back on “ye olden tymes” (as you put it), I’ve been struck by the difference between the reaction to the unemployment that followed the financial crisis of 2008 and the television news I used to watch back in the ’70s. Back then, the unemployment rate would be the first item on the news during any economic downturn, and they’d go on and on about a decimal change one way or the other. But the precipitous drop in employment in 2009 (and the persistent under employment since then) went practically unnoticed. And the reason is the left’s abandonment of ‘bread… Read more »
Hello, everyone. I’m here to shout from the roof tops that I’ve been “Alt-Right” since the 5th grade and I’m not now, nor have I ever been, ashamed of it. Perhaps my Southern upbringing helped to shield me from the mind-control tactics of calling Whitey hateful and racist if he/she agreed more with observable reality than what the people from TV Land told us we should think and feel. My father – really, all the men in my family – would explain to me and my siblings why blacks acted the way they did. I didn’t go to a lily… Read more »
Still the best icon on the web. (“Bad Friends, Good Times”).
O/T- been looking for a chance to thank you, Zman, and 5Miles (I think) for an educational moment.
I was wrestling with some big concept stuff, added in the usual obscure comment which you casually dismissed.
It was a pure Alpha move, and I lost my mind.
Perfect illustration of 5miles’ anonymous-conservative link about making liberals lose it.
Good stuff, people, hat tips to all!
Well, shoot. You’re 5Miles… I meant LetsPlay… I think!
Ha! Yeah, you meant this for Lets Play.
I agree. My icon is both tops and true. The best times are always had with low-down, shameful “bad friends.”
That Zman and the alt-right crowd are gonna get you in trouble…
pretty soon you’ll be reading Reactionary Tree and voting for Trump.
Definitely “Bad Friends”
The Alt-Right is a collection of noticers, I am a noticer but I also love the dank memes. Many of us have been firmly in the alt-right camp and did not even notice it, except for the noticers.
I never could be a conservative, because conservatives love government far too much for my taste. As to racism: http://strike-the-root.com/race-hucksters-bore-me Am I alt-right? Probably not. Anarchists don’t have much use for the left-right spectrum, which is just a device cooked up by the oligarchy to keep discussion within the 3×5 card of allowable political opinion (although as you note, that device is now failing). We just don’t believe in government at all, and like all our associations to be voluntary. But if you all like government, go ahead and have it. We don’t mind, as long as you leave us… Read more »
No matter which way this goes, being a cognitive and genetic outlier will not end well. Adopting refugees and escaped slaves to weaponize a new order? History being what that is, what are people going to do to be left alone? Camp on a burned out graveyard? That is why stuff migrates. English laws and inbred class genetics do not exactly last very long. Not without new crops of uppity victims to row well, and live. Theocracy. Burn the idols. Just not that one. Why do they breed and kill some? They are good to eat. Why do they kill… Read more »
I guess the question for the American public is, which is scarier, Muslims or Trump?
Hillary alone is as scary or worse than either. Hillary plus her progressive coattails of all varieties are far more scary than Muslims and Trump put together. There are plenty of circumstances in which I have no quarrel with Muslims, certainly not most of them, and not necessarily even the extremists. IF they were content to run their turf and plot the global caliphate long term, I’d be willing to call that a manageable historical norm. We could go centuries that way and get by. I see no automatic need to bomb them all or take their countries. I wish… Read more »
Hillary launching the 2 minute hate against the alt-right.
Remember, don’t mention the tattoo. Remember the last guy who mentioned the T? Or the ceremony. Definitely not the ceremony.