A proposal for CLR reading… June 24, 2018
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.trackback
Okay, a suggestion. I was at the Central Library a week or so back and borrowed a couple of interesting works. One being Alt Right: From 4chan to the White House by BBC US’s Mike Wendling. Published just this year by Pluto, I’ve just read the Introduction and it struck me it might be useful the next few weeks progressing through it to highlight some of the more intriguing quotes and see if that generates discussion. Even better if some of you get a chance to acquire it yourselves and post up quotes you find equally telling. So, here to get the ball rolling are some of Wendling’s thoughts that seemed to me particularly worthy of comment…
Youth?
So who exactly are the people who make up the alt-right? Here again the nature of the movement and its life online make it extremely hard to pin down he characteristics of the individuals involved. It’s safe to assume that many are men, and most are white, but there are notable exceptions. The conventional wisdom, created in party by alt-right sympathisers, has established that this is a youthful movement, and while there may be an element of truth in that description the movement probably doesn’t skew as young as it thinks it does.
Socioeconomic background (does he mean class?).
Despite their anti-immigrant stance, more than a few alt-righters are immigrants, or children of immigrants. It does seem that a significant cohort are university students or recent students who bear a particular grudge against the forces of political correctness. It’s unclear if any particular socioeconomic backgrounds are particularly over- or under-represented.
Soft power and culture…
But the argument that the alt-right represents a “counter-culture” comes almost entirely from the movement itself and rings hollow when properly examined. It has received little scrutiny in the media – the anonymity of most activists being a key barrier to testing the proportion. In actual fact, the alt-right is quite a culturally sterile space – producing a bunch of Photoshopped images (“memes”), tweets, propaganda videos and in-jokes, sure, but very few original songs, bands, films or other cultural artefact of the type that flourish in real counter-cultural communities. This is a movement with no soft power, and which immediately found Iit hard to keep up oppositional pretence after their hero was elected president.
Political action?
As a creature born and raised on the internet, it values trolling and internet pranks not just as sideshows or light diversions but as key forms of political actions
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 
As a creature born and raised on the internet, it values trolling and internet pranks not just as sideshows or light diversions but as key forms of political actions
‘Prank’ as plausible deniability for advancing fascist ideas.
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Yes, though in fairness to the author he makes no bones about that last, that this is core to them (fascist ideologies).
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All the rest of the vast volume of competing political expression filling the Internet fizzles and goes nowhere in national politics, European or US.
That is sometimes explained by saying it is because it can’t or won’t, or anyway doesn’t, form old fashioned political parties or connect into existing ones.
So I would ask the same question as implicit in the title; how did this school of thought connect into, and hitch a ride on, the Republican party?
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Now that’s a question! Is it because at its ‘softest’ margin it is near enough identical to forces already extant in the Republican Party, particularly following the Tea Party populist tilt? And then there’s racial and gender aspects that run deep in it, and the fact the Republicans aren’t a single unitary party (and IIRC has no national programme) but more a collection of parties and groups who coalesce around the name and the poles of influence (Congress, local states etc), so therefore it is easier for sections of it to be pushed one way or another?
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Did he offer a definition of what alt right is.
I don’t think I’ve yet seen one. I’ve seen a lot of references to person x being alt right and person y being liked by the alt right as if that’s equivalent but a lot of this seems like a house of cards.
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In a way perhaps he does and in a form that seems to me close to your point, suggesting it is ‘an incredibly loose set of ideologies held together by what they oppose: feminism, Islam, the BLM movement, political correctness, a fuzzy idea they call ‘globalism’ and establishment politics of both the left and the right’. And he also suggests that the term itself ‘transformed from an obscure idea into commonly used – if sometimes ill-defined-label’
He goes on to say that “imprecision [on the part of members of the alt-right, or perhaps more accurately those who identify with it] allows even the most extreme alt-righters-and many of them hold views far out of step with any recognisable mainstream political party or movement – to avoid being pinned down and to accuse their accusers of misrepresenting them. Thus to call the alt-right ‘racist’ or an offshoot fo the KKK and leave it at that is to step into their trap, where activists can either refute the claim with selective facts or embrace it- but either way claiming victim status -and tweet out a few Pep memes in triumph. The internal logic of the alt-right quickly breaks down under scrutiny – and the fissures that have already started to kill it off become glaringly obvious-but in order for this to happen it must be properly examined and exposed.
Getting a handle on the A-R is difficult. It is, as mentioned, an oppositional force with no real structure…”
“there are definitive identifiable strands of alt-right thought’
And that last I think points, at least this early in the book to his thesis which is that it is something of a tendency – people moving on alt-right (and alt-light sides) in a similar direction, sharing some commonalities but also having some distinctive differences amongst elements of it. Some working in combination, others actually at odds with one another.
But in a way where’s the surprise. When we read the term the ‘far left’ we know that that describes a category but that that category isn’t exact, that there are commonalities and distinctions and divisions within and between itself (so it can therefore contain Stalinists Trotskyists Anarchists, parties, individuals, groups, formations, schools of thought, publications, media, etc and many of them completely at odds with one another). The same is true of all such categories or terms ‘the Left’, ‘Neo-liberal’, ‘liberal’ etc. They almost seem to map out political terrain on which various actors may traverse but not necessarily (indeed usually not) as one.
Anyway, fingers crossed by the end of the work he’ll have some working definition of same.
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I probably should say at this point that I tend to the view, though I’m open to persuasion otherwise reading this book, that alt-right is at least partly a constructed term (in part media used tho IiRC Spencer coined it) used to describe a range of contradictory forces that while they do exist do not necessarily have the relationship with one another the term might imply. But we’ll see.
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BTW you can read the Intro and a couple of pages of C1 here…
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The problem with the alt-right is that it’s so bloody amorphous. Internet celebs like Jordan Peterson or Dave Rubin clearly have alt-right “feelz”, yet they are not of the far-right and it would be unfair and more than a little counterproductive to label them as such. They may be ultra-conservatives or right-libertarians but they are not neo-nazis or white-power types. Though they increasingly draw support and succour from elements of that movement.
Even Joe Rogan seems sorta-kinda alt-rightish, though his somewhat confused politics are more of a libertarian, almost anarchist mind-set.
Maybe, and I’m just thinking aloud, we should see the alt-right in a venn diagram way, as a cross-over point of ultra-conservatives, libertarians, the far-right, white-right, and kids playing for LOLZ? With some circles bigger than others.
There is definitely a counter-cultural aspect to it all, coupled ironically with a fair degree of technophile elitism among the “hipster-nazis”; a pleasing if somewhat inaccurate description.
This stunt in the Alps in pretty typical. Is it a real political gesture or just a weekend break with mates for the Instagram snaps?
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The problem with the alt-right is that it’s so bloody amorphous. Internet celebs like Jordan Peterson or Dave Rubin clearly have alt-right “feelz”, yet they are not of the far-right and it would be unfair and more than a little counterproductive to label them as such. They may be ultra-conservatives or right-libertarians but they are not neo-nazis or white-power types. Though they increasingly draw support and succour from elements of that movement.
I believe the Germans have a saying which goes something vaguely like this: if there are nine people at a table listening to and not challenging a tenth who is a Nazi, then there are ten Nazis at that table.
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LOL! Ok, that’s pretty good. Though in fairness I think Jordan or Rubin would challenge explicit Nazis. The problem is where the Nazism gets fuzzy around the edges. That ideological liminal space is where part of the alt-right more or less sits. That is why it is so worrisome. Plausible deniability confuses the situation.
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How remarkable the times are that the gay, married to a man, jew who supports abortion is regarded as alt right.
I do not think just because you are a gay Jew that you must therefore be sound. Look at Milo to knock that on the head but a pro pot, pro abortion, pro gay marriage, pro prison reform guy is being lumped in with Richard Spencer.
If you want proof that the definition has a long way to go then perhaps that’s it and if you want proof that the alt right has metastasized so completely as to be able to seamlessly incorporate that type of person as a work horse then that’s it.
Either way there is something to think about.
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“Maybe, and I’m just thinking aloud, we should see the alt-right in a venn diagram way, as a cross-over point of ultra-conservatives, libertarians, the far-right, white-right, and kids playing for LOLZ? With some circles bigger than others.”
Yes but with some actual fascists thrown in the mix too – I don’t think Peterson is alt-right actually more contrarian with a line of faux reactionary thinking which is a real pity because some of the basics he espouses is sensible. But I can see how his dancing around stuff can feel alt righty
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I read that comment and also wanted to respond.
In the space of a few comments we went from people who are called alt right (Peterson) to alt right ish (Joe Rogan) to you can label them all Nazis.
We do not have a sense of what alt right is yet we are already calling them alt right or sympathisers and then summing it up with = neo Nazis.
How in God’s name is Joe Rogan alt right? Or feels like alt right – and feels like is really dangerous territory.
Hands up here who likes being called stalinist by right wing types.
Milo, Spencer yeah but Rubin, Peterson and Joe Rogan.
Where is the pause button on this? This is the standard playbook and that’s why I wanted to know what the definition of alt-right was because it won’t be long before we see that definition becoming feeling becoming well You’re a Nazi anyhow.
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I personally don’t feel those mentioned are alt-right, and certainly not the more identifiable far-right. However, they tap into a certain strand of alt-right sentiment or grievance without themselves being of the movement. Peterson is more contrarian-right, as WBS indicates, while Rogan seems to be a sort of anarcho-libertarian at times. The problem is that both beliefs find echoes in alt-rightism.
That said, we are just teasing out our thoughts in a political discussion. I don’t think anyone if definitively labelling anyone here.
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It’s my sense that for any if these discussions to have power it’s important to not just nice forward to hearing ” good stuff” but also to question the a priori assumptions made by the author.
Especially for left wing groups. By the good stuff I mean the main theme of the book.
However, even briefly there are important points made that should be considered.
WBS, you quoted:
“a fuzzy idea they call ‘globalism’ and establishment politics of both the left and the right’. ”
Is there a person here who doesn’t agree with opposition to those thing as they are do loosely defined there.
Seattle, occupy, etc etc seemed to have a concrete enough idea that globalism existed but they aren’t alt right.
The thing that labour represented was the establishment left. Opposing that is good.
What I’m trying to get down to here is that the rush to the exits to call people alt right might result in a phenomenon not being property understood and if you want to double down on danger that’s a good approach.
Another term for the alt right might be “the racist left”.
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Another term for the alt right might be “the racist left”.
How on earth so? These guys fit seamlessly with the majority of what Goldwater Republicanism was about.
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A couple of thoughts on that. First up the author doesn’t namecheck Peterson or Rubin, indeed he has interviewed Spencer and an array of self-identifying alt-right figures including Gottfried too.
And that point is very important. Alt-right isn’t just a media or other construct. It was a label that a number on the far right selected and have applied to themselves very consciously. Go to Amazon and one can find collections of essays by a variety of those figures (Spencer, Taylor, MacDonald) so they’ve no hesitation in using it.
So there’s nothing wrong or illegitimate about the author writing about a group that has a self-defined and very consciously so range of people at its heart.
No one here is rushing to call anyone alt-right, indeed ASF and myself have been very careful not to term anyone (say Peterson) as alt-right. He isn’t. He’s right contrarian and that’s a pity because he actually has some good and useful stuff to say about various issues and I fear that the contrarian bits get in the way of the good stuff. And so far in the book the author isn’t doing likewise though it’s a fair point more broadly you make that there is a tendency to rope a lot in under the banner – sometimes that’s accurate, sometimes not so much. It’s worth keeping an eye out.
Re the left and racism, or alt-right being the racist left. I’m a bit dubious. For a start their economic approaches aren’t leftwing at all. And indeed far right economic policies which seems left wing – ie worker oriented tend to break down at one obvious point: they don’t have a category of worker which is a left wing category, ie all workers irrespective of ethnicity or religion or whatever.
Instead to them the category of worker is bound by religion and ethnicity (or on occasion culture). Furthermore they don’t position power amongst workers but amongst elites who guide the workers – and non democratic elites at that. Finally what they say they will do ‘for’ workers (in a paternalistic way) isn’t actually much cop. They’re almost invariably uninterested in breaking up capital or instituting health care or whatever. Or as with Bannon actively hostile to same. All it is is rhetoric (occasionally about jobs, but even then poorly thought out).
So per definition they’re not left wing (in precisely the same way as loyalism in the north has problems or had re workers in the north only including those who were PUL, as in the use of that acronym in NI, rather than CNR). Again that’s not left wing.
I think there’s a danger that one reifies that rhetorical nod to workers and economics as a part of their programme, but in fact there’s a massive incoherence between those on the far right in terms of economics, libertarians, semi-statists (of a chauvinist or national sort), conservatives, reactionaries, etc.
I’d also think it’s casting the net too wide to say well x is anti globalism and y is anti-globalism therefore they are the same. The analyses and nature of the analyses are radically different (as well as which their understanding of the term globalism would be markedly different). It collapses nuance and category to argue that one is the same as the other. To give another example, I’m very strongly antagonistic to left wing pro-Brexit analysis. I think its wrong, poorly thought out, etc. But I don’t think it is the same as right wing pro-Brexit analysis, and I don’t think that outcomes are the same in terms of what is sought.
Anyhow, this is just the intro and it’s raised a good level of discussion. Chapters 1 on… 🙂
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I’d be on that page.
I’ve seen too many easy references and catch all definitions of who is alt right on the wider internet and it’s depressing to see it…but I also think it’s dangerous.
The point about them being the ” racist left” is a bit of a flourish but came from the following points.
1 – the alt right is heterogenous and indeed it includes a spread but that spread is part of the problem of defining it.
2- the lead outfit for the AR is Breitbart. A look at Breitbart site is to see repeat warnings of the dangers of globalisation, the threat of low wages, the contexting of immigration as as an economic instrument of big business.
3 the lead preacher of the alt right is Bannon and bannons schtick is to argue economic nationalism irrespective of race, religion, etc. The truth of that is suspect but it’s remarkably dangerous because people seem to believe it and it may become bigger than Bannon and take up it’s own life.
4 a search brought up this article on the alt right with the originator Spencer.
https://www.thenation.com/article/the-racist-right-looks-left/
Ugly and lacking underpinning the sentence that struck me was “stupid.…Reaganite nostalgia”.
That’s a comment from Spencer. They actually seem to believe this and perhaps that’s not surprising since they are national Socialists and that’s their schtick.
These people are turning on reaganism. There is something really weird happening whereby they have incorporated anti corporatism and they believe it.
Are they left wing. No, of course not but they seem to be willing to sell themselves a bit more as that than they would have before. Maybe it’s strasserism ?
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The antithesis of Reaganism isn’t Strasserism (and I don’t think they’re Strasserites who often seem to be right syndicalist or vocational state proponents where one can get a tangible grasp on their ideology at all). But take Bannon at his word and see his attacks on the ‘administrative’ ‘state. And on health care. And on union power. And on… and suddenly all he seems is to be a right of right wing blue-collar Republican. Indeed the huge irony is that if they are anti-Reagan much of the rhetoric these folk use is “Reagan democrat”.
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No, I don’t think the opposite of reganism is strasserism. That’d be a mental space I want to keep far from.
I’m not trying to say this is absolute. I think they are trying to figure out their position. Bannon has stated he is a huge Regan fan.
I am just trying to tease out how febrile it seems to be.
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Febrile is precisely it. Though doesn’t it come back to the incoherence of the fascist political project as economic project. There’s no clear direction as to what that means. One can look at traditional social democracy, or mid to late Leninism (say the NEP) or liberalism of whatever flavour and see relatively clear economic projects as part and parcel of their political approach. But fascism has never really had an economic project it can call its own. It really is a political/ideological project that piggybacks quite comfortably onto a pre-existing capitalist structures, at least in practice (Italy/Germany) and in variants (Francoist Spain though that was never a fully fledged fascist regime Franco being remarkably astute in keeping the Falange and its economic approaches at arms length – btw there’s an interesting history on how the Falange had a ‘workerist’ element of sorts but other strands in it kept that fairly subdued, arguably the Austrofascists though they in a sense seem to have been really conservatives trying to shield themselves in fascist trappings). The political project always comes first and so they can tolerate or even encourage broadly capitalist economic structures where there’s some state intervention but all things considered pretty mild ones and fundamentally what they see as ‘national’ businesses and/or pools of wealth are relatively untouched by the regimes. And as the situation say in Germany gets more difficult as the war continues they actually seem to detach entirely from serious economic approaches and have all manner of insanity (not least the extermination of the Jews which, and this isn’t a great sentence that follows but you know what I mean, makes no economic sense at all and wraps up resources etc at a point when they can least afford them). Even the prosecution of the effectively racial war on the Eastern Front sees incredibly counterproductive approaches taken in regard to military terms which serve only to strengthen the resistance ahead (and behind) them.
Even the ‘softer’ variants seem to have no very clear economic programme, usually defaulting to a sort of right of right – poujadist, pro-small business, anti-union, sub-vocational, which in practice is continuity conservatism. telling I think that the League is messing around with flat taxes.
And on the wilder shores the likes of national anarchists or national bolsheviks try to reinvent the wheels in various different ways according to taste and broader prevailing political winds.
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“Did he offer a definition of what alt right is.
I don’t think I’ve yet seen one. I’ve seen a lot of references to person x being alt right and person y being liked by the alt right as if that’s equivalent but a lot of this seems like a house of cards.”
I think the term is deliberately vague. But much as we may dislike,
say, Theresa May, I don’t think any of us would describe her as
“alt-right”, whereas both Trump and Orban would have articulated
ideas and much closer to the alt-right movement.
The SPLC has this definition of “alt-right” :
The Alternative Right, commonly known as the “alt-right,” is a set of far-right ideologies, groups and individuals whose core belief is that “white identity” is under attack by multicultural forces using “political correctness” and “social justice” to undermine white people and “their” civilization.
https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideology/alt-right
This NYT article has this:
The “alt-right” is a racist, far-right movement based on an ideology of white nationalism and anti-Semitism…
The movement’s self-professed goal is the creation of a white state and the destruction of “leftism,” which it calls “an ideology of death.” Richard B. Spencer, a leader in the movement, has described the movement as “identity politics for white people.”
It is also anti-immigrant, anti-feminist and opposed to homosexuality and gay and transgender rights. It is highly decentralized but has a wide online presence, where its ideology is spread via racist or sexist memes with a satirical edge.
“Identity Politics for White People” does seem accurate-all the various
people I’ve seen lumped under the alt-right banner do all articulate
some form of white nationalism.
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yeah, it’s not a bad term. White nationalism does seem to be the key underpinning.
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I think this matches closely with the origins of the term.
I think it also reveals a problem and a solution though.
The solution is it excludes people who have nothing to do with the alt right from being labeled as alt right or associated as such unless the evidence says otherwise.
The problem it reveals is how do you quantify what seems to be a wider movement of a right seeking to redefine it’s purpose. Clearly, there is a wider dynamic and part of the reason people get loosely called alt right is because they are part of that wider dynamic.
So, what’s giving rise to these two forms both of which are occurring close in time and aren’t necessarily parts of the same movement although there is overlap (but where isn’t there) but they may be responses to some common stimuli.
So, what’s driving this?
Interested to see where the book goes with that.
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A good point. What critiques of the Alt Right (and this includes F.O’Toole’s piece in today’s IT) miss is that it is a revolt against the current neoliberal consensus, but one sponsored by individuals to fight on the wrong programme. The tasks facing us are huge and seem huger since the SU fell, so it is easy to look for ways to fight globalisation on the cheap. And what seemingly more easy than attacking neoliberalism on its identity politics? Low wages? Stop immigrants coming in and undercutting native workers! Unemployment? Make a bonfire of tariffs and the workplace controls that are preventing businesses development! Law and Order? Its thim furriners agin! And, over all, there is the need to maintain the nation as a disciplined homogenous whole, like a counter-revolutionary Bolshevism (which is precisely how the original Fascist Party was designed, by the way.).
Now, certainly, we must work to defend and expand the social gains made under the neo-lib umbrella (Few of them were initiated by the neo-libs themselves, in fact) , but we cannot defend the consensus’ economics. It is essential that we fight the fascists as socialists. If we fight as net-liberals, we are likely to find too many of our ‘allies’ deserting us for the forces of the enemy; they will compromise because on the basic economic issue, the profit motive, they are at one with the enemy.
But globalisation. it should always be thrown that the major propaganda source fro the alt right is the globalised media conglomerate of that Old man of the outback, Rupert Murdoch.
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Well said.
This surely means that the Left must find ways to debunk the most popular myths generated by the propoganda arrangements with straight-talking responses in an unflinching fashion.
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“It is essential that we fight the fascists as socialists. If we fight as net-liberals, we are likely to find too many of our ‘allies’ deserting us for the forces of the enemy; they will compromise because on the basic economic issue, the profit motive, they are at one with the enemy.”
+1
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“So, what’s giving rise to these two forms both of which are occurring close in time and aren’t necessarily parts of the same movement although there is overlap (but where isn’t there) but they may be responses to some common stimuli.
So, what’s driving this?”
Important question.
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Phew! To answer your q. adequately ,wbs, we’d need a an whole new heading. However, I can make a stab at it.
At the end of World War II, fascism was pretty well discredited. The world order divided between the Soviet Union and its satellites that claimed to be building single country socialism and the capitalist democracies. These latter sought to avoid the pre-war misery by organising full employment and greater provision of welfare without breaking with imperialist capitalism either economically or in political perspectives. Economically, the Attlee government in Britain, the nearest that island has ever got to a socialist regime, depended too much on the city of London and its foreign holdings to do more than nationalist the Bank of England. Politically, there were the cold war, the brit colonial wars in Malaya and Kenya, Suez, Algeria and of course Vietnam. These coarsened the politics of the metropolitan states; Algeria destroyed the admittedly ramshackle French Fourth Republic in favour of the more authoritarian Fifth and inspired JM LePen. Vietnam aborted LBJ’s Great Society. Over all, such contradictions hastened the moment when the falling rate of profit made it impossible for the post war order to continue in the same way.
Fron 1965, there was a confused struggle over what was to replace it. Basically the debate was between a greater state intervention and laisser faire. The seventies saw people change their positions. In Britain, curbs upon trade union powers were mooted first by Wilson’s first Labour government: his second increased their freedom of action. Meanwhile the crisis was causing a revival of discredited attitudes: in Britain anti-immigrant laws, in the USA, Nixon’s Southern Strategy. With the’ 80s came a hardening of economic and social conservatism, represented by the policies of Thatcher and Reagan, different approaches, but with the same aim: the increase of profit rates at the expense of wages. Both failed, but their failures were overshadowed by that of the Soviet Union. Since everyone, bar a relatively few soreheads like yours truly, had claimed that the soviet bloc was indeed socialism, there were few to challenge the open domination of the global conglomerates. Instead resistance took the form of neoliberalism: intensive capitalist accumulation and enlightened identity measures. This combination has tended to discredit the latter in many eyes, just as the Versailles settlement discredited the relative enlightenment of the Weimar Republic.
Fascism will not come this year or next year, but it is growing and is flexing its muscles.
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That’s a gloomy analysis, but I think it’s very plausible. I’ve long felt similarly, that the failure of the Soviets, a failure that was all too evidence in both its strong and weak versions, was pivotal. That when it was still extant the fact it was extant was sufficient for far too many, sort of the token that socialism worked, whatever the reality, and that when it failed that was a further crucial blow seeming to shut down the possibility of alternatives (including alternatives forms of socialism). Moving beyond that though, there’s the rub.
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Short answer. We can only work and argue. The problem with the second is that too many of us (perhaps including self) mistake pontificating for arguing.
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Well put and building on that sentiment perhaps as many more think arguing is equal to work.
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Just so, tho’ I’ve noticed that organisations are prone to mobilise quite large numbers for work, but train them for the ;one haul subsequently.
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