What's the deal with the Alt-Right?

[Gentleman of Entropy]

The more I think about it, the more I think the alt-right is the funhouse mirror version of the Occupy movement, everyone who isn't already signed up to a cause, united only by dissatisfaction at what they see as a system that has failed them, but ultimately too fractured to make any headway, thus they've settled for a life of loud, but harmless, mediocrity.

 

[Dudeofteenage]

The alt-right predates Occupy.

 

[AnOminous]

The alt-right predates Occupy.

Maybe the term has, or the groups now commonly put under that umbrella, but it certainly hasn't been used broadly or adopted by any particular movement until pretty recently, like 2014 or so, although there were scattered references to it before Occupy.

 

[Dudeofteenage]

Maybe the term has, or the groups now commonly put under that umbrella

It's that second one. I mean Alex Jones has been on the radio since 1996. He obviously wasn't reacting to Occupy.

I think the real genesis of the alt right goes all the way back to the 60s. A lot of those hippies ended up becoming conservative, but some of them wanted to keep some of the trappings of counter-culture. That's basically what the alt-right is.

 

[*Asterisk*]

It's that second one. I mean Alex Jones has been on the radio since 1996. He obviously wasn't reacting to Occupy.

I think the real genesis of the alt right goes all the way back to the 60s. A lot of those hippies ended up becoming conservative, but some of them wanted to keep some of the trappings of counter-culture. That's basically what the alt-right is.

Demented reactionaries since the industrial age often put on counterculture trappings. The whole appeal of the likes of Hitler and Mussolini was their use of working class anger as a weapon against a radically changing society.

 

[Dudeofteenage]

Demented reactionaries since the industrial age often put on counterculture trappings. The whole appeal of the likes of Hitler and Mussolini was their use of working class anger as a weapon against a radically changing society.

That's true, but the difference is that the fascists mostly scavenged from a very different leftist tradition to the 60s counter-cultural one. Although I guess you could argue that they were 'alt-right' in a sense, too. But in the sense it's mostly meant today, it's largely a legacy of the sixties - although there is obviously some cross-fertilisation between explicit fascists and non-fascist right-wing revolutionists like Alex Jones and his various clones.

 

[AnOminous]

It's that second one. I mean Alex Jones has been on the radio since 1996. He obviously wasn't reacting to Occupy.

I think the real genesis of the alt right goes all the way back to the 60s. A lot of those hippies ended up becoming conservative, but some of them wanted to keep some of the trappings of counter-culture. That's basically what the alt-right is.

I disagree. The vast majority of the people considered alt right detest hippies with a passion and would say things like they want to shove them in ovens. They blame them for the degeneracy of modern society and the wave of what they would call Cultural Marxism that has utterly inundated and obliterated Western civilization.

 

[Sheikh_Speare]

This thread is quickly becoming as autistic as the alt-right itself.

 

[Squealer]

Well, we do watch anime porn and masturbate to it.
MSNBC said all trump supporters do.

 

[autisticdragonkin]

I disagree. The vast majority of the people considered alt right detest hippies with a passion and would say things like they want to shove them in ovens. They blame them for the degeneracy of modern society and the wave of what they would call Cultural Marxism that has utterly inundated and obliterated Western civilization.

One has to realize that there can be influence without alliance. I think it is more likely an influence from the Volkisch movement (which were similar to hippies) though

 

[Dudeofteenage]

I disagree. The vast majority of the people considered alt right detest hippies with a passion and would say things like they want to shove them in ovens. They blame them for the degeneracy of modern society and the wave of what they would call Cultural Marxism that has utterly inundated and obliterated Western civilization.

Yeah it's not so much that they actually -are- hippies or want to hang out with hippies. It's not even specifically about hippies, it's more about sixties counter-culture in general. I mean recreational drug use is pretty common among the alt-right and the idea of drug use as politically subversive basically comes from that counter-culture. That's the kind of thing I'm talking about.

@Asterisk's point about fascists' debt to leninism is kind of illustrative - few would doubt it, but it doesn't change the fact that fascists despised communists and thought they were destroying the world.

 

[RichardMongler]

Pardon the bump, but since it needs to be addressed...

The alt-right is largely a manifestation of frustration with the liberalism of Obama's America, combined with a rejection of Bush-era notions of conservatism. This basically leads to alt-right positions being a grab bag of contrarian bullshit and second-option bias. A lot of it is also a desperate attempt at articulating a right wing position without sounding like evangelical neocons ("Fuck you, dad! Jesus is a kike on a stick and Hitler did nothing wrong!").

For people who claim to not give a fuck what liberals think, a great deal of alt-right discourse is about signaling to liberals how smart and different and edgy they are. This is why you really find no creationists or fundie protestants in the alt-right. Instead they're into "HBD," which is mostly rehashed 19th century "race science," but they think that having IQ stats and cranial charts at least looks more intellectual than believing that Adam and Eve rode dinosaurs. Alt-right ideas have a heavy air of "survival of the fittest" and "might is right" (the latter actually being the name of an incoherent 19th century tract that a lot of alt-rightists suggest).

You're on the right track, but it's still not quite encapsulating who they are.

It's difficult to say who coined the term (some say Paul Gottfried), but Richard Spencer played an instrumental role popularizing the term with his former website Alternative Right. Much like Occupy Wall Street, the alt-right is a loose coalition of disparate elements with radically different belief systems. You can have LaVeyan Satanists, white ethnonationalists, Christian fundamentalists a la Common Filth (despite his attacks on the alt-right, he's still followed by a good number of them), Traditionalist Catholics, Eastern Orthodox converts, neomonarchists, neoreactionaries, various elements of the manosphere, European Neopagans and all other similarly minded people claiming to be alt-right.

The common denominators are:
1. Anti-globalism. Funny since progressives were the champions of the anti-globalization movement in the '90s and early/mid '00s. Now, the tables have turned.
2. Anti-status quo.
3. Anti-egalitarianism. If anything divides the left and right sharper, it's the question of equality, and the alt-right sees it as a cancer.
4. Anti-political correctness.

Only a small minority of the alt-right consists of bonafide Fascists or National Socialists, and they are often savagely attacked and ridiculed (as "14/88" types) by other alt-righters. Conversely, Fascists hate the alt-right, particularly because they feel that, unlike Fascism, the alt-right has no systematic framework from which to govern:
http://ropeculture.org/2015/12/28/why-the-alt-right-is-gay/
http://ropeculture.org/2016/05/06/anti-intellectualism/
http://ropeculture.org/2017/01/13/zero-tolerance/

The white ethnonationalists within the alt right can largely be seen as a predictable reaction against the feminist gender "identity politics" and anti-white ethno-nationalist groupthink that have been promoted by neoliberals and their progressive lackeys for the better half of the 20th century.

It's hardly a mystery why the alt-right gained the traction they have since everyone else is aggressively promoting their own narrow ethno-nationalist or gender group interests, white heterosexual males alone are singled out and criticized whenever they start belatedly defending their own group interests. Of course, societal elites have been busily promoting their own political and economic interests all along, increasingly behind a pseudo-humanitarian globalist and multiculturalist veneer, but are doing so mainly at the expense of the American working and middle classes.

 

[GL99]

Only a small minority of the alt-right consists of bonafide Fascists or National Socialists, and they are often savagely attacked and ridiculed (as "14/88" types) by other alt-righters. Conversely, Fascists hate the alt-right, particularly because they feel that, unlike Fascism, the alt-right has no systematic framework from which to govern

Informative post, but to be fair you could easily argue most of the components of the alt-right hate each other as much as you claim the Nazis and Fascists hate the rest of them. The neopagans loath the Christians, given how the old-school vikings were big on the "sacking monasteries" thing and nowdays say Christians "worship a dead Jew on a stick." "Various elements of the manosphere" don't mesh well with ethno-nationalists, either because they think all men of all races should unite against "perfidious roasties," or because the "stay at home and masturbate all day" strategy of the MGTOWs is incompatible with pumping out more kids for the white race. If you want to say that the diehard 14/88ers are a small minority savagely mocked by the rest of the alt-right, you could say the same of most of its other components. It's one reason there are so many lolcows there, really. Tons and tons of drama.

 

[RichardMongler]

Informative post, but to be fair you could easily argue most of the components of the alt-right hate each other as much as you claim the Nazis and Fascists hate the rest of them. The neopagans loath the Christians, given how the old-school vikings were big on the "sacking monasteries" thing and nowdays say Christians "worship a dead Jew on a stick."

I did. Hence why I said loose coalition. Unity in opposition. A similar phenomenon happened in the '80s when neoconservative Christians marched hand-in-hand with radical feminists in their moral condemnation of pornography. For wholly different reasons, both sides aimed for the proscription of porn by all means possible.

Likewise, you have mutually hostile groups in the alt-right marching hand-in-hand in their shared opposition to whatever ails them.

"Various elements of the manosphere" don't mesh well with ethno-nationalists, either because they think all men of all races should unite against "perfidious roasties," or because the "stay at home and masturbate all day" strategy of the MGTOWs is incompatible with pumping out more kids for the white race.

Indeed.

It all depends on which segment of the manosphere we're talking about, but if we're talking about the "old school" MRAs (Paul Elam, Warren Farrell, et cetera), most of those guys aren't engaged with the alt-right at all. In fact, I recall seeing on their forums several self-identified Marxists as resident posters. It's also rather instructive since most of those movers and shakers were former feminists. Ergo, they're more a "men's civil rights group" than part of the alt-right.

Other parts of the manosphere hate other segments of the alt-right. Here we have Common Filth and Davis M.J. Aurini shitting on Richard Spencer for an hour here.

It's one reason there are so many lolcows there, really. Tons and tons of drama.

 

[Oglooger]

I never got why it's called alt-right in the first place.
what is it being an alternative to?

 

[millais]

I never got why it's called alt-right in the first place.
what is it being an alternative to?

Cuckservative neo-cons?

 

[Feline Darkmage]

I never got why it's called alt-right in the first place.
what is it being an alternative to?

It's a and/or the alternative to mainstream right-wing Neoconservatism.

 

[Oglooger]

Doesn't that just make it the regular right wing instead of neo-con centrism?

 

[Feline Darkmage]

Doesn't that just make it the regular right wing instead of neo-con centrism?

Take it up with Richard Spencer fam, he likes taking credit for coming up with it after all.

 

[Oglooger]

Take it up with Richard Spencer fam, he likes taking credit for coming up with it after all.

I'll just call myself right wing and go bully kekists.