Who Are The Alt-Right? Clinton’s Greatest Creation
Author’s Note: This piece was originally written for my regular ‘Sex, Drugs & Electoral Rolls’ column in Craccum Magazine. It was unable to be published in a timely manner there due to a mix-up with the vagaries of print-deadlines, so has been presented with some alterations for your enjoyment on TDB instead.
Late last month, US Presidential Candidate Hillary Clinton made world-sweeping headlines for a campaign stump-speech in which she called out – by name – the previously internet-bound phenomenon known as ‘the Alt-Right’. That same evening, Newshub aired a resyndicated news story from abroad which mentioned in passing one Milo Yiannopoulos (widely regarded as a figurehead sine qua non for the disaffected gaggle of networked malcontents we’re talking about), while also addressing the ‘Alt-Right’ as being a “white nationalist movement”.
In the case of both Clinton and that errant news report, the claim and purpose of invoking these groups by name was much the same as earlier eras’ emphases upon shadowy yet monolithic Islamic terror networks, and vastly insidious Communist conspiracies – that is, to give a new and looming Official Boogeyman for Establishment figures (whether political or media) to point to as a creeping, subversive threat.
Certainly, in the climate of political upheaval being inspired by political moments such as #Brexit and the ongoing, inexorable rise of Donald Trump (alongside the consequent breaking and political bankruptcy of the US Political Establishment), it is very handy to be able to cast about and identify a single unifying phenomenon or philosophical grouping responsible for all of the above. Even better if you can seek to marginalize and reduce the cause you’re talking about by turning your reporting or speechifying on its underpinnings into itself an act of de-legitimating.
And there is, generally speaking, nothing less legitimate in the eyes of many than a bunch of anime-watching, LCD-tanning, adolescent (whether biologically or behaviorally) young men embracing notionally extremist political creeds drawn from the darkest, strangest, and most irrational-outrage-prone corners of the Internet – which, among other things, is what the Alt-Right is often regarded as being. (Presumably the main reason Key hasn’t attempted to attack Winston’s support-base like this is because the National Party stereotype of NZF-voters all being over 60 effectively precludes same from hanging out on image-boards) About the only thing which could possibly be regarded as more absurd and derision-worthy in association with a mainstream political campaign would be actual Neo-Nazis and cross-burning American White Separatists. Both of which, you’ll note, the ‘Alt-Right’ is often described as containing.
But while there is an obvious and potent rhetorical force to be had in describing your opponent’s core supporters thus (however true or otherwise it might be), the trouble with both politicians and con-men is that they eventually start to suffer the deleterious after-effects and clouding of judgement which almost inevitably accompanies starting to believe your own propaganda. Worse, there’s a curious property of the political realm that makes things you talk about as ‘mere’ narrative oratical flourishes turn into terrifyingly concrete reality (c.f the way there largely wasn’t an organized Islamic armed “Caliphate” up until US rhetoriticians started talking about one). The esoterically inclined might recognize this as a temporal manifestation of the Buddhist concept of ‘Tulpa’ – wherein sheer force of believe can actually make otherwise illusory objects real through the manipulation of Maya (because if everything’s vaguely unreal anyway, then forming unreality into things which are as tangible as ‘real’ objects isn’t actually that hard – a perfect metaphor for the modern operation of PR and rhetoric in politics).
By putting an increasing energy into ‘calling out’ opponents of Clinton, or the E.U., or Globalization, or any of the rest of it as being ‘Alt-Right’, and “White Nationalists”, and all the rest of the unsavory gumbo of slurs which we’re going to see unfold over the next few weeks … the Protectors of Orthodoxy are committing three grave errors.
First, and most obviously; Clinton, half the UK Conservative Party, and probably sooner or later John Key et co (in other words, your Technocratic Globalist Elites) engaging in this sort of rhetorical legerdemain, do so to fairly deliberately mischaracterize their adversaries. As I’ve covered in previous columns both in this magazine and elsewhere, the driving forces kicking back against Establishment Politics across the Anglosphere and even further afield are not what they’re being sold as. Instead, they’re disgruntled and disaffected working-class folks who’re fundamentally OVER the way they’ve been continually marginalized and passed over by the alleged benefits of Globalization and successive layers of economic ‘reform’. They are fulminating and fustigating, in the main, about being left behind and lied to by the neoliberal elites who’ve misgoverned and misruled over us for the best part of a generation. It’s the same phenomenon (and quite literally the same people) which adequately explain both Trump and Sanders, Corbyn and Brexit.
To insist, blithely, that all of the above is effectively reducible down to a veritable CARICATURE of a political movement as largely carried out over 4chan is not just to engage in the most comprehensive misjudgement of upheaving political forces since a certain previous prominent female naively presumed that a few cakes would put down the French Revolution … it is to also blatantly insult all the decent, mature people who’ve *actually* built up and sustained the above and aforementioned political shifts. Fifty Two Percent of British Voters are not Alt-Right, and nor are most of the people who fairly resolutely think Hillary is unfit to be President.
And yet … if you name something like this – give title and prominence to the ‘phenomenon’ – then like teenagers queuing up to buy suddenly outlawed ‘explicit’ music as a form of rebellion, it can therefore take on a life and vitality all of its own.
The second cardinal error, therefore, is something which an associate of mine termed the ‘backdraft principle’. Rather luridly, he described the ambit of such as being akin to standing outside of a burning building, and opening a great, heavy-set door. All of a sudden, “oxygen rushes into a previously enclosed space, rapidly adding intensity to the conflagration, resulting in an explosion”. I’m not sure of the precise application of thermodynamics here, but the metaphor is an apt one. If Liberal Voices mean what they say about this ‘Alt-Right’ being an even more dangerous adversary for that which they value than your run-of-the-mill Trump supporter, then perhaps the very worst thing Clinton could have done, from a long-term perspective, would be to give voice – her voice – to their Movement. In much the same way as the Ancient Greeks sought to destroy Herostratus … there are some iconoclasts whom, if you’re serious about curtailing their influence, all you can do is cease to mention them in public in the hopes of considerably aiding and availing their withering demise. To do otherwise – to lend them the legitimacy of mention in a Presidential campaign speech … is to give them an entirely undeserved respectability.
The third fault is perhaps rather innocuous, except from an academic’s or pedant’s point of view. There is no single monolithic ‘Alt-Right’ any more than there is a ‘unitary’ anti-West in the Middle East. Over the last eighteen months of running battles and skirmishes which I’ve had with an eclectic array of the ‘Alt Right’s’ online membership, about the only consistent feature of the term’s adherents is their diversity. You will quite literally encounter *everything*. Semi-reconstructed fascists duel with Pinochetian economic libertarians who share the former’s substantive enthusiasm for f(l)ashy uniforms. Raging homophobes are lead by a flaming homosexual. Former Eastern-Bloc Jews make common cause with Anti-Semites (I’m not even kidding – I’ve seen this a number of times). Hezbollah and the Islamic Republic of Iran are praised, while Muslim migrants are referred to as “rapefugees”. “Don’t Tread On Me” yellow-black Anarcho-Capitalists are found a stone’s throw from semi-ironic Stalin-enthusiasts. And an increasingly bewildering ‘rainbow’ array of reprehensible representatives of wildly differing ethnicities come together to make jokes about African-Americans and each other.
Truly, if we are to conceptualize the ‘Alt-Right’ as a “movement” (which would, itself, do almost irreparable harm to the concept of a ‘movement’ in politics), it must be the single most diverse political grouping ever conceived since the Fall of the Tower of Babel. From what I have seen, it quite literally makes the NZ Labour Party appear to be a bastion of staid white/beige hetero-dimensional ‘uniformity’ by comparison.
In any case, leading political figures should exercise a certain degree of care when it comes to ‘calling out’ their opponents. Particularly, as in this case, where it apparently involves an attempt to masque and market otherwise-ordinary middle-of-the-road types as being radical and radicalized extremists. As an associate put it – “the danger of being called a fascist is that if it happens often enough, eventually you might cease questioning it and just go with what’s expected of you”.
Because to continue down this road – of lumping the spectrum of more sensible objection in with extremism – is to invite extremists to take leadership of the sensible objection.
And if that happens, then all this present talk of the ‘Alt-Right’ as a mainstream (or ‘mainstream-threatening’) “movement” might very well make the leap to being ‘prescriptive’ rather than merely ‘predictive’, as it is presently.
The Alt-Right is no fantasy. They stand behind Trump at every rally. They throng to his meetings. They bellow out “Lock Her Up” at every opportunity, (except when it is the Bernie or Bust people chanting). They sit stony-faced when Trump tries to pivot to a kinder, gentler race card. They don’t have to be Brown-shirts to disconcert the American educated middle class for whom the worst accusation – on a par with Child Molester – is that they are Racist. To say Trump panders to these people isn’t to say their Hordes are about to sweep down from the hills with whatever battle cry was used in 55 days in Peking. But it does point out that there is an ugly underbelly to the Arcadian paradise that is the US today. Not one that everyone wants to see with a place at the most powerful table in the country.
Now Alex Jones is one guy really worth listening to about the evils of “The Bilderberg Group”.
That is the most secretive empire assembly OWG group scheming to take over the world.
The very one that J Key as PM of NZ and his carefully selected parliamentary cohorts, all attend secretly using our taxpayer money without telling us all what they are scheming.
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/june2006/080606alexjones.htm
Alex Jones Detained On Orders Of Bilderberg Group
15 hours of hell at the hands of immigration who knew they were coming
Paul Joseph Watson/Prison Planet.com | June 8 2006
Alex Jones and his team were detained by Canadian immigration on orders of the Bilderberg Group for a 15 hour nightmare of interrogation, accusations and threats of arrests in anticipation of the conference in Ottawa which starts today.
The group were detained at 11:45pm last night and only released after 2pm today.
Customs openly told Alex as soon as they brought him into custody that the Bilderberg Group was aware of his arrival and that this was the reason for his detainment. All three members of the team were instantly detained despite going through different immigration desks.
Officials knew everything about Alex, even the fact that George W. Bush had once had him arrested in 1998.
“I was screamed at, I was cussed at, I was interrogated,” said Alex.
Jail threats were issued as officials seized and searched through Alex’s equipment for 15 hours. He was told that if any trace of pornography was found on his three computers that he would be arrested.
“They were talking about how I was a criminal – they hooked our laptop computers up and said that if they found any porn, even mainstream porn, that it’s illegal to take it across lines and that we’d be going to jail,” said Alex, thanking God that no trace of any porn was found on his office computers.
Searches continued throughout the night and again in the morning.
Immigrations officials seemed to take a gleeful satisfaction in detaining the team, claiming they were liars and not part of the media despite one admitting to having seen an Alex Jones documentary. Accusations of drugs and weapons smuggling were thrown around without recourse.
“You Americans shit all over us Canadians think you can do anything you want to us,” said one immigration official who was acting more like a drill sergeant.
Towards the end of the ordeal national media, including the Ottawa Citizen and CBC, got wind of what was unfolding and sent journalists to the airport to talk to Alex.
A CBC journalist vouched for the fact that Alex was in the media and that she was planning on interviewing him, after also being subjected to a barrage of questions by officials.
At this point immigration officials sharply changed their attitude, reversed a likely decision to deport the team and by the end were apologetic and conciliatory about the entire issue.
Alex would like to make it clear that the immigration officials on the whole were just doing what they were told in trying to prove who Alex was and they should not be the focus of any vitriol. Alex himself admits that his behavior was not perfect and he smarted off a couple of times when he should have remained quiet. The major element of this story is that the pressure was brought to bear by Bilderberg.
The point to emphasize again is that it was brazenly stated that the Bilderberg Group were behind the decision to detain Alex and his team. Bilderberg have acquired a notorious reputation of harassing journalists, including Jim Tucker and Daniel Estulin, who are simply trying to report on a meeting of the world’s most influential powerbrokers.
The immigrations officials said that their reason for detaining Alex was because they feared he was in the country to infiltrate the Bilderberg meeting.
Since being allowed to enter the country the team have been watched and tracked by several nefarious individuals and also followed by car.
The team booked a decoy hotel in order fool Bilderberg security as to their real location. The decoy hotel has been receiving numerous calls from individuals within Bilderberg’s Brooke Street hotel – despite the fact that Alex told no one he was staying there.
Further reports on this incident and developments from the Bilderberg conference itself will feature here over the next few days.
Click here to listen to Alex’s call in to his own show today being hosted by Jack Blood.
Unless you are living in America you are largely dependent on hearsay and what people choose to report.
That said, when a lot of prominent people in America are saying Hillary is the worst thing since sliced bread, utterly evil, and perhaps even bordering on insane, you have to take notice.
‘Paul Wolfowitz and the lies that he told in the high government positions that he held are responsible for a massive number of deaths and massive destruction in seven countries. Wolfowitz has announced his vote for Hillary Clinton. Does this make you feel reassured?
The real surprise would have been Wolfowitz’s announcement in favor of Donald Trump. So why was what was expected news?
Trump has said that he doesn’t see any future in the conflict Washington has initiated with Russia, and Trump questions the point of NATO’s continuing existence. These peaceful attitudes make Trump into a “national security risk” according to Wolfowitz. What Wolfowitz means is that a peace candidate is a threat to Wolfowitz’s doctrine of US world hegemony. In the crazed mind of Wolfowitz and the neoconservatives, America is not safe unless it rules the world.
Hillary is a warmonger, perhaps the ultimate and last one if she becomes president, as the combination of her hubris and incompetence is likely to result in World War 3……’
http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2016/08/29/can-americans-overthrow-the-evil-that-rules-them-paul-craig-roberts/
It was sad to hear Henry Rollins blithely singing Clinton’s praises about what a great Prez she will be. This is election, like all US Prez elections, is the archetypal example of the false choice of electoral politics. The military and the industrial offer a spokes-puppet each, and we’re supposed to go to virtual civil war over how either of them would be a disaster and the other is the “lesser evil”. The whole thing is a circus, and voting in such a competition is akin to punching yourself in the head with you left hand because it’s not as bad as doing it with your right hand (or vice versa).
One thing that creeps me out is every time I see Trump on TV, I get flashes of old black and white news reels of a certain German dictator haranguing thousands of his ardent followers.
Some things never change.
A brilliant and powerful post Jamie.
Very relevant to our modern day situation.
With a surge of younger people to NZfirst as covered in
Curwin’s conference article it can only be NZFIRST at the
next election.
I suspect Winnie plans to take advantage of this global rise
in Anti-Establishment movements and looking at our sick array
of Rino Parties,including the Greens,there can only be one
choice. They are all controlled offshore.
Winston is a Nationalist and I have always believed that it is
possible NZFIRST could outpoll Labour and Greens and
thus become PM through coalition.
It’s all contained in the name.
I come from a working class Labour voting family.
Never again since they sold us out.(They killed Norman Kirk.)
Helen had a chance to roll back the Contracts Act that has caused so much devastation.Just tinkered around the edges.
It is not surprising she has a position at the UN.
As for the Greens,a controlled party if ever there was one.
Imported an Aussie to lift their game.Now heads Greenpeace NZ, another controlled organization.
The WHO,on scientific advice from it’s research arm,announced in 2014 that glysophate caused cancer!!
Thats Roundup sprayed all over our crops and contaminating
our environment. Europe has moved to ban it.
That’s why GMO’s are so deadly,also being banned globally.
Leaked documents show that Monsanto knew BEFORE RELEASE!!. Now being sued worldwide.
And what do we hear from the Greens? Sweet F…K ALL!!
It’s supposed to be their territory!!!
And for those that don’t know, it is sprayed on our grains,
wheat and sugar beets 10 DAYS BEFORE HARVEST to dry
the plant out so they can save in the cost of processing,FFS.
So, there really is only one chance we too can turn this all
around. (Think Brexit, Le-pen in France,and the Trump Movement devastating the Establishment in America and more. See my explanation in Martyn’s column – Trump)
VOTE / SUPPORT NZFIRST!! Spread the word.
Don’t believe a word of the deceiving,lying controlled media
anymore.
The MSM has now lost all credibility. 6% trust in USA.
It is a great idea and the power of it’s spread can be devastating. ( Forgot the quote at the mo.)
Cheers.
CURWIN; You are posting some impressive articles.
Keep up the good work!
Rubbish.
The only “threat” is to your privileged white male position. When it comes to bigotry, the Right is well-versed in such matters. Trying to label the Left, women, non-Whites, LGBT,Maori, etc, as “all bigoted, anti-free speech and anti-democratic” shows how much you are threatened by those in society who have traditionally been marginalised by the heterosexual white male hierarchy.
And you don’t like it one bit, do you?
I’m guessing the whites in the Southern States of the USA felt pretty much the same when the civil rights movement found a powerful voice in the 1960s. Remember who the bigots were (and many still are) then, Andrew?
If you want to look at bigotry, just review many of the comments you’ve had published on this Forum.