The Alternative Right Movement: What is it and Should We be Scared?

The expression of the alternative right first emerged as the name of a website created by Richard Spencer and Colin Liddell in 2010.  Later the “New Alternative Right” a webzine, edited by Liddell and Andy Nowicki, carried on when the first website shut down in 2013. The sites addressed the need for an “alternative” to mainstream right-wing ideas, views that are consistent with the European New Right.

The authors’ first discovery is what it is not.  It is not a bastion of white supremacy that targets blacks, Jews, women, Latinos and Muslims. The authors conclude that the alt-right has nothing in common to the 1980s skin heads that are generally low-information, low-IQ thugs driven by the thrill of violence and hatred.  The alt-right is a much smarter group of college-educated men who are not driven by violence and hatred.  They are bright, dangerously bright, which is why they are feared by the left.

 The second discovery is that the alt-right is not a complete departure to mainstream conservativism.  Both factions share a preference for homogeneity over diversity, stability over change, and hierarchy and order over radical egalitarianism.  Both value familiar societies, familiar norms, and familiar institutions.

The difference between mainstream conservativism and the alt-right is that the alt-right movement is born out of the youthful, subversive, underground edges of the internet that delights in attention attention-grabbing, juvenile pranks.  It has grown up a bit by turning their subversion of the national media into an in-house sport.

The authors believe that millennials are attracted to the alt-right for the same reasons that young Baby Boomers were drawn to the New Left in the 1960s.  The movement promises fun, rebellion, a sense of self righteousness and a challenge to social norms they oppose.

Although the alt-right emphasizes economic efficiency, it believes that western European culture is valuable and worth preserving and protecting.  The intent to preserve and protect culture stands against the regressive left that aspires for a politically correct reality that led to the erasure of the name and removal of the statue of Woodrow Wilson, a progressive, from Princeton for being a racist.   It also has successfully removed from the history and literature curricula of many colleges the study of the achievements of “dead white males” because they are assumed to be biased and their study marginalizes the contributions of women and minorities.

The alt-right accepts the fact of hereditary intelligence and ability differences and disavows the legitimacy of identity politics.  Those of the alt-right see everyone as human beings rather than as members of a demographic group or a political identity.

By contrast, the authors assert that the regressive left loudly insists that it stands for equality and racial justice while praising acts of racial violence.  The authors contend that it defends absurd feminist positions with no basis in fact and ridicules and demeans people on the basis of their skin color, sexual orientation and gender.

Although the alt-right consists mostly of college-educated men, it sympathizes with the white working classes and feels a sense of noblesse oblige.  It opposes class warfare that is celebrated by the left.  

The alt-right is strongly critical of left-wing feminism that vilifies men and sanctifies the emasculated male.  The alt-right yearns for men to be “real” men who are strong and competent.

Overall, the portrait painted by the authors is that the young, intelligent, rebellious alt-right is more of a breath of fresh air rather than a major departure from mainstream conservativism.  Consequently, the alt-right is here to stay and that should scare the left.

Source: Breitbart