Hillary Clinton gave a speech today attacking the “Alt Right” in between simultaneously claiming Trump was a Putin puppet and that Trump was going to start WW3 with nukes by attacking Putin. There was an ad that featured “scary” KKK types, but this is standard fare for the modern Democratic party. The fact of the matter is that the Clintons, the Democratic Party, and the MSM are all pretty confused about what the hell the Alt Right is.
The standard playbook move by the Progressive/Marxist Left has been to shout down any resistance as Nazi Bigots Who Want to Holocaust Six Million Jewish Black Baby Illegal Alien Bodies the minute they come into power. Until recently, it was a rather effective tactic, as the target stopped talking about the (usually true) fact that they had hit upon and instead began sputtering about how they weren’t really a racist and they were the most unracist racist to ever not be a racist. In other words, the lady doth protest too much. The ever compliant media would then turn the conversation into how racist the person in question was. Part of the reason that Trump is so effective is that he does not get off message by these accusations.
With the Alt Right, the response is to double down on the racism and refer to themselves as gay Nazi bodybuilders in addition to telling crude jokes about how many Jews one can fit into an ashtray. This is maddening, because the one thing the Devil cannot tolerate is to be mocked. The fact that the usual tactics are not working can help explain these conniptions by the Borg.
Further complicating matters is there is no standard for “is” the Alt Right. I will give you my interpretation, which I believe is a good general primer to the readers of this refined site. First, it is not “conservatism” in a traditional sense. Conservatism was always defined by its opposition to progressivism, and therefore had very few hard principles. Now, conservatism is more about conserving the paychecks and sinecures of National Review writers to keep on getting invited on talk shows.
The Alt Right believes that the Traditional Western State is worth preserving, the best thing, and that they do not cede moral authority to the Left. That modernism and progress is a lie, simply a way for the usual Borgists throughout history to leverage power to benefit them. Of course, there are arguments to how best accomplish this. Some believe that returning to a Founder’s Republic style is better, while others believe that the setting for the republic has passed, and that aristocracy is man’s natural state.
Obviously, there is a broad range of opinions here, but as I said before it’s that Traditional Western Civilization (mostly embodied in this modern era by Russia and Eastern Europe) is the best way for humanity to progress. Specifically, that the pillars of Western Civ (the family, military, church, academia, and culture) are worth defending in the face of “progress”, which is secular hedonism dressed up as a way forward.
Some of you reading this are pointing and sputtering right now. “What about the damn Hitlerfrog!” you are shouting at the monitor. Yes, yes. There’s no greater way to spin the Left up than to attack their sacred cows, especially when the Left has made the last forty years a free for all for mockery. Now that they’re in the crosshairs of psychofash teenagers with nothing to do but create offensive memes, they want to bring back speech codes and censorship.
Annoyed by the hypocrisy of wealthy white liberals living in gated communities telling Rust Belt Americans that illegal immigrants have as much right to America as they do, the Alt Right has a grand time pointing out that the people who hate walls live behind walls, usually in the most offensive fashion. It is an effective blend of the dialectic and the rhetorical, made more effective by the fact that the Alt Right has the truth on its side.
Trump’s rise has let the genie out of the bottle. The modern Republican Party has two options: either it can go the way of the Whigs, consisting of old men upset over frog memes while transparently making sure of their own nest egg, or it will be subsumed by the Young Turks of the Alt Right, who are currently in the process of naming the enemy for what it is. Time will tell where the dice fly.
Tyler -
There's nothing new about the alt-right, just the same misfits who think they can get the political system to get them something they can't get on their own - respect for their un-American and abhorrent views. Losers all, as they continually remind people.
Col. Lang -
Very disappointed that you would give a platform to these despicable views. I understand that you really don't like HRC, but these alt-right clowns don't deserve anything but disgust from decent people.
Posted by: HankP | 26 August 2016 at 02:46 PM
One way that Trump could win is if the MSM Borg Noise Machine convinces enough Berners that a Clinton Landslide Victory is inevitable. The more Bitter Berners who think so, the more Bitter Berners will feel free to vote for some Third Party or Write Sanders In or leave the presidential line blank. The Clinton Machine could lose enough Bitter Berner votes that Trump could win by subtractive default. And then the Trump Community would be given a chance to roll out some Alt Right practices and concepts and see how they function.
And meanwhile . . . what of the Bitter Berners? When the Good Ship Sanders sank ( or got sunk) we all found ourselves in the water. So now the Bitter Berners are floating around on a flotilla of lifeboats, liferafts, inner tubes, Sinclair Dinosaur WaterFloater Toys ( little versions of this:
https://images.search.yahoo.com/search/images;_ylt=A0LEVzLZkcBXjfUAJ9pXNyoA;_ylu=X3oDMTEyMm43aWFsBGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDQjE5MTBfMQRzZWMDc2M-?p=Sinclair+Oil&fr=sfp#id=62&iurl=https%3A%2F%2Fmedia2.wnyc.org%2Fi%2F620%2F465%2Fc%2F80%2F1%2FMacys_Sinclair_Oil_Dino_620.jpg&action=click )
etc.
Where will we go? Some few will make for the broad shores of Clintonia or Trumpistan. Some will set sail for the various islands of the Leftist Archipelago . . . the Red Rock Reefs, the Little Green Islets, etc. How many will go where? I don't know.
And then what? Maybe over the next 30-40 years the Bitter Berners and their descendants and recruits ( if any) will roll out an Alt Left of their own. If they evolve one.
Posted by: different clue | 26 August 2016 at 03:13 PM
Tyler
The left only believe in egalitarianism in rhetoric. Not when it effects their gate guarded communities. As Ross Douthat wrote in the Pravda on the Hudson some time back, the left are all for multiculturalism when it's the nice Afghan restaurant in the gentrified trendy neighborhood but not when it comes to the refugee Afghan family as their neighbor.
I call recall a funny story when George Lucas wanted to develop his property in Marin County the huge pushback from all the liberals. Then he decided to build low income homes at the property and how the same egalitarians were apoplectic that he would invite "criminals" to their backyard.
Posted by: Jack | 26 August 2016 at 03:20 PM
Tyler,
I agree somewhat. The liberal media, i.e. the Huffington Post, is unreadable. The big lie is washing over us. The establishment is having a hissy fit that the little people dare question the elite’s privileges. The real problem is how to restore government by and for the people and the rule of law that is fairly applied and enforced. It is not by voting for Hillary Clinton. She is a globalist who is totally for the status quo. In this election; if you are not in the top 10%, there are only two options, voting for Donald Trump to throw in a monkey wrench into the current system or a vote for Jill Stein in the hope that this will either force the Democrats to reform or that a progressive party will arise out of the ashes. Libertarians will only speed up the descent into chaos. The World at War is forcing mankind to seek safety in their tribal roots. Unrest has spread to Turkey, Kosovo and Ukraine. Western Europe and North America are next.
Posted by: VietnamVet | 26 August 2016 at 04:17 PM
All this talk reminds me of the following quote from John Biggins' 'Tomorrow the World - In which Cadet Otto Prohaska carries the Habsburg Empire's civilizing mission to the entirely unresponsive peoples of Africa and Oceania". The fourth book in a series which I highly recommend:
"In the end I came to the conclusion - confirmed in later years by all the rest of the propaganda I read, whether Communist, Fascist or religious - that it spoke only of itself: not so much a means of getting ideas from one head into another as a kind of ritual activity designed to keep thought at bay and stifle doubt in the mind of the author."
Posted by: gallus vir | 26 August 2016 at 04:44 PM
and now CH is one of them.
Posted by: jonst | 26 August 2016 at 04:46 PM
It's interesting that HC is so confident, not having had a serious press conference in months and failing to schedule any serious rallies. Maybe she so confident because she already knows the outcome.
Posted by: David Lentini | 26 August 2016 at 05:07 PM
HankP
Be disappointed somewhere else. I hold both of them and the SJW Kaine in contempt. You don't get to tell me what my editorial policy will be. Your reaction to differing views is to insult the holder of these views. Be gone! pl
Posted by: turcopolier | 26 August 2016 at 06:07 PM
Frankly my bigest worry with in this election is, delegitimization of the Borg and thier Queen, by way of this election, participation, revelation etc. may result in Borg picking an even biger war to re-legitimize itself. To me that is the real danger in this election.
Posted by: Kooshy | 26 August 2016 at 06:22 PM
rjj,
If the self-styled "master persuader's" work leaves a lot of people persuaded a lot of times, then the "master persuader" really is a master persuader. Luntz masterly persuaded many people of many things in the past.
Is he now trying to sell the un-sellable?
Posted by: different clue | 26 August 2016 at 06:24 PM
It appears more likely that the "massaging" of the polls being done more by the Trumpites, in their hope against hope. The polling firms with the best records of past presidential races are consistently showing a significant lead to the soon to be anointed Queen, especially in the traditional "swing" states.
Unless there is a new blockbuster expose of the Queen, the election is now setting in poured cement. Bring on the court jesters!
Posted by: gowithit | 26 August 2016 at 06:26 PM
I read an article, and I cannot remember at this point where, and the author's thesis was that the alt-right was the beginning of the secularization of the Republican party. I think there's much truth to this.
Posted by: The Porkchop Express | 26 August 2016 at 06:26 PM
MRW,
I hadn't read about the Maserati. If someone could offer a photograph of that in Sanders's driveway with proof that it is his, that would be telling.
I read separately on one of NaCap's discussion threads that Mrs. Sanders had inherited some land from older relatives in her family ( bought way back before such land became high priced) and after inheriting it, sold it so the Sanderses could buy a lakeside cottage closer to where they live. This is used to prove the Sanders's hypocrisy but Lambert Strether at Naked Capitalism discusses how that only works for those who buy into the trope that the Left does not deserve to have Nice Things. $500,000-600,000 dollars is not vast wealth in today's world (even if it is vaster than my wealth), and a bid-up-priced cottage on Lake George may not be very big.
And I would have called Sanders a New Deal Reactionary anyway. He was trying to get people over their fear-reaction at the word "socialism". If he really thinks "bring back Glass-Steagall" is "socialist", then he isn't really very socialist. And that's fine with me. I would have been satisfied with some good hard New Deal Reactionism.
Posted by: different clue | 26 August 2016 at 06:35 PM
VietnamVet,
I tried getting onto Huffington Post to see if I could sneak a comment past the Exclusionary Moderation Forcefield that Tyler described and I found an insurmountable barrier even before that. Apparently you have to sign onto HuffPoo through Facebook. And I am not on Facebook. And I am not going to join Facebook just so I can try commenting on a thread on HuffPoo.
Posted by: different clue | 26 August 2016 at 06:37 PM
The Porkchop Express,
Lambert Strether and others at NaCap think they see the Two Brand Name Parties doing a Pole Shift Reversal. The Democratic Party is becoming the Party of the Upper Ten Percent aGAINST the Lower Ninety Percent. And the Republican Party is becoming the Party of the Lower Ninety Percent. If this hypothesis is correct, we will see the DemParty trying to cut or privatise Social Security and the RepParty defending Social Security as is. And we will see other such Economic Class Warfare Reversals.
Posted by: different clue | 26 August 2016 at 06:40 PM
GWI,
You are high. The same polling firms you run to as your Authority Daddy have been unable to call this election correctly at all. Trump was never gonna make it past Iowa, remember? Oversampling dems, undersampling indies, eliminating entire age brackets are not the signs of a good poll.
Weak troll 2/10
Posted by: Tyler | 26 August 2016 at 06:40 PM
A new big war to me is a eastern European war, think around Poland on to east Mediterranean.
Posted by: Kooshy | 26 August 2016 at 06:41 PM
Jack,
The problem is we have to live with the results of their moral signalling while they retreat behind gated communes with armed guards.
Posted by: Tyler | 26 August 2016 at 06:42 PM
DL,
Vox got pretty petulant with me cause I said he sounded like a hysterical SJW regarding the police after the Dallas shooting.
Posted by: Tyler | 26 August 2016 at 06:43 PM
Moldbug is often conflated with the altright, but his neo-libertarian techno commercialism has been superseded and rejected by the altright. His enduring legacy is the concept of the 'cathedral', which was less original than he thought, since it is functionally very similar to Sam Francis' description of the managerial class (Moldbug differed in that he tended to see its rooted exclusively in secularized yankee puritanism).
Posted by: Lemur | 26 August 2016 at 06:45 PM
Jld,
Moldburg goes on forever but he's exponentially more normal than the freakshow of pansexual furry perverts that populate the Progressives.
Better remove the beam from thy eye, brut.
Posted by: Tyler | 26 August 2016 at 06:46 PM
All
It is a sad thing that the old like Giuliani and me are now being told by the Hillary people that we should be quiet because we are obviously senile. I don't much like "America's mayor" but his appeal to people to look at the photographs and videos of HC being physically propped up and stumbling around are not the absence of evidence that the MSM propagandists want you to think they are. pl
Posted by: turcopolier | 26 August 2016 at 06:59 PM
"Conservatism was always defined by its opposition to progressivism, and therefore had very few hard principles."
Yes, specifically, post-war, Buckleyite, American conservatism was always about 'muh feels'. That's why it could never stop 'progress'. They never thought about what it was the wanted to conserve, or WHY it was worth conserving (other than instinctive nostalgia). The altright has the radical notion the historic American nation is a worthy object of conservation, and that when the Founder's referred to their "posterity", they weren't talking about the entire global south. Up until 1965 this was a given in the realm of the policy anyway.
Like it or not, the origin of all genuine critique and dissent from now on will arise from a reconstituted right. The democrats are trying to create a one party state: https://renderuntoc.wordpress.com/2016/08/17/americanism-a-universal-creed/#more-26
Posted by: Lemur | 26 August 2016 at 07:06 PM
The altright is the pointy end of the spear of a reconstitued right wing, and as such have consolidated a movement that has consolidated at least a third of the voting public behind it. And if they do succeed in capturing the political system, that implies they have succeeded in the market place of ideas.
Posted by: Lemur | 26 August 2016 at 07:18 PM
It used to be reversed from what it is now before 1910.
Posted by: MRW | 26 August 2016 at 07:28 PM