the alt-right

someone in toronto made some posters

https://www.buzzfeed.com/ishmaeldaro/toronto-white-person-alt-right-posters?utm_term=.fryb5ZVkv#.avxen6r35

They don't seem particularly anti-LGBT as far as I can tell, as long as nothing scares the horses

Maybe not with homosexual sex (same as it has ever been with the far right) but anything undermining cultural norms - 'acting gay' much less the entire T part - is anathema.

There's definitely overlap with the "art of manliness"/artisanal knives culture where unreconstructed white bros who're susceptible to whatever's floating around in the culture are gonna pick up on alt-right ideas, where if the culture had just continued its leftward drift they'd be more getting down with genderfuckery and I dunno Syrian cuisine or whatever. Things that militate against that, tho:
1) some of the alt-right's power does stem from its "alt"ness, so as naff people pick it up, it loses appeal to real hipsters
2) as the emboldened nazi shits go full-on explicitly racist in public, that will actually be a turn-off for a bunch of folks (whereas if they'd turned up the heat slowly, the bros would have found they'd become boiled frogs).

are there organisations fighting this sort of thing yet? i prob sound v naive/feckless/earnest/dim but i would gladly donate to/volunteer for an org that was trying to counter this stuff. I've started donating to (britisher) amnesty and reprieve but it feels like they're more about countering abuse by states than masses of individuals...

like is there an equivalent to the southern poverty law center operating in the UK? or maybe since this all playing out on the internet the geographic thing is not so important anyway? idk

1) some of the alt-right's power does stem from its "alt"ness, so as naff people pick it up, it loses appeal to real hipsters

this is interesting, I think some of its power does stem from the fact that its like a secret language, and the people that their trolling don't "get" it. From a UK perspective, I've started seeing quite a few UKIP supporting truelad.com types using basic versions of alt-right memes and talking points, and they seem very different from the 4chan/ten-levels-of-irony guys

Plus there is nowhere for eg /r/the_donald to go but down - the god emperor can't help but disappoint them, it'll probably not be more than a month until the first "have we been tricked?" thread.

See, we think that, and we may be right, but then there's Scott Adams Adamsplaining to us that what their god-emperor does is not shifting but rather "pacing and leading."

Pacing and Leading: Trump always takes the extreme position on matters of safety and security for the country, even if those positions are unconstitutional, impractical, evil, or something that the military would refuse to do. Normal people see this as a dangerous situation. Trained persuaders like me see this as something called pacing and leading. Trump “paces” the public – meaning he matches them in their emotional state, and then some. He does that with his extreme responses on immigration, fighting ISIS, stop-and-frisk, etc. Once Trump has established himself as the biggest bad-ass on the topic, he is free to “lead,” which we see him do by softening his deportation stand, limiting his stop-and-frisk comment to Chicago, reversing his first answer on penalties for abortion, and so on. If you are not trained in persuasion, Trump look scary. If you understand pacing and leading, you might see him as the safest candidate who has ever gotten this close to the presidency.

I think Scott Adams is, in the end, more interested in the Cult of Scott Adams than he is the alt-right. Like there's a lot of overlap but I don't think the alt right is taking its cues from an office humour cartoonist.

Of course I hate them both and I hate them all, but it might - MIGHT - be a kinda accurate description of the workings of rightwingnut opinion. The Orange One has not disappointed them - yet - because what he's done so far is meet them where they are. Once they glommed onto his hideous visage they've followed whither he went. Whether it's by accident or design doesn't ultimately matter. No they're not taking their cues from an office humour cartoonist, but this may be an accurate description of the dynamic.

Given how demonstrably shitty most of us were at saying what was going to happen only a week ago, I'm not putting a lot of trust in my own powers of prediction. Speaking only for myself there.

From now on, if the topic is political culture, and I begin a sentence with something to the effect of "here's what I think is going to happen," everyone around me is authorized to shoot to kill.

Haha yeah, same. I just think that a huge part of the post-4chan edgelord alt right shtick is a complete allergy to any kind of compromise, so those dudes have a lot of disappointment in store for them. More "respectable" fringes may very well end up at the same position as Scott Adams, yeah, and I think the actual majority of people who voted Trump will be easily distracted by other cultural wars and spin that Trump comes up with.

For all I know, Trump could come out tomorrow in favor of single-payer health care and open borders, and after a moment's thought the alt-right doodz would be like FUCK YEAH!

I suspect they just want to be on the side that's meeting their juvenile emotional middle-finger-raising needs, and the specifics are secondary. It's tribal rather than ideological.

But as noted, feel free to prepend everything I write about this with an unspoken disclaimer like "Clearly I know nothing about anything, because a week ago, I sincerely thought this whole phenomenon was a last hot flareup of a doomed worldview."

Plus there is nowhere for eg /r/the_donald to go but down - the god emperor can't help but disappoint them, it'll probably not be more than a month until the first "have we been tricked?" thread.

― Andrew Farrell, Tuesday, 15 November 2016 14:17 (forty-five minutes ago) Permalink

Watching these gimps get Ernst Roehm'd is going to be one of the consolations of the next few years

Plus there is nowhere for eg /r/the_donald to go but down - the god emperor can't help but disappoint them, it'll probably not be more than a month until the first "have we been tricked?" thread.

believe me when i say - his hardcore supporters are not going to admit to, or reflect on, anything. i lived through 4 years of rob ford in Toronto (i've noticed an endless chain in similarities in the support for both these men), and i saw his supporters make excuses for literally all of his behaviour. his soft support could melt away quick enough – but there will be 25-30% of people that will make excuses for anything. whatever it takes to not have to admit they are wrong. what will be more likely with these people is they will just double down on all their preconceived notions and prejudices. and there will be no shortage of people to blame for whatever goes wrong for trump. liberals, the media, minorities, unions, "elites", bureaucrats, judges, scientists, "SJW" – all people easily and readily thrown under the bus in order to excuse trumps failures and their own.

I think you're right. The alt-right and the parodies of them are almost impossible to tell apart right now. I wonder if you'd be able to make a parody site and have these guys follow any ludicrous thing you say.
But there's probably lots of different types of alt-right who believe in very different things.

I heard something a while ago about Elon Musk drinking blood at ceremonies, I couldn't tell if it was a joke. What would they have against him?

Lol @ "pacing and leading" aka "pandering and bullshit".

We are talking about a movement founded to a large extent by dudes whose qualifications are limited to saying "yeah, I fucked her."

least they have a qualifications framework so

Someone's been putting up recruitment posters in Toronto: http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2016/11/14/racist-alt-right-posters-toronto-school_n_12963366.html

Probably telling that my first reaction is "These fringe lunatics are never going to get anywhere in Canada." Denial is sooo much more pleasant than accepting that these people are organizing in my area.

they did seem to get taken down p fast and the consensus (at least from people speaking up about them) seems to be that they were repulsive.

There was another Scott Adams interview a couple days ago where he described Trump's pattern of advancing then backing off from extreme positions as "A/B testing," indicative of a "business approach."

He doesn't also criticize Clinton for flip-flopping and having public and private positions, does he?

has anyone asked scott adams why he thinks a guy who lost a billion dollars in one year and has bankrupted businesses multiple times is a actually good businessman?

the political equivalent of that level of fuckuppery could start wars ffs

xp Because he can recast him as secretly smart in a way that only Scott Adams can see.

xps I mean yeah they're repulsive and they're at least making the news and being described as repulsive, but I truly don't think that would have happened a month ago.

scott adams is not alt-right. he's a gullible knowitall, which is close.

if being a gullible knowitall made you alt-right we could just take /r/the_donald's traffic

Scott Adams has always had shitty MRA-type views so it's not surprising that the alt-right gravitated to him. I don't necessarily think he's a part of that movement but he's definitely pandering to them and telling them what they want to hear.

Do have to laugh at his lessons about "pacing and leading" and "A/B testing" which is a funny way of saying "indecisive and doesn't really know what the president does"

so my wife went to the high school where current head of breitbart went and someone decided to post on their alumni group about the 'elephant in the room'. his wife posted this response:

As someone who has personal experience with Steve, I can tell you he is a brilliant patriot who has an impressive resume including naval officer, investment banker, Hollywood producer, and media mogul. He helped turn a long-shot candidacy into an electoral victory. Whether or not you agree with him on policy, you must admit he's effective. I'm well aware of the media talking points on why we're all supposed to hate him, but I think a lot of people are getting fooled. The comments regarding his children came from his divorce proceedings! Are you really going to define a man's life over one comment alleged in a bitter divorce?

I realize that many news outlets are running with the idea that he is racist, but these are the same media outlets that misled you about the election and the voters. By so casually accusing people of racism and anti-Semitism with little or no evidence, you are cheapening the meaning of these words. The Democrats do this to Republicans every election. Here's what Coretta Scott King said about Reagan in 1980: “I am scared that if Ronald Reagan gets into office, we are going to see more of the Ku Klux Klan and a resurgence of the Nazi Party." Donald Trump has a Jewish daughter and Jewish grandchildren. Do you really think he'd appoint an anti-Semite as his top advisor? The premise is absurd!

I challenge you to read Breitbart News for a few weeks and to listen to SiriusXM Patriot 125 6-9am EST. Their headlines are provocative, but the articles themselves are mostly straightforward facts. The media is cherry-picking a few headlines from opinion pieces (many of which are satire!) and suggesting they are representative of the entire website. Read the articles and explain why you disagree, don't just dismiss them because you don't like the opinion stated in the headline.
As far as the "alt-right" branding, it's a media buzz word with an unclear definition. Some use it to describe fringe KKK groups and others merely use it to describe constituents who are fed up with the establishment Republican Party. Breitbart is certainly not a platform for white supremacists and in fact, has been BOYCOTTED by far right groups because it has openly gay writers. Not to mention, it has an entire section (Breitbart Jerusalem) that defends Israel, the world's lone Jewish state. Steve is credited with launching this section personally.

My husband, Alexander Marlow, was Andrew Breitbart’s first employee and is now editor in chief of Breitbart News, which has 40+ million monthly readers because it reports the news that no other outlets have the courage to report. This election has made it very clear that America is divided and that mainstream media is completely out of touch with at least half of the nation. I humbly suggest that you not repeat old mistakes and seek out diverse points of view!

she uses milo as a shield!

explicitly patriarchal gender views are only one leg of the stool, and probably the most popular, it's true

a commitment to racial hierarchy (if not "race science") is the other, but a lot of people have that too -- the alts were open and explicit about it while your average tcot type likes blue lives and tendentious MLK memes. anti-semitism used to be the key dividing between alt and regular-GOP right, but that membrane is breaking down imo.

back when these guys were getting going, hostility to democratic government was the last and most important: celebrate monarchy, oligarchy, theocracy, whatever. lee yuan kew, pinochet and uhh the stuarts were big heroes. now that donald has won and the alt-right is officially A Thing (thanks, hillary) this part has been obscured and forgotten

there was a moment when the more highbrow "NRx" type people disdained old-school nazism as just communism for whites. it dovetails with the general tendency of nerds to fetishize 'intelligence' for its own sake and all the resentments carried with it (why can't the smart people just be in charge and be sexy and respected); adam's style certainly overlaps with that

now that donald has won and the alt-right is officially A Thing (thanks, hillary) this part has been obscured and forgotten

has it so quickly? the stuarts are one thing but idk if admiration for authoritarians like pinochet or lee kuan yew is off the table. (putin obviously isn't.) incidentally my mom who grew up in late-colonial/early-post-colonial singapore seems on the balance to greatly admire lee kuan yew despite her fairly public parents having been under frequent threat of lawsuit or delicensing from him for oppositional speech and id rly k how to feel abt it. i think zizek once said the 21c would build statues of him in every country. lky, not zizek.

Adams' style is also all about explaining things. THIS is what is true and THIS is what is not, and if you believe that other thing you've been hypnotized. I know, because I took a class in hypnotism. In fact I'm hypnotizing you right now. You're going to wake up tomorrow and realize you've been living in a matriarchy all along.

that facebook post about breitbart I copied and pasted upthread made the 'news'

https://www.buzzfeed.com/salvadorhernandez/ties-to-trump-and-breitbart-divide-exclusive-los-angeles-sch

marlow's wife not only deleted her post but her entire facebook account

Before I knew what the "alt-right" was, I spent some time on a message board that had a strong alt-right contingent, though it had other contingents as well (not 4-chan or reddit). I have to admit that sometimes I found the some of the alt-right posting very funny, because it took the piss out of the intense self-seriousness of some parts of the left. I've found Rush Limbaugh funny at times in the same way without ever agreeing with him on any substance. I think it would be wise to recognize that there's an element of the "backlash" here that's really about oversocialization, about politeness to the point of feeling inauthentic and unable to express darker emotions.

Rush is old news, it's all about Tomi Lahren now

the alt-right is funnier than the uptight-left

http://heatst.com/entertainment/if-ghostbusters-was-just-a-little-better-it-could-have-defeated-donald-trump/

milo will have been loving all of this

http://www.influxpress.com/blog/2016/11/17/open-letter-objecting-to-the-invitation-of-milo-yiannopolous-to-speak-at-simon-langton

it's a nice letter though

the "uptight left" is usually just liberals. The dirtbag left is funny.

the sexed-up coverage of the alt-right in a bunch of mainstream outlets lately has been distressing, especially Mother Jones.

http://www.vice.com/read/heil-trump-this-is-the-alternative-right

the sexed-up coverage of the alt-right in a bunch of mainstream outlets lately has been distressing, especially Mother Jones.

Yeah, there's something that goes into this like the journo/blogger need to focus on a thing and publicize the hell out of it, feeding in the provocative nature more than any contemplative. It's like Isis or some shit, which the coverage goes hyperbolic and they get built up into being Cobra.

Feel like the generic public still doesn't know about the alt-right. The coverage is justified considering Steve Bannon's new place in the world

Yeah the particular way it has been done though has been very bad. MJ originally had a headline along the lines of "Meet the dapper new leader of the white nationalist movement" or something, deleted it.

Milo is speaking at the school I work at next month. I feel a bunch of lefty academics protesting and yelling is exactly what he would thrive so I really want to organize some sort of response where a bunch of people get tickets, show up, and totally ignore him by knitting, doing homework, napping, reading, etc. I also want to avoid racist assholes threatening to firebomb my house so not sure how to go about this.

would think nobody protesting, nobody getting tickets is probably the best response