is there any reason to call these people "alt-right" when "neo-nazi" would suffice?
― k3vin k., Monday, November 21, 2016 5:09 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
I've personally flipped that switch already. Fuck whatever media-friendly label they prefer.
― i need microsoft installed on my desktop, can you help (Old Lunch), Tuesday, November 22, 2016 8:30 AM (two hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
I like to think of them as Trunk Club Fascists
― the last famous person you were surprised to discover was actually (man alive), Tuesday, 22 November 2016 16:14 (seven years ago) link
I'm not sure what to make of some of the labelling. Many people including myself were using alt-right to refer to a much wider array of modern right wing bigotry, including non-whites who use some of the same ideas as the white nationalists and repurpose them to suit their own prejudices.
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Tuesday, 22 November 2016 18:15 (seven years ago) link
"I was just kidding" is a refrain I'm very familiar with hearing from the people I've known who suffer from personality disorders.
― i need microsoft installed on my desktop, can you help (Old Lunch), Tuesday, November 22, 2016 2:11 PM (four hours ago)
Er, wtf Old Lunch?
― emil.y, Tuesday, 22 November 2016 18:24 (seven years ago) link
I think the reason why I've used 'alt-right' as a term rather than neo-nazi is similar to what RAG is saying. It was something that encompassed a lot of online spheres, from PUAs to st0rmerz to channers to whoever else was being a fucking dickhead. Now that the entire real world is crumbling, though, I'm with people who want to call them what they are.
― emil.y, Tuesday, 22 November 2016 18:27 (seven years ago) link
afaics, the whole "alt-right" label is just a rebranding of plain old white supremacy and neo-Nazism, for the same reason Comcast is trying to rebrand as Xfinity, because the old brand is hated and reviled. Using this new friendlier brand name just obscures their connection with white supremacy, which benefits the neo-nazis and no one else. The news media should be flayed for playing into the hands of these deplorable people. God, what a world we live in now.
― a little too mature to be cute (Aimless), Tuesday, 22 November 2016 18:43 (seven years ago) link
they're mostly just entitled white-terrorist fuckhead dweebs and should be treated like any other terrorism suspects
― imago, Tuesday, 22 November 2016 18:48 (seven years ago) link
except with more waterboarding
I'm kidding, they should be treated like Breivik their Viking lord, allowed to study for a degree from the comfort of prison
― imago, Tuesday, 22 November 2016 18:50 (seven years ago) link
I don't even know. Put them and Isis in a big pit then check back forty years on, see if they've forged a new society together
― imago, Tuesday, 22 November 2016 18:52 (seven years ago) link
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3954508/The-worrying-rise-Britain-s-modern-day-Hitler-youth-Neo-Nazi-referrals-Government-s-deradicalisation-programme-overtaking-Islamist-extremism-cases-parts-UK.html
― The Doug Walters of Crime (Tom D.), Tuesday, 22 November 2016 18:54 (seven years ago) link
really though what the western world needs is an overhaul of education systems, mental health access, employment law and much, much besides
in the meantime, wage fucking cultural hell upon these cunts until they don't exist as a movement
― imago, Tuesday, 22 November 2016 18:55 (seven years ago) link
We've got our own little tinpot Breivik here in the UK.
― The Doug Walters of Crime (Tom D.), Tuesday, 22 November 2016 18:57 (seven years ago) link
That article's headline should read 'SUCCESS! Our xenophobic hate-campaign reaches YOUR CHILDREN!'
― imago, Tuesday, 22 November 2016 18:58 (seven years ago) link
Of the Mail, I mean
And I don't care how trenchant that is
― imago, Tuesday, 22 November 2016 18:59 (seven years ago) link
... the Mail and all the others.
― The Doug Walters of Crime (Tom D.), Tuesday, 22 November 2016 18:59 (seven years ago) link
xps @Aimless, that's a great point, Clear Channel did the same thing - I didn't realize they were iHeartRadio until fairly recently.
― flappy bird, Tuesday, 22 November 2016 19:06 (seven years ago) link
Thing is though, don't some people who aren't white nationalists refer to themselves as "alt-right"? Like "I'm not white or racist, I just hate political correctness and women.
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Tuesday, 22 November 2016 19:16 (seven years ago) link
When you lie down with dogs, you get up with fleas.
― a little too mature to be cute (Aimless), Tuesday, 22 November 2016 19:19 (seven years ago) link
Donald Trump knows the word 'disavow'
― The Doug Walters of Crime (Tom D.), Tuesday, 22 November 2016 19:24 (seven years ago) link
― Robert Adam Gilmour, Tuesday, November 22, 2016 2:16 PM (forty-seven minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
Nazi-adjacentNazi allies
― the last famous person you were surprised to discover was actually (man alive), Tuesday, 22 November 2016 20:04 (seven years ago) link
― emil.y, Tuesday, November 22, 2016 12:24 PM (one hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink
Sorry, I was referring to PARTICULAR (and pointedly not ALL) NPD/BPD suffers I've known who didn't take personal responsibility for their actions or mental health and whose behavior reminded me of what j.lu described. That particular defense just hits a little close to home. It certainly wasn't meant as a blanket assessment, though, so I apologize if I caused offense.
― i need microsoft installed on my desktop, can you help (Old Lunch), Tuesday, 22 November 2016 20:13 (seven years ago) link
ok deep breath.
there's specific recent history to these terms as well as overlap as well as slippery definitions of each.
the term 'alt-right' is not entirely generic; richard spencer ran (runs?) a website about white nationalist concerns called "alternative right" and has done so since the late bush years iirc? the idea that it was about old-right or explicitly white-right ideas that then-dominant bush-era neocon or theocon politics had kicked out
"white nationalist" is probably the best catch-all term but it doesn't encompass everything and everyone. "nationalist" does etymologically contain "natal" ie questions of birth, lineage and belonging which are the key obsessions that mainstream american conservatism keeps out of sight.
the high-toned term "neoreactionary" was bandied about a few years ago (with catchy web-contraction NRx), largely for people coalescing around blogger 'mencius moldbug.' this scene is much nerdier and less 'nazi'
quite a number of years ago john derbyshire suggested the term 'dissident right' to mean roughly all this stuff but it never took off
― goole, Tuesday, 22 November 2016 20:23 (seven years ago) link
not sure how it's resonating elsewhere but at least insofar as the_d0nald is concerned at least one thread exists where ppl are either really upset or just certain that it's a long game being played re: trumps announcement not to prosecute Clinton when he comes into office.
i am interested to see how these communities react to some of the more obvious walk-backs trump takes on his variously insane campaign promises
― geometry-stabilized craft (art), Tuesday, 22 November 2016 20:25 (seven years ago) link
i like the term fascist, but in an american context a lot of these people are old-right/libertarian descended -- ie it's not the totalized state but the totalized anti-state as utopia
― goole, Tuesday, 22 November 2016 20:26 (seven years ago) link
I'm sticking with "radical white terrorists"
― Οὖτις, Tuesday, 22 November 2016 20:26 (seven years ago) link
Hey, as long as they consort with neo-Nazis, I'm comfortable tagging them all with that label.
― i need microsoft installed on my desktop, can you help (Old Lunch), Tuesday, 22 November 2016 20:28 (seven years ago) link
as long as actual neo-nazis are using this label to try and buff up their image/play down their murderous race fantasies i think it's probably good to use a label that brings out the real nature of their "ideas", and let the non-nazi alt-rightists work it out for themselves
― brex yourself before you wrex yourself (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 22 November 2016 20:29 (seven years ago) link
sorry for same post as Old Lunch
xps sadly i don't think Trump will get any significant blowback from his most diehard supporters for broken promises. it'll get blamed on someone else.
― flappy bird, Tuesday, 22 November 2016 20:29 (seven years ago) link
yeah i agree with that totally.
xp NV i mean
― goole, Tuesday, 22 November 2016 20:30 (seven years ago) link
Yes, NV's is a perfect unpacking of my perspective.
― i need microsoft installed on my desktop, can you help (Old Lunch), Tuesday, 22 November 2016 20:33 (seven years ago) link
yes. OTMFM. All those "non-nazi" alt-righters are free to create some other space for themselves and distance themselves from literal nazis.
― the last famous person you were surprised to discover was actually (man alive), Tuesday, 22 November 2016 20:34 (seven years ago) link
i think successful political nicknames are typically loose, simple, ideologically useless and openly derogatory. something like 'wingnut right' but you'd want a specific new coinage. these sensible or technical labels just legitimize, whereas it's better to be dismissive.
― Roberto Spiralli, Tuesday, 22 November 2016 20:34 (seven years ago) link
also the rise of the Hitler state was achieved thru a broad coalition of right wing interests. i'm sure there were scumbags who thought anti-semitism was a meaningless sideshow who were backing him right thru into WWII
― brex yourself before you wrex yourself (Noodle Vague), Tuesday, 22 November 2016 20:36 (seven years ago) link
http://www.whitepages.com/name/Richard-B-Spencer/Whitefish-MT/8fqyxgh
just saying.
― ian, Tuesday, 22 November 2016 20:42 (seven years ago) link
lolthx man
― Οὖτις, Tuesday, 22 November 2016 21:05 (seven years ago) link
postcard campaign.
― ian, Tuesday, 22 November 2016 21:09 (seven years ago) link
6 beds / 7 baths6,630 sqftSingle Family HouseBuilt in 2006Value: $2.43M
― qop (crüt), Tuesday, 22 November 2016 21:11 (seven years ago) link
The other side of that is that you're massively inflating the number of Neo-Nazis, which is not an act without side-effects.
― Andrew Farrell, Tuesday, 22 November 2016 21:39 (seven years ago) link
yeah how many americans are there that identifies with being alt-right? do we have an estimate?
― Van Horn Street, Tuesday, 22 November 2016 22:32 (seven years ago) link
scott alexander made an estimate (ymmv obv):
The alt-right is mostly an online movement, which makes it hard to measure. The three main alt-right hubs I know of are /r/altright, Stormfront, and 4chan’s politics board.The only one that displays clear user statistics is /r/altright, which says that there are about 5,000 registered accounts. The real number is probably less – some people change accounts, some people post once and disappear, and some non-white-nationalists probably go there to argue. But sure, let’s say that community has 5,000 members.Stormfront’s user statistics say it gets about 30,000 visits/day, of which 60% are American. My own blog gets about 8,000 visits/day , and the measurable communities associated with it (the subreddit, people who follow my social media accounts) have between 2000 – 8000 followers. If this kind of thing scales, then it suggests about 10,000 people active in the Stormfront community.4chan boasts about 1 million visits/day. About half seem to be American. Unclear how many go to the politics board and how many are just there for the anime and video games, but Wikipedia says that /b/ is the largest board with 30% of 4Chan’s traffic, so /pol/ must be less than that. If we assume /pol/ gets 20% of 4chan traffic, and that 50% of the people on /pol/ are serious alt-rightists and not dissenters or trolls, the same scaling factors give us about 25,000 – 50,000 American alt-rightists on 4Chan.Taking into account the existence of some kind of long tail of alt-right websites, I still think the population of the online US alt-right is somewhere in the mid five-digits, maybe 50,000 or so.
The only one that displays clear user statistics is /r/altright, which says that there are about 5,000 registered accounts. The real number is probably less – some people change accounts, some people post once and disappear, and some non-white-nationalists probably go there to argue. But sure, let’s say that community has 5,000 members.
Stormfront’s user statistics say it gets about 30,000 visits/day, of which 60% are American. My own blog gets about 8,000 visits/day , and the measurable communities associated with it (the subreddit, people who follow my social media accounts) have between 2000 – 8000 followers. If this kind of thing scales, then it suggests about 10,000 people active in the Stormfront community.
4chan boasts about 1 million visits/day. About half seem to be American. Unclear how many go to the politics board and how many are just there for the anime and video games, but Wikipedia says that /b/ is the largest board with 30% of 4Chan’s traffic, so /pol/ must be less than that. If we assume /pol/ gets 20% of 4chan traffic, and that 50% of the people on /pol/ are serious alt-rightists and not dissenters or trolls, the same scaling factors give us about 25,000 – 50,000 American alt-rightists on 4Chan.
Taking into account the existence of some kind of long tail of alt-right websites, I still think the population of the online US alt-right is somewhere in the mid five-digits, maybe 50,000 or so.
― Mordy, Tuesday, 22 November 2016 22:41 (seven years ago) link
so it is still very marginal.
― Van Horn Street, Tuesday, 22 November 2016 22:43 (seven years ago) link
That Steve Bannon performative bit of evil reads so much like Davis Aurini:
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/kprBSlFRCv0/maxresdefault.jpg
― (rocketcat) (kingfish), Tuesday, 22 November 2016 22:47 (seven years ago) link
bannon obv successful enough that his grandiose notions about power are not just youtube larping
― Mordy, Tuesday, 22 November 2016 22:48 (seven years ago) link
yeah but his success not fully dependant on being the king of the alt-right or so. might be obvious to people like you who have (rightfully) studied the movement, but reading the news it's hard to really get the scale of the movement.
identifying how racism operates is #1 priority when it comes to finding solutions to fight it, focusing a lot on 4chan seems misguided to me rn (only accusing some media institutions here, no one in the thread).
― Van Horn Street, Tuesday, 22 November 2016 22:58 (seven years ago) link
this twitter is run by, if i've read it correctly and he's not a complete fabulist, old-line republican staffer on the senate foreign relations committee. (i found his blog during the iraq war, written pseudonymously as a rolling horror document of what was happening.)
https://twitter.com/DrLeoStrauss/status/801135190806503424
Well known GOP op/pundit to me- “white genes superior to blacks ala VDARE, Franco USA over dealing with ethnics” Writes w/Bannon @ Breitbart
take it all with a big grain of salt, but he's said shit like this numerous times over the years -- that the staffers and on-the-ground operatives of the conservative movement, even back in the reagan days, had beliefs identical to the alt-right hidden just a scratch below the surface.
i think analyses like scott alexander's (AS USUAL) miss the point totally by adding up numbers online. these ideas are everywhere. that the trump moment, or the internet, or whatever it is we're living through, has shown us a bloc of young men willing to espouse them loudly if semi-anonymously in public should indicate some greater multiple of people who are nodding along.
― goole, Tuesday, 22 November 2016 23:00 (seven years ago) link
Any 'alt-right' folks who are uncomfortable with being referred to as neo-Nazis are free and welcome to denounce any white supremacist or antisemitic beliefs they've been wrongly accused of harboring. But I'll just comfortably continue making my assumptions about those who run with that pack and keep shtum.
― i need microsoft installed on my desktop, can you help (Old Lunch), Tuesday, 22 November 2016 23:06 (seven years ago) link
I suspect most alt-right people don't care what we call them - or if they do care it's because they find it amusing. A big piece of the alt-right is about irreverence for traditional taboos in American civil culture like the Holocaust or slavery. If they felt any kind of disassociation from the term Neo-Nazi it's probably in that they see it as an ironic moniker.
― Mordy, Tuesday, 22 November 2016 23:08 (seven years ago) link
I'm still going with 'Vanilla Isis'.
― jane burkini (suzy), Tuesday, 22 November 2016 23:15 (seven years ago) link
It is kinda the same as people calling ISIS Daesh. Does anyone think ISIS gives af if you use one over the other?
― Mordy, Tuesday, 22 November 2016 23:16 (seven years ago) link