Who are the alt-right, exactly? (An open letter)

[metatron]

You have already been given that. Some (not necessarily all!) of the core beliefs of neoreactionaries combined with the chan/trolling aesthetic is what I am offering as the 'loose framework' of the alt-right. I don't see what's insufficient about it.

I appreciate the style argument you have made. I suspect that's something that will be to some degree normal going forward and it's merely a set of groups arguably on the right who happen to be the ones who've done it first.
But there is some descriptive power there. There's the trolling of *****, there's a certain bubblyness reminiscent of Ron Paul's campaigns etc.
Like, we all can see what you are saying there and we can easily recognise it in the field.
There are problems there, too, though. E.g. You asserted that "most MRAs" were part of the alt-right. But most of them don't use such tactics. Even most anti-feminists don't do so. In fact plenty of them are sort of grumpy about looking all too quaint and irrelevant compared to the "troll army". You appear to appreciate none of that, largely due to your camp's compulsion to conflate all anti-feminism, including the MRM (which is about as tangentially semi-true, semi useful and semi absurd as calling the NRA a christian organisation (actually, with some thought the latter sounds way too credible compared to the former, but anyway)).
Similarly many people you would file as alt-right or at least as dangerously close based on views of theirs you would call islamophobic don't memefy well and have similar gripes about the relevant culture.
But none the less, there is some meat to the aestetic case you have made.

You have to make some argument about the denominators of the content as well. You can argue that this is some loose alliance or whatever. But you have to offer something persuasive on that front.
So far all you have shown in any convicing way is that there are all manner of groups who use these tactics, except when they don't, because they feel the concensus of centre/centre-left media is favoring their more powerful opposition.
Yeah, well, congrats, we just managed to define asymetric conflict in political media. Duh.

Well, duh. Neo-Nazis have been around for decades. The alt-right is relatively new. If you're expecting the term to be as well-defined as "Neo-Nazi," you are again, sorry to say it, doomed to disappointment. Wait three or four decades and maybe it will be.

I don't think this is a nstrong argument. Other movements/phenomena were around for the better part of an afternoon and there was some commonly agreed stable concept of who and what they are (not necessarily one that wasn't partially incorrect - not the point). E.g. Occupy, the Tea Party.

 

[Lexicus]

E.g. You asserted that "most MRAs" were part of the alt-right.

Well, I suppose I would amend my point to say that most MRAs are neoreactionaries, but not necessarily alt-right. Better?

I don't think this is a nstrong argument. Other movements/phenomena were around for the better part of an afternoon and there was some commonly agreed stable concept of who and what they are (not necessarily one that wasn't partially incorrect - not the point). E.g. Occupy, the Tea Party.

Both of these are a lot easier to nail down than the alt-right. The Tea Party was (is?) a highly visible public campaign. Occupy was an actual event. The alt-right is a diffuse phenomenon that still mostly exists in an anonymous online setting.

 

[metatron]

Well, I suppose I would amend my point to say that most MRAs are neoreactionaries, but not necessarily alt-right. Better?

Not at all.
In fact you are undermining with this mischaractarisation what is arguably the best descriptive tool for alt-right ideology you have: Neoreaction.
It just doesn't match your observations at the beginning of the thread.

The alt-right is a diffuse phenomenon that still mostly exists in an anonymous online setting.

This is a positively absurd statement, given your remarks in post #2 of this thread.
Never mind that gay man from the UK who toured college campuses.

 

[Lexicus]

This is a positively absurd statement, given your remarks in post #2 of this thread.

Which remarks in particular? And you get that reading that piece I linked (and which you dismissed saying you weren't going to "waste significant labor on it" which I think is a prime example of acting in bad faith) changed my thinking considerably from where it was when I started posting in this thread, right?

 

[metatron]

Which remarks in particular?

The people i made you rate, and their followers are pretty highly puplic. Excluding Mr. Maldonado (who's arguably too much "youth entertainment") virtually all of them give lectures and/or are in panel discussions and/or get interviewed on television and/or testify at the freakin Canadian Senate.
But everybody who agrees with them is some underground Nazi dude with a ski mask or something who lurks in the corners of the internet? What?

And you get that reading that piece I linked [...] changed my thinking considerably from where it was when I started posting in this thread, right?

If your position has changed you are free to tell me that. Did you? Have i missed that?

(and which you dismissed saying you weren't going to "waste significant labor on it" which I think is a prime example of acting in bad faith)

1. I am largely aware of the contents of the thing in broad strokes.
2. I regard it to be fecal matter.
3. Seeing the glorious level of opposition research you people have so far displayed in this thread, i feel no obligation to re-read an ideologically unpleasant anonymous article in an attrocious font to not get the "grand theory" you claim it does not provide.

 

[Lexicus]

The people i made you rate, and their followers are pretty highly puplic. Excluding Mr. Maldonado (who's arguably too much "youth entertainment") virtually all of them give lectures and/or are in panel discussions and/or get interviewed on television and/or testify at the freakin Canadian Senate.
But everybody who agrees with them is some underground Nazi dude with a ski mask or something who lurks in the corners of the internet? What?

I don't know, I think you are exaggerating the importance of these figures to some degree. I still stand by my remarks - the alt-right's beating heart is in ***** and various subreddits. The vloggers and other more public figures remain somewhat peripheral.

If your position has changed you are free to tell me that. Did you? Have i missed that?

Position and thinking aren't quite the same thing. My basic position on what the alt-right is has remained essentially the same, but that article gave me a new way to think about it and a new way to organize what I think about it, if that makes sense.

1. I am largely aware of the contents of the thing in broad strokes.
2. I regard it to be fecal matter.
3. Seeing the glorious level of opposition research you people have so far displayed in this thread, i feel no obligation to re-read an ideologically unpleasant anonymous article in an attrocious font to not get the "grand theory" you claim it does not provide.

I still don't quite get why you think it's crap, though. You have done zero to counter any of the substantive factual assertions made there, and I'm not seeing much on why the interpretive parts are not useful. I get that you disagree with the author ideologically, but I do too, and that didn't stop me from finding the piece highly useful.

 

[metatron]

I don't know, I think you are exaggerating the importance of these figures to some degree. I still stand by my remarks - the alt-right's beating heart is in ***** and various subreddits. The vloggers and other more public figures remain somewhat peripheral.

So then all the people you have characterised as alt-right or alligned or close or grey area are extensions of a thing that has its heart on ***** and some subreddits?
Importance isn't really relevant to that question public exposure and lack of anonymity is.

Anyway, this would mean that when you talk about the alt-right you are actually talking about an unknown group of trolls on the internet. And virtually anybody who these people happen to agree with can be labeled an associate?

I still don't quite get why you think it's crap, though. You have done zero to counter any of the substantive factual assertions made there, and I'm not seeing much on why the interpretive parts are not useful. I get that you disagree with the author ideologically, but I do too, and that didn't stop me from finding the piece highly useful.

I basically deem it libellous totalitarian hate speech. That's a different level of disagreement than yours.
I frankly feel the level of presumption that i was to care about this turd remarkably insulting.

 

[Lexicus]

I basically deem it libellous totalitarian hate speech. That's a different level of disagreement than yours.

Yes. It also happens to be a laughably false, loony claim.

I frankly feel the level of presumption that i was to care about this turd remarkably insulting.

Until you actually engage with that text I see no reason to take the discussion further.

 

[metatron]

...

The text is as deserving of my engagement as a text asserting that pizzagate was real.

Also, we shall note the time. 21gmt, 02/11/17.
What's his face again? Sam Keeper.
Well, we'll see how it goes.

 

[caketastydelish]

Because MRAs are far-right.

Many of them are not registered Republicans. Many are even registered, Democrats. Plenty didn't vote for Trump. Whether they're "reactionary" is open to interpretation, but they're not "far right" in the sense, say, the KKK is.

 

[caketastydelish]

We're not talking about the mild dudes who want parental leave equal with women or other such reasonable policies (often backed by feminist associations too). We're talking about the actual MRAs, who are nothing more than anti-feminists. They loathe women's right and want men to be more clearly advantaged in society. Those are the vocal ones, the trolls on the internet, the ones who send death threats to feminist spokespeople.
This week two people in France created a service where if you're a woman and a guy asks you for your number in an insistent manner and you can't really refuse you can give him a number which would send the guy a message after an hour telling him he's made a woman uneasy and to stop being so insistent. MRAs coordinated and managed to shut it down by overloading it. That's what these people do. They're not here for men's rights, they want women to be as oppressed as possible

Well, that is very reprehensible. Anyone who do such things does not speak for me. As Metatron said the "no true Scotsman" applies. I suppose if someone openly identifies as an MRA that's all there is to it, rather than "only a 'real' MRA would do..."

 

[innonimatu]

Lol, okay. I mean to me it looks more like a list of qualifying criteria and/or warning signs for some categorisation that has a more distilled definition that exists outside of the list. As a definition in and of itself it's a bit... weirdly specific and meaningless isn't it? I mean it's a rather odd grab-bag of very specific criteria - Being an adherent of transhumanism, actively promoting rape, participating in DDoS attacks and enjoying a nice game of Warhammer, all while subscribing to the Austrian School of Economics. And those are just the greatest hits. Does there really need to be a specific term to describe such a person?! What use does that serve? And then the alt-right are only a subset of these people?

Pardon me for meddling on what seems to be a semi-private discussion, but my succinct description of anyone capable of holding all those beliefs would be quite simple: "entitled, sheltered, selfish fool". Because no one else would combine all those for long before clashing with the difficulties of life. The "fool" part is because I'm an optimist, but I have to admit that such folly can for some people last through a lifetime of comfort - those who are born into great wealth or are sufficiently sociopath and smart to get it..

People from a lot of different background can fall into this situation, if they are provided with those starting conditions and happen to wonder into some cesspit of society during their formative years (or other live-changing periods). Nothing new. We always had those kind of people. Now we have more because, duh, inequality has risen and selfishness has risen with it. And selfishness needs some "rational excuse" to provide a semblance of "moral backing". One important thing to remember is that most of these people are actually sheltered pussies that need a specific kind of society to thrive. I see them as symptoms of malaise, not causes.

I actually thing that Lexicus was onto something with the "neo-recationary" term. That would have been a fine label and avoided any confusion with "alt-right". It even has the advantage of being both historically understandable (we kind of know what reactionary meant) and suitably vague to encompass what are different types of people.

 

[Samson]

According to the beeb, the alt-right was coined in 2008 by Paul Gottfried. I have quickly read the speech, and it seems to basically come down to on the right but not neo-con, growing out of Paleoconservatism. This ends up being a largely negative definition, defining it as what it is against rather than what it is for. I do not know if this is useful nowadays.

As to what it is against, from the speech I got:

• Martin Luther King
  
• Joe Lieberman
  
• Scoop Jackson
  
• Open borders with Mexico
• Invading iran

The bbc lists:

• black radicalism
  
• radical feminists
  
• open borders activists
  
• progressive society
  
• political correctness

The bbc also links a document by Allum Bokhari and Milo Yiannopoulos, but it is much harder to read as it is more overtly unpleasant. It names subgroups within the movement, but does not really define them to the point that you can reliably put people in one or other. They are:

• The intellectuals
• Natural conservatives
• The meme team
• The '1488ers'

 

[innonimatu]

Please, please, cease granting importance to those people! The writers of all those documents are part of the problem. They create definitions, and seek to create "factions", out of thin air for their own self-aggrandizement. The media echoes them, when it doesn't outright use or own them, to advance the interests of its own paymasters. Don't feed them.

 

[Lexicus]

Please, please, cease granting importance to those people! The writers of all those documents are part of the problem. They create definitions, and seek to create "factions", out of thin air for their own self-aggrandizement. The media echoes them, when it doesn't outright use or own them, to advance the interests of its own paymasters. Don't feed them.

Well, the author of the document I offered has remained anonymous, so I don't see how she (or he, I suppose, or maybe they) was doing it for self-aggrandizement. I don't think I overestimate the importance of neoreaction - it remains a small, fringe element of the right, but it is worrying that some of its views seem to be breaking into the mainstream right, at least in the United States. I don't think that worrying about that is "granting [undue] importance" to this phenomenon.