If Milo is New Face of American Right We’re in Trouble

Paul Gottfried writes:

As a historian of the American conservative movement, I dove into Milo’s book because I was interested in what it conveyed about the Alt-Right, but my interest quickly dissipated after I read the relevant remarks. I would gather that there used to be an original Alt-Right, which “was the most exciting, dynamic and effective right-wing to emerge since the Tea Party.” This creation was so good that even an “Israeli-supporting former Tea Party member was in those days just as likely to be drawn to it as a Richard Spencer-devotee.” Unfortunately it’s never made clear what this wonderful thing was before Spencer and his confrères ruined it by identifying the Alt-Right with white nationalism and even Holocaust-deniers. In fact it’s hard to figure out much of anything about the movement that Milo credits himself with having founded—and which apparently his well-heeled patrons thought was super. For those who are curious about Milo’s topic, I would urge them to read George Hawley’s Making Sense of the Alt-Right. Unlike Milo, Hawley has studied the subject of his research and doesn’t bother to explore the contributions made by the author of Dangerous, whose formative influence on Hawley’s subject was less than negligible.