Anatoly Karlin writes: On May 6, Richard Spencer and the Bay Area Alt Right organized a “safe space” for Europeans at Sproul Plaza, U.C. Berkeley.
Although I do not strictly consider myself Alt Right (or NRx), I do support about 70% of their positions, so I was happy to turn up with them to troll my alma mater.
Richard Spencer was interviewed by a couple of student journalists, while the rest of us engaged slack-jawed passersby in discussions about identity, human biodiversity, and the necessity of becoming who you are. I suppose that means my “Far Right Recruiter” achievement trophy has been unlocked.
Apart from one SJW neckbeard, seen above delivering a spittle-flecked rant while an aloof shitlord looks on smugly, the event passed off peacefully. This was probably on account of it being announced on very short notice, which didn’t give local Antifa organizations the time to mount a coordinated response.
Otherwise, the crowd that gathered was very multicultural, as you might expect of UCB’s demographics. Vibrant. Diverse. The debates were vigorous, even if the two sides largely talked past each other. For many intelligent normies, even concepts as basic as the intellectual crisis of the blank slate model and the replication crisis in psychology, now widely accepted outside explicitly ideological university departments, came as big and incredible news. Meanwhile, the Alt Righters tended to come in too thick and too fast and triggered away potential sympathizers by frontloading too much overt European Identity in their talking points when a more exclusively data-based focus might have been more productive. That said, I’m not criticizing. It’s still good that these ideas are getting out there on the streets instead of just sitting on computer pixels.
There were some surprises too and from rather unexpected quarters. Richard Spencer had a highly cordial discussion with an Israeli woman, who agreed with his point that if Israel could have a wall then who was to say that America couldn’t? Common ground was found with Bernie supporters, who although highly highly averse to the race talk and predisposed to blame colonialism for the Third World’s ills were fully in line with the Alt Right’s desire to stop meddling abroad. And there was one Japanese student who revealed his astounding power level by quietly confiding his avid perusal of The Daily Stormer. The merchant fears the samurai, indeed.
