* “Their numbers are hard to gauge, since they mostly operate online and, as with most internet bullies, anonymously…”
Kind of like the writers of The Economist…..
Or am I missing something here?
* Thanks for letting us in on the diabolical frog symbol. I had no idea that it signaled white supremacy. While we’re at it, did you know that the Morton Salt logo is a symbol of witchcraft, Teletubbies are an undercover gay marriage campaign, heavy metal album covers contain secret messages, and KISS means Knights In Satan’s Service?
* I honestly wonder whether this article wasn’t a joke. It displays a serious failure to understand the origin of memes and internet culture in general. The clear lack of original and insightful analysis compels me to believe that the article was copied from similar ones that appeared in other publications recently. I never thought I would ever be saying this, but The Economist really needs to get its act together. It’s credibility among readers who have had even a shred of exposure to internet culture has been dangerously undermined.
* The Economist used to report the hard facts and news without fluffy, leftist PC commentary. Such a pity the Economist has, since its new ownership and editor of a few months ago, fallen to this. Chasing readership numbers and profits, I guess? Its becoming just another Huffingtonpost type spewing stuff out. Its a tradjedy. So we are forced to scroll the internet for hard and straight forward news.
* I follow the meme’s on twitter with great amusement. The cool kids are definitely on the alt right. It was the democrats in 08′ with Jon Stewart but now there are wittier warriors like Ricky Vaughn and others. The elites miss the point of the alt right and the right wing twitterspere, these people are not dangerous just trolls reacting to globalization, multiculturalism and illegal immigration overrunning our towns and school systems. These are all legitimate concerns and this snarky movement has propelled these issues forward, no longer brushed under the rug. If the readers of the economist haven’t learned anything from the outcome of the Brexit vote you should consider cancelling your subscription because the magazine isn’t teaching you anything.
* Europe has been drifting leftward ever since fascism was defeated in ’45, but the US never succumbed to either of those extremes.
So when I say the Economist is a left-wing publication, I am speaking from an American perspective, just as my mainstream American conservative views are far right by European standards.
The reason the Economist is so stridently pro-Hillary is that she, shorn of her corrupt career, reflects the norm of the European mainstream center.
Now that ‘centrist’ ideology is under attack in Europe because of the invasion of the muslim immigrants and the European governments’ doubling down despite the rampant crime and long-term threat of terrorism these immigrants represent.
The fallacy of governments like Germany is that these immigrants are not refugees, they are not fleeing from violence by the time they get to Turkey, and certainly not when they get to Greece, yet still Merkel lets them come. The right’s resurgence is simply sanity being restored.
In the US, the left is faltering and collapsing with the health of Hillary and the non-stop revelations of her extreme carelessness, ineptitude and lack of wisdom, coupled with her corruption exposed by the revelations of her emails and the rejection of such poisonous ideas as the importation of muslims carrying the totalitarian ideology of Islam.
The Economist’s stabs at the deplorables, alt-right and mainstream right in America is just its attempt to impose its European views on America.
That went out of style in 1782 and isn’t coming back any time soon. Europe installed slavery in America. Europe invented fascism, communism and socialism. America definitively rejected them all.
Europe has nothing useful to teach us about proper political discourse or ideology, it gives only lessons in what not to do.
* Two or three weeks ago Mrs. Clinton denounced the “Alt-Right” in a campaign speech and, so help me, I thought she was referring to a new computer command!
The first time I saw this green frog business was this past Monday and I had no idea what it “symbolized.” It just seemed as though Kermit had really let himself go.
I have many acquaintances, albeit most of them are from an older demographic, and my classroom is filled with high-school students who spend their waking moments on the web and not one person has ever mentioned Alt-Right nor have I seen a frog sticker on a book bag (the first place that youthful rebellion is manifested.)
Thirty-odd years ago a prankster created a mild brouhaha when he, quite successfully, started a rumor in NYC that the livery horses that tramp so disconsolately around Central Park South would now be required to wear diapers. (The PETA types were, predictably, outraged.)
Out and about in the world everyday, chatting constantly with my friends and my students and a longtime reader of newspapers and magazines of all political shades and hues, I can only wonder how Alt-Right can be a dangerous mass movement if there is no mass and no danger.
Perhaps Alt-Right is just a fraternity prank which aims to provoke “Get off the lawn!” outrage from the usual suspects on the Left. And, it may also be that Alt-Rights defenders are also unaware that the whole business may be a send-up that the ever-vigilant Left has stirred to life by the vivifying lightning bolt of its habitual verbal over-kill.
Regardless, the Left is locked and loaded as a target for Grand Guignol political ribaldry. Many, many Americans no longer pay much attention to, much less are intimidated by, the Left’s constant braying about racism, micro-aggressions, the “War on Women” and similar shopworn and tattered moanings from liberals of all stripes.
Lex, you’ve bought the Brooklyn Bridge. Again.
* “extreme right of the 1930s, fuelled by rabid nationalism.”
You must be talking about Israel.
Why is the Western Jewish controlled MSM silent on Israel’s rabid nationalism & ethno-religious centrism. But if the US, or Denmark or Hungary or any other Western country wants to do the same thing, that very same MSM will scream vitriol & anti-White racism.
The Economist would be wrong just to dismiss them as crackpots. Their rantings, ignorance and anger are no different from the extreme right of the 1930s, or to the ongoing tactics of Israel to ethnically cleanse Palestine of Arabs.
* Literally shaking as I read this ignorant xenophobic trash from the Clinton campaign, and I can now barely type. Does she know any actual Pepes? I do, and they’re nothing like what she describes. The Pepe community, despite being marginalized and demeaned by bigots like Hillary Clinton, is a group of good hard-working honest Americans, and it works closely with law enforcement to identify any rare Pepes that might be at risk to do these types of things Hillary talks about. Hateful Pepephobia like Hillary’s is the root cause of any antisocial behavior by what are indeed very rare Pepes. We should not judge the actions of all Pepes by the unfortunate memes of a few poor, misguided Pepes. You’re playing right into the hands of radical Pepes. It’s 2016, is it not? Educate yourselves! Ignorance kills!
* I love it how The Economist gets all acerbic and froths at the mouth when discussing racism in America and Antisemitism among non-Muslims. Trump may be a bully and unqualified, but saying that he’s endorsed by self-identifying Nazis is no more relevant than saying that Hillary is endorsed by America’s Communist Party. You’re pursuing the wrong tack if you expect to shame the Alt-Right into submission like a schoolmaster – they revel in your hatred. Why not convince conservatives who are appalled at Trump’s ridiculousness as much as they are at Hillary’s scandals to consider Gary Johnson? He endorses the same classical liberalism which has been the darling of The Economist’s editorial policy since your publication helped repeal the Corn Laws.
* The Economist has lowered themselves to the same level as Islamic publications in going after cartoons! Remember the last time what happened — Charlie Hebdo and eleven dead. Just as decrepit Islamist tried to rally their masses against cartoons, the Economist and its Globalist fellow travelers think they can stop Trump, Brexit, Marine Le Pen, etc. by attacking a cartoon!
This also reminds me of a generation ago when do-gooder Church people called heavy metal “Devil Worshipping Music” and forbade their children from listening to Black Sabbath, Led Zeppelin, or The Rolling Stones! Instead of being shamed by the devil worshiping slur — defiant young people turned to their parents and yelled HAIL SATAN! With the alt-Right it will be the same, you will not be able to keep ideological hegemony over the youth of today by called them racists!
* Time for a point by point rebuttal.
Much of the Alt-Right’s output will seem indecipherably weird to those unfamiliar with the darker penumbras of popular culture. It has its own iconography and vernacular, derived from message boards, video games and pornography.
It must seem indecipherable to you as well, since you seem so apt at misrepresenting it.
Its signature insult is “cuckservative”, directed at Republicans supposedly emasculated by liberalism and money.
Are you honestly trying to claim, AT BEST, modern conservatives haven’t lost every single cultural battle their constituencies cared about? At worst they’ve actively sold them out and these aren’t isolated incidents. This is the rule, not the exception.
and the man himself, circulating the Alt-Right’s memes and hoax statistics
Trump retweeted one image, one time with statistics. While they were incorrect, 2 out of the 3 statistics weren’t far off.
To most Americans, the purposes to which these gimmicks are put will seem as outlandish as the lexicon. One of the Alt-Right’s pastimes is to intimidate adversaries with photoshopped pictures of concentration camps
Literally have never seen this, but lol. All this focus on the Jewish aspects makes me think the author of this article might have (((parenthesis))) around his name.
Jared Taylor of American Renaissance, an extremist website, dismisses these antics as “youthful rebellion”.
He’s right. We’re just messing with you. Much of the alt-right are just old school nerd trolls mixed with American nationalism. We’d do whatever gets a rise out of you. Milo even told you how to beat us, but you blithering idiots are too dense to get it.
Mr Taylor is also involved with the Council of Conservative Citizens, which Dylann Roof cited as an inspiration for his racist massacre in Charleston last year.
Literally has nothing to do with anything, just your feeble attempt at casting guilt by association. Why bother refuting what Mr. Taylor (don’t even know who he is tbh) says, when you can just use a negative association. Here I know:
“Omar Mateen (the Orlando shooter) was a life long member of the Democrats and cited ISIS as his inspiration, you don’t want to be in the same party as an avowed ISIS terrorist do you?!” I mean how transparent and pathetic can you get?
But the substance behind the sulphur can seem difficult to pin down. The term Alt-Right..
There’s no such thing as the alt-right, it’s just a way of grouping and disparaging the individual conservative currents and a way of writing them off by associating them with unsavory currents or characters.
Yet from the quack ideologues
[citation needed]
to the out-and-proud neo-Nazis
Oh and just like I said you’re trying to put us all in this huge umbrella so that you can write us off by associating us with bad elements. KYS
It repudiates feminism with misogynistic gusto.
People aren’t equal. If women need artificial structures in order to compete at the same level as men, they aren’t equal and this disproves one of the most basic tenants of feminism. I, and many young people bought into a dream about equality. We believed in tabula rasa, but it’s not true. Your LSD addled generation lied to us, in the hopes of the lie becoming true. We traded what worked, for what sounded good. Ultimately it’s about letting people do what they’re good at. Women have biochemical, morphological, neurochemical, neurostructural differences, pretending they don’t and having them act like imperfect men is not a celebration of the feminine but rather a crass rejection of it. Do you ever wonder why all the hardcore (3rd wave) feminists all look like men and are filled with hate? They hate women and the feminine. I love women and embrace the feminine. If that is misogyny, then I suppose I am guilty of this charge.
It embraces isolationism and protectionism
And your problem with that is? Our recent intrigues across the Middle East have went so well right? We didn’t lose a ton of jobs to Mexico, India, China and so on? We don’t have a huge trade deficit with every single trade partner?
Above all, it champions white nationalism
WRONG. It champions white tribalism. As in whites need to recognize every other group looks out for their tribal interests and so should we. Blacks do it = good, Hispanics do it = good, Jews do it = good, Asians do it = good, Whites do it = OMG YOU’RE A RACIST NAZI BIGOT THAT HATES WOMEN AND MINORITIES. F**k you and your intellectually dishonest attack on my tribal interests.
If any other group does it, it’s okay. Honestly this is what drew most of us to this thinking, we got tired of being told we were part of the patriarchy, or we were holding the black man down, or that we have some collective guilt for slavery, or the holocaust. You can only call us racist or sexist so many times before it loses all meaning.
This article ticks off all the checkboxes of mainstream media bewilderment and obsolescence.
The alt-right’s rise is the counter product of the progressive left’s descent into a stunning display of doublethink; narcissism + self-loathing through victimhood which is proudly celebrated and rewarded by the government and media for their advocacy of the following:
* Additional speech regulations to protect peoples’ subjective feelings that can change at a whim and are not grounded in fact –> undermine the need for the 1st Amendment through social intimidation, “hate speech”/thoughtcrime laws
* Dissolution of borders out of a naive and suicidal hatred of their own countrymen because of a narrow, warped view on historical grievances –> acquisition of foreign workers conditioned to receive less pay
* Welfare state bred from the insatiable Western consumerist mentality –> people indentured to the state
“It repudiates feminism with misogynistic gusto.” you write without nuance. The modern feminism movement, also known as intersectional feminism, is an ideology meant to pit man against woman by using the proposition that a problem exists (ex// women are oppressed because more men are in a management position than women) as proof of its continued existence (circular logic) and extreme exercise of power in society. The major battles for women have been won in the West and what little remains requires precise campaigning, not shotgun tactics. But as those who’ve achieved power rarely relinquish it out of kindness, feminism has devolved into serving as a means of acquiring social prestige in circles of authority.
Feminism holds no monopoly on the concept of “equality.” It is an ideology, one that has become supremacist in nature despite its insistence to look at dictionary definitions. It is the subject of ridicule from the alt-right, and classic liberal left, because of its ridiculous victim complexes and enormous amount of ideological “feature creep” in its efforts.
You cite the SPLC and ADL as if they’re trustworthy organizations, when in fact they both have an extreme anti-right bias and have smeared organizations as “Nazis(!)” if they’re deemed a threat to the political establishment (advocacy of citizens’ rights, media watchdogs, etc.)
I’ve heard enough from the mainstream media these past few years. All I see now are propagandists who have failed to adapt to the information age. Those that have adapted still peddle the same outdated nonsense that made us all turn off our televisions in the first place and have caused public trust in the media to plummet (reference: see recent Gallup poll).
All you’ve left in your arsenal are buzzwords: sexist, racist, misogynists, white supremacists, bigots, Islamaphobic, conspiracy theorists, manchildren, cisgendered males, and the constantly repeated list goes on and on. There is no logical substance to any of this. Where are the arguments? This has gone on for decades now and has come to a head these past few years due to a number of real world events and your continued smug self-righteousness through all of it. People aren’t buying into your demands to exercise self-flagellation as you get away with the lies by omission.
The alt-right is a product of your arrogance and solipsism. You supposedly report the news, yet the sources you cite happen to fall under the same media umbrella network of nepotism. Wikipedia inadvertently shows the lot of you as nothing but a circular loop of propagandists in an echo chamber citing each others words as “truth.”
You don’t even know there’s a civil war in the left, do you? Despite my defense of the alt-right, I’m one of those classical liberals who won’t be batting an eye when Trump goes after your kind with the libel laws. Traitors of the people go first.
Also, nice way of weaseling Russia into the article. No one’s going to buy a war with them as your means of distracting from the collapse of the DNC. Adding The Economist to the hosts blocklist so I never stumble upon this site again by accident. Suggest others do the same. Just look up the instructions on how to do it.
* Ah yes, the venerable ADL; who so venerably denied the Armenian genocide for decades in the name of geo-political concerns, who so venerably harassed a poor couple over a neighbour’s feud, who so venerably campaigns for the erosion and eventual destruction of 2nd amendment rights, and who so venerably defends Israeli nationalism from even the slightest criticism with a paranoid fervour whilst slandering or (dare I say) defaming every single other self-determination/nationalist/patriotic movement in the west.
I hold their venerable opinion on just about everything in high regard for sure.
* This is truly the greatest 4Chan prank in history… MSM outlets and the Democratic candidate calling Pepe a neo nazi… If you told me this a year ago, I would have died laughing. It would have been unthinkable that a semi-obscure imageboard could have a major impact on the US election. Random sh*tposting and ironic post-postmodern edgy internet humor that pokes fun at post-postmodern society has suddenly become a factor in mainstream American politics that is capable of influencing global economics and geopolitics.
MSM has consistently completely failed to understand any of these memes or the alt-right (which doesn’t even exist as a coherent movement at all) or 4Chan or internet culture in general. I can tell you that the vast majority of people who would be characterized as ‘alt-right’ have never even heard of any of these so-called leaders of the alt-right mentioned in the article, and nobody on /pol/ ever used ((())) until it was widely reported in the MSM.
tl;dr: the entire planet is getting trolled hard by 4Chan and it’s probably the funniest thing that has ever happened in the entire history of human civilization.
* A 173-year old magazine, known for its rational arguments and highly-educated readership, staffed by people of remarkable and sometimes enviable intellect, a magazine which I grew up reading every week as my primary source of information throughout my university days, willingly seems to have bought into the idea that a green cartoon frog is the new face of the far-right, neo-nazis, white supremacists, and others.
Not David Duke or any other individual involved with the KKK.
Not some gang member from the Aryan Brotherhood with Hitler and swastika tattoos on his body.
Not even Milo Yiannopoulos, the flamboyant white homosexual journalist widely followed by the Alt-Right.
A. freaking. green. cartoon. frog.
People who work at The Economist: are you doing the drugs? Did no one stop for a single moment and think “this sounds a bit too silly, maybe we should go with something else or at the very least double-check to see if its right?” Did nothing about the idea seem a bit absurd to you?
It genuinely scares me to think that people took this fear of Pepe thing seriously.
* So the only sources of biased judgments in this article come from jewish-supremacist groups like the ADL and SPLC?
The groups that praise Israel’s ban on muslims, while campaigning for open borders in the West?
* The Economist, it’s feminist and “progressive” editorial staff, and this reporter have shined a bright light on their own ideology with this article. The degree of confirmation bias is astounding, especially for a magazine that once was a bastion of logical thought.
The Economist is a lost cause, so this comment is not for them. It’s for the other readers that might make their way to this comments section.
The author says that one thing that binds many on the Alt-Right is anti-feminism. That is about the only true point made here. Meanwhile, the author bashes various people ostensibly of the Alt-Right for made-up statistics and scare-mongering.
Yet, The Economist has not once questioned any of the ridiculous “statistics” that feminists put out there and which, these days, are actually the basis for draconian public policy. For example, the supposed “pay gap” has been soundly disproven, yet The Economist along with it’s fellow progressive and feminist media travelers continue to cite it as if it is a legitimate basis for government intervention into the economy and people’s personal and family lives. Another example is the absurd idea that there is a “rape culture” on American university campuses. Feminism is so full of these nonsense statistics that I could write pages of them here. The media that wants so desperately to control “the narrative” never question its own easily debunked assumptions.
On topics like immigration, you would have us believe that a religion/ideology that is obviously incompatible with the Western philosophical underpinnings of Western democracy is, in fact, harmless. This, despite the morbid violence that results when Islam’s followers clash with secular Western society. On topics like immigration, you would have Americans reject the notion that rule-of-law is a key part of America’s success in order to feel good about illegal immigration.
More than anything the Alt-Right is a response to the media force-feeding this nonsense to people for the past 2 or 3 decades. We know things like the pay gap, rape culture, LEO bias against blacks, and so on, are not true. Yet it is forced on us much like the Soviet Union forced mythology on it’s people in order justify CONTROL.
We just are not buying it anymore. So you can throw around all the -isms and -phobias you want at people who disagree with you. We now know that these terms are only designed to try to shut good people up. And you can use big words like “excrescence” to feel holier-than-thou and intellectually superior. That will not work either.
The “narrative” used over the past 3 decades to manipulate and control is now dead. Articles like this are nothing more than an expression of remorse that your best days are behind you.