Luke Ford

David Weigel writes:

Taylor and Spencer, like many on the alt-right, believe in the relative superiority of different races; social conservatives believe that adherence to traditional Judeo-Christian values would bring about harmony. As the Daily Beast’s Betsy Woodruff prodded Spencer into admitting, the “utopian” alt-right state would include European whites but no Jews.

“Does anyone in this room really think that differences between pygmies, Danes and Australian aborigines are just social constructs?” Taylor asked at one point. “Really? This idea is so stupid that only very intelligent people could believe it.”

…Yet when they got inside the downtown Washington hotel where Spencer, Brimelow and Taylor would speak, reporters could ask whatever they wanted. That was on brand; alt-right figures write and talk constantly and make themselves available to the media. They also seem totally uninterested in dissembling — the more shocking and blunt the answer, the better…

The alt-right doesn’t have a political strategy yet. The Friday news conference was loose, with no real agenda apart from clearing up who represented the alt-right (no one person, said Spencer) and what the alt-right believes. Highly aware of their toxicity, the alt-right’s leaders support Donald Trump but admit that his attitude and elevation of the issues of race and immigration are more important — in the short term — than what he says from week to week. The closest thing to a political ground game on the alt-right has come in the form of clumsy robo-calls from California’s William Johnson…

The alt-right isn’t into American exceptionalism. At the Values Voter Summit, this year and every year, politicos and activists hark back to the founding faith of America’s revolutionaries. Hardly an hour can go by without a nod to John Winthrop’s “city upon on a hill” quote, as handed down (and slightly altered) by Ronald Reagan.

For the alt-right, America is more at risk because it is less providential. “We question America’s founding myth,” Spencer explained. “If you look at the Declaration of Independence, it’s not just the notion of ‘all men are created equal’ that I would object to. It’s also this notion that states come into being as entities for people to defend their inalienable rights. I find that to be total hokum, nonsense. That’s not how any state, including the United States, came into being.”

Brimelow used his briefer remarks to speculate about a balkanized American future, where some states — led by the Pacific Northwest — would declare the experiment over. “I think it will break up,” he said. “In some ways, that’s the best we can hope for.”

…Downtown, the alt-right troika praised Trump not because he was adopting new beliefs, but because he had found and defeated the right enemies.

“I don’t think our support of Trump is about policy, at the end of the day — it’s about style,” Spencer said. “We live in a fragmented, decaying society. We live in a society of moral degeneracy. We’re going to fight our way out it, and sometimes that means using the tools at hand. It’s going to mean unleashing a little chaos.”

Rosie Gray writes: “We’ve got to have professional organizations, professional people doing it, we’ve got to amp up what we’re already doing,” said Richard Spencer, a white nationalist leader.

…The press conference was billed as an explainer of the alt-right, but it was also focused on where the three men see things developing in the future, both politically and on a grander philosophical level. Brimelow sees the country breaking up geographically into different sections, while Spencer envisions a white ethno-state. But the matter of more immediate concern is still Trump’s campaign, which while not a perfect vessel for the alt-right is as close as anything has come, culminating in Trump’s hiring former Breitbart News chairman Steve Bannon, who has described Breitbart as “platform for the alt-right.” Alt-right members sneer not just at the left but also at movement conservatives, viewing them as relics who sold out on the issue that matters most: race. Brimelow dismissed National Review, for example, as a “cuckservative operation.”

“Certainly we have been you could say riding his coattails,” Spencer said of Trump. He acknowledged the alt-right’s differences of opinion with Trump on policy but downplayed the importance of policies at all; “it’s about him,” Spencer said. “And it’s about in a way projecting onto him our hopes and dreams.”

Non-Jews can’t move to Israel and become citizens with the same ease that Jews can. Does that mean Jews hate non-Jews? So why if gentiles want to create their own states without Jews, that means they hate Jews?

Daily Beast:

The Alt-Right needs to aspire to something, even if that dream won’t come true in his lifetime—and that means they should aim to build an ethno-state for just whites. And Spencer made it clear that white-only means Jews aren’t invited. They have their own identity, and it isn’t white-slash-European, and that’s that…

So the Alt-Right—helmed by the trio who gathered at The Willard on Friday—is the most extreme example of a shift on the American right: away from a nostalgic conservative focus on restoring the values of the Founders, and towards a forward-focused nationalism that prioritizes drastic limits on immigration and open hostility to globalism. Trump isn’t a white nationalist. But he speaks their language. And they dig it.

Wow, there’s nothing snide in this article!

Tucker Carlson seems the most woke of all conservative journalists.

Daily Caller: This of course brings up accusations of white supremacy. However, all three men object to this description. When asked about this label, Brimelow pointed to race and IQ studies which show “whites are not the superior race” and it is instead East Asians. He then joked that he must then be a “yellow supremacist.”

The alt right leaders also received many questions related to whether they are anti-semites. Taylor and Spencer disagreed here, but both said that Jews could be part of the Alt Right. Taylor said he considers European Jews to be European and Spencer said that Jews are a distinct people.

The movement has been described frequently as relating to conservatism but those present at the meetings objected to this characterization. Spencer said the “origin of the alt right is really a revolt against conservatism as we know it.” He spoke about “cuckservatives,” and defined them as “defending institutions for other people.”

Clinton spoke about the alt right in connection with Donald Trump. However, Spencer doesn’t think Trump is alt right — just that he is “high energy” and what they want in a leader. He agrees mostly with Trump’s immigration policy, but would want tighter legal immigration that prefers Europeans.

The movement has no strict leadership or orthodoxy and Spencer said that he is opposed to specific policy proposals. He instead prefers “meta-politics.” He has a vision for a white ethno-state, but this is a utopia he sees occurring far into the future. Spencer said having a utopia-like vision is positive and better than the “negativity” of mainstream conservatives that just seeks to oppose liberal policies.

Taylor’s goal for the alt right is possibly more realistic. He envisioned a PTA meeting where people are discussing the lack of black students in AP classes, and a mother stands up and mentions race’s influence on intellect.

Before either of these goals are achieved, Spencer wants the alt right to professionalize like other political movements. When asked about where they will get money for this, Spencer joked and said, “Vlad,” in reference to Vladimir Putin.

Mother Jones: Spencer explained that he likes Trump’s immigration policy, which not only calls for mass deportation of undocumented immigrants but also reduces legal immigration into the country. (Spencer’s ideal policy would also favor immigrants from Europe.) But as Spencer put it, it’s Trump’s more intangible qualities that make him a hero of the alt-right. To Spencer, Trump’s brash style suggests a white savoir, unwilling to be bullied by the politically correct crowd.

“I don’t think our support of Trump is really about policy at the end of the day,” Spencer said. “I think it’s really about Trump’s style, the fact that he doesn’t back down, the fact that he’s willing to confront his enemies…You look at that and you think, this is what a leader looks like.”

Spencer continued, “It really is about him and it’s about, in a way, projecting onto him our hopes and dreams. There’s something called ‘me magic,’ and that is a self-fulfilling prophecy…We want to make Trump; we want to imagine him in our image. And that is maybe—you can see that in a meme of Trump as a Napoleon or Trump as some figure out of the Dune novels in an arcade of the future in a robotic suit of armor fighting enemies. All of that stuff is silly, all of that stuff is ridiculous, but it actually gets at something real and that is that we want something more, we want something heroic, we want something that is not defined by liberalism or individual rights or bourgeois norms. We want something that is truly European and truly heroic.”

For this description, Spencer was greeted with much applause by his fans in the room. He elaborated that rather than a multicultural America, his ideal is a white empire. He described his “dream…ethno-state” as “a homeland for all Europeans,” which would take an “imperial form.”

“It’s very similar to the idea of Zionism for Jews in the 19th century,” he said. “It’s actually very similar to the ideal of communism for the left in the 19th century. It’s not here, it’s in the future, we should dream about it.”

What would this utopia look like? Spencer said it’s too far off to get into specifics. But he and Taylor, whose role at Friday’s event was to give academic assurances that the races of the world are not equal, disagreed on whether Jews would be welcomed into the white utopia homeland. Spencer took the position that they were not “European” and therefore would take their place in their own ethno-state. Taylor countered, “I don’t think that if a Jewish person identifies with the West and with Europe than that’s something that we should deny.” As Spencer acknowledged, the alt-right has yet to sort out these mere details.

But Spencer did offer up a vision of an alt-right society. “If the alt-right were in power, we would all have arrived here via magnetic levitation trains,” he said. “We would have passed by great forests and beautiful images of blond women in a wheat field with their hands, running them through the wheat.” The audience tittered. “It would be a wonderful sight.”

From TPM: In a cramped, carpeted ballroom at the Willard Hotel in downtown Washington, the rebranded “alt right” movement took a victory lap Friday and looked optimistically toward their future as a growing movement in the United States.

The press conference included all the same alt right notes that have become the centerpiece of the movement. There were discussions about an “ethnostate” and how to build one and debates about whether Jewish people could rightly identify themselves as European. One participant waxed poetic on why he is tired of being called a white supremacist in the media, and another predicted that the United States “will break up” over its divisions.

After years in relative obscurity in chatrooms and anonymous forums online, the disjointed alt right movement, closely aligned with the white nationalist movement, is experiencing a bit of a renaissance at the moment. In Europe, a backlash against a refugee crisis has resulted in Brexit. And in the United States, at the top of a major party ticket, the alt right finally has a Republican candidate in Donald Trump it can rally around.

“It is in a way projecting on to him our hopes and dreams,” said prominent movement leader Richard Spencer, a man who has said before he dreams of a white ethnostate. “We have not been made by Trump, but we want to make Trump and we want to imagine him in our image.”

The alt right claims to have no leader, no spokesman, no formal organization. But in front of dozens of sympathizers and reporters, leading figures Spencer, Peter Brimelow and Jared Taylor outlined their own vision for the future of their movement and their most high-profile political spokesman yet, Trump…

Trump, Spencer argued, “seems to be willing to go there. He seems to be willing to confront people” even if the alt right readily admits Trump is far from the optimal candidate.

“Donald Trump is not alt right in the sense of his ideas. He is not really alt right in terms of his policies,” Spencer said, nothing that his movement grew increasingly worried earlier this summer that Trump was backing way from his hard-right policies toward immigrants.

“We cannot be a Trump cheerleading squad,” Spencer said about the movement’s future, ruminating on the possibilities that the movement may even have to serve as a chief critic of Trump if he is elected and proves to be disappointing.

The left-wing point of view is also instinctive and biological and rooted in imprinting.

Genes and imprinting and geography and culture create our decisions (and free will if you believe in that).

I think people on the right have a stronger fight and flight reflex, have a stronger disgust reflex while people on the left are more at ease with diversity and shocking images.

When I feel a group is a threat to my group, I have a strong reaction to that threat. I know how much I hate those who threaten the existence and tranquility of people I love, so I am not dismayed when members of other groups have a strong reaction against those who threaten them.

The Alt-Right seems to me to be another instinctive biological reaction. I think all of the major political views are primarily rooted in biology and imprinting. Exposition of these reactions can be eloquent, but these expositions are always rationalizations of primal feelings.

The pre-frontal cortex can temper one’s instinctive reactions to make them more socially acceptable. I suspect that most people are a lot more racist and bigoted and intolerant than they will allow themselves to seem in public in America.

I believe most Israelis wish that Palestinians would disappear. I am sure most Arabs and Muslims wish that the Jewish state would disappear and probably all of its Jewish residents as well. It is normal for people to wish that their enemies would disappear, but most of are more diplomatic than to say so in public. So when Alt-Righters may say Jews are “oven-worthy,” I don’t think they are expressing any sentiment that is unique to Nazis. I think it is a universal human sentiment to wish to be rid of your enemies. Members of the Alt Right tend to be self-destructive and anti-social so they say the quiet part out loud.

In Judaism, I see how violent are the feelings between different types of Jews. The more Orthodox Jews and non-Orthodox Jews interact, I suspect, the more they dislike each other. Jewish history is filled with examples of Jewish civil wars. Wanting to destroy your enemies is not unique to Nazis or to Arabs or to Muslims but the relish one says such shocking things out loud usually reveals something about your socialization and your standing.

Marginalized politics attract marginalized people, meaning people with little to lose, meaning people who haven’t built anything or connected to anyone. These are dangerous people, usually most dangerous to themselves.

Someone who joins the Alt Right likely feels like he has nothing to lose, which is not the sign of a thriving life.