{"id":102131,"date":"2016-07-24T10:08:28","date_gmt":"2016-07-24T18:08:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=102131"},"modified":"2016-07-24T10:09:44","modified_gmt":"2016-07-24T18:09:44","slug":"the-alt-right-at-the-rnc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=102131","title":{"rendered":"The Alt-Right At The RNC"},"content":{"rendered":"

Joan Walsh writes for The Nation<\/a>:<\/p>\n

An exhilarated Richard Spencer, a leading white nationalist who coined the term \u201calt-right,\u201d introduced himself to me just as Milo began to speak. \u201cThis is the alt-right convention! We were really absent in 2012; we have a big presence here, in a way we never had before.\u201d Spencer, 38, is witty and well-dressed and happy to politely spar with journalists of the left. He came to national attention last year when he pronounced Donald Trump as the candidate for white Americans in an interview with The Washington Post\u2019s David Weigel. Almost exactly a year later, he\u2019s even happier with the presumptive GOP nominee.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think with Trump, you shouldn\u2019t look at his policies. His policies aren\u2019t important. What\u2019s most important about Trump is the emotion. He\u2019s awakened a sense of \u2018Us\u2019 a sense of nationalism among white people. He\u2019s done more to awaken that nationalism than anyone in my lifetime. I love the man.\u201d<\/p>\n

It was a very friendly crowd, many of whom seemed to recognize me as the author of a book that is not exactly the bible of the white-nationalist movement. One of the organizers, Chris Barron, the genial founder of GOProud, greeted me warmly, and several people went out of their way to say hello. \u201cYou blocked me on Twitter,\u201d says a friendly Josh Smith, who used to run one of two Salon.com parody accounts. Smith has turned out to see his hero Milo, but he\u2019s impressed by the luminaries in the room. He points out to me the urbane, white-haired Peter Brimelow, the long-time, pro-white, anti-immigration writer and agitator who runs the similarly themed site VDare.com. \u201cIsn\u2019t he kind of a white nationalist, or white supremacist?\u201d I ask Smith. He smiles. \u201cWhat is white supremacy, really?\u201d<\/p>\n

…Richard Spencer told me he doesn\u2019t know what Trump will do either, but he seems to trust him more. I ask him what his larger political goals are, beyond electing Trump, and he draws me into a friendly, if surreal, conversation about the future of white people. At first, he sounds pragmatic. \u201cWe are going to be a minority. If we ceased all immigration tomorrow, we\u2019d still become a minority. So we need a radical reorientation, and we need a new consciousness, to determine what we want.\u201d<\/p>\n

OK, I\u2019ll bite, I decide, and I ask him what he thinks \u201cwe\u201d should want.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I care about is not just about being comfortable. It\u2019s not just about safety, or national security. White people are unique in the sense that, we are the ones who are going to explore the world. We\u2019ll need our own state eventually, for our Faustian destiny to explore the outer universe. That is what we were put on this earth to do. We weren\u2019t put on this earth to be nice to minorities, or to be a multiculti fun nation. Why are we not exploring Jupiter at this moment? Why are we trying to equalize black and white test scores? I think our destiny is in the stars. Why aren\u2019t we trying for the stars?\u201d<\/p>\n

When I try to argue that equality and pluralism are central to the nation\u2019s founding documents, he looks disgusted. \u201cWhen I look at Thomas Jefferson\u2019s writings, the Declaration of Independence, it makes me want to vomit. The idea that a \u2018creator\u2019 made all human beings equal? That\u2019s ridiculous. The idea that all human beings are equal is such an appalling sentiment. We\u2019re here on this earth for such a short period of time. The idea that we would dedicate ourselves to something as stupid as \u2018equality\u2019 or \u2018democracy\u2019 is morally insulting to me.\u201d Nearby I notice a man carrying a sign: \u201cIncome Inequality = I.Q. Inequality.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joan Walsh writes for The Nation: An exhilarated Richard Spencer, a leading white nationalist who coined the term \u201calt-right,\u201d introduced himself to me just as Milo began to speak. \u201cThis is the alt-right convention! We were really absent in 2012; … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42720],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-102131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alt-right"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=102131"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102131\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":102133,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102131\/revisions\/102133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=102131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=102131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=102131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}