{"id":104255,"date":"2016-08-26T07:18:32","date_gmt":"2016-08-26T15:18:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=104255"},"modified":"2016-08-26T07:18:32","modified_gmt":"2016-08-26T15:18:32","slug":"whats-the-alt-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=104255","title":{"rendered":"What’s the Alt-Right?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Professor Thomas Maier writes<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Alt-Right leaders, unlike Neo-Nazis or KKK supporters, are intellectually and rhetorically sophisticated. Jared Taylor, editor of the American Renaissance website, holds degrees from Yale and the Institut d\u2019Etudes Politiques de Paris. On his site, Taylor published \u201cAn Open Letter to Cuckservatives\u201d \u2014 the Alt-Right\u2019s insulting term for moderate conservatives \u2014 laying out his beliefs.<\/p>\n

In the letter, Taylor denies the notion that “the things you love about America\u2026are rooted in certain principles.\u201d Rather, \u201cthey are rooted in certain people.\u201d That is, white people: \u201cGermans, Swedes, Irishmen, and Hungarians could come and contribute to the America you love,\u201d Taylor says. \u201cDo you really believe that a future Afro-Hispanic-Caribbean-Asiatic America will be anything like the America your ancestors built?\u201d White nationalism is more important than inalienable rights because \u201cEven when they violate your principles, white people build good societies. Even when they abide by your principles, non-whites usually don\u2019t.\u201d<\/p>\n

Richard B. Spencer of the National Policy Institute, who went to the Universities of Chicago and Virginia, is openly anti-American. In an interview last July with the New York Times he said: \u201cAmerica as it is currently constituted \u2014 and I don\u2019t just mean the government; I mean America as constituted spiritually and ideologically \u2014 is the fundamental problem\u2026I don\u2019t support and agree with much of anything America is doing in the world.\u201d He despises \u201ccuckservatives\u201d because \u201cwe\u2019ve recognized the bankruptcy of this ideology, based on \u2018free markets,\u2019 \u2018values,\u2019 and \u2018American exceptionalism.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

In short, this new strain of reactionary thought goes beyond the garden-variety racial prejudice of yore \u2014 which certainly was bad enough \u2014 to a root-and-branch rejection of American 21st century values. The Alt-Right represents the first new philosophical competitor to liberalism, broadly defined, since the fall of Communism.<\/p>\n

Is anyone listening to the Alt-Right? Yes: Key Alt-Right websites the American Renaissance and VDARE \u2014 named after Virginia Dare, \u201cthe first white child of English parentage born in America\u201d \u2014 both received more web visits last November than Dissent and Ms. The National Policy Institute and its Radix Journal together had many more visits than the neoconservative policy journal National Affairs.<\/p>\n

So the Alt-Right has an audience \u2014 and in Trump, it has a candidate. Trump\u2019s rants about Mexican rapists charging across the southern border, his attacks on an American-born judge of Mexican descent, and his calls to ban Muslims from entering the country, are all in line with Alt-Right ideology. Accordingly, Alt-Right organizations made robocalls for Trump in the Iowa, New Hampshire and Utah primaries. <\/p>\n

VDARE declared in July: \u201cWe are all Donald Trump Now.\u201d And the website\u2019s editor, Peter Brimelow, wrote on Wednesday: \u201cTrump is the best presidential candidate on immigration that we\u2019ve ever had. That\u2019s not saying a lot, goodness knows \u2014 but it\u2019s a YUGE advance.\u201d<\/p>\n

But VDARE isn\u2019t the Alt-Right flavored publication most closely associated with Trump. That distinction goes to Breitbart News, whose former chair, Stephen K. Bannon, is now the Trump campaign CEO. Bannon has described Breitbart as a \u201cplatform for the Alt-Right.\u201d The site even published a helpful \u201cGuide to the Alt-Right\u201d which explained that \u201cyoung rebels\u201d are drawn to the cause \u201cfor the same reason that young Baby Boomers were drawn to the New Left in the 1960s: because it promises fun, transgression, and a challenge to social norms they just don\u2019t understand.\u201d Those norms apparently include tolerance and the concept of racial equality.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Professor Thomas Maier writes: Alt-Right leaders, unlike Neo-Nazis or KKK supporters, are intellectually and rhetorically sophisticated. Jared Taylor, editor of the American Renaissance website, holds degrees from Yale and the Institut d\u2019Etudes Politiques de Paris. On his site, Taylor published … 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,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42720],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-104255","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alt-right"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t