In a recent conversation, I was asked to explain Alt-Right. I said that it refers to a a loose coalition of Republicans, fascists, white nationalists, bigots, misogynists and and homophobes that usually encourages their followers to express their hatred through violence.
Like all political movements, the alt-right has its own lexicon and memes, as well as its own interpretation of news events. Below you’ll find a brief list of terms you may use as a guide if you care to visit the swamps in which adherents to this 21st-century version of white supremacist ideology reside.
1. Alt-right. As Julie Andrews once sang before her character fled the Nazis: “Let’s start at the very beginning.” The term “alt-right” is shorthand for "alternative right." Just as, say, alt folk musicians envisioned themselves as a more modern, hipper iteration of the Dylan-era folk music that preceded them (which really wasn’t folk music at all, but I digress), alt-righties perceive their movement to be the tweaked-for-millennial-consumption adaptation of the ideologies professed by such uncool paleoconservatives as Cranky Uncle Pat Buchanan and Klanboy David Duke.
There are, however, disagreements among alt-righties on the scope of their hatred. The self-parodying Breitbart News editor Milo Yiannopoulos, for example, wears his gay identity as a badge, even as he spews vitriol against Muslims and blacks. Others who wear the alt-right label, such as the Daily Stormer’s Andrew Anglin, spurn Yiannopoulos as a “degenerate.” Yiannopoulos’ latest badge of courage is being banned by Twitter for his racist dogging of actor/comedian Leslie Jones, a star of the all-female reboot of Ghostbusters. (Since then, Jones’ personal accounts have been hacked in a brutal cyberattack.)
One form of hatred that appears to unite alt-righties? Misogyny. Man, do they hate feminists! Yiannopoulos even did a lecture tour titled, “Feminism is cancer.”
Gearing up a Twitter offensive in advance of Hillary Clinton’s speech in Reno about the alt-right, #altright members on Twitter set out to define their own movement.
“#AltRight means you don’t think a room full of white males is a problem to be fixed,” wrote @hateful_heritic.
“#AltRightMeans it’s time to oppose HUD/Section8 housing moving blacks into the suburbs. Save our White neighborhoods”, added@_AltRight_, with an accompanying photo of a lone white man in a swimming pool, surrounded by dark-skinned people.Some posted Richard B. Spencer’s white-identity video, “Who are we?” (Money quote: “I’m a Roman, a Briton, a Dane…”)
From <Alternet>
Here is that "white identity" video. It contains hateful propaganda to justify white supremacy.
Barf Bag Alert!!!
Note the closing implied call to violence, using "RISE" displayed within flames.
The article’s list of terms you need to understand Alt-Right has seven terms. I shared one. Click through for the other sic.
Thinking back to my original conversation, I think they should be called Alt-Wrong.
13 Responses to “They Should Be Called Alt-Wrong”
Sorry, the comment form is closed at this time.
Even Alt-Wrong is too good for them. Ctrl-Wrong might be a liitle closer. Maybe just "Fascists"? Or A$$holes.
Video: I know that "Destiny" meant genocide here in the U.S. as early as the beginning of the 19th Century ("Manifest Destiny.") I know the Romans were classic bullies, and so were the Danes. Not much is known about the Saxons because the Normans crushed them so severely, but they may well have been. Certainly after the Normans and Saxons amalgamated to become the Britons, as in British Empire, they became classic bullies as well. (What passed for compassion in the British Empire in the 19th Century was convincing themselves theywere subjugating others "for their own good." As in "The White Man's Burden." Should I assume that they don't know any of that, or that they do not care?
Yes, the article does an excellent job of picking up the warning rattles.
How about Fascist Assholes?
What about ALL-Wrong
Works for me. I picked "Ctrl" because that's what they want to do, of course,but it's a little subtle. which doesn't work with them.
"What passed for compassion in the British Empire in the 19th Century was convincing themselves theywere subjugating others "for their own good." "
Have you thought about how asinine the Brits are re immigrants etc that came up around Brexit? The Brits thought colonisation was their right over several centuries. But now, when some of those "colonials" want to come to Britain, having had the English culture imposed on them, the British go snakey.
I have, nor is it new. In "Medea" by Euripides (431 BCE and no, I wasn't there), there's a section in whhich three men attempt to mansplain why she should be a well-behaved woman – Creon, Jason, and Aegeus, King of Athens. One of them, Aegeus I think, explains in all seriousness that Jason did her a HUGE favor by bringing her away from her own BARBARIAN people to Greece, which is civilized, and that was so great a gift that he doesn't owe her anything else. I kid you not. And that was intended by Euripides to be serious and accurate. There's footage somewhere of the complete Zoe Caldwell performance of the translation made for Dame Judith Anderson, for which Dame Judith prepared Zoe (which didn;t prevent her from stealing the show, playing the nurse, at every opportunity.)
At first glance I read "All-Right" and after reading the Alternet article, I'm quite convinced this is exactly as these "Alternative" (aka extreme) right wingers intended it to be read -and pronounced – by their followers. Each time their minions read is as "alright" they have it imprinted on their impressionable brains that it's completely acceptable to think and act the way they do.
Apparently, who they are are a bunch of narrow minded fools, little minded fools, who can not see that they are only a PART of a larger human race. Narrow minded fools who think that they are exceptional, and whose exceptionalism may be in their ownership of little minds, as in the quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines."
I read the article yesterday and just about barfed. I one thing I did not do was watch the video, but I have now. These guys have forgotten that humanity grew out of Africa, the cradle of civilisation.
White genocide? What a crock. Whites have "enjoyed" a privilege over the centuries to the point that some see it as a right . . . some would say a God given right. But we SHARE this planet. All have a right to live here. I would agree that the word 'RISE' in the flames is a call to violence.
Alt Wrong or ALT Crazed would fit these blatant bigots.
I've read the whole Alternet article, but I haven't watched the videos for a number of reasons. For one, I don't want to boost their viewing numbers as this will only be interpreted as increasing popularity. Then it's a lovely Sunday afternoon here and I don't want to spoil it by loosing my brunch. Though it may never come to that, because the reception is so bad that I'll probably won't see the end of it. But most importantly, reading about Alt_Right was bad enough, seeing and hearing it would really give me too much aggravation. Neo-Fascist ideology, especially where it talks about "the white race" and "genocide" tends to do that to my Jewish half.
Completely scary! The mass genocide of the Native Americans was just so brutal and bloody that I really don't want to see this again in the name of "white supremacy" and will do what I can to see that it won't happen in my lifetime or the next!!!
Amen and bleary eyed hugs to all!