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The Emergence of the Alt- Right

Prior to the 2016 presidential election season, only a handful of political

die- hards followed the machinations of a new political ideology called the

alternative right, or Alt- Right. So how did this political faction spring

from obscurity to occupy center stage in American politics? The conser-

vative movement, the Republican Party, and American politics in general

are today in a crisis that is both reected in and caused by the crystalliza-

tion of the Alt- Right.

Before the extraordinary presidential election of 2016, the Alt- Right

went unnoticed by the general public and was of interest primarily to ob-

servers of right- wing extremism. That situation changed when in the heat

of the campaign, Donald Trump chose Stephen K. Bannon, former editor

of the web outlet Breitbart News, as his campaign CEO. Bannon him-

self described Breitbart News as “the platform for the Alt- Right.”

Hill-

ary Clinton immediately criticized Trump for embracing the “emerging

racist ideology known as the ‘Alt- Right.’ ... A fringe element has effec-

tively taken over the Republican Party.”

Suddenly the Alt- Right went from obscurity to infamy. Many com-

mentators responded to Clinton’s speech. Liberals, moderates, and main-

stream conservatives praised the speech, while Alt- Right outlets criticized

it as irrelevant and low- energy. But public awareness of the new movement

THE RISE OF THE ALT- RIGHT

shot up, with Google searches of the term “Alt- Right” spiking immedi-

ately after Clinton’s remarks and then falling but staying at a much higher

level than before.

The Alt- Right had arrived.

Why is the Alt- Right so widely perceived as a new threat to Republi-

cans and indeed the republic? At rst glance, Alt- Rightism seems to be no

more than a collection of well- known far- right talking points. It supports

the mass deportation of undocumented immigrants and protectionist

trade policies. It opposes feminism, diversity, globalism, gun control, and

civil rights. Are such positions, which have been staples of the conserva-

tive movement for years and about which reasonable people may differ,

any more problematic now than they have ever been? Is the Alt- Right’s

heated rhetoric really more problematic than the conspiracy- mongering

and race- baiting found at the fringes of the right for decades?

In fact, the Alt- Right is far more radical and dangerous than the right-

wing extremism of past decades. For it is the underlying ideology of the

Alt- Right, rather than its controversial policy positions, that merits con-

cern. In the following statements, prominent Alt- Rightists sum up their

ideology:

James Kirkpatrick (contributor, VDARE): “The Alt Right is ... a refusal

to accept the frame imposed by those who are hostile to us on issues like

morality, politics, and culture. ... Key concepts: A) a critique of egali-

tarianism; B) a recognition that liberal ‘morality’ is a tactic to acquire or

safeguard power; C) a recognition of HBD [human biodiversity].”

Jared Taylor (editor, American Renaissance): “What is the Alt Right? It is

a broad, dissident movement that rejects egalitarian orthodoxies. These

orthodoxies require us to believe that the sexes are equivalent, that race is

meaningless, that all cultures and religions are equally valuable, and that

any erotic orientation or identication is healthy. These things we deny.

The Alt Right is also skeptical of mass democracy. It opposes foreign aid

and foreign intervention— especially for ‘nation building.’ ”

Hateful Heretic (contributor, The Right Stuff ): “The Alt- Right is the right

wing stripped of any superstitious belief in human equality and any ad-

mission of the left’s moral authority; it is the right in full revolt against the

progressive establishment.”

The Emergence of the Alt- Right

Richard Spencer (editor, Radix Journal): “The Alt- Right is ... serious op-

position to, not just the left, but also the conservative status quo. ... The

alt- right would agree that ... race is the foundation for identity. ... Almost

all people in the Alt- Right have an awareness of Jewish inuence ... and

... [are] skeptical of it.”

Kevin MacDonald (editor, Occidental Observer): “It’s legitimate for white

people to identify as white and pursue interests as white Americans.”

Mike Enoch (editor, The Right Stuff ): “The ... Alt- Right ... [is about]

race realism ... [and] Jewish power, its affect on our political world geo-

politics, United States politics, global politics, everything.”

Greg Johnson (editor, Counter- Currents Publishing): “The Alternative

Right means White Nationalism. . . . White Nationalism[’s] . . . self-

evident corollary [is] anti- Semitism.”

Andrew Anglin, editor of the Daily Stormer, an Alt- Right website vis-

ited more than 900,000 times each month, gives the basic tenets of the

movement as follows:

Anti- Semitism ... Jews are fundamentally opposed to the White race and

Western civilization and so must be confronted and ultimately removed

from White societies completely.

White Countries for White People ... The end goal of the movement

is to establish pure White racial states in all formerly White countries. ...

We believe in mass deportations of all non- White immigrants. ... This

would include, in America, a repatriation to Africa of the descendants of

slaves (or an allocation of autonomous territory for them within our cur-

rent borders).

Scientic Racism . . . The Alt- Right does not accept the pseudo-

scientic claims that “all races are equal. ...”

Opposition to Feminism and “Gender Equality,” Support for Tradi-

tional Families ... The claim that “men and women are equal” is looked

at as entirely ridiculous by the Alt- Right.

Endorsement of White History ... We view Whites as the creators

and maintainers of Western civilization.

Cultural Normalization ... The Alt- Right seeks .. . authoritarian

THE RISE OF THE ALT- RIGHT

measures to deal with addictive drugs, pornography, crime and other de-

generate social ills.

Commonsense Economics ... Physically remove Jews. ... Most in the

movement would support a type of free market socialism.

White Struggle as a Global Battle. The Alt- Right views the struggle

for the continued existence of the White race as a global battle between

Whites and the Jews.

Brad Grifn, editor of the website Occidental Dissent, who often writes

under the pen name Hunter Wallace, describes the Alt- Right’s “three

hallmark characteristics” as follows:

Realism: I mean that [the] Alt- Right is non- ideological and analyses

almost every question from the perspective of whether or not it is true.

... The Alt- Right looks at the question of racial equality, demands to see

the evidence, and draws the conclusion it is just a bunch of bullshit. ...

The evidence for racial equality is less plausible than Medieval alchemists

trying to turn lead into gold.

Identity: ... The Alt- Right’s analysis of history and biology has led us

to the conclusion that human beings ARE NOT primarily individuals.

On the contrary, we are tribal beings who invariably divide the world into

in- groups and out- groups, and those tribes have always been in a primor-

dial struggle for DOMINANCE. ... The timeless struggle for DOMI-

NANCE between rival groups is why we have POLITICS.

Iconoclasm: Third, the Alt- Right has a strong Nietzchean streak. Even

if many of us have studied Nietzsche at one point in our lives and moved

on as we grew older, we still tend to relish creating mischief. We enjoy

smashing idols.

Peter Brimelow is the founder and editor of VDARE, which is named

after Virginia Dare, whom he identies as “ ‘the rst white child of Eng-

lish parents’ born in America.”

He describes himself as a “godfather” of

the Alt- Right

and offered this denition of the movement:

The Alt Right is the name sometimes given to the group of websites and

individuals who have broken with the corrupt, cowardly, intellectually

bankrupt, Establishment Right. VDARE.com is often included in it. ...

The Emergence of the Alt- Right

The Alt Right surfaces issues that the Establishment Right won’t

touch— of course most notably, from VDARE.com’s point of view, im-

migration.

Alt- Right leaders, relative to neo- Nazis or Ku Klux Klan support-

ers, are intellectually and rhetorically sophisticated. Jared Taylor, editor

of the American Renaissance website, holds degrees from Yale and the In-

stitut d’études politiques, Paris. On his site, Taylor published “An Open

Letter to Cuckservatives”— the Alt- Right’s insulting term for mainstream

conservatives— laying out his beliefs.

In the letter, Taylor denies the notion that “the things you love about

America ... are rooted in certain principles.” Rather, “they are rooted in

certain people.” That is, white people: “Germans, Swedes, Irishmen, and

Hungarians could come and contribute to the America you love,” Taylor

says. “Do you really believe that a future Afro- Hispanic- Caribbean-

Asiatic America will be anything like the America your ancestors built?”

White nationalism is more important than inalienable rights because

“even when they violate your principles, white people build good societ-

ies. Even when they abide by your principles, non- whites usually don’t.”

Richard B. Spencer of the National Policy Institute, who went to the

University of Chicago and the University of Virginia, is openly anti-

American. In an interview with the New York Times, he said, “America as

it is currently constituted— and I don’t just mean the government; I mean

America as constituted spiritually and ideologically— is the fundamental

problem. ... I don’t support and agree with much of anything America

is doing in the world.” He despises “cuckservatives” because “we’ve rec-

ognized the bankruptcy of this ideology, based on ‘free markets,’ ‘values,’

and ‘American exceptionalism.’ ”

In short, this new strain of reactionary thought goes beyond the garden-

variety racial prejudice of yore— which certainly was bad enough— to a

root- and- branch rejection of American political principles. The Alt- Right

is a form of radical Gnosticism as fundamental in its rejection of the

American democratic tradition as the Communist Party line of the 1930s

and the most fevered effusions of New Left radicalism of the 1960s were.

Alt- Rightism is in essence a political ideology rather than a movement,

constituency, or interest group. This book is primarily an analysis of

Alt- Right ideas— their development, dissemination, and implications for

THE RISE OF THE ALT- RIGHT

American political discourse. The movement’s history and personalities

are taken up in the course of exploring and evaluating its thought. The

book’s main thesis is that the Alt- Right represents the rst new philo-

sophical competitor in the West to democratic liberalism, broadly de-

ned, since the fall of communism. The main challenges to democratic

liberalism now come not from the radical left, as was the case in the latter

half of the twentieth century, but from the radical right.

The distinctive features of Alt- Right thought can be summed up as the

following:

◆

A rejection of liberal democracy. The Alt- Right holds, in essence,

that all men are not created equal and concludes that liberal political

principles, broadly understood, are obsolete.

◆

White racialism. A polity can be decent only if the white race is

politically dominant.

◆

Anti- Americanism. As racial equality has displaced white domi-

nance, the United States of America has declined and no longer

merits the allegiance of its white citizens; they should transfer their

loyalty to the white race.

◆

Vitriolic rhetoric. The propensity for intemperate language often

found at the ends of the political spectrum is taken by the Alt- Right

to lengths previously seen only among fringe elements. The move-

ment rejects the standard ethics of controversy and indulges in race-

baiting, coarse ethnic humor, prejudicial stereotyping, vituperative

criticism, and the aunting of extremist symbols.

Plan of the Book

Is the Alt- Right big enough to be important? A possible objection to this

entire project is that the Alt- Right is so extreme that it is isolated, with no

inuence on mainstream politics. It is sometimes argued that the Alt- Right

has no more connection with mainstream conservative movements than

left- wing extremists— communists, for example— have with mainstream

liberals. Chapter 2 addresses this concern through an analysis of trafc to

web political magazines of various ideological orientations, including the

The Emergence of the Alt- Right

Alt- Right. The nding is that Alt- Right web magazines have a considerable

audience, one comparable in size— as measured by web trafc— to those of

established organs of left, right, and centrist opinion. The rise of the Alt-

Right is simply this dissemination of its ideas, which is widespread relative

to that achieved by other antidemocratic ideologies of the near past and

present and represents a toehold gained in American political discourse.

Chapters 3 and 4 concern the intellectual roots of the Alt- Right.

Chapter 3 describes the development of what might be called a proto- Alt-

Right. The ideological origins of the Alt- Right can be traced back to the

appearance of the National Review in 1955 and the effort of its founder,

William F. Buckley, to dene a mainstream conservatism consistent with

the American liberal democratic order. Especially early on, those efforts

were not always entirely successful. But eventually Buckley cobbled to-

gether a rightist ideology that emphasized traditional values, capitalism,

and anticommunism, and drove out of the movement anyone to the right

of that consensus. But by the early twenty- rst century, exiles from con-

ventional conservatism had embraced a more radical rightism than ever

before and had organized themselves to make a successful challenge for

leadership of the conservative movement. Chapter 4 looks at the crystal-

lization of the Alt- Right as a distinct political ideology during the period

2000–16. How the political shocks of the early twenty- rst century and

the rise of the new communication medium of the internet contributed to

the weakening of traditional gatekeepers of American political discourse

is discussed. Some of the Alt- Right intellectuals who took advantage of

that new discourse habitat are proled.

Chapters 5 through 9 look at the ideology of the Alt- Right today.

Chapter 5 discusses how to think about political ideologies. Chapter 6

considers the Alt- Right’s rejection of American political philosophy as it is

expressed in such foundational documents as the Declaration of Indepen-

dence, the Federalist Papers, the Constitution, and other accounts. Chapter

7 looks at the racialism of the Alt- Right, and chapter 8 explores the move-

ment’s anti- Americanism. Chapter 9 looks at a variation on Alt- Right ide-

ology that might be called “Alt- Lite,” that is, the somewhat watered- down

version of the Alt- Right’s ideology that is most notably disseminated by

Breitbart News and that outlet’s former editor and former White House

adviser, Steve Bannon. Donald Trump is also considered a purveyor of

Alt-Lite ideas.

THE RISE OF THE ALT- RIGHT

Chapter 10 considers what the rise of the Alt- Right implies for Ameri-

can democratic discourse and sketches a political vision that more effec-

tively responds to some of the concerns the Alt- Right has identied. The

Alt- Right is wrong in thinking the nation is dominated by what it calls a

“managerial oligarchy,” which amounts to saying that America is practi-

cally a totalitarian regime. A correct diagnosis is much simpler: American

politics is unduly inuenced by the very rich. Through constitutional and

political reform, America needs to get much better at redistributing the

wealth generated by its economy so as to compensate and reintegrate the

interests that temporarily lose out in the inevitable processes of globaliza-

tion and capitalist creative destruction. Better redistribution requires a po-

litical system less dominated by gridlocked factions and more responsive

to ideas that can override group interests. An American political process

in which public ideas are stronger than they are now— stronger relative

to other resources, such as money, votes, and organization— would im-

prove democratic accountability and make the system more responsive to

nonelite groups in general, including the “Middle American Radicals,” or

white working class, with whom the Alt- Right is sympathetic.

Absolutely the worst possible response to the challenges of economic

restructuring is that forwarded by the Alt- Right: fragmenting still more

the already blooming, buzzing confusion of American interest group poli-

tics by further subdividing the polity into the windowless, irreconcilable

monads of racially dened identity groups. The likely consequences of

the radically racialist form of identity politics espoused by the Alt- Right

are disorder, violence, and economic shrinkage. Vastly more promising is

a political order in which all interests accept a liberal democratic frame-

work, acknowledge each other’s legitimate aspirations, and remain open

to persuasion by convincing public ideas.