Community Diary by Hillary supporters. Everyone welcome. The only thing we ask is that if you brought pie, you kindly eat it before entering. Happy chatting.
So the world we think we know is not actually the world we know. While it is important to understand what happened in the election and learn from it, it is equally important to look to the present and figure out how we each can work to ensure the rights already won are not lost in the frenzy of opinion and discussion the latest tweetstorm one @realDonaldTrump creates.
One of those things is agreeing on what exactly it is we are facing on the other side. Apparently AP thought it would be helpful and yesterday released a recommendation for writing about the alt-right on their The Definitive Source blog. Per John Daniszewski, Vice President for Standards in Writing about the ‘alt-right’ .
Avoid using the term generically and without definition, however, because it is not well known and the term may exist primarily as a public-relations device to make its supporters’ actual beliefs less clear and more acceptable to a broader audience. In the past we have called such beliefs racist, neo-Nazi or white supremacist.
…
Again, whenever “alt-right” is used in a story, be sure to include a definition: “an offshoot of conservatism mixing racism, white nationalism and populism,” or, more simply, “a white nationalist movement.”
It took 383 words or 2154 characters (no spaces) in the body of the blog entry to advise that when using alt-right, you should include a definition of what the alt-right is. Then in the final section of the entry, they advised “Be specific and call it straight”.
I agree with the sentiment that if you are going to accuse a group of being alt-right (using AP parlance), make sure you have your facts straight. I do take issue with their use of “call it straight”. Calling it straight is not calling it alt-right with a definition. Alt-right as AP has already noted above can be used to soften or obscure these vile beliefs and make them more acceptable — normal. This not calling it straight.
I would like to suggest that the AP revise their blog entry for simplicity and accuracy. Here is my suggestion.
Writing about the ‘alt-right’
by jabberwoky
The ‘alt-right’ are White Supremacists.
5 words or 35 characters (no spaces) and I’ve called it straight.
So I know we have had a conversations about white supremacy and I think we are all pretty comfortable with using that term. I thought it would be interesting however to look at what the other side considers the ‘alt-right’ to be — or at least what their main mouthpiece platform Breitbart thinks it is. I am not going to revolt you by copying tons of the article into the dKos platform— just a few main points. For those of you who can bear the disgust factor of giving Breitbart a click, you might find the entire article interesting and I would encourage you to read it if you have not done so already (it was published in March). Many of the themes we have speculated as factors in the horrific election loss are identified.
As a side note on the article, the writing and approach to the topic is very smooth — if you were not reading it closely and critically you could even possibly come away with the idea that “Oh, the alt-right is not so bad. They aren’t really horrible racists, just misunderstood.” That is the real danger of calling them alt-right versus what they really are — White Supremacists.
An Establishment Conservatives Guide to the Alt-Right*
*note this is a very long article and I believe I am still within fair use, it is also co-written by Allum Bokhari and Milos Yiannopolous — so if that is a deal breaker you may want to stop reading
The alternative right, more commonly known as the alt-right, is an amorphous movement. Some — mostly Establishment types — insist it’s little more than a vehicle for the worst dregs of human society: anti-Semites, white supremacists, and other members of the Stormfront set. They’re wrong...
...The alt-right is a movement born out of the youthful, subversive, underground edges of the internet. 4chan and 8chan are hubs of alt-right activity. For years, members of these forums – political and non-political – have delighted in attention-grabbing, juvenile pranks. Long before the alt-right, 4channers turned trolling the national media into an in-house sport.
So who are these pranksters anyway? Conveniently the article lays out 4 main groups of which I have only pulled a fraction of the info out of to present here. The article itself has a much more fulsome description re the people and their motivations.
THE INTELLECTUALS
There are many things that separate the alternative right from old-school racist skinheads (to whom they are often idiotically compared), but one thing stands out above all else: intelligence. Skinheads, by and large, are low-information, low-IQ thugs driven by the thrill of violence and tribal hatred. The alternative right are a much smarter group of people — which perhaps suggests why the Left hates them so much. They’re dangerously bright.
The origins of the alternative right can be found in thinkers as diverse as Oswald Spengler, H.L Mencken, Julius Evola, Sam Francis, and the paleoconservative movement that rallied around the presidential campaigns of Pat Buchanan. The French New Right also serve as a source of inspiration for many leaders of the alt-right.
Academics, well that’s ok then.
These intellectuals are such a diverse group — they are masculinists who inhabit the “manosphere”, proponents of Human Biodiversity who study “scientific race differences” and Neoreactionaries who seem to advocate thinking like a computer...or maybe a sociopath. Sounds like the makings of a really dysfunctional and arrogant dinner party.
NATURAL CONSERVATIVES
Natural conservatives can broadly be described as the group that the intellectuals above were writing for. They are mostly white, mostly male middle-American radicals, who are unapologetically embracing a new identity politics that prioritises the interests of their own demographic.
In their politics, these new conservatives are only following their natural instincts — the same instincts that motivate conservatives across the globe. These motivations have been painstakingly researched by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, and an instinct keenly felt by a huge swathe of the political population: the conservative instinct.
Come now, these guys aren’t so bad. They just want to hangout with the people they know and have the world remain like it has always been. In other words, white people — men especially- on top. That sounds like a Nancy Friday book doesn’t it.
THE MEME TEAM
Earlier, we mentioned the pressure to self-censor. But whenever such pressure arises in a society, there will always be a young, rebellious contingent who feel a mischievous urge to blaspheme, break all the rules, and say the unsayable. Why? Because it’s funny!
As Curtis Yarvin explains via email: “If you spend 75 years building a pseudo-religion around anything – an ethnic group, a plaster saint, sexual chastity or the Flying Spaghetti Monster – don’t be surprised when clever 19-year-olds discover that insulting it is now the funniest fucking thing in the world. Because it is.”
As Cindi Lauper might say (in an alternate universe) these boys just want to have fun! Total jokesters who want to put a smile on your face by sending you a picture of a cute little frog who for some inexplicable reason likes to wear a cap and hang out near showers and ovens. Come on, admit it, you know they aren’t really serious...just pulling your leg, taking the mickey etc...They’re young, they’ll grow up someday (and be even worse).
THE ‘1488rs’
Anything associated as closely with racism and bigotry as the alternative right will inevitably attract real racists and bigots. Calmer members of the alternative right refer darkly to these people as the “1488ers,” and for all their talk of there being “no enemies to the right,” it’s clear from the many conversations we’ve had with alt-righters that many would rather the 1488ers didn’t exist.
These are the people that the alt-right’s opponents wish constituted the entire movement. They’re less concerned with the welfare of their own tribe than their fantasies of destroying others. 1488ers would likely denounce this article as the product of a degenerate homosexual and an ethnic mongrel.
Now these guys are the really scary dudes. But don’t worry, no one likes them. The ‘alt-right’ keeps them in their basket and only lets them out for the occasional Trump rally or celebratory march in North Carolina.
Oh, you saw them? Driving in a parking lot and waving a Confederate flag? Ripping a hijab of a woman’s head? Spray painting swastikas on synagogues. LIFTING A FIVE YEAR OLD UP BY HIS NECK?
But I just don’t get it, according to the article, there just isn’t that many of them...
So those are the main four groups according to Breitbart but please be aware that although this publication is the self-described voice of this... ummm... community??? The community members don’t all agree.
Not all alt-righters will agree with our taxonomy of the movement. Hacker and white nationalist Andrew Auernheimer, better known as weev, responded in typically jaw-dropping fashion to our enquiries: “The tireless attempts of you Jews to smear us decent Nazis is shameful.”
So now we kind of know who they are, what do they want. Well, the same as everyone else apparently.
In short, they want what every people fighting for self-determination in history have ever wanted, and what progressives are always telling us people should be allowed — unless those people are white. This hypocrisy is what has led so many Trump voters — groups who have in many cases not voted since the 1970s or 80s — to come out of the woodwork and stand up for their values and culture.
So that was a guide to White Supremacists. Here is a companion guide that we should all be familiar with as they try to march into the light under a quite possibly authoritarian presidential regime.
Oh, and just in case you think the danger is overstated and my preoccupation this morning with white supremacists is overstated, check out how this headline violates #8 on Timothy Snyder’s list
8. Believe in truth.
To abandon facts is to abandon freedom. If nothing is true, then no one can criticize power, because there is no basis upon which to do so. If nothing is true, then all is spectacle. The biggest wallet pays for the most blinding lights.
Yep, you read that right — Steve Bannon is a populist, not really a white supremacist. Interesting piece which is at pains to paint Bannon as an opportunistic populist...and Renaissance Man apparently (sounds like Steve would classify himself as one of The Intellectuals).
Combative, Populist Steve Bannon Found His Man in Donald Trump
He is an avid reader of history, fond of citing Plutarch and Plato, and his career reflects a restless, eclectic mind. He has conceived a rap musical based on Shakespeare’s “Coriolanus” (never completed); overseen the troubled Biosphere 2 project, an experiment in the Arizona desert meant to mimic the earth’s ecosystem; acquired partial rights to “Seinfeld” before it became a megahit; moved to Shanghai to run a company marshaling Chinese computer gamers to earn points for Western players; and produced films on Washington corruption, Occupy Wall Street and Phil Robertson of “Duck Dynasty.”
From the article, he also apparently has an African American friend, has been the token white guy at mostly black dinners and his family has interfaith and interracial marriages — this might all be absolutely true butI don’t see how it absolves Bannon from being a white supremacist. If he publishes a “news site” that traffics in white supremacy and runs a campaign that is supported whole heartedly by white supremacy, there is a good chance that Steve Bannon is a proponent of white supremacy.
BELIEVE IN TRUTH
I’ll be back in a minute, just need to take a shower.
So now, back to our regular programing.
This
this
and this
might lead to this
and this
which I hope will lead more people to this
Don’t forget to grab your copy of the companion book midway down the diary — we might very well need it.