Mediaboss Marketing

It exists at the intersection of two popular racial myths. First is the idea of the model minority, in which Asian-Americans are painted as all hard-working, high-achieving and sufficiently well-behaved to assimilate. If Asians are the model minority if that is how nonwhites can find acceptance in white America then perhaps that opens the door to acceptance from white supremacists.

The second myth is that of the subservient, hypersexual Asian woman. The white-supremacist fetish combines those ideas and highlights a tension within the project of white supremacism as America grows more diverse a reality that white nationalists condemn as white genocide. The new, ugly truth? Maintaining white power may require some compromises on white purity.

Was Tila Tequila at that white supremacist dinner just attempting, in some twisted way, to assimilate? Or to rebel against what was expected of her? I cringe at her antics, at her trying to be just one of the white-supremacist bros.

But the photo also conjured up my memories of being a 14-year-old Asian girl in an overwhelmingly white school who wanted to be interesting, self-possessed and liked. Instinctively, I knew it meant distancing myself from the other Asian kids, especially the nerdy and studious ones. I knew I had succeeded when a friend remarked that I wasnt really Asian, I was white, because youre cool.

As I skipped classes to smoke in the courtyard, read Baudelaire to seem the interesting kind of smart and attempted to distance myself from the stereotypes, I didnt know that the idea I wanted to run from of Asians as civilized, advanced and highly intelligent had roots in white supremacy. But between the white supremacist Chris Cantwells tattoo of a Japanese character and the Charleston shooter Dylann Roofs speculations that Asians could be great allies of the white race, there are echoes of historys most infamous white nationalist.

I have never regarded the Chinese or the Japanese as being inferior to ourselves, Adolf Hitler said in 1945. They belong to ancient civilizations, and I admit freely that their past history is superior to our own.

In the United States, the model-minority myth grew from Asian-Americans mid-20th-century efforts to win civil rights, as the scholar Ellen D. Wu recounts in The Color of Success. Previously, Asian-Americans, many with humble roots in rural China, were considered degenerate, subject to lynchings, and forced to live in segregated neighborhoods and attend segregated schools under a regime of discriminatory laws and practices she has called a cousin to Jim Crow.

But, according to Professor Wus research, Chinese-Americans promoted themselves as hard-working, obedient, family-oriented and able to easily assimilate into American life traits that are not uncommon in poor immigrant communities, where many have made enormous sacrifices to move to a foreign place.

By the height of the civil rights movement, America was already giving preferential treatment to educated, professional Asian immigrants, reinforcing the idea of Asians as pliable and studious. White politicians co-opted the myth, pointing to Asian-Americans as proof that the right kind of minority group could achieve the American dream.

Professor Wu found that just months before the release of the 1965 Moynihan Report, the widely influential policy paper that attributed black poverty to a degenerate black culture, its author, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, spoke at a gathering of intellectuals and policymakers about how Japanese- and Chinese-Americans, considered colored just 25 years earlier, were rather astonishing. Am I wrong that they have ceased to be colored? he asked.

In reality, Asians are rarely considered white, and the model-minority myth obscures the vast differences among Asian-Americans. Whats more, the myth helped to strengthen Americas white liberal order, which claims to uphold diversity while also being anti-black. It legitimizes white Americas power to determine who is good and to offer basic dignity and equal rights.

The model-minority myth exists alongside another dangerous and limiting idea one that is consistent with the alt-rights misogyny and core anti-feminist values. The main problem with white women, as many alt-right Asian fetishists have noted, is theyve become too feminist. By contrast, Asian women are seen as naturally inclined to serve men sexually and are also thought of as slim, light-skinned and small, in adherence to Western norms of femininity.

These stereotypes have roots in Americas postwar military incursions into Asia. In Japan, a network of brothels permitted by American officials opened as United States troops began arriving in August 1945. The brothels employed tens of thousands of women until Gen. Douglas MacArthur declared them off limits in 1946.

In South Korea, an estimated 300,000 women were working in the sex trade by 1958 (after the end of the Korean War), with more than half employed in the camptowns around the American bases. Vietnams sex industry, centered largely on American bars, thrived during the Vietnam War. And the stereotype of docile Asian women persists. Nowhere is this more explicit than in sex ads and online pornography.

Tila Tequila Playboy model, reality show star, aspiring rapper and one of a handful of female Asian-American celebrities is often seen through this trope. Does she resent being typecast as the hot, horny Asian as much as I resented being seen as a model minority?

Yet after I was called white at age 14, it felt, paradoxically, like a compliment to be nicknamed Geisha Girl by another friend, a well-meaning gay white boy. This was not because I was delicate. But the nickname became our inside joke, and it symbolized the kind of femininity that attracted the boys I liked, but that I have never really possessed. Being in on the joke meant I was accepted. Since then, I have acted out in all manner of ways to dispel the model minority image. Still, I have never fully extinguished the belief that racking up an impressive lineup of achievements is the only way to gain respect.

The stereotypes that feed the Asian-woman fetish are not exclusive to the far right. They exist across the political spectrum and infect every aspect of life not just the bedroom and manifest themselves in figures as distant from America as the blond-haired, blue-eyed heroes and hypersexualized heroines of Japanese anime.

This fun-house mirror asks me to be smarter, nicer, prettier and more accomplished than my white counterparts for the same amount of respect, then floods my dating app inbox with messages that reek of Asian fetish. Thankfully, Im not required to care or let it define me; for what its worth, I am even entitled to play up the stereotypes if I see something to be gained. Maybe this is where the Asian girlfriends of alt-right men stand. But none of us can escape the truth that the fun-house was built to justify systematic exploitation of everyone in this country who isnt white. Thats important context. Otherwise, Richard Spencers comments could almost sound nice.

There is something about the Asian girls, he once said to Mother Jones. They are cute. They are smart. They have a kind of thing going on.

See original here:
The Alt-Rights Asian Fetish - The New York Times

What is the alt-right?

Everybody has an opinion about it, but nobody seems to know exactly what it is. So, I took it upon myself to find out.

I took a deep dive into alt-right culture. I read their books, listened to their podcasts, watched their videos, followed their blogs, and spoke personally to their leaders.

Heres what I learned:

First, theyre really small... like, your high school reunion small. That big national alt-right gathering in Charlottesville, in August 2017? Yeahthat attracted all of about 600 people...and thats on the high end of estimates. And that infamous torch rally on the evening of August 11? There were maybe 100 tiki-torch carriers.

But however small it is, the alt-right does have a belief systema worldview. Its right there, in their name. The alt in alt-right means alternative. The alt-right is an alternative to American conservatism.

So, its no surprise then that the alt-right has far more in common with the leftanother alternative to conservatism than it does with the traditional American right.

Let me try to untangle this.

Both the left and the alt-right are obsessed with race and identity politicsthe belief that a persons value is linked to their racial heritage. The left wants special status for racial and ethnic minorities. The alt-right wants special status for the racial and ethnic majority.

Since America, according to the alt-right, was founded by white Europeans, and was built by white Europeans, it should belong to white Europeans. Americas success, in their view, is a product of race and geographyor, as the alt-right likes to put it, of blood and soil.

So, in the alt-rights view, the moral ideals of the American Founderslike, all men are created equal are naive and misguided.

The man who coined the term alt-right is a white nationalist named Richard Spencer, who runs alternativeright.com as well as the National Policy Institute, the self-described think tank of the alt-right. According to Spencer, the movement is dedicated to the heritage, identity, and future of people of European descent in the United States.

Jared Taylor, the editor of the white identity website American Renaissance, holds that, Any attempt to create a society in which race can be made not to matter will fail.

Other alt-right leaders include:

Sam Francis, the late syndicated columnist and forefather of the movement who famously called for a white racial consciousness.

Theodore Beale, the blogger known as Vox Day, who, in his manifesto, What is the Alt-Right cites the white nationalist motto, We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children.

And Paul Ramsey, a white nationalist who produced and starred in a video entitled, Is It Wrong Not to Feel Sad about the Holocaust?

Another area of agreement between the alt-right and the left is that both ultimately reject God. The alt-right admires Christendom for uniting the European continent, but rejects Christianity for its offer of salvation to all people, irrespective of race. The movements favorite philosopherjust like the Nazis of yesteryearis Friedrich Nietzsche, who famously claimed, God is dead.

Spencer himself is an avowed atheist who, like leftists since Karl Marx, longs for a new ideology as robust and binding as Christianity to replace traditional religion. That brings us to the most glaring similarity between the alt-right and the left: their disdain for the individual.

The constant focus of both the left and the alt-right on group identity means that they downplay the value of the individual. This stands in stark opposition to the fundamental American value, which conservatives have long championed, that places the individual, not the collective, at the center of society. The pioneer spirit, entrepreneurial drive, the acceptance of personal responsibilitythese are uniquely American ideas, uniquely conservative ideas. But they mean little, if anything, to the alternatives to conservatism: the left and the alt-right.

Put simply, the alt-right has three core beliefs: the promotion of white identity politics, the rejection of God, and the subordination of the individual to the collective.

In other words, the alt-right has nothing in common with conservatism, and is in fact much closer to leftism. Except, of course, that the left is much, much larger.

Im Michael Knowles, host of The Michael Knowles Show, for Prager University.

Download a PDF of this Transcript

Read the original post:
What Is the Alt-Right? | PragerU

Richard Spencer, born in Boston, Massachusetts, and raised in Dallas, Texas, is responsible for popularising the term alt-right and is the movements best-known activist.

Spencer was educated at the University of Virginia, obtained a masters degree from the University of Chicago and then embarked on doctoral studies at the private Duke University.

Tellingly, Spencers entrance essay for Duke University was on the German philosopher, political theorist and Nazi Party member Carl Schmitt. In 2007, he dropped out and took a job as assistant editor at Pat Buchanans magazine, The American Conservative, before later being fired for his extremist views.

Spencer then moved to Takis Magazine as executive editor before founding AlternativeRight.com in 2010 as an online magazine of radical traditionalism that aimed to forge a new intellectual right-wing that is independent and outside the conservative establishment. The websites contributing editors were Peter Brimelow, the British founder of the anti-immigrant website VDARE.com, and Paul Gottfried, also from Takis Magazine. The success of the website meant that in 2011 Spencer was offered the leading position at the National Policy Institute (NPI) and Washington Summit Publishers upon the death of Louis Andrews. On taking control he promptly moved the operation from Washington DC to the location of his family holiday home in Whitefish, Montana.

In 2012, Spencer launched Radix Journal as a twice-yearly offshoot of Washington Summit Publishers. The journal went on to be one of the leading outlets for the alt-right, hosting articles by a plethora of prominent far-right writers, before Spencer stood down in January 2017 to launch his new venture, Altright.com.

Spencer and the NPI have been central to the rise of the alt-right and have played an important role in bringing European New Right thinkers to an American far-right audience. The yearly conferences, organised by Spencer, who describes himself as an identitarian, attract prominent speakers from across America and Europe. In 2013, at their After The Fall: The Future of Identity conference, the NPI hosted the French New Right founder and philosopher Alain de Benoist alongside the fascist author of Against Democracy and Equality: The European New Right, Tomislav Suni.

That same year, at Jared Taylors American Renaissance conference, Spencer called for peaceful ethnic cleansing.

In 2014, Spencer was expelled from Hungary after trying to organise a conference in Budapest that was to include Philippe Vardon from the French Bloc Identitaire movement and the Russian far-right philosopher Alexander Dugin. As a result, Spencer is now banned from entering the UK and the other European Union countries covered by the Schengen agreement.

The NPI made headlines around the world in late 2016 when Spencer was filmed bellowing Hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory! at their Become Who You Are conference in Washington DC where speakers included VDares Peter Brimelow, antisemite Kevin MacDonald and Colin Robertson (aka Millennial Woes) from the UK.

Spencer was a vocal supporter of Donald Trump during his election campaign and became an increasingly high profile figure especially in the wake of Hillary Clintons speech that referred to the alt-right.

In January 2017, Spencer was central to the emergence of AltRight Corporation, a merger between the NPI, the publisher Arktos Media and the Scandinavian media platform Red Ice Creations.

The new group has a single board and an office in city centre Washington DC. Spencer is the American editor and sits on the Board of Directors with Daniel Friberg, Henrik Palmgren, William Regnery and Tor Westman.

Read the original post:
The International Alternative Right | HOPE Not Hate

Jeremy Christian (right), seen during a Patriot Prayer, allegedly stabbed three men, two fatally, in Portland earlier this year. During a subsequent courtroom appearance, he exclaimed: "Free speech or die, Portland. You call it terrorism I call it patriotism." John Rudoff/AP hide caption

Jeremy Christian (right), seen during a Patriot Prayer, allegedly stabbed three men, two fatally, in Portland earlier this year. During a subsequent courtroom appearance, he exclaimed: "Free speech or die, Portland. You call it terrorism I call it patriotism."

Updated 9:26 a.m. ET on Aug. 14

Alt-right. White nationalist. Free speech. Hate speech.

A number of labels involving the far right have been tossed about once again after a weekend white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Va., turned deadly.

Here's a look at some of the phrases being used to describe the people involved and what's behind them:

Alt-right/white nationalist

There's plenty of disagreement and debate about what language to use to describe far right politics and the groups that operate there.

These days, the labels white nationalist and alt-right have become ubiquitous. Radical right and ultra-right are older terms from the 1950s and '60s, and other terms include paleo-conservative, the militia movement, identity movement, American fascists, national socialists, neo-Nazis. But according to Mark Potok, a leader at the Southern Poverty Law Center for the last two decades, essentially these groups can be broken down into two main categories those who focus primarily on issues of race and those who focus primarily on conspiracy theories. One idea that courses through nearly all of them is the belief that healthy societies are dependent on racial, ethnic and cultural purity that for the white race, diversity is the path to political and cultural extinction.

The thinking is that each racial/ethnic group should get their own country, but the USA (and Europe) is for white, European, Christian culture.

It's why language like that of Jeremy Christian who allegedly stabbed three people on the Portland Metro then shouted "get the f*** out of my country" in court is prevalent among the far right.

In the "Unite the Right" rallies in Charlottesville, Virginia last week, white nationalists and neo-Nazis chanted the phrase "blood and soil" and "Jews will not replace us."

"Blood and soil" began as a political and cultural idea in Germany that predated and then was taken up in earnest by the Nazi regime.

There are several romanticized conceptions in the Blood and Soil ideology race and ethnic purity combined with a belief that a rural, agrarian lifestyle is the healthiest, most sincere, conservative and (during the first half of the last century at least) Germanic way of life. In 1930, Richard Walther Darre wrote a book Neuadel aus Blut und Boden A New Nobility Based On Blood And Soil which glorified "peasant virtues" and aggressively promoted eugenics. It was a powerful influence on Reichsfuhrer Heinrich Himmler. A virulent anti-Semite, Darre became Reich Minister for Food and Agriculture in 1933 and authored the idea of "Rasse und Raum" Race and Space which was intended to provide political and intellectual cover for Nazi aggression and expansion.

This supremacist vision is what separates alternative right/white nationalists from others on the political spectrum. It's an enormous leap ideologically from mainstream conservatism and the main reason why alt-right membership remains relatively low. Where does the term alt-right come from? Paleo-conservative philosopher Paul Grottfried first used the phrase in 2008 but white nationalist Richard Spencer ran with it and helped make alt-right ubiquitous.

Spencer is a new face of the extreme right movement. Well-educated at the Universities of Virginia, Chicago and Duke, he is a world away from old images of the Ku Klux Klan. According to Pete Simi, professor of Sociology at Chapman University and the co-author of the book American Swastika: Inside the White Power Movement's Hidden Spaces of Hate, the term alt-right was a successful attempt by Spencer to rebrand himself and his followers as something fresh, young and smart for a new generation.

Among its allies, the alt-right embraces President Trump adviser and former Breitbart editor Steve Bannon. Bannon has called the site a "platform for the alt-right."

Free speech or hate speech?

Free speech has grown into a major issue for both mainstream conservatives and the alt-right. For mainstream conservatives, the belief that the left is more intolerant of dissent than the right is evidenced by the protests against right-wing speakers on college campuses.

White nationalists believe their First Amendment rights go further: that they should have the freedom to say whatever they like and not suffer consequences for example, getting fired from their job for posting something hateful on Facebook.

The alt-right has developed its own language and symbols on the Internet. Parentheses around a person's name means they are Jewish. "Cuckservative" is a particularly ugly racist and derogatory term describing establishment Republicans who aren't considered conservative enough.

Professor Simi says a key feature of white nationalist belief is seeing themselves as victims. "We're not the haters, we're the victims of white genocide," Simi says, describing the alt-right mindset. Marginalized, oppressed and fighting an uphill battle against the powers that be, they view themselves as noble, courageous, even heroic warriors.

"Patriot" or terrorist?

A second category of the extreme right is the American militia movement, which can be characterized by its belief in conspiracy theories. On his Facebook page, Christian praised Oklahoma City bomber Timothy McVeigh, "May all the Gods Bless Timothy McVeigh a TRUE PATRIOT!!!"

Former SPLC director Potok said the movement's fundamental idea is that the federal government is involved in a conspiracy against its people's liberties. The imposition of martial law will be followed by the forced confiscation of guns, and Potok explains that in the end, the U.S. government will be forced into a one world government, the so-called "New World Order" that will be run to serve the global elite. Elements of these conspiracy theories recently made a prominent appearance in Texas in 2015 during an armed forces military exercise, which stoked fear among some worried Texans that President Barack Obama was about to use Special Forces soldiers to confiscate guns and round up resisters. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott responded by ordering the Texas State Guard to monitor the Special Forces soldiers while they trained in Texas.

Martin Kaste contributed to this story. It was originally published on June 4.

Originally posted here:
Alt-Right, White Nationalist, Free Speech: The Far Right's ...

Breitbart's Milo Yiannopoulos, a self-proclaimed leader of the movement, co-wrote a manifesto of sorts about what the alt-right believes. Drew Angerer/Getty Images hide caption

Breitbart's Milo Yiannopoulos, a self-proclaimed leader of the movement, co-wrote a manifesto of sorts about what the alt-right believes.

The presidential candidates this week accused one another of racism and bigotry, with Hillary Clinton arguing that Donald Trump's rhetoric and policies are an invitation to the "alt-right" movement.

"This is not conservatism as we have known it," the Democratic nominee said on Thursday during a speech in Reno, Nev. "This is not Republicanism as we have known it. These are racist ideas. These are race-baiting ideas. Anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, anti-women ideas all key tenets making up an emerging racist ideology known as the 'alt-right.'"

So what, exactly, is the "alt-right"?

The views of the alt-right are widely seen as anti-Semitic and white supremacist.

It is mostly an online movement that uses websites, chat boards, social media and memes to spread its message. (Remember the Star of David image that Trump received criticism for retweeting? That reportedly first appeared on an alt-right message board.)

Most of its members are young white men who see themselves first and foremost as champions of their own demographic. However, apart from their allegiance to their "tribe," as they call it, their greatest points of unity lie in what they are against: multiculturalism, immigration, feminism and, above all, political correctness.

"They see political correctness really as the greatest threat to their liberty," Nicole Hemmer, University of Virginia professor and author of a forthcoming book Messengers of the Right, explained on Morning Edition.

"So, they believe saying racist or anti-Semitic things it's is not an act of hate, but an act of freedom," she said.

For that reason, as well as for fun and notoriety, alt-righters like to troll, prank and provoke.

One of their favorite slams is to label someone a "cukservative," loosely translated by the Daily Caller as a cuckolded conservative, or "race traitor" who has surrendered his masculinity.

How does the alt-right movement differ from what we think of as traditional conservatism?

The movement's origins are traced to many conservatives' opposition to the policies of President George W. Bush, especially the U.S. invasion of Iraq (alt-righters are strictly isolationist).

They are also suspicious of free markets, a key tenet of conservatism, as they believe that business interests can often be in conflict with what they view as higher ideals those of cultural preservation and homogeneity.

Two self-proclaimed leaders of the alt-right movement Breitbart's Allum Bokhari and Milo Yiannopoulos recently outlined a manifesto of sorts for what the group believes and who their allies are and are not. It claimed that "beltway conservatives" hate alt-right adherents even more "than Democrats or loopy progressives."

They see themselves, rather, as "natural conservatives," with an "instinctive wariness of the foreign and the unfamiliar," Bokhari and Yiannopoulos wrote.

What is Trump's connection to the alt-right?

Last week, the GOP presidential nominee announced that Stephen Bannon, chairman of Breitbart News Network, which Bannon has called "the platform for the alt-right," would be his campaign's new chief executive.

"By putting Brietbart front and center in his campaign," said Hemmer, "Trump has elevated the alt-right."

But Hemmer suspects that Trump and all but a small fraction of his supporters do not pledge allegiance to the alt-right movement.

Yet, the movement has embraced Trump.

"I think they are attracted to Trump [and] see him as a vessel for getting their ideas out there," Hemmer said.

Clinton is likely to continue drawing a link between Trump and the alt-right in the minds of voters.

"She's reminding those undecided voters that whatever the new moderate face of Donald Trump might be, there are the things he has said and here are the implications of the things he said and the people who he's brought into his campaign," Hemmer said.

How do alt-right leaders feel about Clinton's statements?

They seem to be loving the attention. As Michelle Goldberg wrote in Slate:

"The white nationalist Richard Spencer was on vacation in Japan when he learned that Hillary Clinton was planning to give a speech about Donald Trump's ties to the so-called alt right, and he was thrilled. 'It's hugely significant,' Spencer told me by Skype from Kyoto. 'When a presidential candidate and indeed the presidential candidate who is leading in most polls talks about your movement directly, I think you can safely say that you've made it.' "

Read the original post:
What You Need To Know About The Alt-Right Movement : NPR