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Demonstrators in New York march against the Charlottesville nationalist protests. Photograph: ddp USA/REX/Shutterstock

The left-right spectrum of political speech is getting increasingly crowded. The rise of Donald Trump has popularised the term alt-right, which sounds more indie and cool than far right. Meanwhile, those on the alt-right have recently begun to describe their opponents as the alt-left a coinage that, asymmetrically, seems to be an attempt to rhetorically downgrade them to a fringe group of eccentrics, rather than a broad coalition of people who dont like racism much. What about the alt-left that came charging at the, as you say, the alt-right? Trump asked, Solomonically, after the clashes in Charlottesville. Do they have any semblance of guilt?

Some of the people who actually protest against alt-right protesters in the US are from a group called Antifa, short for anti-fascist. Their opponents happily adopt the term, aiming to paint any and all anti-racist liberals as a small militant conspiracy, but their acquiescence in such language seems a bit peculiar when you think about it. American shock-babbler Ann Coulter, for example, tweeted that she hoped Trump would denounce the violent left-wing Antifa that shut down my Berkeley speech! IfCoulter agrees to call her opponents Antifa, does it logically follow that she is happy to identify as a fascist?

Fascist, of course, has long been a term of abuse on the left that has not, historically, been restricted to actual fascists, but applied liberally to Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, George W Bush and many others before Trump. As Samantha Power, author of A Problem from Hell, wrote in 2004: Fascism unlike communism, socialism, capitalism, or conservatism is a smear word more often used to brand ones foes than it is a descriptor used to shed light on them. We may suspect that the same is increasingly true of almost all political descriptors applied to other groups these days.

If Coulter agrees to call her opponents Antifa, does it logically follow that she is happy to identify as a fascist?

The angry white men who congregated in Charlottesville were widely described as Nazis, a usage for which there are arguments both for and against. On the one hand, these people love swastikas, chant things like blood and soil, and hate Jews and black people, which definitely seems pretty Nazi. On the other hand, tocall them Nazis is a convenient othering that refuses to acknowledge their identity as Americans, standing in the USs own proud tradition of violent racism. The first of the three groups calling themselves the Ku Klux Klan formed in the mid-19th century, after all, and US eugenics and investigations into the science of racial cleansing in the early 20th century were themselves taken as inspiration for the Nazis murderous programme.

To resist calling them Nazis is not somehow to make excuses for savage paranoiacs who claim that liberal policies amount to genocide of their group. A similar point can be made about the term neo-Nazi, which was already in use in the 1940s when actual Nazis were still around, and probably ought to be limited to groups that explicitly want to reconstitute something very like the National Socialist German Workers Party. The unfortunate truth is that nazism does not exhaust the scope of possible human evil.

What, then, about white nationalists or white supremacists? Such terms certainly seem more coolly analytical than fascists or Nazis, though it might be seen as a problem that they both contain the word white, and so implicitly acquiesce in the underlying idea that skin colour is really important. And white supremacist itself (from 1896) was formed from the earlier phrase white supremacy (1824), and thus carries within it the exact noxious ideology that opponents wish to denounce. It might seem that the simple term racists would suffice, were it not for the unfortunate fact that there are so many racists in the world that its just not specific enough to pick out this particular rump of morons.

If you are not a Nazi or a fascist or on the alt-right, but not a paid up member of Antifa or really feeling the Bern either, what are you? You may be a member of the roundly despised group of centrists. That is now a term of outright contempt among fans of Jeremy Corbyn, for example, but the very first citation of the word in the OED is hardly complimentary either: in 1872, the Daily News reported on a group of French parliamentarians: That weak-kneed congregation who sit in the middle of the House, and call themselves Centrists. To employ the term centrist as abuse, of course, is to imply a Manichean worldview in which everything is pure good or pure evil, and politics boils down to a simple binary choice. Its a fantasy world in which complicated decisions are easy, and you can be sure the Nazis would agree.

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'Alt-right', 'alt-left' the rhetoric of hate after Charlottesville - The Guardian

Last Friday night, the white nationalists who marched on Charlottesvilles Emancipation Park all looked strikingly similar. They were almost exclusively white, of course. But they were also relatively young. And with a handful of exceptions, they were men.

The Unite the Right rally brought together white nationalists of all stripes, including traditional white supremacists like Neo-Nazis and the KKK, and other racist groups that have united under the banner of the new, internet-oriented alt-right. The rally was violent and bloodyone of the white supremacist attendees is being charged with deliberately ramming his car into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing Heather Heyer and injuring more than a dozen others.

Bannon's Exit Leaves Trump Untethered

Its hard to determine just how many women identify with the alt-right, because many of the movements members keep a low profile. George Hawley, author of Making Sense of the Alt-Right, estimates that 20 percent of alt-right supporters are women. But in Charlottesville, a far smaller portion of the crowd was female. All 10 speakers at the rally were men.

There has been a lot of theorizing on why the white nationalism of the alt-right is more popular among men than women. The prevailing theory is that women are turned off by its stark anti-women rhetoric. But their lack of presence at the rally shouldnt be read as an absence of women in the white nationalist movement overall.

There are a lot of white women who buy into this movement, theyre just doing it in private, said Kelly Baker, an author who specializes in gender and white extremist groups. Theyre not vocal, but they are supporters of the men in their lives who are.

I talked to a few alt-right supporters after the Charlottesville rally. All of them gave the same explanation for the protests missing women: biology. There is no official alt-right platformmembers are generally anti-immigrant, anti-Semitic, and see themselves as defenders of the white race. Most also maintain that there are certain characteristics inherent to each gender. Men are risk-takers, multiple alt-right supporters told me. Women are nurturers. Risk-takers belong at nationally televised protests. Nurturers dont.

By and large, alt-right men dont seem to be forcing these traditional gender roles on the women of their movementthe alt-right women are doing it themselves. The women share a profound disdain for the feminist movement, and are eager to claim the supportive, behind-the-scenes roles.

As for female empowerment, theres nothing that has made me feel more empowered in my life than supporting and being supported by a strong man, Claudia Davenport, an alt-right activist, said in an interview with The Economist. I think that men and women are better off when we stop fighting nature and allow our distinct identities to shine through.

In our conversations, multiple alt-right supporters referred to the movements men as protectors.

Its not the role of women to protect the borders, the nation, or the family. So we do not expect this of women, nor do we find it strange that they are less represented in something that we view as an innately male occupation: guarding territory, said Tara McCarthy, a female alt-right blogger.

White supremacy movements have used the language of protection since the height of the KKK in the 1920s. The KKK rallied to defend white supremacy from the forces it perceived as threateningnamely immigrants and recently enfranchised African Americans.

The KKK made it its mission to defend the spaces it saw as its own: white women, the home, the schools, the nation. They thought, This is our job as knights, protection is what we do, said Baker.

Unlike the alt-right, however, Klanswomen were on the front lines of the movement. There were fewer of themat the Klans peak, half a million, compared to four million menbut they didnt confine themselves to supporting roles. The vast majority wore robes, marched in parades, and participated in highly visible picnics. They were involved in the fight for female suffrage, arguing that only white women should get the vote.

So why are todays white nationalist women less visible than the 1920s Klanswomen? Today, visibility entails significantly more risk. When the KKK marched in the early 20th century, it was powerful and influential in the South. When the white nationalists marched through Charlottesville, they knew they would face social media backlash and counter-protests across the country.

In this way, white-nationalist protestand protectionhas become a more traditionally masculine act in the view of its proponents. Its more dangerous, and requires more risk, than it did 100 years ago.

The alt-right is divided on how visibleand vocalthey want women to be. On one hand, there are organizations like Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW), a gender separatist group that cautions men against relationships with women, that bar women from membership. On the other, there is a growing contingent of alt-right men who encourage the women in their community to speak out and become leaders themselves.

Many alt-right men like it when they have women who are contributing content, recording podcasts, making YouTube channels. Thats because women in this movement have an easier time amassing followers, said Hawley.

According to Hawley, outspoken women on the alt-right are particularly effective mechanisms for recruitment. Because there arent many of them, a female alt-right blogger, YouTube star, or Twitter enthusiast attracts more attention than a young white man who fits the alt-right stereotype. Women make the movement seem more normal, Hawley said.

There are only a few alt-right women interested in claiming leadership roles within the movement. As the alt-right develops, these women will likely continue to be a source of tension. During a live-streamed video chat in 2015, Colin Robertson, a popular Scottish alt-right blogger, discussed U.S. politics, among other things, with two of the most prominent female personalities on the alt-right, Lana Lokteff and Ayla Stewart. As soon as Robertson opened the conversation up to the audience , misogynistic comments started rolling in. One viewer wrote, These women are the same old tainted, fucked-up strong womyn, using a spelling of women some feminists use to mock Lokteff and Stewart as feminists in disguise.

To fit into the movement, alt-right women must be visible in the right way. They have to prove they arent threatening traditional gender roles: both through what they say, and how they look. The majority of well-known, female alt-right personalities are young, attractive women.

When women do appear in alt-right journals or online discussions, its as objects of attraction, said Baker. They need to appear as victims or passive objects of male desire.

Above all, women on the alt-right must accept the movements dogma on biology: the idea that men are meant for certain roles, and women are meant for others.

See the article here:
The Women Behind the 'Alt-Right' - The Atlantic

Fighting Nazis is a good thing, but fighting Nazis doesnt necessarily make you or your cause good. By my lights this is simply an obvious fact.

The greatest Nazi-killer of the 20th century was Josef Stalin. He also killed millions of his own people and terrorized, oppressed, enslaved, or brutalized tens of millions more. The fact that he killed Nazis during the Second World War (out of self-preservation, not principle) doesnt dilute his evil one bit.

This should settle the issue as far as Im concerned. Nazism was evil. Soviet Communism was evil. Its fine to believe that Nazism was more evil than Communism. That doesnt make Communism good.

Alas, it doesnt settle the issue. Confusion on this point poisoned politics in America and abroad for generations.

Part of the problem is psychological. Theres a natural tendency to think that when people, or movements, hate each other, it must be because theyre opposites. This assumption overlooks the fact that many indeed, most of the great conflicts and hatreds in human history are derived from what Sigmund Freud called the narcissism of minor differences.

Most tribal hatreds are between very similar groups. The European wars of religion were between peoples who often shared the same language and culture but differed on the correct way to practice the Christian faith. The SunniShia split in the Muslim world is the source of great animosity between very similar peoples.

The young Communists and fascists fighting for power in the streets of 1920s Germany had far more in common with each other than they had with decent liberals or conservatives, as we understand those terms today. Thats always true of violent radicals and would-be totalitarians.

The second part of the problem wasnt innocent confusion, but sinister propaganda. As Hitler solidified power and effectively outlawed the Communist Party of Germany, The Communist International (Comintern) abandoned its position that socialist and progressive groups that were disloyal to Moscow were fascist and instead encouraged Communists everywhere to build popular fronts against the common enemy of Nazism.

These alliances of convenience with social democrats and other progressives were a great propaganda victory for Communists around the world because they bolstered the myth that Communists were just members of the Left coalition in the fight against Hitler, bigotry, fascism, etc.

This obscured the fact that whenever the Communists had a chance to seize power, they did so. And often, the first people they killed, jailed, or exiled were their former allies. Thats what happened in Eastern Europe, Cuba and other places where Communists succeeded in taking over the government.

If you havent figured it out yet, this seemingly ancient history is relevant today because of the depressingly idiotic argument about whether its okay to equate antifa anti-fascist left-wing radicals with the neo-Nazi and white-supremacist rabble that recently descended on Charlottesville, Va. The president wants to claim that there were very fine people on both sides of the protest and that the anti-fascist radicals are equally blameworthy. He borrowed from Fox News Channels Sean Hannity the bogus term alt-left to describe the antifa radicals.

The term is bogus for the simple reason that, unlike the alt-right, nobody calls themselves the alt-left. And thats too bad. One of the only nice things about the alt-right is that its leaders are honest about the fact that they want nothing to do with traditional American conservatism. Like the original Nazis, they seek to replace the traditional Right with their racial hogwash.

The antifa crowd has a very similar agenda with regard to traditional American liberalism. These goons and thugs oppose free speech, celebrate violence, despise dissent, and have little use for anything else in the American political tradition. But many liberals, particularly in the media, are victims of the same kind of confusion that vexed so much of American liberalism in the 20th century. Because antifa suddenly has the (alt-)right enemies, they must be the good guys. Theyre not.

And thats why this debate is so toxically stupid. Fine, antifa isnt as bad as the KKK. Who cares? Since when is being less bad than the Klan a major moral accomplishment?

In these tribal times, the impulse to support anyone who shares your enemies is powerful. But it is a morally stunted reflex. This is America. Youre free to denounce totalitarians wherever you find them even if they might hate the right people.

READ MORE: The Fascists Were Using Antifa against Conservatives What Identity Politics Hath Wrought Rebuilding the Public Square after Charlottesville

Jonah Goldberg is a fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and a senior editor of National Review. You can write to him in care of this newspaper or by e-mail at [emailprotected], or via Twitter @JonahNRO.

Link:
Alt-Right & Antifa -- Both Bad Groups & Ideology | National Review - National Review

Some of the protesters who marched through Charlottesville last weekend were described as alt-right, a newish term that has been used for everyone from white supremacists to economic populists. But what does it actually mean? The Associated Press recently issued guidelines discouraging journalists from using the term generically and without definition since 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. Meanwhile, President Trump recently told reporters that some of the protesters in Charlottesville who waved Nazi insignia and chanted anti-Jewish slogans werent all nefarioussome were very fine people.

A psychology paper put out just last week by Patrick Forscher of the University of Arkansas and Nour Kteily of Northwestern University seeks to answer the question of just what, exactly, it is that the alt-right believes. What differentiates them from the average American?

For the paper, which has not yet been peer-reviewed, Forscher and Kteily recruited 447 self-proclaimed members of the alt-right online and gave them a series of surveys. How did they know these people were really alt-right? The individuals responded to questions like, What are your thoughts when people claim the alt-right is racist? with statements like:

If it were not for Europeans, there would be nothing but the third world. Racist really needs defined. Is it racist to not want your community flooded with 3,000 low IQ blacks from the Congo? I would suggest almost everyone would not. It is not racist to want to live among your own ... Through media [the Jews] lie about the Holohoax, and the slave trade. Jews were the slave traders, not Europeans ... many people don't even understand these simple things.

The researchers compared the responses of the alt-right people to a sample of people who did not identify as alt-right. What they found paints a dark picture of a group that feels white people are disadvantaged. They are eager to take action to boost whites standing. Whats more, they appear to view other religious and ethnic groups as subhuman.

Importantly, the study authors did not find that economic anxiety was driving the alt-rights sentiments, debunking a popular theory in the wake of the 2016 election. Alt-right supporters were more optimistic about the current and future states of the economy than non-supporters, they write.

But there were key ways that the alt-right participants differed from the comparison group. The alt-right members trusted alternative media such as Breitbart and Fox more than mainstream outlets. They were much more likely to have a social-dominance orientation, or the desire that there be a hierarchy among groups in society.

One can easily guess who they want at the top of this hierarchy. The alt-right participants were more likely to think men, whites, Republicans, and the alt-right themselves were discriminated against, while minorities and women were not. This is in line with past research showing that white supremacists have a victimhood mentality, in which they consider whites to be the real oppressed people of American society.

In this study, the alt-right members were much more likely to be willing to express prejudice, to engage in offensive behavior and harassment, and to oppose Black Lives Matter. And heres the scariest part. The researchers showed the participants the below scale, which psychologists use to ask people how evolved various groups are. A score of zero puts them closer to the ape-like figure on the left, while a 100 is the fully evolved human on the right. Its a scale, in other words, of dehumanization.

The alt-right members were much more likely to consider groups they see as their opponentspeople like Muslims, Mexicans, blacks, journalists, Democrats, and feministsto be less evolved than they are. If we translate the alt-right and non-alt-right ratings into their corresponding ascent silhouettes, this means that our alt-right sample saw religious, national, and political opposition groups as a full silhouette less evolved than the non-alt-right sample, the authors write.

Voxs Brian Resnick further breaks down the data here:

On average, they rated Muslims at a 55.4 (again, out of 100), Democrats at 60.4, black people at 64.7, Mexicans at 67.7, journalists at 58.6, Jews at 73, and feminists at 57. These groups appear as subhumans to those taking the survey. And what about white people? They were scored at a noble 91.8. (You can look through all the data here.)

The comparison group, on the other hand, scored all these groups in the 80s or 90s on average. (In science terms, the alt-righters were nearly a full standard deviation more extreme in their responses than the comparison group.)

If you look at the mean dehumanization scores, theyre about at the level to the degree people in the United States dehumanize ISIS, Forscher says. The reason why I find that so astonishing is that were engaged in violent conflict with ISIS.

Forscher and Kteily also found there were two distinct subgroups in their sample of alt-righters. Some were populists, who were concerned about government corruption and were less extremist. The more extreme and racist among them, meanwhile, were the supremacists. The authors speculate that people who start out as populists might become radicalized into the supremacist camp as they meet more alt-righters.

This study, once it is peer-reviewed, may have broad implications for the fight against hate groupsand for psychology itself. As the authors note, modern psychology studies mostly focus on implicit biasthe internal racism that most people dont outwardly express. They might be, say, slower to associate professor with a picture of an African-American person, but theyre not grabbing torches and heading to rallies. Perhaps psychologists simply thought society had progressed to the point where overt racism is so rare as to be difficult to measure. But this study shows that hundreds of actual, proud racists can be easily recruited online for a study for the low price of $3.

The authors of this paper write that blatant intergroup bias has by no means disappeared. Its something the events in Charlottesville revealed all too vividly last weekend.

View post:
The Dark Minds of the Alt-Right - The Atlantic

To the editor: I applaud Jonah Goldberg for remaining a member of the traditional right. (The alt-right has gained ground, thanks to a win-at-all-costs strategy, Opinion, Aug. 15)

He says the so-called alt-right wont replace mainstream conservatism because the overwhelming majority of conservatives are patriotic and decent. Yet President Trumps approval rating among Republicans is around 80%. That means Republicans are supporting an administration that includes Steve Bannon, Sebastian Gorka and Stephen Miller.

The people whose faces were seen so well in the torchlight in Charlottesville, Va., have supremacy over nothing and no one, but they will support those in power who feed their ugly fantasy. Without these people, conservatives cant win.

They keep feeding this beast, and it gets uglier every day.

Stephanie McIntyre, Simi Valley

..

To the editor: Its a shame that Goldbergs public dissent from the alt-rights debased dogma invites harsh reprisals from fellow conservatives. But Goldbergs rare courage which prompted one pundit to label him an apostate ultimately will hold him in good stead on both sides of the red-blue divide.

Once our national nightmare has ended, most everyone to the left of the alt-right will admire Goldbergs composed, coherent takes on Trump.

If only more conservatives understood that hewing to a party line doesnt rate with being on the right side of history.

Roberta Helms, Santa Barbara

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To the editor: Enough with the term alt-right, which obscures what that movement really is: white supremacy. Each time we say it or print it, we are practically saying its all right. It is not all right; its all wrong.

The late Elie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor and a professor of mine at Boston University, stressed the importance of identifying and naming evil. He called it our personal responsibility, and when we name something evil, we cannot permit it to be diluted or undermined.

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We, here in 2017, cannot be complacent; we cannot stand by silently. It is our imperative to name the evil that we experienced in Charlottesville. It is the neo-Nazi white supremacist movement. Sure, we can use shorthand terms neo-Nazi or white supremacy, but we cannot call it by a name that hides or obscures what this movement is.

Insist on calling a spade a spade.

Julie A. Werner-Simon, Santa Monica

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To the editor: Who decided that white supremacists could rename themselves the alt-right? Whats next, the KKK rebranding itself as the Alternative Hood Klub?

Ken Jacobs, Santa Monica

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It's a sad fact: Republicans who denounce the 'alt-right' do so at great political risk - Los Angeles Times