Alt-Right white nationalism – Political Research Associates
An antifascist report on the far right movement that embraced Donald Trump.
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This report is excerpted from Matthew N. Lyonss forthcoming book, Insurgent Supremacists: The U.S. Far Rights Challenge to State and Empire, to be published by PM Press and Kersplebedeb Publishing. This report is also featured in Ctrl-Alt-Delete: An Antifascist Report on the Alternative Right, which is now available for pre-order.
For a printer-friendly PDF version, click HERE.
The Alt Right, short for Alternative Right, is a loosely organized far-right movement that emphasizes internet activism, is hostile to both multicultural liberalism and mainstream conservatism, and has had a symbiotic relationship with Donald Trumps presidential campaign. The Alt Right brings together different branches of White nationalism, including scientific racists, sections of the neonazi movement, and adherents of European New Right ideology. The Alt Right also encompasses rightist ideologies that dont center on race, above all efforts to destroy feminism and re-intensify mens dominance over women, as well as other elitist and authoritarian currents. The Alt Right has little formal organization but has made effective use of online tactics.
This report offers an overview of the Alt Rights history, ideology, and relationship with the Trump campaign and presidential administration.
Part 1 Origins and development
Major forerunners of the Alt Right included paleoconservatism, an anti-interventionist, anti-free trade, anti-immigration branch of U.S. conservatism that emerged in the late 1980s; and the European New Right (ENR), a project that began in France in the late 1960s to rework fascist ideology by appropriating elements of liberal and leftist thought to mask anti-egalitarianism.
The term Alternative Right was introduced by Richard Spencer in 2008 and initially was a catch-all encompassing paleoconservatives, libertarians, White nationalists, and other rightists at odds with the conservative establishment. AlternativeRight.com, an online magazine which Spencer founded and edited from 2010 to 2012, became a popular intellectual forum for a range of dissident rightist views, including scientific racism, the ENR, National-Anarchism, libertarianism, male tribalism, and Black conservatism. Gradually, the term Alternative Right or Alt Right became more closely tied to White nationalism and the goal of creating a White ethnostate, as a number of other White nationalist publications became associated with the Alt Right and as Spencer focused more sharply on White nationalism after becoming head of the National Policy Institute in 2011.
Starting in 2015, the Alt Right broadened out from a small intellectual circle as a much wider array of online activists embraced the term. Many of these newer Alt Rightists were based in discussion websites such as Reddit, 4chan, and 8chan. Some of them, such as Andrew Anglin of The Daily Stormer, brought neonazi-based politics into the movement.
Part 2 Major Ideological Currents
Some Alt Rightists have used moderate-sounding intellectual tones, often borrowing from the ENRs euphemistic language about respecting difference and protecting biocultural diversity. But many others have used naked bigotry and supremacist speech in an effort to be as inflammatory as possible. This stylistic difference is more division of labor than factional conflict.
Most Alt Rightists regard Jews as dangerous outsiders who bear major responsibility for the decline of European civilization, but they disagree about whether or not to work with them. Neonazi-oriented Alt Rightists reject any association with Jews and regard them as the embodiment of pure evil. Other Alt Rightists, however, advocate a tactical alliance with right-wing Jews against Muslims and immigrants of color, and believe that migration to Israel will help prevent Jews from subverting western societies. A few Alt Rightists have welcomed like-minded Jews to movement publications and events.
The Alt Right has increasingly embraced an intensely misogynistic ideology, which argues that women need and want men to rule over them and should be stripped of any political role. This largely reflects the influence of the manosphere, an online antifeminist subculture of men who falsely claim that men in U.S. society are oppressed by feminism or by women in general. Although there has been some tension between the two movements over racial politics, many manospherians have also become active in the Alt Right, and the manospheres online harassment campaigns against women have strongly influenced the Alt Rights own activism. The Alt Right has also been influenced by the male tribalism of Jack Donovan, a longtime Alt Right speaker and writer who advocates a social and political order based on small, close-knit gangs of male warriors.
Many Alt Rightists consider homosexuality in any form to be immoral and a threat to racial survival, but there has also been a trend to welcome some homosexual men (such as Jack Donovan) while continuing to derogate gay culture. Alt Rightists uphold classical fascisms elitist and anti-democratic views of governance, but their goal of breaking up the United States into ethnically separate polities is inherently decentralist. This blend of authoritarianism and decentralism, rooted in the European New Right and paleoconservatism, has been bolstered by two other political currents that overlap with the Alt Right: (a) right-wing anarchists (including National-Anarchists and Keith Prestons Attack the System website), who want to dismantle the centralized state but uphold non-state systems of hierarchy and oppression; and (b) the neoreactionary movement (also known as the Dark Enlightenment), an offshoot of libertarianism which rejects popular sovereignty and advocates small-scale authoritarian enclaves such as seasteads.
Part 3 Relationship with Donald Trump
Alt Rightists have long argued about whether to work within existing political channels or reject them entirely. Many Alt Rightists, borrowing from the ENR, have focused on a metapolitical strategy of seeking to transform the broader political culture and thereby lay the groundwork for structural change.
A majority of Alt Rightists supported Donald Trumps presidential candidacy, although they recognized that Trump was not one of them and was not going to bring about the change they wanted. Rather, they believed that Trumps campaign could weaken the Republican Party and shift political discussion in ways that Alt Rightists could use to promote their own ideology. A minority of Alt Rightists opposed Trump because they believed he was loyal to Israel, promoted illusory faith in the U.S. political system, or would co-opt their movement into supporting established elites.
Alt Rightists helped Trumps campaign through online activism, including skillful use of online memes such as #Cuckservative and #DraftOurDaughters to discredit Trumps opponents, as well as coordinated online harassment, which often involved floods of abusive messages and images, rape and death threats, and doxxing (public releases of personal information) targeting individual Trump opponents and members of their families. In return, the Trump campaign gave the Alt Right greater visibility, influence, and sense of purpose.
As the Alt Right grew and attracted attention, some conservativeswho became known as the Alt Litetook on the role of apologists or supporters for the Alt Right, helping to spread a lot of its message without embracing its full ideology or its ethnostate goals. In the public mind, prominent Alt Lite figures such as Milo Yiannopoulos and Steve Bannon of the Breitbart News Network have often been equated with the Alt Right itself. The Alt Right has relied on such figures to help bring its ideas to a mainstream audience, but many Alt Rightists have regarded them as untrustworthy opportunists.
Conclusion the Alt Right and the Trump presidency
Many Alt Rightists see themselves as the Trump coalitions political vanguard, taking hardline positions that pull Trump further to the Right while enabling him to look moderate by comparison. However, the question of how to play that vanguard role has sharpened tensions both within the Alt Right and between the Alt Right and its sympathizers.
Because Trump has mostly chosen hardline establishment figures for his administration, Alt Rightists could easily find themselves pushed into an oppositional role. Yet Alt Rightists could continue to exert significant pressure on the Trump administration, because they know how to speak effectively to a large part of his popular base. They are in a strong position to continue influencing the political culture.
Maybe you first heard about them in the summer of 2015, when they promoted the insult cuckservative to attack Trumps opponents in the Republican primaries.1Maybe it was in August 2016, when Hillary Clinton denounced them as a fringe element that had effectively taken over the Republican party.2Or maybe it was a couple of weeks after Trumps surprise defeat of Clinton, when a group of them were caught on camera giving the fascist salute in response to a speaker shouting Hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory!3
The Alt Right helped Donald Trump get elected president, and Trumps campaign put the Alt Right in the news. But the movement was active well before Trump announced his candidacy, and its relationship with Trump has been more complex and more qualified than many critics realize. The Alt Right is just one of multiple dangerous forces associated with Trump, but its the one that has attracted the greatest notoriety. However, its not accurate to argue, as many critics have, that Alt Right is just a deceptive code-phrase meant to hide the movements White supremacist or neonazi politics. This is a movement with its own story, and for those concerned about the seemingly sudden resurgence of far-right politics in the United States, it is a story worth exploring.
Thislogo for the Alt Right has been appearing online, on posters, and at events.
The Alt Right, short for alternative right, is a loosely organized far-right movement that shares a contempt for both liberal multiculturalism and mainstream conservatism; a belief that some people are inherently superior to others; a strong internet presence and embrace of specific elements of online culture; and a self-presentation as being new, hip, and irreverent.4Based primarily in the United States, Alt Right ideology combines White nationalism, misogyny, antisemitism, and authoritarianism in various forms and in political styles ranging from intellectual argument to violent invective. White nationalism constitutes the movements center of gravity, but some Alt Rightists are more focused on reasserting male dominance or other forms of elitism rather than race. The Alt Right has little in the way of formal organization, but has used internet memes effectively to gain visibility, rally supporters, and target opponents. Most Alt Rightists have rallied behind Trumps presidential bid, yet as a rule Alt Rightists regard the existing political system as hopeless and call for replacing the United States with one or more racially defined homelands.
This report offers an overview of the Alt Rights history, beliefs, and relationship with other political forces. Part 1 traces the movements ideological origins in paleoconservatism and the European New Right, and its development since Richard Spencer launched the original AlternativeRight.com website in 2010. Part 2 surveys the major political currents that comprise or overlap with the Alt Right, which include in their ranks White nationalists, members of the antifeminist manosphere, male tribalists, right-wing anarchists, and neoreactionaries. Part 3 focuses on the Alt Rights relationship with the Trump presidential campaign, including movement debates about political strategy, online political tactics, and its relationship to a network of conservative supporters and popularizers known as the Alt Lite. A concluding section offers preliminary thoughts on the Alt Rights prospects and the potential challenges it will face under the incoming Trump administration.
Two intellectual currents played key roles in shaping the early Alternative Right: paleoconservatism and the European New Right.
Paleoconservatives can trace their lineage back to the Old Right of the 1930s, which opposed New Deal liberalism, and to the America First movement of the early 1940s, which opposed U.S. entry into World War II. To varying degrees, many of the America Firsters were sympathetic to fascism and fascist claims of a sinister Jewish-British conspiracy. In the early 1950s, this current supported Senator Joe McCarthys witch-hunting crusade, which extended red-baiting to target representatives of the centrist Eastern Establishment. After McCarthy, the America First/anti-New Deal Right was largely submerged in a broader fusionist conservative movement, in which Cold War anticommunism served as the glue holding different rightist currents together. But when the Soviet bloc collapsed between 1989 and 1991, this anticommunist alliance unraveled, and old debates reemerged.5
In the 1980s, devotees of the Old Right began calling themselves paleoconservatives as a reaction against neoconservatives, those often formerly liberal and leftist intellectuals who were then gaining influential positions in right-wing think-tanks and the Reagan administration. The first neocons were predominantly Jewish and Catholic, which put them outside the ranks of old-guard conservatism. Neocons promoted an aggressive foreign policy to spread U.S. democracy throughout the world and supported a close alliance with Israel, but they also favored nonrestrictive immigration policies and, to a limited extent, social welfare programs. Paleconservatives regarded the neocons as usurpers and closet leftists, and in the post-Soviet era they criticized military interventionism, free trade, immigration, globalization, and the welfare state. They also spoke out against Washingtons close alliance with Israel, often in terms that had anti-Jewish undertones. Paleoconservatives tended to be unapologetic champions of European Christian culture, and some of them gravitated toward White nationalism, advocating a society in which White people, their values, interests, and concerns would always be explicitly preeminent. To some extent they began to converge with more hardline White supremacists during this period.6
These positions attracted little elite support, and after Reagan paleocons were mostly frozen out of political power. But they attracted significant popular support. In 1992 and 1996, Patrick Buchanan won millions of votes in Republican presidential primaries by emphasizing paleocon themes. Paleocons also played key roles in building the anti-immigrant and neo-Confederate movements in the 90s, and influenced the Patriot movement, which exploded briefly in the mid-90s around fears that globalist elites were plotting to impose a tyrannical world government on the United States. Some self-described libertarians, such as former Congressmember Ron Paul, embraced paleoconservative positions on culture and foreign policy.7After the September 11th attacks in 2001, the resurgence of military interventionism and neoconservatives prominent roles in the George W. Bush administration solidified the paleocons position as political outsiders.8
The Alt Rights other significant forerunner, the European New Right (ENR), developed along different lines. The ENR began in France in the late 1960s and then spread to other European countries as an initiative among far-right intellectuals to rework fascist ideology, largely by appropriating elements from other political traditionsincluding the Leftto mask their fundamental rejection of the principle of human equality.9European New Rightists championed biocultural diversity against the homogenization supposedly brought by liberalism and globalization. They argued that true antiracism requires separating racial and ethnic groups to protect their unique cultures, and that true feminism defends natural gender differences, instead of supposedly forcing women to divest themselves of their femininity. ENR writers also rejected the principle of universal human rights as a strategic weapon of Western ethnocentrism that stifles cultural diversity.10
European New Rightists dissociated themselves from traditional fascism in various other ways as well. In the wake of Frances defeat by anticolonial forces in Algeria, they advocated anti-imperialism rather than expansionism and a federated empire of regionally based, ethnically homogeneous communities, rather than a big, centralized state. Instead of organizing a mass movement to seize state power, they advocated a metapolitical strategy that would gradually transform the political and intellectual culture as a precursor to transforming institutions and systems. In place of classical fascisms familiar leaders and ideologues, European New Rightists championed more obscure far rightist intellectuals of the 1920s, 30s, and beyond, such Julius Evola of Italy, Ernst Jnger and Carl Schmitt of Germany, and Corneliu Codreanu of Romania.
ENR ideology began to get attention in the United States in the 1990s,11resonating with paleoconservatism on various themes, notably opposition to multicultural societies, non-White immigration, and globalization. On other issues, the two movements tended to be at odds: reflecting their roots in classical fascism but in sharp contrast to paleocons, European New Rightists were hostile to liberal individualism and laissez faire capitalism, and many of them rejected Christianity in favor of paganism. Nonetheless, some kind of dialog between paleocon and ENR ideas held promise for Americans seeking to develop a White nationalist movement outside of traditional neonazi/Ku Klux Klan circles.
Richard Spencer speaking at a National Policy Institute conference in 2016.
The term Alternative Right was introduced by Richard Spencer in 2008, when he was managing editor at the paleocon and libertarian Takis Magazine. At Takis Magazine the phrase was used as a catch-all for a variety of right-wing voices at odds with the conservative establishment, including paleocons, libertarians, and White nationalists.12Two years later Spencer left to found a new publication, AlternativeRight.com, as an online magazine of radical traditionalism. Joining Spencer were two senior contributing editors, Peter Brimelow (whose anti-immigrant VDARE Foundation sponsored the project) and Paul Gottfried (one of paleoconservatisms founders and one of its few Jews). AlternativeRight.com quickly became a popular forum among dissident rightist intellectuals, especially younger ones. The magazine published works of old-school scientific racism along with articles from or about the European New Right, Italian far right philosopher Julius Evola, and figures from Germanys interwar Conservative Revolutionary movement. There were essays by National-Anarchist Andrew Yeoman, libertarian and Pat Buchanan supporter Justin Raimondo of Antiwar.com, male tribalist Jack Donovan, and Black conservative Elizabeth Wright.13
AlternativeRight.com developed ties with a number of other White nationalist intellectual publications, which eventually became associated with the term Alternative Right. Some of its main partners included VDARE.com; Jared Taylors American Renaissance, whose conferences attracted both antisemites and right-wing Jews; The Occidental Quarterly and its online magazine, The Occidental Observer, currently edited by prominent antisemitic intellectual Kevin MacDonald; and Counter-Currents Publishing, which was founded in 2010 to create an intellectual movement in North America that is analogous to the European New Right and lay the intellectual groundwork for a white ethnostate in North America.14
Founded in 2005, The National Policy Institute is a White nationalist, White supremacist think tank based in Arlington, Virginia.
In 2011, Richard Spencer became head of the White nationalist think-tank National Policy Institute (NPI) and its affiliated Washington Summit Publishers. He turned AlternativeRight.com over to other editors the following year, then shut it down completely, establishing a new online magazine, Radix, in its place. (The other editors then reestablished Alternative Right as a blog.) Compared with AlternativeRight.coms broad ideological approach, Spencers later entities were more sharply focused on promoting White nationalism. Starting in 2011, NPI held a series of high-profile conferences that brought together intellectuals and activists from various branches of the movement. In 2014, the think-tank, together with supporters of Russian ENR theorist Aleksandr Dugin, cosponsored a pan-European conference in Budapest, although the Hungarian government deported Spencer and denied Dugin a visa.15
Starting in 2015, a much wider array of writers and online activists embraced the Alt Right moniker. As Anti-Fascist News put it, the alt right now often means an internet focused string of commentators, blogs, Twitter accounts, podcasters, and Reddit trolls, all of which combine scientific racism, romantic nationalism, and deconstructionist neo-fascist ideas to create a white nationalist movement that has almost no backwards connection with neo-Nazis and the KKK.16Some online centers of this larger, more amorphous Alt Right included the imageboard websites 4chan and 8chan, various Reddit sub-communities, and The Right Stuff blog and podcasts. Some Alt Right outfits offered neonazi-oriented politics (such as The Daily Stormer and the Traditionalist Youth Network), while others did not (such as Occidental Dissent, The Unz Review, Vox Popoli, and Chateau Heartiste).
Message boards like 4chan have become appropriated as online centers of a more amorphous Alt Right.
On many sites, Alt Right politics were presented in terms intended to be as inflammatory as possible, bucking a decades-old trend among U.S. Far Rightists to tone down their beliefs for mass consumption. Previously, antisemitic propagandist Willis Carto and former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke had made careers of dressing up fascism as populism or conservatism; now Alt Rightists confidently derided antifascism in the way 1960s radicals had derided anticommunism: We might not all be proper fascists, The Right Stuff columnist Lawrence Murray wrote in 2015, but were all a little fash whether we want to be or not. Were fashy goyswe think a lot of nasty thoughts that keep leftists up at night during their struggle sessions. Might as well embrace it17
The Alt Rights rapid growth partly reflected trends in internet culture, where anonymity and the lack of face-to-face contact have fostered widespread use of insults, bullying, and supremacist speech. More immediately, it reflected recent political developments, such as a backlash against the Black Lives Matter movement and, above all, Donald Trumps presidential candidacy. A majority of Alt Rightists supported Trumps campaign because of his anti-immigrant proposals; defamatory rhetoric against Mexicans, Muslims, women, and others; and his clashes with mainstream conservatives and the Republican Party establishment.
The original AlternativeRight.com magazine helped set the parameters of Alt Right White nationalism. In Why an Alternative Right is Necessary, published in 2010 soon after the magazine was launched, columnist Richard Hoste offered a paleocon-style criticism of the War on Terror and mainstream conservatives, coupled with a blunt new emphasis on race:
One would think that the odds of a major terrorist attack happening would depend on how many Muslims are allowed to live in the United States. Reducing Islamic immigration in the name of fighting terror would receive widespread public support, be completely practical in a way installing a puppet regime in Afghanistan wouldnt, and not lead us to kill or torture anybody. The idea that nothing must be done to stop the March Of Diversity is so entrenched in the minds of those considered of the Right that they will defend America policing the entire planet, torture, indefinite detentions, and a nation on permanent war footing but wont mention immigration restriction or racial profiling.
Weve known for a while through neuroscience and cross-adoption studiesif common sense wasnt enoughthat individuals differ in their inherent capabilities. The races do, too, with whites and Asians on the top and blacks at the bottom. The Alternative Right takes it for granted that equality of opportunity means inequality of results for various classes, races, and the two sexes. Without ignoring the importance of culture, we see Western civilization as a unique product of the European gene pool.18
A few months later, Greg Johnson at Counter-Currents Publishing declared that:
The survival of whites in North America and around the world is threatened by a host of bad ideas and policies: egalitarianism, the denial of biological race and sex differences, feminism, emasculation, racial altruism, ethnomasochism and xenophilia, multiculturalism, liberalism, capitalism, non-white immigration, individualism, consumerism, materialism, hedonism, anti-natalism, etc.
He also warned that White people would not survive unless they work to reduce Jewish power and influence and regain political control over a viable national homeland or homelands.19
In 2016, following the Alternative Rights rapid growth, Lawrence Murray in The Right Stuff proposed a summary of the movements big tent philosophy: inequality of both individuals and populations is a fact of life; races and their national subdivisions exist and compete for resources, land and influence; White people are being suppressed and must be allowed to take their own side; men and women have separate roles and heterosexual monogamy is crucial for racial survival; the franchise should be limited because universal democracy gives power to the worst and shackles the fittest; and Jewish elites are opposed to our entire program.20Alfred W. Clark in Radix offered a slightly different summary. In his view, Alt Rightists recognize human biodiversity; reject universalism; want to reverse Third World immigration into the West; are skeptical of free trade and free market ideology; oppose mainstream Christianity from a variety of religious viewpoints (traditionalist Christian, neo-pagan, atheist, and agnostic); and often (but not always) support Donald Trump. Unlike Murray, Clark noted that Alt Rightists disagree about the Jewish question, but generally agree that Jews have disproportionately been involved in starting left-wing movements of the last 150 years.21
Alt Rightists have promoted these ideas in different ways. Some have used moderate-sounding intellectual tones, often borrowed from the European New Rights euphemistic language about respecting difference and protecting biocultural diversity. For example, the National Policy Institute has promoted identitarianism, a concept that was developed by the French New Right and popularized by the French group Bloc Identitaire. In 2015, Richard Spencer introduced an NPI essay contest for young writers on the theme, Why Im An Identitarian:
Identitarianism eschews nationalist chauvinism, as well as the meaningless, petty nationalism that is tolerated, even encouraged, by the current world system. That said, Identitarianism is itself not a universal value system, like Leftism, monotheism, and most contemporary versions of conservatism. To the contrary, Identitarianism is fundamentally about difference, about culture as an expression of a certain people at a certain time. Identitarianism acknowledges the incommensurable nature of different peoples and culturesand thus looks forward to a world of true diversity and multiculturalism.22
Very different versions of Alt Right politics are available elsewhere. The Right Stuff website uses a mocking, ironic tone, with rotating tag lines such as Your rational world is a circle jerk; Non-aggression is the triumph of weakness; Democracy is an interracial porno; Obedience to lawful authority is the foundation of manly character; and Life isnt fair. Sucks for you, but I dont care. An article by Darth Stirner, titled Fascist Libertarianism: For a Better World, further illustrated this style:
Dear libertarian, take the rose colored glasses of racial egalitarianism off. Look around and see that other races dont even disguise their hatred of you. Even though you dont think in terms of race, rest assured that they do. Humanity is composed of a series of racial corporations. They stick together, and if we dont Western civilization is doomed.
Progressives, communists, and degenerates of various stripes will need to be internedat least during the transition period. Terrorism and guerrilla warfare can be prevented with this measure. In the instance of a coup dtat it would be reasonable to detain every person who might conceivably be an enemy of the right-wing revolution. Rather than starving or torturing them they should be treated well with the highest standard of living reasonably possible. Most of them will simply be held until the war is over and the winner is clear. This is actually much more humane than allowing a hotly contested civil war to occur.23
The Right Stuff doesnt just offer quasi-irony, however, but also naked bigotry, as summarized by Anti-Fascist News:
Anti-Fascist News argues that different branches of the Alternative Right use different language to appeal to different target audiences. The Right Stuff tries to mimic the aggression and reactionary insults of right-wing talk radio like Rush Limbaugh, while Radix would love to look a lot more like that trendy Critical Theory journal young grad students are clamoring to be published in.25This is more division of labor than factional conflict, as a number of Alt Right intellectual figures have appeared on The Right Stuff podcasts, for example.
Stylistic differences aside, though, Alt Rightists have also disagreed about substantive issues. One of the biggest points of contention has been whether White nationalists should work with Jews, or at least some Jews. Anti-Jewish bigotry and scapegoating have been prevalent across most of the movement, but with important variations and exceptions. For the minority of Alt Rightists who identify with neonazism, such as Andrew Anglin of the Daily Stormer, uncompromising antisemitism is the overriding core principle.26And for many others, Jews are a major existential threat. To The Right Stuff blogger Auschwitz Soccer Ref, Jews as a group have engaged in 2,000 years of non-stop treachery and backstabbing and are remorseless enemies who seek the destruction of the people they hate, which is us. As a result, anyone who self-identifies as a Jew or anyone who makes excuses for a continued Jewish presence in White homelands should be unapologetically excluded from this movement, and none of these people should ever be allowed to speak at alt right conferences no matter how pro-White they may seem.27
American Renaissance is a monthly online magazine considered widely to be a White supremacist publication.
Not all Alt Rightists agree. American Renaissance, one of the movements central institutions, pioneered a version of White nationalism that avoided antisemitism. Besides publishing Jewish authors, both Jews and antisemites have been welcome at AmRen events as long as they set aside their disagreements.28Richard Spencer, too, repeatedly welcomed Jewish writers and cited them as useful contributors to the movement.
Even Alt Rightists who view Jews as dangerous outsiders dont necessarily regard them as the embodiment of pure evil. Serbian-American author Srdja Trifkovic wrote that the Jews had disproportionately contributed to the erosion of European civilization. Nevertheless, he hoped for an alliance with Jews against their common enemy, the brown, black, and yellow multitudes whose eventual attacks on the Jewish community might easily exceed in ferocity and magnitude the events of 1942-45.29Similarly, Counter-Currents writer M.K. Lane described Jews as a self-segregating and culturally arrogant people, a people who refuse to assimilate [and] who even when they do ostensibly assimilate, cause even greater harm than they did before desegregating. Yet Lane also hoped that a significant number of Jews could be won over to ally with White nationalism since, if we go down, they go down. Of course, in such an alliance White nationalists must not allow ourselves to become stooges. Jews living in our midst could either be allowed to live in their own communities, assimilate in small numbers, or move to Israel. Anything as long as they refrain from subverting our societies30
While White nationalism has been central to the Alternative Right, patriarchal politics have played an increasingly importantand increasingly poisonousrole in the movement. The original AlternativeRight.com featured a range of views on gender, from patriarchal traditionalism to a kind of quasi-feminism. A number of male contributors expressed concern that their branch of the Right had attracted few women. Publisher and novelist Alex Kurtagic argued in 2011 that women and men had distinct natural roles, but that the White nationalist movement needed both:
Women are far more than nurturers: they are especially proficient at networking, community building, consensus building, multi-tasking, and moral and logistical support provision. These are all essential in any movement involving community outreach and where user-friendly, low-key, non-threatening forms of recruitment are advisable. Women can create a much broader comfort zone around hardcore political activism through organising a wide range of community, human, and support-oriented activities31
Andrew Yeoman of Bay Area National Anarchists argued more pointedly that sexist behavior by male Alt Rightists was driving women away:
Many women wont associate with our ideas. Why is this important? Because it leaves half our people out of the struggle. The women that do stick around have to deal with a constant litany of abuse and frequent courtship invitations from unwanted suitors. nothing says youre not important to us [more] than sexualizing women in the movement. Dont tell me thats not an issue. Ive seen it happen in all kinds of radical circles, and ours is the worst for it.32
Logo for the White nationalist discussion site, Stormfront
As the Alternative Right has grown, it has abandoned this kind of self-criticism and debate about gender politics. Going beyond traditionalist claims about the sanctity of the family and natural gender roles, Alt Rightists have embraced an intensely misogynistic ideology, portraying women as irrational, vindictive creatures who need and want men to rule over them and who should be stripped of any political role.33The Traditionalist Youth Network claims that womens biological drives are contrary to the best interests of civilization and the past century or so of womens enfranchisement and liberation has been detrimental to societal stability. But the group frames this position as relatively moderate because, unlike some rightists, they dont believe that women are central to the destruction of Western Civilizationthey are simply being manipulated by the Jews.34The Daily Stormer has banned female contributors and called for limiting womens roles in the movement, sparking criticism from women on the more old school White nationalist discussion site Stormfront. Far-right blogger Matt Forney asserts that Trying to appeal to women is an exercise in pointlessness. its not that women should be unwelcome [in the Alt Right], its that theyre unimportant.35
A big reason for this shift toward hardline woman-hating is that the Alt Right has become closely intertwined with the so-called manophere, an online antifeminist male subculture that has grown rapidly in recent years, largely outside traditional right-wing networks. The manosphere includes various overlapping circles, such as Mens Rights Activists (MRAs), who argue that the legal system and media unfairly discriminate against men; Pickup Artists (PUAs), who help men learn how to manipulate women into having sex with them; Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOWs), who protest womens supposed dominance by avoiding relationships with them; and others.36
Manospherians have emphasized male victimhoodthe false belief that men in U.S. society are oppressed or disempowered by feminism or by women in general. This echoes the concept of reverse racism, the idea that White Americans face unfair discrimination, which White nationalists have promoted since the 1970s.
Daryush Valizadeh writes at the PUA site, Return of Kings.
Some manospherians are family-centered traditionalists while others celebrate a more predatory sexuality. Daryush Valizadeh, who writes at the PUA site Return of Kings under the name Roosh V, embodies this tension. He argues that the nuclear family with one father and one mother is the healthiest unit for raising children, and socialism is damaging because it makes women dependent on the government and discourages them from using their feminine gifts to land a husband. Yet Valizadeh has also written 10 how-to books for male sex tourists with titles such as Bang Ukraine and Bang Iceland. Valizadeh doesnt dwell on his own glaring inconsistency, but does suggest in his article, What is Neomasculinity?, that the dismantling of patriarchal rules has forced men to pursue game as a defensive strategy to hopefully land some semblance of a normal relationship.37
Like the Alt Right, manosphere discourse ranges from intellectual arguments to raw invective, although the line between them is often blurred. Paul Elams A Voice for Men, founded in 2009, became one of the manospheres most influential websites with intentionally provocative articles arguing, for example, that the legal system was so heavily stacked against men that rape trial jurors should vote to acquit even in the face of overwhelming evidence that the charges are true.38Elam also satirically declared October Bash a Violent Bitch Month, urging men to fight back against physically abusive female partners. He offered satire such as:
I dont mean subdue them, or deliver an open handed pop on the face to get them to settle down. I mean literally to grab them by the hair and smack their face against the wall till the smugness of beating on someone because you know they wont fight back drains from their nose with a few million red corpuscles.39
Manospherians also tend to promote homophobia and transphobia, which is consistent with their efforts to re-impose rigid gender roles and identities. At Return of Kings, Valizadeh has denounced the legalization of same-sex marriage as one phase of a degenerate march to persecute heterosexuals, both legally and socially, while acclimating young children to the homosexual lifestyle.40On the same website, Matt Forney warned that trans women who have sex with cis men might be guilty of rape by fraud.41At the same time, some manosphere sites have sought to reach out to gay men. A Voice for Men published a series of articles by writer Matthew Lye that were later collected into the e-book The New Gay Liberation: Escaping the Fag End of Feminism, which Paul Elam described as a scorching indictment of feminist hatred of all things male.42
One of the events that brought the manosphere to public attention was the Gamergate controversy. Starting in 2014, a number of women who worked inor were critical of sexism inthe video game industry were subjected to large-scale campaigns of harassment, coordinated partly with the #Gamergate Twitter hashtag. Supporters of Gamergate claimed that that campaign was a defense of free speech and journalistic ethics and against political correctness, but it included streams of misogynistic abuse, rape and death threats, as well as doxxing (public releases of personal information), which caused several women to leave their homes out of fear for their physical safety.43The Gamergate campaign took the pervasive, systematic pattern of threats and abuse that has been long used to silence women on the internet, and sharpened it into a focused weapon of attack.44Gamergate, in turn, strongly influenced the Alt Rights own online activism, as I discuss below.
There is significant overlap between the manosphere and the Alt Right. Both are heavily active on discussion websites such as 4chan, 8chan, and Reddit, and a number of prominent Alt Rightistssuch as Forney, Theodore Beale (pseudonym: Vox Day), James Weidmann (Roissy), and Andrew Auernheimer (weev)have also been active in the manosphere. Many other Alt Rightists have absorbed and promoted manosphere versions of gender ideology.
Daryush Roosh Valizadeh in Warsaw, Poland in 2014. (Photo: Bartek Kucharczyk via Wiki Commons).
But there have also been tensions between the two rightist movements. In 2015, Valizadeh (Roosh V) began to build a connection with the Alternative Right, attending an NPI conference and quoting extensively from antisemite Kevin MacDonald in a lengthy post about The Damaging Effects of Jewish Intellectualism And Activism On Western Culture.45Some Alt Rightists responded favorably. One blogger commented that the manosphere was not as stigmatized as White nationalism and the Alt Right, and suggested hopefully that, since the Manosphere has a very broad appeal it is possible that bloggers such as Roosh and Dalrock [a Christian manospherian] might serve as a stepping stone to guide formerly apathetic men towards the Alternative Right.46Matt Parrott of the Traditionalist Youth Network praised Valizadehs What is Neomasculinity? as a masterful synthesis of human biodiversity knowledge, radical traditionalist principle, and pragmatic modern dating experience.47
But the relationship soured quickly, largely because Valizadeh is Persian American. Although Andrew Anglin of The Daily Stormer tweeted that Valizadeh was a civilized and honorable man,48many White nationalists denounced him as non White and an enemy. One tweeted that he was a greasy Iranian who goes to Europe to defile white women and write books about it.49After studying Valizadehs accounts of his own sex tourism, Counter-Currents Publishing editor-in-chief Greg Johnson concluded that Roosh is either a rapist or a fraud and it is not just feminist hysteria to describe Roosh as a rape advocate. More broadly, Johnson wrote, for all its benefits the manosphere morally corrupts men. It does not promote the resurgence of traditional and biologically based sexual norms.50Valizadeh responded by blogging The Alt Right Is Worse Than Feminism in Attempting to Control Male Sexual Behavior.51
Jack Donovan, an early contributor to AlternativeRight.com who has stayed active in the Alt Right as it has grown, offers a related but distinct version of male supremacist ideology. In a series of books and articles over the past decade, Donovan has advocated a system of patriarchy based on tribal comradeship among male warriors. Drawing on evolutionary psychology, he argues that in the past men have mostly organized themselves into small, close-knit gangs, which fostered true masculinity and mens natural dominance over women. Yet modern globalist civilization requires the abandonment of human scale identity groups for one world tribe. A combination of feminists, elite bureaucrats, and wealthy men, he writes, has promoted male passivity and put women in a dominant role.52
Jack Donovan has advocated a system of patriarchy based on tribal comradeship among male warriors. (photo: Zachary O. Ray via Wiki Commons).
Unlike Christian rightists, who argue that feminism misleads women into betraying their true interests, Donovan sees feminism as an expression of womens basic nature, which is to calm men down and enlist their help at home, raising children, and fixing up the grass hut. Today, he argues, feminists supposed alliance with globalist elites reflects this: Women are better suited to and better served by the globalism and consumerism of modern democracies that promote security, no-strings attached sex and shopping.53
Donovans social and political ideal is a latter-day tribal order that he calls The Brotherhood, in which all men would affirm their sacred loyalty to each other against the outside world. A mans position would be based on hierarchy through meritocracy, not inherited wealth or status. All men would be expected to train and serve as warriors, and only warriorsmeaning no womenwould have a political voice. In this version of patriarchal ideology, unlike the Christian Right version, male comradeship is central and the family is entirely peripheral. An example of the kind of community Donovan envisions is the Odinist group Wolves of Vinland, which Donovan joined after visiting their off-the-grid community in rural Virginia in 2014. The Wolves use group rituals (including animal sacrifice) and hold fights between members to test their masculinity.54The Wolves of Vinland have also been praised by White nationalist groups such as Counter-Currents Publishing, and one of their members has been imprisoned for attempting to burn down a Black church in Virginia.55
Donovan has written that he is sympathetic to White nationalist aims such as encouraging racial separatism and defending European Americans against the deeply entrenched anti-white bias of multiculturalist orthodoxies. White nationalism dovetails with his beliefs that all humans are tribal creatures and human equality is an illusion. But in contrast to most Alt Rightists, race is not Donovans main focus or concern. My work is about men. Its about understanding masculinity and the plight of men in the modern world. Its about what all men have in common. His Brotherhood ideal is not culturally specific and hes happy to see men of other cultures pursue similar aims. For instance, I am not a Native American, but I have been in contact with a Native American activist who read The Way of Men and contacted me to tell me about his brotherhood. I could never belong to that tribe, but I wish him great success in his efforts to promote virility among his tribesmen.57
Donovan also echoes the 1909 Futurist Manifesto, a document that prefigured Italian Fascism. (Image: Wiki Commons)
There are strong resonances between Donovans ideas and early fascisms violent male camaraderie, which took the intense, trauma-laced bonds that World War I veterans had formed in the trenches and transferred them into street-fighting formations such as the Italian squadristi and German storm troopers. Donovan also echoes the 1909 Futurist Manifesto, a document that prefigured Italian Fascism with statements such as We want to glorify warthe only cure for the worldmilitarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of the anarchists, the beautiful ideas which kill, and contempt for woman.58Thus its not surprising he has embraced the term anarcho-fascism, referring to a unified male collective bound together by a red ribbon of blood.59
In the Alternative Right and among rightists in general, the most controversial part of Donovans ideology is that he advocates and practices androphilia, by which he means love or sex between masculine men. Donovan doesnt call himself gay, rejects gay culture as effeminate, and justifies homophobia as a defense of masculinity rooted in the male gangs collective survival needs. His version of homosexuality is a consummation of the priority that men in his ideal gang place on each other. As he has commented, When you get right down to it, when it comes to sex, homos are just men without women getting in the way.60Many Alternative Rightists consider homosexuality in any form to be immoral and a threat to racial survival, and Donovan has been vilified on many Alt Right sites for his sexuality, yet his work has also won widespread support within the movement. Anti-Fascist News has noted a broader trend among many White nationalists to include openly homosexual writers (such as James OMeara) and musicians (such as Death in June leader Douglas Pearce), while continuing to derogate gay culture.61
Like many far-right currents in the United States, the Alt Right offers a vision of the state that is both authoritarian and decentralist. Alt Rightists uphold classical fascisms elitist and anti-democratic views on how society should be governed, and as the movement has grown it has increasingly applauded dictatorial figures such as Chiles Augusto Pinochet.62At the same time, the Alt Right goal of breaking up the United States into ethnically separate polities is inherently decentralist, and is rooted in both the European New Rights vision of replacing nation-states with a federated empire and paleoconservatisms traditional hostility to big government. The authoritarian/decentralist blend has been bolstered by two other political currents that have influenced the Alt Right: right-wing anarchism and neoreaction.
As part of its project to bring together a range of dissident right-wing voices, AlternativeRight.com published articles by self-identified anarchists Andrew Yeoman of Bay Area National Anarchists (BANA) and Keith Preston of the website Attack the System (ATS). National-Anarchism, which advocates a decentralized system of tribal enclaves, was initiated in the 1990s by Troy Southgate, a veteran of British neonazism.63Over the following years, National-Anarchist groups formed in a number of countries across Europe, the Americas, and Australia/New Zealand. The first U.S. affiliate, BANA, began in 2007, and Southgate formally launched the National-Anarchist Movement (N-AM) in 2010.64
National-Anarchism is a White nationalist ideology. Like Identitarianism, it draws heavily on the ENR doctrine that ethnic and racial separatism is needed to defend so-called biocultural diversity. The N-AM Manifesto declares that race categories are basic biological facts and some people are innately superior to others. National-Anarchists also repeat classic antisemitic conspiracy theories and, like many neonazis, promote neopaganism and closeness to nature.65But National-Anarchists reject classical fascism for its emphasis on strong nation-states, centralized dictatorship, and collaboration with big business. Instead, they call for breaking up society into self-governing tribal communities, so that different cultures, beliefs, and practices can co-exist side by side.66
National-Anarchists have not had a significant presence in the Alternative Right since BANA disbanded in 2011, but self-described anarcho-pluralist Keith Preston has continued to participate in Alt Right forums, for example speaking at National Policy Institute conferences and on The Right Stuff podcasts. Preston is a former left-wing anarchist who moved to the Right in the 1990s and then founded the group American Revolutionary Vanguard, which is better known today by the name of its website, Attack the System.67ATS brings together a number of right-wing currents, including National-Anarchist, libertarian, White nationalist, Duginist, and others, among it editors and contributors, but Prestons own ideology is distinct from all of these.68
Like the National-Anarchists, Preston advocates a decentralized, diverse network of self-governing communities, while rejecting left-wing anarchisms commitment to dismantle social hierarchy and oppression. Authoritarian and supremacist systems would be fully compatible with the anarcho-pluralist model, as long as they operated on a small scale. But unlike National-Anarchists, Preston frames his decentralist ideal in terms of individual free choice rather than tribalism, and he is not a White nationalist.69Although Preston has echoed some racist ideas such as the claim that non-European immigrants threaten to destroy Western civilization, his underlying philosophy is based not on race but rather a generic, Nietzschean elitism that is not ethnically specific.70While Preston himself is White, several of his closest associates in the Attack the System inner circle are people of color.
Preston has offered several reasons for his involvement in the Alternative Right. He sees the movement as an important counterweight to what he calls totalitarian humanism (supposedly state-enforced progressive values, i.e., political correctness), he regards the Alt Rights foreign policy non-interventionism and economic nationalism as superior to what the Republican or Democratic parties advocate, and he shares many Alt Rightists interest in earlier European critics of liberal capitalism and mass democracy,71meaning people like Julius Evola, Carl Schmitt, and Ernst Jnger. In addition, the Alt Right allows Preston to avoid political isolation, as his efforts to reach out to left-wing anarchists have been almost completely rejected.
Preston is a respected figure within the Alternative Right, and his anti-statist vision appeals to some White nationalists in the movement. For example, Counter-Currents author Francisco Albanese has argued that it provides the best and most viable option for the ethnic and racial survival of Whites in regions where they form a minority of the population. In addition, it is only outside the state that whites can come to understand the true essence of community and construction of a common destiny.72At the same time, anarcho-pluralism offers potential common ground between White nationalists and other critics of the existing order, such as anarcho-capitalists and other market anarchists, whose ideas are regularly featured on Attack the System, as well as the libertarian theocrats of the Christian Reconstructionist movement.73
Prestons approach to political strategy takes this bridge-building further. Echoing Third Position fascists, who denounce both communism and capitalism, Preston and ATS call for a broad revolutionary alliance of all those who want to destroy U.S. imperialism and the federal government. Within U.S. borders, this would involve a pan-secessionist strategy uniting groups across the political spectrum that want to carve out self-governing enclaves free of federal government control.74As a step in this direction, ATS supported a series of North American secessionist conventions, which brought together representatives of the neo-Confederate group League of the South, the Reconstructionist-influenced Christian Exodus, the libertarian Free State Project, advocates of Hawaiian independence, the left-leaning Second Vermont Republic, and others.75
Neoreaction is another dissident right-wing current with a vision of small-scale authoritarianism that has emerged online in the past decade, which overlaps with and has influenced the Alternative Right. Like the Alt Right and much of the manosphere, neoreaction (often abbreviated as NRx, and also known as Dark Enlightenment) is a loosely unified school of thought that rejects egalitarianism in principle, argues that differences in human intelligence and ability are mainly genetic, and believes that cultural and political elites wrongfully limit the range of acceptable discourse. Blogger Curtis Yarvin (writing under the pseudonym Mencius Moldbug) first articulated neoreactionary ideology in 2007, but many other writers have contributed to it. Neoreaction emphasizes order and restoring the social stability that supposedly prevailed before the French Revolution, along with technocratic and futurist concerns such as transhumanism, a movement that hopes to radically improve human beings through technology. NRx theorist Nick Land is a leading advocate of accelerationism, which in his version sees global capitalism driving ever-faster technological change, to the point that artificial intelligence essentially replaces human beings. One critic wrote that neoreaction combines all of the awful things you always suspected about libertarianism with odds and ends from PUA culture, Victorian Social Darwinism, and an only semi-ironic attachment to absolutism. Insofar as neoreactionaries have a political project, its to dissolve the United States into competing authoritarian seasteads on the model of Singapore76
PayPal co-founder and Trump supporter Peter Thiel. (Photo by JD Lasica via Flickr.)
Neoreactionaries, who are known for their arcane, verbose theoretical monologues, appear to be mostly young, computer-oriented men, and their ideas have spread partly through the tech startup scene. PayPal co-founder and Trump supporter Peter Thiel has voiced some neoreactionary-sounding ideas. In 2009, for example, he declared, I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible and the vast increase in welfare beneficiaries and the extension of the franchise to womenhave rendered the notion of capitalist democracy into an oxymoron.77Both Yarvin and fellow NRxer Michael Anissimov have worked for companies backed by Thiel.78This doesnt necessarily mean that Thiel is intentionally bankrolling the neoreactionary movement per se, but it points to resonances between that movement and Silicon Valleys larger techno-libertarian discourse.
At its heart, neoreaction is a critique of the entire liberal, politically-correct orthodoxy, commented WhiteDeerGrotto on the NRx blog Habitable Worlds. The Cathedral, a term coined by Moldbug, is a description of the institutions and enforcement mechanisms used to propagate and maintain this orthodoxya power center that consists of Ivy League and other elite universities, The New York Times, and some civil servants. The politically-correct propagandists assert that humans are essentially interchangeable, regardless of culture or genetics, and that some form of multicultural social-welfare democracy is the ideal, final political state for all of humanity. Neoreaction says no. The sexes are biologically distinct, genetics matter, and democracy is deeply flawed and fundamentally unstable.79
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