New York Times | London Gallery LD50's Alt-Right Show Should Be Its Last, Critics Say New York Times As the British Parliament debated the proposed visit of President Trump to Britain, protesters gathered outside. A post-Trump election exhibition at the LD50 ... |
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London Gallery LD50's Alt-Right Show Should Be Its Last, Critics Say - New York Times
CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference, an annual prom of sorts for Americas right wing, kicked off Thursday in a conference center just south of Washington D.C. Hundreds have gathered tolisten to speakers like Ted Cruz, Kellyanne Conway, Mike Pence and the president himself, along with dozens of others.
One of the first wasDan Schneider, the executive director of the American Conservative Union, which hosts the event. Unlike the other speakers, Schneider wasnt there to talk about the future of conservatism, he was there to distance his movementfrom the alt-right, the anti-Semitic, anti-feminist, and racist arm of conservatism that slithered its way into the mainstream during the 2016 presidential election.
In an address Thursday morning titled The Alt Right Aint Right At All, Schneider attempted to claim that the alt-right isnt conservative at all rather, a ruse by liberals to hijack a wing of the right-wing movement under the guise of conservatism.
There is a sinister organ trying to worm its way into our ranks and we must not be duped,Schneider told the crowd, as many poured out of the ballroom as if to not pick a side in the growing rift between the oft-blended political movements. He described the alt-right as garden-varietyleft-wing fascists and went on to describe members of movement in a way that some of the more fringe alt-righters describe themselves.
They are anti-Semites, he said. They are racists. They are sexists. They hate the Constitution they despise everything we believe in. They are not an extension of conservatism.
Just outside, in the lobby of the conference center, a man with a different perspective waited. White supremacist Richard Spencer the punchable face of the alt-right movement milled about, talking to press. He called the speech a pathetic attempt to cast his budding movement as liberal in any way.
[Schneider] denounced me in totally stupid ways, Spencer said, adding that the alt-rightwas always about a right-wing that was against the conservative movement.
The split between traditional conservatives and the alt-right and even those who buy into the alt-rights rhetoric about nationalism and identity but dont necessarily want to admit it is clear at CPAC; as I was talking with Spencer, a man who appeared to be in his early 20s walked up to him and asked for a photo. He then thanked him and said praise Pepe, a nod to a cartoon frog that has become the symbol of the alt-right. Another similarly aged man was overheard saying, If [Spencer] can piss off antifa hes OK by me, a reference to the growing number of left-wing anti-fascist activists like those who rioted in D.C. on inauguration day.
On the other side of the split, other conservatives are echoing Schneiders insistence that the alt-right is not conservatism. Just feet away from Spencer stood a group of men and women who were outraged that Spencer was even in the same hemisphere as conservatives, let alone at the same conference.
Its bullshit that they try to categorize him as [conservative], said Laura Lightstone, a Maryland conservative who wants nothing to do with people like Spencer and his cartoon frog. [The media] isgonna categorize us as being accepting of him being here[his beliefs are] not conservative. Theyre not Republicanhe doesnt represent Trump votersthe conservatives I know and live around down here, nobody believes in that shit.
To try and say the alt-right isnt a wing of conservatism today is a tall tale to tell, particularly given President Trumps choice of Steve Bannon as his chief adviser. Bannon is the former head of Breitbart News, which he described as the platform for the alt-right.' Bannon is also pegged to speak at CPAC on Thursday. Not to mention, alt-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, a now-former editor at Brietbart who was slated to speak at CPAC until video surfaced of him advocating for pedophilia.
Despite Schneiders and many other conservatives hopes of distancing themselves from Spencers explicitly racist alt right, Spencer and his cohort see opportunity, believing that Trump and his teamare more aligned with his movement than traditional conservatism.
The way to think about it is Donald Trump is stumbling towards a sort of nationalism a nationalist ideology, and in that way he has a connection with the alt-right,' Spencer said. He has a deeper connection with us that he has with conservativesbecause we are about the nation, too.
Of his conservative critics, Spencer said an old adage applies.
First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win, he said. I think right now theyre fighting us. The fact is they werent talking about the alt-right a year ago, or two years ago. They now feel the need to talk about us so theyre objectively fighting us.
A little while later, Spencer was escorted out of the hall by conference security.
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War Between Conservatives And 'Alt Right' Dominates CPAC - Vocativ
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Alt-right launches barbed personal attacks on Lily Allen - Newshub
Late the night before the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, Richard Spencer, the de facto leader of the white nationalist movement calling itself the Alt-Right, texts me to say he'll be there not to disrupt, he insists, but to ask questions after the "Anti-Alt-Right speeches on [the] main stage." The next day, at the Gaylord Convention Center just outside of Washington, D.C., there is no Q&A, but Spencer, who gleefully attracts a throng of reporters everywhere he goes, holds forth outside the hotel ballroom. Dan Schneider, the executive director of the American Conservative Union, which hosts the conference, has just decried the Alt-Right as a "sinister organization that is trying to worm its way into our ranks." Spencer denounces the speech as "stupid" and "pathetic."
Inside the ballroom, four Republican governors are speaking about how they are "reclaiming America's promise," something reporters might have covered in years past to glean glimmers of presidential ambitions. But Trump and his success at electrifying the Alt-Right has changed all that. Instead, dozens of reporters cluster around Spencer, who most recently made headlines for eliciting Nazi salutesat a conference he hosted in November, and becoming the butt of a meme about whether it is acceptable to punch Nazis.
Surrounded by media, Spencer persists for so long that organizers eject him from the conference. No matter: His mission is accomplished.
Schneider, rather than provoking a serious discussion of the conservative movement's relationship with the Alt-Right, has thrown up a straw man. The Alt-Right, he says (correctly) are "anti-Semites," "racists" and "sexists." But, he adds (incorrectly), they do not emerge out of conservatism's own trenches. Instead, he maintains, "they are garden variety left-wing fascists."
That is, as one of the morning's other speakers, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, has said, an "alternative fact." The origin story of the Alt-Rightis one of far-right, authoritarian white nationalists who broke with movement conservatism, and toiled in relative obscurity until Trump's campaign elevated them to the national stage.
Schneider insists to Rolling Stone that the term Alt-Right originated with "a Jewish man" who sought a break from George W. Bush's foreign policy, but that the racists have "wormed their way in, stolen the term intentionally so they could deceive people about who they are." (Schneider did not name the Jewish man, but Paul Gottfried, who is credited with coming up with the term "Alt-Right" with Spencer, claims that "America is no longer a republic or a liberal democracy," a view for which he "was banished from the mainstream of political discourse," according to a profile in Tablet.)
Spencer says the Alt-Right "was always about a right wing that was against the conservative movement, it was against George W. Bush in its origins." In other words, the Alt-Right's opposition to conservatism was not confined to foreign policy. Spencer mocks Schneider, derisively saying he is unaware that "garden variety left-wing fascists were so numerous," and insists that the ranks of the Alt-Right are. As if on cue, a CPAC attendee pops in to ask Spencer for selfie while saying, "Praise kek," the Alt-Right's homage to its "god" of "meme magic."
Like conservatives' baseless claims that protesters at marches or town halls are paid leftist protesters, Schneider's effort to depict the Alt-Right as a creature of the left is a denigration of anything that disrupts their mirage that Trumpism is a spectacularly successful restoration of America's greatness. But even attendees at CPAC see through Schneider's characterization. Nick Gricus, a student at DePaul University, calls it a "deflection mechanism." The Alt-Right, Gricus says, "is bigotry. That's not a partisan definition."
The dissonance between Schneider's speech and a series of events leading up to it show how his effort to peg the movement as left-wing is a sign of deep anxiety of how Trumpism, fueled by the Alt-Right, is altering conservatism, and how the movement may have lost control over defining itself. (Why else would the ACU have opened its conference with a series of speeches intended to explain what conservatism stands for?)
Last summer, Steve Bannon, the former Breitbart executive who is now chief strategist to Trump, boasted that his publicationis "the platform for the Alt-Right." Just days ago, the ACU was forced to disinvite Milo Yiannopoulos, a (now former) Breitbart editor with a long history of racism, sexism, Islamophobia and xenophobia. He was poised to be toasted at CPAC until an anonymous conservative group called the Reagan Battalion exposed radio interviews in which he praised pedophilia and the world finally discovered ACU's bridge too far. Although Yiannopoulos was ultimately shunned, Bannon is given the rock-star treatment in an interview with ACU Chairman Matt Schlapp, conducted on the main stage, and without a single mention of the Alt-Right.
Schneider has little to say about Bannon's characterization of Breitbart, saying only that the definition is "fuzzy" and he gave his speech so people could "have clarity on this." The Alt-Right, he adds, has "nothing to do with the American tradition" and is "inconsistent with the very idea of conservatism."
Yet the Alt-Right sees in Trump and Bannon signs that conservatism is being abandoned for nationalism. "Trump is stumbling toward a nationalist ideology," Spencer tells reporters. "In that way, he has a connection with the Alt-Right, he has a deeper connection with us than he has with conservatives." Bannon, too, while not Alt-Right, Spencer says, "seems to be open to other ideas besides just the conservative pabulum." He cites Bannon's own references to Alexandr Dugin, the far-right Russian writer, and the Italian fascist Julian Evola, both deeply influential to the Alt-Right.
Spencer also praises Bannon's deputy, Stephen Miller, whom he knew while they were both students at Duke, as someone who appears "very committed ... toward nationalism, and that we have a sovereign right to determine our future."
Bannon signals his and the Trump administration's break with movement conservatism in the interview with the ACU's Schlapp. "There's a new political order being formed out of this," he says. He repeatedly extols Trump's "economic nationalist agenda." The "center core of what we believe, that we are a nation with an economy, not an economy just in some global marketplace with open borders," says Bannon. "We are a nation with a culture and a reason for being," he adds, with words redolent of Spencer's self-described "identitarianism." Bannon pitches the CPAC crowd: "I think that's what unites us."
Regardless of whether they understand what the Alt-Right is, or how it is altering conservatism, Trump has already drawn new devotees to CPAC. Devon Hunter, a University of California-Merced student, sporting a Make America Great Again hat, says Trump made him more interested in the gathering. As for the Alt-Right, Hunter says its "a monster that the left points to and that the right doesn't want anything to do with."
Thomas Melvin, a retired school principal from Charleston, South Carolina, also has come to his first CPAC, though he had followed it on television in the past. He says Trump is the reason he's here. "People are happy because he's doing what he said he'd do," says Melvin. Even "Republicans who were against him are supporting him now," he says. "They know he's got a heart for America."
Watch Donald Trump's Speech at CPAC 2017.
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CPAC's Flirtation With the Alt-Right Is Turning Awkward - RollingStone.com
Steve Bannonwho may or may not be alt-right, depending on who you askwith Reince Priebus at CPAC on Thursday.
Alex Wong/Getty Images
Having it both ways: Michelle Goldberg reports on the odd hypocrisy of the Conservative Political Action Conference, the organizers of which are trying to simultaneously denounce and welcome the alt-right. A case in point: Kicking out punching victim Richard Spencer but giving Steve Bannon a prime speaking spot.
Star power: Willa Paskin examines the role of celebrities in an America thats governed by one. Some, like Katy Perry, are loudly straddling the line separating politics from entertainment, while others, such as Taylor Swift, are being deemed sympathizers for staying mum. In an era of unique polarization, stars have been weaponized by the right and left in a zero-sum game of embarrassment and consolation, Paskin observes.
No bogus data: At least for now. Jordan Weissmann debunks a Wall Street Journal scoop that warned that Trumps White House might be fiddling with U.S. trade figures for political gain.
Get out and see Get Out: Aisha Harris calls the new horror flick, helmed by comedian Jordan Peele, a classic, hitting that sweet spot between scary and hilarious, and laying bare the many layers of Americas historic treatment of the black body.
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The Angle: Who Likes the Alt-Right Edition - Slate Magazine