Muh White Genocide

This question was recently posed: "Is WHITE GENOCIDE Real? Who is behind it? Why are Whites shamed everywhere and portrayed as the evil people who should be to blame for everything?" [not my words]

It's not real. and being shamed and "blamed for everything" is not even remotely the same thing as genocide, even if that were happening. you guys are watering down the meaning of the word genocide just as the leftists are watering down the meaning of words like rape and racism. being shamed into feeling guilty about your history is not the same as mass execution. obviously! show me one instance of white people being rounded up and executed because of their skin color and I will listen to your concern... what's with you people, seriously! Trump is not organizing genocide of POC and nobody (neither the left, nor the Jews) is organizing white genocide. there is no genocide happening in the west... god damn!

While the South African Farm Attacks are, as of yet, a far cry from actual genocide, they are not a good sign nonetheless.   South Africa could well follow Zimbabwe into failed statedom if they carry on as they are.  Things are not getting better.  The ultimate regressive left movement, the Fallists, follow a doctrine much like that of the most fanatical black power movements in the US, but also have the demographic majority to make the threat they pose much more legitimate.  Things are not heading in a good direction down there. 

Other than that, I agree with the quoted paragraph.  The big deal with this whole white genocide narrative - declining birth rates - are universal occurrences in the developed world and are even affecting less developed regions.  While the Islamic world still has the highest birth rates on average overall, there's been decline there likewise.  Consider Iran, a country with an average birth rate of 6.5 children during the early part of Ayatollah Khomeini's reign, now sits with a fertility rate of 1.62. 

It's not restricted to Iran. The notion that Islamic birth rates are skyrocketing while western birth rates plummet is simply not true.  While their birth rates are still the highest by religion, Muslims are not immune to the demographic trends that affect the rest of the world.  They are supposedly going to sweep in and jihad us all to death once they gain the demographic advantage needed to do so. Not if their women learn how to read first, which is looking more and more likely. Birth rates boil down to female literacy and overall economic development, not conspiracies.

In particular, I find the idea that the Jews are behind white genocide to be patently absurd. In this narrative, the Jews apparently want their allies in the west to be overrun by the populations of their enemies in the middle east. What genius! Makes total sense! Yeah, sure ... Granted, Israel does not equal all Jews, but the idea that Jews would be conspiring to bring about the downfall of western liberal democracies in such a way when it would be so clearly harmful to the Jewish state simply defies logic and common sense.  All of this assumes that the Jews are actually capable of such a far reaching conspiracy in the first place, a highly dubious proposition.  While conspiracies can and do happen in history, theories positing so flawless execution of so vast and sinister a conspiracy with absolutely no leaks, miscalculations or screw ups should elicit skepticism from all who hear them.  

I don't agree with the "progressive" propensity to demonize white males and think it hurts the left in the long run. They're better off sticking to economic and political approaches to dealing with injustice, because identity politics alone aren't working out well. The fact that this is a far cry from genocide doesn't make it right. However, it IS a far cry from genocide. Ratched up rhetoric and hyperbole is the stuff of which the internet is made, however. Want to draw attention to yourself and your cause? Nothing makes headlines like overblown extremist nonsense.

No, "white genocide" is not real as in a planned out thing. 

Yes, whites are being attacked by European, American, and Canadian governments in favor of non whites. 

The context of this debate is often lost because Neo Nazi groups spin it in a way to frighten people in the wrong way. 

Yes, there absolutely is a self censoring double standard that white people in the west face... Yes, the media, government, and pop culture are allowing black and Islamic violence to continue. 

No. It is not a planned thing. It is the result of overly passive people who were not properly raised as humans and have a guilt complex.

I agree with this. Whites are not so much being "attacked" as being passed by in favor of cheaper foreign labor.  Some things are cheaper to import than they are to produce domestically, and surplus population is one of them.  Whether an immigrant is being brought in to take the white man's job, or the white man's job is being outsourced to the third world, the bottom line is, well, the bottom line.  The Fortune 500 guys making these decisions are themselves overwhelmingly white.  But the only color that's really important here is green. 

As for white guilt, it became the fashionable path of least resistance on college campuses that fell under the increasing domination of the various strands of leftist identity politics - feminist theory, critical race theory, queer theory and so on. It was suggested that these bodies of thought required protection from white male criticism as a prerequisite for marginalized people to develop an authentic sense of consciousness in a supposedly oppressive society wherein they faced discrimination. So it became taboo for white males to criticize them. The potential cost of resistance outweighed the potential benefits from the perspective of any individual contemplating it, so it just wasn't done.

The results were quite predictable. The women's studies and black studies classes (among others) became echo chambers wherein critical thought and reality testing took a back seat to in group solidarity. They could bash white males all they wanted, and could use some variant of the power-plus-prejudice argument to rationalize why it wasn't racism/sexism or whatever when they did it, and were largely supported in these rationalizations by academic institutions (at first) and later media and other institutions into which these indoctrinated students would graduate.  Now there's a very widespread de facto expectation that whites will not protest when they are bashed in ways that would be beyond the pale if it were another ethnic group.  It may well behoove the regressive left to rethink this, and I would urge them to do so if they do not wish to see white identity politics continue its ascent, but do not wait with baited breath for that to happen.  

The right wing response, quite predictably and typically, was to assume it was planned from the start this way by some sinister cabal. The Jews, the Democratic party, the persons of Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Cultural Marxism and so on. The ultimate motivation is much more a reflection of the anxieties of right wingers, typically involving the imposition of a socialist economy, inflating away the value of their gold stockpiles, taking their guns away, raising taxes of course, and for the fringe right, white genocide.  For the right wing, it always has to be a conspiracy hatched by some omnipotent and malevolent individual, hell-bent on ruining everything.

Alt Right vs. Alt Left

According to Alt-Right blogger Vox Day:

"The Alt Right believes Western civilization is the pinnacle of human achievement and supports its three foundational pillars: Christianity, the European nations, and the Graeco-Roman legacy."

If this is the Alternative Right, what then would be the Alternative Left?

The Alt Left believes Enlightenment civilization is the pinnacle of human achievement and supports its own foundational pillars.  Of these, the first is reason and rationality, the second is individual liberty and the third is the enlightenment era philosophical tradition.

This promises no panacea, and often results in tension between competing ideals of the good.  The libertarian/individualist traditions and the egalitarian/collectivist traditions - think Adam Smith vs. Karl Marx for example, are often at odds with one another.  But common to both in the end is a commitment to a rationalistic world view and a belief in concepts such as scientific and social progress, however imperfectly these are often expressed or implemented.

We are skeptical of religions as dogmatic systems and romanticism (in its original meaning) and are likewise skeptical of deterministic and closed systems of "rationalist" thought such as Marxism and Randian objectivism - though ideas may be taken from both if warranted.  The labels of reason and rationality cannot be applied to closed and non falsifiable systems of thought, and individual liberty is not upheld by anyone who would demand the sacrifice of human well being to a dogmatic insistence on either market or plan.

It would be easy and correct to respond that man does not live by reason alone.  Fundamental to man's nature is the need for meaning and purpose which often find themselves expressed in the forms of religion, identity, artistry, creativity and mythology.  It is because of and not in spite of these needs that enlightenment civilization must be upheld.  The absence of liberty and reason in theocratic and fascistic spaces testify to this.  It is for the sake of poetry and spirituality, of philosophy and the arts that the foundations of society should be reason, liberty and enlightenment philosophies.  It is not the case that the alt-left eschews questions of identity and spirituality in favor of a narrowly economic and rationalistic conception of man.  Rather that a rationalistic and free social order is an essential foundation for man to satisfy his spiritual and philosophical yearnings.

There are those who assert that the enlightenment has failed, and advance a "dark enlightenment" calling for a return to tradition, religion and monarchy.  This is fundamentally misguided in that the neo-reactionary critique accurately targets not modernism, but postmodernism - or at least the bastardized implementation thereof, and its own neoreaction is really just a different version of the same thing: the replacement of reason, liberty and philosophy with identitarian subjectivism, tribalism and fanaticism.

To these ends, it is clear that the majority of the self described Alt-Left adheres, above all, to the disentangling of romanticism from leftist thought, and it is this that satisfies our definition of both alternative and left wing.  To this end:

·      We favor the redressement of the extremes of economic inequality and corporate power, not the quasi-religious glorification of revolution for its own sake. 

·      We favor equality of right and - ideally - opportunity for women and people of color, not the quasi religious glorification of the foreign and the feminine. 

·      We favor conservationism and environmental sustainability, not the quasi religious glorification of “Mother Earth” or back-to-the-land utopianism.

·      An approach to reform that emphasises implementable policy, not some or another kind of change of consciousness.

Vox Day would see the unseating of a democratic polity marked – in the words of conservative luminary Russell Kirk - by division between “all those men and women who fancy that the temporal order is the only order, and that material needs are their only needs, and that they may do as they like with the human patrimony. On the other side of that line are all those people who recognize an enduring moral order in the universe, a constant human nature, and high duties toward the order spiritual and the order temporal” in favor of a polity marked by division between “men and women who believe that they are ultimately defined by their momentary opinions and those who believe they are ultimately defined by their genetic heritage.”

It should be apparent to any reasonable person that this is the forcing of a choice of evils by means of a false dilemma, and one not marked by greatly different choices in any event.  Ultimately, would not a “genetic heritage” be every bit as binding and deterministic in the long run as an “enduring moral order in the universe” and a “constant human nature” if not more so? 

The neo-reactionaries have observed the morass that the postmodern regressive left has inflicted on western civilization via its capture of academia and mass media, and advance in defiance to it merely a belief in either ethnic or racial nationalism, or a belief in a reassertion of religious traditionalism or fundamentalism.  Utterly absent is any rational analysis of either the institutional structure of the organs that propagate culture in the west, the philosophical underpinnings of regressive left thought nor the strategies employed by the regressive left to gain the influence that it has gained.  Meme warfare - essentially online culture jamming - is child’s play compared to hegemony at the governance level of the very internet platforms whereon the memes are hosted and spread.

Due to their mutual faith in identity above all, the failure of both the reactionary right and the regressive left alike should be a foregone conclusion.  But that failure threatens to be very costly, and presents a fundamental threat to the western tradition that neoreaction so claims to cherish and want to uphold but simultaneously undermines, and that the regressive left claims to despise and wish to supplant but simultaneously depends on.

Erroneous philosophical foundations will not produce polities that last.  The extent to which western civilization has declined is quite proportionate to the extent to which its academics and professors extol their “genetic heritage” in preference to their responsibility to understand art, science and philosophy in any sort of nuanced and sophisticated way.  One look at a black studies or a women’s studies department makes that perfectly clear, and a white male version of the same thing will only hasten this decline.

The great demarcation in modern politics is between men and women who uphold a humanistic vision of reason, liberty and philosophy, and those who uphold a tribalist vision of fanaticism, authoritarianism and dogma.  In the later camp, it does not fundamentally matter if one’s loyalty is to the white race or the black, heteronormative machismo or radical feminism, the Christian Church, Islamic Sharia or state Atheism, libertarian capitalism or socialist planning.  When tribe, dogma or ideology supersede humanity, reason and philosophy, the end is always a bloodbath and the beginning is denial that we have a choice between the first three and the second three options.

Neoreaction: Right Wing Postmodernism Pt 2

Suppose one had a world view characterized by Wikipedia's definition of postmodernism, "an attitude of skepticism, irony or distrust toward grand narratives, ideologies and various tenets of universalism, including objective notions of reason, human nature, social progress, moral universalism, absolute truth, and objective reality" and instead insisted on the primacy of identity and society in a manner that precluded a universal truth that would be binding on all of humanity.

Alongside this you cultivate an extreme distrust towards the social structures within which you lived.  You regard these structures as inherently dangerous to the identity group to which you belong, and indeed to all distinct identity groups to which people could belong, and this was a serious threat because on some level, you realize that identity is fundamental to human nature.  You live in a society that is inimical to your race, nationality, culture or religion and privilege other groups at the expense of yours.

However, you are nagged by doubts about whether these social structures could ever really be defeated, however much you might want them to be.  Perhaps the culture in which you live benefits you materially, or in some other way that you're unable or unwilling to be fully aware of, and this deters the kind of sustained pushback necessary to truly overthrow or separate from it.  Or maybe you can't shake the notion that these social structures are just too strong, and the group to which you belong has passed the point of no return in a terminal decline, and so you approach the whole issue with any of several reactions.  Grim resolve.  A smirk.  A kind of ironic nostalgia.

So as a result, the subgroup to which you belong is characterized by a considerable degree of angst and irony. The popular culture that appeals to you appropriates imagery (or sound or some other form of artistic or cultural creation) from the culture it despises and uses it in a deconstructive or even a subversive sort of way.  To the extent that your identity group becomes politically conscious, it adopts a counter-cultural and adversarial stance vis-a-vis the dominant culture, without pushing things to the point of outright revolt.  You do need the apparatus and institutions of the dominant culture to maintain your standard of living, after all, though you understandably loathe to admit it.

With me so far?  Good.  Now here's the curveball.  You don't live in something like a patriarchy or a colonialist society.  The angst you're experiencing is not as a result of the recent failure of socialism, that grand experiment in democratic egalitarianism, though to be honest it was known to be corrupt and ineffectual for quite some time now.  Indeed, very much the opposite.  Your angst is as a result of the apparent unravelling of western civilization, whether you frame it in racial (white) or religious (Christian) terms.

The society that oppresses you is not marked by an ideology of racial supremacy, but rather an ideology of forced racial integration and contrived egalitarianism.  All around you: in academia, in the media, from the ever swelling ranks of government bureaucracy, and no small number of your family, friends and acquaintances, is repeated ceaselessly an incessant cant stressing the evils of your racial and ethnic group.  Only that group is white and European in origin.  Your identity and culture are being invisibilized under an endless barrage of egalitarian dogmas and smug platitudes stressing culpability for the evils of history.

Like your relatives on the postmodernist left, you feel that the last few hundred years and its insistence on the primacy of reason, universality, the individual, science and progress is a massive sham, and that your race and culture have suffered for it.  But you can't really blame the postmodern devils like racism and patriarchy for the decline of your own race and identity, since racialism, heteronormativity and patriarchy are very much what you actually believe in, were you to be honest. So this kind of rules out postmodernism proper, given its egalitarian implications, though it shares many other elements with what you believe.

So we'll have to call the worldview you've embraced since being redpilled something else.  Maybe ... the dark enlightenment?  Sure.  Why not?  And speaking of red pills, has anyone who's actually taken one made note of Neo's copy of Simulacra and Simulation - a significant work of decidedly postmodern philosophy by Jean Baudrillard when we first meet him in The Matrix?  Isn't it kind of remarkable that one of the neoreactionary movement's most well known metaphors is taken from a film franchise that deals very heavily in postmodernist themes such as reality creation and the distinction between the symbolic and the real?

Truth is, the right wing has been flirting with postmodernism for a while now.  And why shouldn't they?  If all cultures are equal and there's no objective means of deeming one superior to another, than on what grounds can a left that makes multiculturalist claims object to the claims of racial distinctiveness and demands for cultural protectionism made by the white nationalists?  Indeed, it was postmodern cultural relativism that laid the groundwork for a reemergence of white identity politics in the post WW2, post civil rights era.

Likewise, postmodern critiques of the scientific method as being mere ideology or social construct, or at the very least impossible to disentangle from the language, culture, politics and power relations from which it emerges, opened the door for the emergence and legitimization of intelligent design as being the equal of evolution, for climate change denial or for the acceptance of just about any conspiracy theory you can name.  And through its embrace of postmodernism, the left gave up its moral and intellectual right to tell any of these people that they're objectively wrong, and they all damn well know it.  Just try telling conspiracy theorists, white nationalists and religious neoreactionaries they're wrong.  The tone of voice you'll hear when they call you a cuck or a degenerate will sound strangely like the tone you get out of feminists and SJWs when they dismissively insist that you're a white male.

We're all writing our own realities now.  The road to a presidential administration claiming the validity of "alternative facts" in the face of "fake news" can really be said to have begun in the English departments of the 1980s and 90s with claims of "the death of the author" and the "deconstruction" of the western canon to reveal its subtexts of power and privilege.  How appropriately ironic.  Those who once insisted that free and open discourse, especially across racial and gender lines, is really impossible since "all principles are prejudiced" and "all discourse is about power" now find themselves trembling at the ascension to the White House of a man who flaunted all norms of decency and civil exchange across racial and gender lines.  Again, appropriately ironic.

To say nothing of an internet culture that is saturated with mimetic imagery that is used to deconstruct their opponent's political positions - meme magic so called, the ironic appropriation of corporate icons - think McDonald's "Mac Tonight" - synthesised and sampled vaporwave music, cynical youth culture - think 4chan, and even a whole satirical, synthesized religion to rival that of the Spaghetti Monster or the Sub-Genius: the Cult of Kek and its use of Pepe the Frog as a postmodern avatar of an ancient egyptian chaos deity.

All the while, the progressives can only look on with the same kind of horror that traditionalist conservatives did when the western canon and the Christian faith were savaged in the halls of academia and in popular culture alike.  It would be meme magic that would finally deconstruct the deconstructionists.  And good on them.  Quite an impressive feat for weaponized autism.

But many of the outcomes of all of this haven't been so good.  The extremes of skepticism, balkanized identity, cynicism, bitterness and defeatism that were pioneered by the French postmodernists and have gradually migrated across the political spectrum over the last few decades have left the western world hopelessly divided and bereft of either the will or the know-how to sort itself back out again.  Though originally thought of as an antidote to a potential reemergence of totalitarian ideology, postmodernism may well have backfired, and itself become a vehicle for the reemergence of willfully anti-rational fanaticism and hatred, both on the right and on the left.

There are no doubt dark days ahead.

Read Neoreaction: Right Wing Postmodernism Pt 1.

Neoreaction: Right Wing Postmodernism Pt 1

This is not an Article on Postmodernism

The alt-right crops up frequently in social media.  When Hillary Clinton cast the alt-right as a boogeyman in contrast to her own 2016 election campaign, this was its appropriately ironic break into the political mainstream.  I say appropriately ironic because the true nature of the alt-right has been obscured by much of the media attention that's been paid to it.

The alt-right is not chiefly about white nationalism.  White nationalism is about white nationalism.  Not all WNs are alt-right, and more traditional, orthodox neo-nazis tend not to like the alt-right.   While there is plenty of racism on the alt-right, that's not its defining characteristic.  In this two part series, I attempt to explain what I think postmodernism is and the effects it has on society, and then assert that what really defines the alt-right is that it represents the right wing's embrace of postmodernism.

Postmodernism is a slippery concept to pin down.  In spite of this, it comes in for a lot of criticism and is often scapegoated for western civilization's going in the wrong direction.  Wikipedia describes postmodernism as follows:

"While encompassing a broad range of ideas, postmodernism is typically defined by an attitude of skepticism, irony or distrust toward grand narratives, ideologies and various tenets of universalism, including objective notions of reason, human nature, social progress, moral universalism, absolute truth, and objective reality. Instead, it asserts to varying degrees that claims to knowledge and truth are products of social, historical or political discourses or interpretations, and are therefore contextual or socially constructed. Accordingly, postmodern thought is broadly characterized by tendencies to epistemological and moral relativism, pluralism, irreverence and self-referentiality."

This page offers some additional insights:

Postmodernism is "post" because it is denies the existence of any ultimate principles, and it lacks the optimism of there being a scientific, philosophical, or religious truth which will explain everything for everybody - a characteristic of the so-called "modern" mind. 

A common denominator in many descriptions of postmodernism is a loss of faith in the project of the enlightenment and a propensity towards radical forms of cultural relativism.  Other features commonly associated with postmodernism include:

• A number of French philosophers, including Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, Jean Francois Lyotard and Jean Baudrillard, among others.  
• Rejection of metanarratives, which are seen as all encompassing truths universally applicable to the whole of the human race. 
• Poststructuralism, a rejection of a model of understanding human culture by way of its relationship to a larger, overarching system or structure. 
• Deconstruction, a means of studying literature that "that questions all traditional assumptions about the ability of language to represent reality and emphasizes that a text has no stable reference or identification because words essentially only refer to other words and therefore a reader must approach a text by eliminating any metaphysical or ethnocentric assumptions through an active role of defining meaning, sometimes by a reliance on new word construction, etymology, puns, and other word play."
• Postmodernism became increasingly prominent in academia after the Second World War, alongside the somewhat related concept of critical theory, associated with the Frankfurt School.  Postmodernism's skepticism towards enlightenment ideas dovetailed with critical theory's mounting assertions that the Marxist critique of capitalism was merely the tip of the iceberg, and atrocities ranging from colonialism to the world wars and the holocaust suggested that there was something inherently wicked about western civilization itself.  
• Concepts such as cultural hegemony, and mixtures of Freudian concepts with critiques of political economy to describe methods by which marginalized and oppressed peoples internalize their oppression.
• Orthodox Marxism, and especially Marxist-Leninism, was seen as more part of the problem than part of the solution, as the revelations of atrocities inside the USSR came out.  Furthermore, the working classes in the capitalist world had no real interest in overthrowing capitalism, as Marx suggested they should have.  Rather, their aims were simply to have sufficient income and leisure with which to enjoy the products and services provided under capitalism.  Worse still, capitalism was proving superior to Soviet socialism in terms of actually delivering the goods and providing a material standard of living. For most people in the 1st world, leastwise.
• Given the working class's acceptance of capitalism based on rising living standards, critiques of capitalism emerged that tended to more strongly emphasize social alienation and commodity fetishism, and a resulting anti-consumerist disposition.  Related to this were abstract, appropriationist and expressionist forms of art, and irony laden popular culture that positioned itself as a kind of protest against consumerism and commodification.
• If the working class was not willing to play the revolutionary role that Marxism cast for them, other constituencies of people would have to be found whose experiences of alienation under not just capitalism, but western civilization as a whole made them better suited for revolutionary struggle: the 3rd world, racial minorities and people of color, women, LGBT people, Muslims and so on.  And so identity politics were cast into the mix.
• Bodies of critical theory rooted in identity politics: critical race theory, feminist theory, queer theory and so on likewise used postmodern methods to convey their messages and deconstruct the classical canon of "dead white males."  These bodies of theory became increasingly influential in academia and beyond.
• Implicit in the blend of postmodernism, critical theory and identity politics is a rejection of any separation of scholarship and activism, or for that matter of livelihood and activism or of personal lifestyle choice and activism.  The concepts of liberal impartiality and private/public distinction were called into question as just more western liberal privileging of, well, privilege. 
• As such, the "social justice warriors" so called have no qualms about the use, or one could say abuse, of institutional power against their political opponents, or of anyone deemed privileged, for they maintain that the broader society in which everyone operates consists of little more than a network of oppressive social systems designed to further uphold privilege and exclude the marginalized.

The above concepts gestated in academia over a span of decades, and made themselves felt in academia and elsewhere in the form of what was called political correctness.  It was the emergence of the internet and social media, however, that gave what had until then had been a largely avant-garde movement exponentially greater reach with which to reach into a mainstream popular culture that was largely defenseless against the deconstructive techniques of postmodern critical theory.  

The largely rationalist and modernist libertarian individualists who dominated internet culture were as helpless before the postmodern SJW onslaught as the religious traditionalists had so recently been before those same rationalists.  The sharpest skeptics on the internet cast their facts, figures and logic in vain against an onslaught of identitarian ideologues for whom the very terms of rational debate were dismissed as mere devices of and rationalizations for hegemonic white male privilege.  

What was worse, the institutions of knowledge and culture, staffed and managed as they were by graduates from colleges where the varied forms of critical theory were taught, tended to take the side of the social justice warriors.  To legions of social media moderators and blogs covering a whole gamut of subjects, liberal claims to a universal notion of equal treatment rang hollow.  There was no such thing as racism or sexism against the "privileged" and some of these people had no qualms about getting personal or even attacking the families or livelihoods of anyone who dared disagree.  There were no bad methods, only bad people, after all.

But at the heart of postmodernism's strength was also one central weakness: what exempts it from its own critiques and techniques of deconstruction?  If all "truths" are relative social constructs that are more accurate reflections of the fault lines of power in a given context, does this statement also apply to an academic and popular culture that's become infused with the postmodern forms of left-leaning critical theory?

"The paradox of the postmodern position is that, in placing all principles under the scrutiny of its skepticism, it must realize that even its own principles are not beyond questioning. As the philosopher Richard Tarnas states, postmodernism "cannot on its own principles ultimately justify itself any more than can the various metaphysical overviews against which the postmodern mind has defined itself."

The cultural luminaries in academia and mainstream media were not expecting the answer they were to get.

Read Neoreaction: Right Wing Postmodernism Pt 2 here.

Argumentative Styles of the SJWs and the Alt-Right

If you spend any length of time online at all, you will no doubt have heard references to the social justice warriors - SJWs, and the alt-right.  If you are reading this blog, it is likely you have more familiarity with both of these groups than most people.  It is easy to be dismissive of them since the bulk of their strength is on the internet.  This would be foolishly complacent.  For good or ill, the internet has become an important, and in some cases dominant medium of communication for many people.  We live in among the most revolutionary times in human history as far as media and communication are concerned.  The emergence of the internet and social media rival the emergence of the printing press in terms of importance.

Certain styles of communication are better suited to certain mediums than others.  You may want to read this blog's previous entry on "The Medium is the Message" to get a better idea of how and why this is.  The swift emergence of the SJW and alt-right movements are due, in part, to their successful adoption of new media.  Most online communication is not face to face, and so the anonymity enables a higher degree of raw visceralness that is not typical of more town hall style politics.  It will be important going forward, therefore, to be aware of how these movements work and how they propagate their messages.

What follows is a comparison and contrast of the ideological and argumentative styles of the Social Justice Warriors and the Alt-Right.  Bear in mind before you proceed, dear reader, that we are all fallible human beings and that even the best of us can fall into the use of these tactics from time to time.  Also there are times when the use of a tactic listed below may well be appropriate.  Anger is a perfectly justifiable response to the advocacy of some particularly odious points of view.  But with SJWs and Alt-Rightists, these lapses are not occasional, and are quite often intrinsic to their whole belief system.

Manichean World View and Paranoid Style
SJWs and the Alt-Right see politics in terms of an all or nothing struggle between forces of pure good and ultimate evil, and perceive themselves as the victims of and last line of resistance against a supremely powerful and malignant conspiracy or monolithic system of oppression.  White supremacy or white genocide, patriarchy or gynocentrism.  The problem isn't so much that there are no conspiracies or systems of inequality in the real world.  The problem is that SJWs and Alt-Rightists tend to view conspiracy and oppression as being all encompassing - as "the motive force in historical events" as Richard Hofstadter put it in his essay on the Paranoid Style in American politics.  This allows for no middle ground, no neutrality and no shades of grey.  You are either with them or you're against them, and they will treat you accordingly.

Ends Justifying the Means and Double Standards
Because SJWs and the Alt-Right perceive the world in such stark, good vs evil terms, they're inclined to think that any action taken to defeat the "evil" side is justified.  Even if those actions would otherwise be seen as evil themselves.  Both judge themselves by their intentions, which are usually (in their minds, at least) good, while judging others by the real-world outcomes of their actions and favored policies.  Sometimes this goes as far as the entire moral compass of the Alt-Rightist or SJW being attuned to whether or not it advances their cause.  Some belief systems are explicit in their view that it is acceptable to lie in order to advance their cause.  This causes bewildering and disarming cognitive dissonance to the uninitiated.  Rational people perceive the gap between the stated good intentions and the often ugly actions taken to achieve them, especially with SJWs, and can experience paralyzing confusion, and may even wonder if it is not themselves who are in the wrong somehow.

Argument From Intimidation and Character Assassination
Both the SWJs and the Alt-Right frame their arguments in such a way as to impugn the character of anyone who doesn't agree unconditionally.  It is implied that only a racist, a bigot, a cuck or a degenerate would hold another point of view.  SJWs and the Alt-Right often assume a dominating posture and take on a shrill and belligerent tone, in order to put their opponents on the defensive, disincentivize disagreement and frame the debate.  This is a common, go-to strategy to derail a conversation and cause opponents to spend so much of their efforts defending themselves from what are usually overblown allegations that very little time is spent pursuing their actual argument.

Emotional Reasoning
SJWs and Alt-Rightists can put on absolutely Oscar winning displays of anger, offense and outrage so as to create a tense and awkward situation that distracts from the substance of the arguments.  The emotional impact of an argument is privileged over its congruence with the facts and logical consistency.  Skillful ideologues have a knack for getting upset at precisely those arguments that are most threatening to their positions, and their opponents become reluctant to use what would otherwise be the best arguments in their arsenal for fear of being ridiculed or dealing with an angry tirade.  This is especially effective with SJWs, who exploit the natural sympathy that people have for victims of oppression and injustice to stigmatize and silence their opponents.

Signalling and Groupthink
Regressives of all kinds systematically ignore opposing arguments in favor of rhetorical gimmicks such as slogans, buzzwords and portmanteaus intended to demonstrate virtue and cleverness to their ideological allies.  SJWs accuse their opponents of mansplaining or whitesplaining, as examples.  Alt-Rightists use memes in much the same way.  Pepe the Frog throwing a commie out of a helicopter, or the like.  Both of these movements prioritize in-group loyalty and solidarity at the expense of independent perception and judgement of facts, conflicting evidence or disquieting observations that would call into question group beliefs.  Much of their presentation is done with this in mind.

Ad Hominem Attacks
This involves a direct attack upon the person holding an opposing view: insults, personalized hostility, ridicule and so forth.  Saul Alinsky once observed that ridicule is man's most potent weapon, for there is no defense. It's irrational. It's infuriating. It also works as a key pressure point to force the enemy into concessions.  SJWs and the Alt-Right are aware of this and exploit it to the hilt.  They are, in fact, aware of much of what is in Rules for Radicals.  But they sometimes go further: relishing and gloating over personal misfortunes, doxing, threatening family or employment and so on.  Strong internet security and privacy are worth investing in if you are serious about opposing either the Alt-Right or SJWs.

Deconstruction and Reframing
These are high level tactics and their use indicates a skilled rhetorician and political thinker.  Essentially, they constitute a reframing of their opponents arguments to make them more controversial and less defensible.  To do this, they focus in on a single aspect of their opponent's arguments, right down to a few words even, and present them out of their original context.  Conversely, if confronted on a less savory aspect of their own platform, they reframe and reword their position to make it appear more palatable and moderate.  Employing these methods, and defending against them, takes awareness and practice.

Sexism and Sexual Repression
Both of these movements have strong undertones of gender preference.  The preference being for women for the SJWs and men for the Alt-Right.  This could not have been better personified than by the rival candidates for the US 2016 presidential elections.  SJWs and Alt-rightists come across as having "mommy" or "daddy" issues.  The SJWs are preoccupied with tearing down traditional notions of masculinity and femininity while the Alt-Right is preoccupied with upholding them.  And not just for themselves personally, but for the whole society.  This infuses the whole language of both causes.  SJWs denounce "toxic masculinity" while the Alt-Right insults its opponents by calling them "cucks", which are, by definition, unmanly.  Freudian concepts such as penis envy and castration anxiety seem to apply in spades to both sides.

As a corollary, notice that people in both of these movements attack a lack of sexual experience and prowess in their opponents.  Sooner or later, an exchange between the two boils down to people living in their parent's basements and being unable to get laid.

Finally, both sides advocate a high level of sexual control over society, and would regulate consensual sexual behaviors if it were in their power to do so.  The alt-right would suppress homosexuality and miscegenation and tend to prefer a male-initiator and passive female model of courtship.  The SWJs are especially distrustful of male heterosexuality, as they view it is paramount in the objectification of women.  A more recent preoccupation of the SJWs is the abolition of the gender binary all together.

Racism, Fundamentalism and Irrationality
Express disdain for specific racial groups.  This may be rationalized by alleged genetic superiority or by an appeal to alleged historical and/or contemporary privilege enjoyed by the disliked racial group.  Suffice it to say, a preference for whites over PoC is paramount on the Alt-Right, the reverse is true for the SJWs.

Religion serves as an effective corollary to race, often standing in for race among both SJWs and the Alt-Right.  Christianity is coded white while Islam is coded brown and/or black.  This results in paradoxical stances towards Islam in particular by both movements.  SJWs embrace Islam due to their white guilt and the Alt-Right deplores it due to their white supremacy, despite the strongly conservative stance towards women's rights and LGBT rights taken in Shari'a law.

As a related phenomenon, both the SJWs and the Alt-Right are skeptical of the enlightenment, liberalism, rationalism and universal concepts of human experience.  This is expressed on the alt-right through a dark enlightenment or neo-reaction, while the SJWs do so through postmodernism and poststructuralism.  Culture and identity are the order of the day for both.  As such, they seem impractical as actual philosophies for governance.  While the alt-right is anti-communist and the SJWs are usually, though not always, anti-capitalist, both have little time for the empirical and formulaic discipline of economics.

Conclusion
Both the SJWs and the Alt-Right are "feelings based" rather than "evidence based" movements, though selective use of evidence and even scientific process may be employed when it serves their aims. They do not like, and are seldom amenable to, serious scrutiny of their claims and views.  At heart, I think both represent a fusion of the personal and the political.  Often, SJWs and Alt-Rightists have personal axes to grind, or are attempting to rationalize an otherwise very self serving set of positions by appealing to ideology.

Often, but not always.  People in either movement may be sincere in their goals and may be genuinely well intended.  Likewise, even the most sensible and sober conservative, liberal or social democrat may have personal hang-ups that they project onto their view of the world order.  The idea here is not to idealize an impossibly cold and perfectly logical standard that even Mr. Spock would fail to measure up to.  But rather, it is important to emphasise that SJWs and the Alt-Right do not place the kind of premium on formal logic, the scientific method and empirical evidence that their skeptic community opponents tend to prize.  Adjust your expectations of engagements with SJWs and the Alt-Right accordingly.

It is also important that opponents of SJWs or Alt-Rightists not rely on any of the above alone to refute SJW or Alt-Right claims.  Their claims, no more or less than anyone else's, stand or fall on the basis of the evidence for them.  The fact that their positions are poorly argued and reinforced does not itself make their positions wrong. The ideological and argumentative styles listed above are not presented to refute the positions of SJWs and the Alt-Right, but rather to warn of the battery of rhetorical and ideological devices that they use to circumvent opponents who rely on sound logic and evidence as a basis for their own beliefs and as a means of challenging others.  Rationalists should not expect a fight on their terms when engaging SJWs or the Alt-Right.  Be warned.

The Regressive Style

I think the core of the problem lies in a particular mindset that is not unique to either end of the political spectrum and in fact has existed in one way or another as long as there's been a western civilization to speak of.

It is best described as a "revolutionary eschatology" wherein all of society is - knowingly or not - locked in an all or nothing death grapple of good against evil, and all of history is a testament to this struggle. Religious fundamentalism is, perhaps, the most quintessential example of this sort of mindset. Preoccupations with the imminent rise of the antichrist and the need to prepare by means of reasserting religious and cultural purity so as to avoid or forestall the coming tribulations have been seen in countless forms not just in this age of a new millennium and among the sundry revivals of religious fervor seen recently in both in the US and in the middle east, but throughout a very long history. In his 1957 classic 𝘗𝘶𝘳𝘴𝘶𝘪𝘵 𝘰𝘧 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘔𝘪𝘭𝘦𝘯𝘯𝘪𝘶𝘮, British historian Norman Cohn demonstrates that this kind of thinking goes back literally to old testament times.  His description of the underlying mindset is nothing short of poetic:

"The world is dominated by an evil, tyrannous power of boundless destructiveness.  A power moreover that is imagined not simply as human, but demonic.  The tyranny of that power will become more and more outrageous, the sufferings of its victims more and more intolerable - until suddenly the hour will strike when the Saints of God are able to rise up and overthrow it.  Then the Saints themselves, the chosen, holy people who hitherto have groaned under the oppressor's heel, shall in their turn inherit dominion over the whole of the Earth.  This will be the culmination of history; the Kingdom of the Saints will not only surpass in glory all previous kingdoms, it will have no successors." 

Secular variations of this mindset also exist. Marxism prophesied a coming armageddon between proletariat and bourgeoisie. Hitler was adamant that it was "now or never" as far as the Aryan race vs the Jews was concerned. Approaching the new millennium, the religious right at home and resurgent Islamic fundamentalism in the middle east peddled similar themes. But these were never just strictly religious movements, they also appealed to real world grievances - just or otherwise - of common people in their respective societies.

Today, the beat goes on. The alt-right is sounding the alarm that western civilization will not survive unless third world - especially Islamic - immigration is halted and the pernicious influence of "cultural Marxism" in the media and in academia is neutralized. Sinister Jews may or may not be at the heart of a conspiracy to destroy western Christendom which can be, but not necessarily always is, reimagined as the white race. 

None of this is at all new. Alt-Right type groups have been around as long as the Declaration of Independence itself.  Specifics may vary, but the common themes of imminent decline and sinister conspiracies persist.  Be they anti-Illuminati and anti-Masonic conspiracies of the 18th and 19th centuries, or McCarthyite, John Birch Society red scare stuff more recently, there's little new about any of it.  The only things I'd see on 4chan or The Right Stuff today that I would have not seen in the American Mercury circa 1960 (or today, for that matter) are Pepe the Frog and Moon Man.

There, as always, is a diabolical conspiracy best described by Richard Hofstadter in his 1963 essay, The Paranoid Style in American Politics:

"The central image is that of a vast and sinister conspiracy, a gigantic and yet subtle machinery of influence set in motion to undermine and destroy a way of life. One may object that there are conspiratorial acts in history. and there is nothing paranoid about taking note of them. This is true. All political behavior requires strategy, many strategic acts depend for their effect upon a period of secrecy, and anything that is secret may be described, often with but little exaggeration, as conspiratorial. The distinguishing thing about the paranoid style is not that its exponents see conspiracies or plots here and there in history, but that they regard a "vast" or "gigantic" conspiracy as the motive force in historical events. History is a conspiracy, set in motion by demonic forces of almost transcendent power, and what is felt to be needed to defeat it is not the usual methods of political give and-take, but an all-out crusade."

These are the terms in which "cultural Marxism", or should I say (((cultural Marxism))) are expressed.  But it is not unique to the far right.

Those who tend to be tarred with this cultural Marxist label, known to us on the alt-left as the regressive left, peddle their own version of the same kind of narrative. Donald Trump is their version of the antichrist - the embodiment of white male privilege, arisen to lead his basket of white cishet male deplorables and visit tribulations and persecutions upon women, LGBTQ people and people of color: the postmodern equivalent of God's chosen people in the eyes of the SJWs.

Nothing new here either.  The far left has its own long history dating back to the French Revolution in Europe, and utopian communities in America.  Marxism is the best known but by no means the only example.  Running the gamut from late 19th and early 20th century socialist and anarchist movements, to the pro Soviet Communist Party, to the New Left of the 1960s, radical environmentalists and through to today's SJWs, a similar secular manichaeism exists.  

The common thread running through all of them is just how alike their paranoid right wing and religious millennialist counterparts they all are.  America is seen as a vast, oppressive monolith hell bent on enslaving or destroying the proletariat, the 3rd world, women, minorities, immigrants, native Americans, LGBTQ people, the poor and so on, who also tend to be seen as a kind of chosen people, destined to show the way out of a destructive, unsustainable and oppressive consumer-capitalist society and into a kind of postmodern new Jerusalem.  A restoration of the garden of Eden, often reimagined in socialist, matriarchal or non-European terms.  

Given its longevity, it's likely that this regressive style is likely to remain a fixture in some form or another for the foreseeable, and perhaps the indefinite future.  They cannot, it would seem, be defeated entirely, for if one form is suppressed another has been seen to rise and take its place.  But the pattern can be recognized.  Enlightened policy aimed at mitigating the social factors that give rise to the regressive style, thereby keeping its influence minimal, is likely the best we can hope for.  

Deep Politics: the Nation as Family Metaphor

The Nation as Family Metaphor: the Reg-Left wants mommy, the alt-right wants daddy, and the libertarian just wants you to get off his back, man!  Where does that leave the alt-left?

To gain a deep understanding of politics, there are few writers I'd recommend more than George Lakoff.  During his lengthy tenure at University of California Berkeley, he was involved in groundbreaking work in the field of cognitive linguistics - the study of the relationship between thought and language.  Don't worry, we won't discuss anything near so dry here.  This is about Lakoff's opus, a 1996 tome called Moral Politics that claims to get inside the minds of conservatives and liberals respectively.

Lakoff's work is relevant and worth a study by anyone serious about understanding the construction of ideology for two reasons.  The first, which I won't get into as much here, is his emphasis on the use of wording and metaphors to craft narratives that invoke specific moral frameworks when communicating political ideas. He warns against using the conceptual framework of one's ideological opponents when debating contested ideas, as this gives the natural advantage to your opponent, who's framed the issue in a way that's advantageous to their world view.

The second reason is that the moral frameworks used by both the right and the left in America are metaphors for family structure.  This is rooted in what he refers to as the "nation as family" metaphor, which has plenty of historical precedent; the reference to one's country as the "motherland" or "fatherland" being exemplary.  For Lakoff, the metaphors are the "Strict Father" family for the right wing and the "Nurturant Parent" for the left.  They're exactly what they say on the tin - use your own imagination, or perhaps more appropriately, let the words he uses invoke a conceptual framework in your own mind.  These models for family functioning serve as metaphors for the vision that conservatives and progressives have for the moral structure of the nation.

Remarkable about both the nurturant parent and the strict father metaphors is that both conceive of the citizenry in child-like terms.  They differ in terms of how they're going to bring out the best behavior in their pupils.  Again, let the labels Lakoff gives the metaphoric family models tell you how they work.

In this, I'm reminded of another remarkable sociological work, psychiatrist Arthur Deikman's 1990 study of cults and cult behavior, The Wrong Way Home.  It has since been republished as Them and Us: Cult Thinking and the Terrorist Threat.  Deikman describes the allure of "totalist" institutions lying in their appeal to two deep seated human drives: to be on the side of good, and a concept he labels the dependency dream:

The regressive(!) wish for security that uses the family as a model, creating an authoritarian leadership structure (the parent) and a close knit exclusive group (the children.)

The cult member - or member of any other closed social system or maybe even an extremist believer in a political ideology, seeks to regress back to a child-like state wherein an omnipotent parental figure is in complete control.  Maintenance of this illusion requires epistemic closure: an insulation of the belief system and its adherents from external influences that threaten to undermine it.  Thus, outsiders and dissidents are demonized and ideological conformity and groupthink is made paramount.

These conceptual models can be useful for understanding both reactionary right and regressive (there's that word again) left modes of thinking and politics.  They differ from one another over which parental figure is to be cast in the authoritative role.

I think it is obvious that the regressive left is all about maternalism.  Indeed, I think feminism today can be best described as universalizing the mother/child relationship model - making it the basis of all social interaction.  That femininity equates with morality in the regressive leftist mind is, I think, self evident, and doubtlessly derived from their own upbringings.  One displays nothing but ingratitude and disrespect by arguing with mommy feminist.  She gave you life, after all?  Is anything short of total empathy any way to thank her for that?  Mommy feminist will slap your hand and make you share your toys with your younger siblings and other children.  Mommy feminist won't let you hear dirty words or see dirty images.  Mommy Feminist will not allow the screening of films that convey dangerous ideas to the rest of the polity, which she seems compelled to think of in child like terms.

Any form of adult relationship is out, since it is the role of the maternal leftist to both care for and indoctrinate the children, and the duty of the children to learn and model this behavior.  While it is a relationship of caring and nurturance, it is not a relationship of equals, whatever they may claim.  Regressive leftism speaks to either a deep seated yearning for a maternal influence, or a rebellion against firm and disciplinarian masculine influence.  Mommy feminist is great; she gives me stuff!  Dad can go to hell!

That the right wing is paternalistic should require little in depth elaboration.  The religious right is the most glaring and obvious example.  Hell, Christianity is pretty much all about this.  Paternal archetypes and metaphors abound.  God the Father, and in the largest Christian denomination, the clergy are addressed as "father" additionally.  Religious conservatism is all about the projection of paternal archetypes onto abstract belief systems so full of magic and make belief that they'd be called fairy tales if they didn't have so many real world adherents even among the "adult" population.

But it's not just in religion - Donald Trump was not uncommonly referred to as "daddy" in alt-right circles during his presidential bid.  Daddy nationalist is a disciplinarian, who will keep the dirty and the unworthy out.  He is the militaristic protector and the capitalist provider.  But there is no place for the effeminate "cucks" and the weak "degenerates" - discipline and strength is required if America is to be made great again.  The right wing conversely speaks to either a deep seated yearning for paternal influence, or a rebellion against soft and nurturant feminine influence.  Daddy nationalist is the best!  He's the strongest man EVER!  Mom can get lost!

Both of these models are regressive: they speak to and enable child-like thinking and behaviors on part of their followers.  One look at them in action makes that perfectly clear.  Both have issues with the opposite sex: any feminist or alt right blog pretty much screams, "Ew! Boy germs" or "girls have cooties", when stripped of what passes for intellectual pretense.  Debates with either side quickly devolve into exchanges of school yard insults.  There's often a theatrical, make believe, playing dress-up aspect to demonstrations staged by both sides (though the lefties are the worse of the two these days, the rightists aren't innocent, especially among alt-right LARPers.)

An expression I've heard before is that conservatives want to be your daddy, liberals want to be your mommy while libertarians want you to be treated like an adult.  Is this true?  Or would it be more accurate to say that libertarians want to be treated like adults, but eschew the adult responsibilities that come with it.  Because, like, just leave me alone, man!  Don't touch my weed and my porn and, like, you can't make me go to school, dude!  Because, like, the non-aggression principal, okay bro?

Libertarians are a step up from the regressives of the right and left.  They'll at least try to reason with you, even if said reason ends up being more self serving sophistry than real understanding.  Underneath those spotty beards and pimples is a real desire to test the boundaries and see what's out there.  But when you tell them to clean their rooms or pay their taxes ... oh, the drama!

The place of the alt-left in all of this now becomes obvious.  That economy, unemployment or even a job guarantee is a central alt-left issue does say it all.  After all, what age category of person are you telling someone to act like when you sternly instruct them to get a job?

Thus, as a conceptual framework, the alt-left should reject family-as-nation metaphors that cast the political class in parental roles and the citizens in child roles.  The alt-left should view the nation as an association of free adults, whose adult decision making and autonomy is respected and from whom adult responsibilities are expected.  We've made peace with mom and dad, and relate to both as equals, in adult terms.

The alt-left disdains the regressive left and right, but for different reasons than they sneer at one another for.  The grandstanding SJW is contemptible not because she's fat or because she's covered in tattoos and piercings or because she insists on her own gender pronouns.  She's contemptible for her immature attention seeking and the myriad psychological insecurities that drive her behaviors.  The alt-left doesn't need to be told what sexual consent is or the difference between being against racism and being against white people.  We shake our heads at those on both sides who don't seem to know, or feel compelled to voxsplain the difference to rational people as if they've never heard the difference before.

We see the immaturity and sexual repression underlying both the reddit manosphere and tumblr social justice world views; the internet equivalent to the grade two schoolyard where the girls and boys line up on opposite ends and throw snowballs at each other.  Feminists and "redpills" exchange insults that remind one of jump-rope chants, and always boil down to "you're ugly and you can't get laid."  Perhaps neither tumblr feminists nor manosphere types should be getting laid.  After all, one must be an adult in order to give consent.

Adults don't need a mommy or daddy telling them whether they can smoke weed or use porn, though they'll be intelligent and rational in their use of such things.  We don't need to be told who we can and can't hook up with or marry - provided they're consenting adults themselves, of course.  There is no dichotomy between desire and respect in the adult mind, for it does not project parental archetypes onto members of the opposite sex (if that's what you're into).  Adults don't need protection from dirty or harmful words, but they do think before they speak and refrain from being assholes. There's nothing to be gained by being pricks to fat people, for example.  But there's plenty to be gained through a healthy lifestyle.  The patriarchy isn't going to be sorry when your rebellion against "beauty standards" ends up with you developing diabetes or heart disease.

Above all, adults want adult politics.  The economy.  Foreign affairs.  Environmental degradation.  Issues of substance.  We care about identity issues in as far as we care about honest and fair treatment of all, but have no time for attention seeking grandstanders who insist that the world revolves around their feelings.

It is in adult terms that the Alt-Left must frame and advance its world view.

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My Own Alt Left Manifesto

Alternative left manifestos are springing up left and right these days.  Let's not forget some of the older mainstays, such as Rabbit's Counter Currents article and Bob Lindsay's definition of the alt left, more based on what it isn't than what it is.  Others abound, amidst a growing bevy of media exposure, most of which is getting us entirely and completely wrong.

I've wandered into these waters myself, on occasion.  Sort of.  But only in a somewhat general sense.  So some clarity then.  What follows is an abbreviated outline of what I call "My own Alt-Left Manifesto.  With Blackjack and Hookers." A treatise on Postmodern Political Economy .  

Prelude

• Since the end of WWII, the American left has been primarily concerned with anti-racism, while the American right has been primarily concerned with anti-communism.  While there are other concerns in both cases, those ones dominate.
• Both sides have therefore been successful.  Not totally successful, but more or less so.  The left has seen the passage of civil rights laws, affirmative action, an anti-racist consensus among the general public and even elected a black man for two consecutive terms in the oval office.  The right has seen the dissolution of the USSR, market reforms in China, and a retreat of ideological socialism in most parts of the world.
• Despite, or possibly because of this success, both sides of the US political spectrum have vocal factions that are more rather than less strident and fanatical, such as the paleo-cons and the Tea Party on the right and Black Lives Matter and the social justice warriors on the left.
• What typifies these strident ideologues is epistemic closure - the ideologies are marked by obsessive preoccupation with issues that are of little relevance to others (microaggressions, democrats coming to take everybody's guns away, safe spaces, tax revolt etc) refuse dialogue and negotiation and are impervious to persuasion.  All liberals are America hating cultural Marxists, all white males are racist and sexist, and so on.
• Epistemic closure and overall ideological excess has been enabled by the rise and spread of postmodern philosophy and thought: first in academia and subsequently throughout popular culture.  Postmodernism isn't an easy thing to pin down, but critical to it is a rejection of philosophical objectivism on all levels.  Postmodernists would not only claim that morality is subjective, but also that very axiomatic concepts: the nature of basic perception of reality and the foundations of thought, are socially constructed.  The resulting denial of a common reality and a common set of moral and philosophical principles binding to all has caused increased political and social fragmentation and divisiveness.
• Alternative politics have arisen out of frustration with the above and with how tepid and unresponsive mainstream centrist politics is.  Alternative politics have been further enabled by the enhanced reach and networking capability of social media.
• In response to the race-obsessed left, the Alternative Right is marked by "race realism", white nationalism and a narrative of white victimhood at the hands of a militant left enabled by a weak state, corporate power and obliviousness on part of a mainstream right too preoccupied with wealth accumulation to be at all concerned with preservation of European cultural and racial heritage.

Class Realism

• In keeping with the above, in response to the wealth and property obsessed right, the Alternative Left is marked by "class realism," working and middle class solidarity and a narrative of class war waged by a greedy right enabled by a weak state, corporate power and obliviousness on part of a mainstream left too preoccupied with identity politics to be at all concerned with the welfare of working and middle class people.
• "Class Realism" is defined as acknowledging the reality of class, in the historical materialist sense of the term.  Meaning that class is marked by relations of production - some people make their living entirely off ownership of capital through rent, interest, dividends and so on, while others make their living only by selling their own labor power, while still others are some combination of the two, with wildly varying income levels all around.  Class is best seen then in terms of income, net worth and relations of production.
• Class realism acknowledges that at least since the elections of Ronald Reagan in America and Margaret Thatcher in the UK, western governments have been waging active class war against their own working classes.  This is chiefly marked by the exporting of jobs, importing of mass surplus labor, attacking the unions, deregulation, privatization, and the enabling of large amounts of private and public debt.
• While the right wing has been the main driver in this class warfare, it has been enabled by a regressive left that has displayed neutrality on class and economic issues and defines oppression and marginalization instead in terms of culture and identity, causing socially destructive racial and sexual strife and enabling the right's class warfare.

Manifesto of the Alt Left

• The alt left shall strive to be principled but not dogmatic.  Its primary purpose should be able to passionately and philosophically advocate on behalf of the material needs and interests of the working and middle classes, in favor of policies that materially benefit the broader portion of the population and defend them against rentier policies and economics that would only benefit the few.
• The alt left shall remain committed to full employment and worker's rights at all times.
• The alt left recognizes and opposes all forms bigotry as being socially divisive and undermining working class consciousness and solidarity.  But the alt-left does not recognize any form of systemic racial or sexual oppression as taking place in the western world, and rejects the self serving regressive left dogmas of privilege theory and "power plus prejudice."  
• The alt left recognizes no preferred racial, sexual, gender, ethnic or religious categories, and shall not hinder or oppose free expression thereof or free identification with any of them, subject of course to the laws that govern us all.
• The alt left shall value rationality, reason, free thought and other enlightenment humanist values.  The alt left should eschew dogmatism, fanaticism and be no place for the "true believer."  Conversely, the alt-left should be skeptical of postmodernism and its doctrines of extreme cultural relativism and social constructionism.  Romanticism and religion are important aspects of human nature whose free expression in the private realm should be protected, but are poor guides to governance and public policy.
• The alt left is therefore civilly and culturally libertarian.  The alt left fights for rights, not feelings.  Censorship and penalizing of "offensive" speech is dangerous in light of the fact that what is deemed offensive is subjective.  The alt-left recognizes no special prerogatives (such as past or present marginalized status) on part of any segment of society to censor or penalize expression it deems offensive.
• The Alt Left is gravely concerned about ideological capture of higher education, social media and mass media, and the abuse of organizational structures of these institutions by managerial personnel acting as ideological gatekeepers.  This should be a matter of public concern and corrective measures sought out and taken.
• The alt left believes that questions of human biodiversity across racial and gender lines is a matter best left to scientists rather than politicians, and should no way alter our commitment to the above listed principles.
• The alt left believes that intervention in the affairs of other nations does much more harm than good the vast majority of the time.
• The alt left recognizes that fossil fuels will not last forever and that their ongoing use contributes to climate change, pollution and habitat degradation.  It would well behoove us to research and convert to renewable and clean sources of energy sooner rather than later.

The Other Red Pill: No Class

From the 1990s onward, the left in the west found itself increasingly dependent on educated urban liberals, minorities and immigrants for its electoral support as the unions collapsed due to the loss of manufacturing jobs to places like China.  Gradually, dialectics based on race and gender would come to replace dialectics based on class - despite how monstrous a misapplication of Marxist theory this was.  

It was a new lease on life for the beleaguered leftist parties everywhere, albeit one that would come at a heavy price.

Critical theory based on race and gender begun its own "deconstruction" of western culture in academia, supported quite ironically by state and corporate cash, not to mention student debt. The organs of western culture - corporate media and academia - expressed increasing worry that racism and misogyny were "found" to be deeply embedded in western culture - the same culture that financed and enabled the spread of feminist and multiculturalist theory.

A quasi Marxist dialectic recognizing all white males regardless of class as a kind of ruling class, and women and minorities as an exploited underclass emerged, and analysis of racial and sexual relationships through this kind of lens became prominent.  In the absence of a political theory of class rooted in relations of production, such views emerged almost entirely unchallenged.  What we now recognize as political correctness emerged. 

When social media allowed for this ideology to extend beyond academia and into the broader culture, a new plague was released upon the world: the social justice warriors.  Despite their anti-capitalist pretenses, Wall Street certainly had no objections to the SJWs - better white male tears than being occupied, after all.  Silicon Valley went further, with online magazines and social media of all kinds rushing to give platforms to feminist and anti-racist concerns.  The pettier, the better, it so often seemed.  If an article got clicks, the article got bucks.  Advertising fuels it, after all, and what better way to draw attention than with manufactured controversy?  And what worked better for that than some or another instance of "political correctness gone mad."

Each day brought new excesses of social justice trivialities, it seemed.  Microaggressions, trigger warnings, cultural appropriations, the ubiquitous phrase, "check your privilege."  "Problematic" imagery and words were everywhere, from video games to the shirts worn by astrophysicists while landing satellites on comets and everything else you can think of.  A new culture war was underway, and it was much better for business than a class war - narrowly averted coming out of the Lehman Bro's meltdown, would have been.

It should not be a surprise that there'd be a backlash against the excesses of online political correctness.  Its core ideology was not new, but its means of delivery and proliferation were as modern as you could get.  Politically correct culture was viciously attacked, and mainstream conservatism held to ridicule for its failure to adequately stand up for western culture.  Their critique went back to the Frankfurt School, its Jewish-Marxist luminaries and its deconstruction of western civilization as a prelude to socialist revolution.  Conspicuous in its absence were Marx's theories of class relations.  Nor did it seem to matter to the emergent alt-right that as a meaningful force in 21st century politics, Marxist socialism was extinct; its fire has gone out of the universe.

"Cultural Marxism" was the boogeyman that the alt-right was convinced was hell-bent on destroying the west.  And we can all guess (((who))) was to be responsible for it.

The alt-right's bastardization of the cultural Marxist idea is lifted straight out of Mein Kampf, Hitler decisively and explicitly rejected the materialism of Marx, and saw instead a Darwinian struggle of races and nations instead of class struggle. Antisemitism was a common prejudice in Europe in those days, as was fear of communism. Hitler wove the two together into a narrative that he used to appeal to the anxieties of the German people. That Hitler was chosen in preference to the communists in Wiemar Germany was further proof to the Frankfurt theorists that culture went deeper than class in the psyches of the working and middle classes. Hitler differs from the SJWs and their white male counterparts on the alt-right only in that he was many decades ahead of them in his theories. Indeed, it is Hitler much more than Marx that underlies the thinking of both the SJWs and the alt-right, though not directly in the case of the SJWs.  Although it must be admitted that "My Struggle" would make a great name for an edgy teenage girl's tumblr account.

More recently, the Fuhrer's old ideas were dusted off by one William S. Lind, a paleoconservative theorist whose attribution of current year SJW political correctness directly to Marx has, along with Nazi style anti-semetic conspiracy theories been an ideological impetus behind the rise of the alt-right.  Lacking a better way to understand their declining fortunes in the 21st century, the angry white male keyboard warriors of the 4chan and Reddit undergrounds were no less vulnerable to cultural conspiracy theories than the very SJWs they condemned were.

How could any of them have known any better?  The SJWs and the Alt-Right alike cannot be faulted their lack of education.  Class had been dismissed long ago.

Western civilization has paid a dire price for the loss of class consciousness and historical materialism from its political mind. We are without a means of explaining widespread inequality except either through the lens of racial and gender discrimination, or as a natural and good outcome of some people just working harder or being naturally more talented than others.

The results greet you in your newsfeed every day.

Stark Truth Interview with mysterious alt-left blogger.

Alt left veterans Robert Stark (no, not THAT Robert Stark), Rabbit, Robert Lindsay and Alex Goldstein interview Alt-Left blogger Ryan England (with an a) who blogs at Samizdat Chronicles.  Which is here.  Which means it was me they interviewed.

The secret's out!

The interview can be heard here.  It's easy to get lost over at The Stark Truth if you're not careful. You can easily lose a LOT of time listening to Mr. Stark interview people with unconventional outlooks on just about any kind of issue or subject you can think of.  Highly recommended for anyone wanting to break out of the red state vs. blue state mold.

Topics for conversation include:

• My unpleasant youthful politicization during the Satanic Panic of the 1980s. 
• My subsequent exposure to leftist ideas listening to former Dead Kennedys lead singer Jello Biafra's spoken word tours, and Manufacturing Consent by Noam Chomsky.
• How I lost faith in left wing politics for a time as a result of reading "The Myth of Male Power" by Warren Farrell, as well as the underlying class-based concerns that Dr. Farrell raised that are of concern to the left.
• My loss of faith in right wing politics as a result of how conservatives only ever care about the interests of corporations and high profits, and could really care less about social issues and social cohesion.
• How for a long time I remained left wing on economic issues and labor issues, and even became involved in job action and workplace organizing.  But I hated cultural leftism, but the cultural right didn't do it for me either.
• How I encountered the early alt-right, but was put off by their white nationalism.
• And then wondered if there was an alt-right, could there be a leftist counterpart.  Which led me to the discovery of Rabbit and Robert Lindsay's blogs.  I didn't agree with them on everything, but grasped the overall gist of it.
• My own theory of the alt-left, based on the need to for a restoration of economic class analysis to clear up popular misconceptions around the notions of power and privilege.
• Splintering and factionalism on the alt-left, as with so many political movements.  "Judean People's Front" syndrome.
• How untrammeled capitalism is the force that destroys relations based on nation, family and so forth. Corporations have loyalty only to the bottom line.

Enjoy!