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I am curious, because I saw it written many times here, but had no chance to investigate more.
What happened to the Alt-Right movement, and what makes it very different from the dissident right of now?
Richard Spencer claims to have coined the term "Alt-Right" in 2010. But for a brief time around 2015-2017 the term was applied more broadly, with even Steve Bannon and Breitbart claiming to belong to the Alt-Right. It was never clearly defined, but broadly speaking it was a big-tent, right-wing movement that included populist elements and radical elements of the right. It spread through memes and edgy optics, and had some momentum from the election of Donald Trump. Richard Spencer was viewed as a leader, more by default due to his willingness to serve as a lightning rod for the media.
The Charlottesville debacle stopped the Alt-Right in its tracks, as for the first time it received serious opposition in the form of lawfare and mass deplatforming. So the movement immediately crumbled under the pressure and is defunct for all intents and purposes. "Dissident right" is used on one level to avoid the baggage of the alt-right, but on a deeper level the alt-right really does not exist anymore. I would estimate that a majority of those in the DR were red-pilled post-Charlottesville and never belonged to the alt-right in its heyday.
In contrast to the alt-right, I would define the dissident right (DR) as highly fragmented discourse surrounding issues of politics and culture that is only united by its universal acceptance of certain highly controversial premises. Things like the race question and Jewish question more broadly aren't controversial; they are premises that are just understood as true and therefore embedded in the discourse on other political and cultural topics, like the war in Ukraine.
And that leads to a bunch of small groups with wildly different ideas for how the right-wing should move forward. There are Nietzscheans, Christian nationalists, Neo-Platonists, fascists, but there's no broader organized movement and no aspiration for big-tent advocacy. Outsiders would probably consider them all alt-right, but they don't view themselves as part of the same movement although they'll refer to the broader discourse as "DR".
The far right is probably even more ideologically diverse than the far-left. I have seen on Unz articles that Covid either does not exist (a hoax or a flu), came from the US, or came from China. These cannot be mutually inclusive especially not the first one. For Covid to have originated from the lab in China implies that it also exists and is a real thing. Some see China as a major threat, others see China as an ally against US-led globalism and multiculturalism .
There's no analogue to Marxism on the far right, so the radical right is more of a greenfield. There is a lot of ideological diversity, even if they are unified on some issues. There's no sign of any consensus emerging from the DR any time soon.
The dissident right more or less agrees that-
Traditional gender roles are good and necessary. If this means that women’s lib and equality is much reduced that is either desirable or at least an acceptable price to pay. Sexual promiscuity is bad, and birth control is a problem at least in part because it enables it.
Blacks, on average, have lower abilities in all sorts of ways and achieving black-white equality is a pipe dream.
Atheists are untrustworthy.
Bolsonaro and Trump were good, but frustratingly moderate.
The Covid vaccine is bad and this is symptomatic of the state of medical knowledge being generally poor as a whole.
Medical knowledge is unreliable because academia is generally compromised in all sorts of ways, but there’s usually a nugget of truth there.
Human beings have a right to self defense that is more fundamental than freedom of speech or association, never mind the ‘rights’ invented by progressives. Restricting self defense unnecessarily is bad, and that includes the right to keep and bear arms.
Gays are at least suspect if not generally assumed to be perverts.
Capitalism isn’t great but it’s at least better than socialism. Where technology enables human flourishing this is generally good, but there are many technological advances that do nothing of the sort.
State power is necessary.
An excellent summation.
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