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It's not clear to me that those aren't the value of the American right, at least since they kicked the Royalists up to British North America. The differences between the mainstream American right and the mainstream American left are marginal:
Liberty: The right tends to put more emphasis on negative freedom rather than positive freedom. There have been times when, on social issues, the right has been sceptical of particular cases of negative freedom, but the basic assumption of the US right has almost always been individualist rather than paternalist; things like the Religious Right and the anti-woke movement have to justify themselves in terms of "This person's exercise of liberty X actually affects our liberty Y," which is fundamentally different from, "God says no" or "The man in Whitehall knows best."
Equality: Equality of opportunity (not in the silly sense of an equal chance, but in terms of equal legal rights and no unjustified discrimination) is the ideology of just about every last American. American conservatives might argue about the existence of certain types of discrimination or whether some particular case of discrimination is justified, but equality has always been integrally part of the American right's ideology, if not their practice. Of course, there will be the aberrant Nietzschean, Dominionist, Blood and Soil nationalist etc., but they are as alien to the American right as a working class Stalinist in the US left.
Fraternity: The US is unusual in being founded on an ideology (classical liberalism) and with the supposition that religion, ethnicity etc. are personal and/or local, rather than an integral part of the federal state. Trump is fraternal with gay people, trans people, hispanics, blacks etc. Some of his best friends are black. Some of his biggest supporters are hispanics. Friendship across race, religion, and "lifestyles" is as American as apple pie, and as American conservative as loving the US military, which itself has been multiracially fraternal for as long as most people can remember.
As you suggest, for the terminally online, it might seem like a different kind of conservativism had an ascendency in 2016. However, in fact, Trump and Trumpism was just mainstream US conservativism with balls. The average Trump supporter is as fundamentally opposed to reactionaries, Nazis, and the like as the average Hillary supporter.
I think you are conflating current popular views and ideology at the foundation of the US. It is written, of course, that all men are created equal, but this obviously meant something different then, because in America from 18 century up to 20th century there was explicit legal inequality between sexes, races and even economic classes. That was not because of some mistake or for the lack of alternative, but because of conscious policies that aimed to achieve outcomes that were deemed more important than the ideal of liberty.
Equality means many different things now. Hence I specified equality of opportunity and explained some of what that means.
The legal inequality between races was decided at a state level. The legal inequality between men and women was justified based on what people thought were relevant differences - just as one would draw today between children and adults. I'm not so familiar with the details of the economic distinctions, but I imagine that these were justified in terms of a conflict between liberty and equality - which doesn't mean that equality was a value of the American founders, just one that had to be traded-off against things like liberty.
To see how the egalitarianism (in this sense) of the Founders was significant, consider how there was no special place for aristocrats in the US political system - a great break with the norm in Europe. The idea that Joe the Plumber could rise to be of the equal legal status as George Washington was a revolutionary egalitarian idea. No royal family, obviously. In fact, in legal principle, this was possible even if Joe the Plumber was black. The values of the Founders were radically unReactionary and unAlt Right, which doesn't mean that they were left wing in the modern sense either.
It's true that there have been changes in the meanings of these terms, but when you ask the average Trumpist what's important to them, equality in the sense I specified is very important. They might not say "equality", but their attitudes towards elites, snobs, aristocrats etc. will reveal their values.
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So why does the terminally online alt-right link itself to Trump so much? I remember in 2016 when the left accused Trump and his followers of being white supremacists, misogynists, homophobic, far-right fascists and the response from them was that Trump wasn't any of those things; what the right movement stood against was The Establishment. I remember Trump waving the LGBT flag and being proud of receiving support from Blacks and Latinos.
I personally thought the accusations of Nazism towards the Trump movement were an exaggeration, but now ZHP and his ilk are saying, no, the left was right, we are all of bad the things they said we were. Things the average Westerner would consider not only to be morally repugnant, but the very values of the most reviled enemy in recent history. Debate between a Democrat and a Republican is possible because at heart they both share similar core values and goals; but is there even a point to debating those that admit to views that are the complete antithesis of Western civilisation?
Obviously one side of this is just that the alt-right contains multitudes.
Beyond that I do think there is a shift where up until 2016ish the grey tribe still basically agreed with the blue tribe in terms of end goals/reality, but mostly was breaking off/frustrated by SJW/WOKE cultural stuff. They did not want trad wives, where totally convinced that racism was wrong and evil, would consider themselves true LGBT allies, and where broadly in favor of hedonistic modernity. It seems to me that there has specifically been a shift in this group, where, as they became more contrarian and more ostracized by society for not getting with the program they gradually started to question a lot of these core assumption. The liberal framework that 99% of grey tribe people grew up with, that reality had a liberal bias, is mostly gone now and a lot of what we are seeing is the breakdown of that veneer of scientific authority. Ultimately, people change, and to me the online-alt-right looks like a reaction to excesses on the part of the left more than anything.
I’m as grey tribe as they come and to me the pendulum has swung firmly the other way. I’ve come from being sympathetic to the right in ‘16, to seeing it as my complete ideological opponent. I started as an edgy online atheist watching Creationism Debunked videos, got into the Intellectual Dark Web, cheered when the libs lost in ‘16, only to realise that maybe the so-called SJWs might have had a point when the hardcore Christian Right took over the movement.
The latter were the same people I was opposed to at the start of my political journey; anti-science, anti-intellectual, dogmatic theocrats who want to suppress anything that doesn’t agree with their outdated religious views. They’ve just repackaged the old stodgy pearl-clutching views we used to mock in the Bush era as somehow “based and redpilled”. They just stole the colours of the cool, rebellious counter-culture to make the grey tribe forget they used to be their ideological opponent.
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Hard to tell if it was cynical (link to a popular movement) or fantasist ("Finally, our God Emperor is here!") And in a movement known for not speaking plainly, perhaps it was natural for them to assume that Trump was more alt right than he was saying. As you say, that would mean a hilarious convergence between what the alt right and the ctrl left (and mainstream left in many cases) was saying about Trump.
These tendencies might arise in many movements, but I wonder if there's a particular tension for fascist/Nazi/some reactionary types. Their whole ideology is full of worshipping strength, winners, superior men... And yet their movements, since 1945, have been marginalised, weak, and pushed around with ease. They often have some inclination towards "Justice is the advantage of stronger," yet the fascists were weaker than the bourgeois liberal democracies (and even more shamefully, the savage commies) in WWII. It's one thing to believe that the white race is superior in war, but fascists? Losers, literally.
So, in 2016, Trump doesn't just talk about winning and being strong, but actually wins, despite being brash and outspoken. He outrages the people who push around the alt right and defeats the former in a contest. Moreover, he does so despite being tarred with the alt right brush by the people who dominate the alt righters every day. Under such circumstances, it doesn't seem strange that the alt right would be inclined to genuinely believe that Trump was their God Emperor. That's the best reconstruction that I can make of the spirit behind this fashwave song, which I rather like despite not being either alt right or pro-Trump:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=mC5HmxVxOAw
Okay, that’s the first time I’ve heard that one, but it kind of works.
It’s been around since at least 2016. I swear I’ve heard it earlier than that but not sure from where…
I remember hearing it get kicked around quite a bit during gamergate.
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It's funny.
The terminally online right, much like the terminally online left, does not actually have a principled set of ideas that they're operating on. They don't have a central governing ethos, there is no set of principles to live by. There are vibes and there is owning the left. The more trad you are the better your vibes, and the more you own the libs the more trad you are. Does trad actually mean owning property, having a loving family, being kind, respectful, and upright in your moral beliefs? No! It means posting memes about "tfw no land" or "tfw no tradwife" or "tfw cities bad" or some such nonsense. Trump makes the left mad. Therefore Trump good. Do no further analysis than this. Go far enough right and you get to the wignats who call him ZionDon or whatever because he doesn't want to "gas the kikes race war now" and even they will laugh at the orange man's antics because he makes the left mad, and making the left mad is pretty much all the terminally online right actually believes in.
Shoot, I guess I've been doing it wrong, because the general trad discourse strongly encouraged me to stop being a single hedonist, get married, buy a house, have kids, and get serious about religion and stronger social bonds to my community.
Well at least now you know and can divorce your wife, sell your house, abandon your kids, and focus on what really matters. Getting a good like/retweet ratio.
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A simplistic theory, but there's something to be said for it.
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This is pretty much correct. The entire political online discourse is now "what can I do/say/believe that will make my outgroup mad?"
The last several years are best modelled as a massive, distributed search for ways to hurt the outgroup as badly as possible without getting in too much trouble.
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