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Did the alt-right ever even exist? I remember when Trump first came on the scene and people were freaking out, there were articles everywhere and people making tons of YouTube videos about the alt-right and how they were recruiting people. Nobody ever asked the question recruiting them to what? Could you even join the alt-right?
Seriously, from what I can gather, the alt-right was basically some podcast networks (TRS) and then Richard Spencer's tiny organization. His NPI conferences had maybe 500 people. Other so called members of the alt-right like Jared Taylor had already been around for decades with American Renaissance. Even when they got together at their biggest event with Unite the Right in Charlottesville, there were barely 1,000 of them and they were vastly outnumbered by counter-protesters. And a bunch of these were old school white nationalists like David Duke who came on the scene over 30 years before that.
As far as I can tell, nobody has ever seen or heard of a gathering of more than 1,000 of them together at one time. There is no alt-right to join or be recruited to and is not an organization. It has no leader or leaders. It basically doesn't exist. The mainstream media and Democrats basically made it up either as a psyop or just convinced themselves that it exists. It's probably a mix of both. This wasn't like recruiters online targeting vulnerable Muslim kids to go fight for ISIS where you could go literally join ISIS which was an organization that actually controlled land and had an army. You join the alt-right and do what exactly? Shitpost on 4chan and post edgy memes on Twitter?
Their strongest argument probably is that there were some lone wold terrorist attacks. But there were already lone wolf white nationalist attacks before Trump like the OKC bombing. And none of the closest things to leaders of the alt-right had ever committed and violence as far as I can tell. And I would argue that the mainstream media's reporting on this issue did much more to create lone wolf shooters who they gaslit into thinking we were on the cusp of a race war and gassing the Jews than any alt-right "recruiters" did.
Am I crazy here? My theory is that the Hillary Clinton campaign saw they were a good boogeyman to scare people about Trump and then the media ran with it and people convinced themselves of something on a societal level that never even existed. It's actually insane if you really think about it.
For me, the idea of theAlt Right kinda blurred together with NRX via the SSC comments section and the various articles playing 6 degrees of Kevin Bacon with various Rationalists and various flavors of White Supremacism / Nationalism / HBD / whatever. The key difference was established by Richard Spencer doing the Nazi salutes toward Trump, whereas NRX tended to treat Nazis as merely the flavor of totalitarian Leftism that lost the war. So the alt right I guess felt like it was discount Reaction meant to appeal to people less likely to read Moldbug and more likely to hang out on 4chan.
Maybe my memory is faulty, but I remember all this being established before Hillery Clinton and Richard Spencer elevated it to national attention. I distinctly remember posting on Facebook after the Unite the Right incident that I was surprised to learn there were apparently actual Neonazi slogans and styles involved, because of the Boy Who Cried Wolf effect getting me use to "Nazi" basically meaning "someone I hate", and having associated the Alt Right more with the kind of talk from SSC commenters than Richard Spencer.
There were always (well, since the war) ‘Neo-Nazis’, think The Believer with Gosling in 2001. Online neonazi communities had existed since the first wave of internet communities emerged in the late 80s and early 90s. But it was a pretty low status thing, a lot of ex-cons, blue collar or underclass whites. Heavy association with KKK larpers, prison and drug gangs. There were always some more intellectual members, some academics especially those associated with Holocaust denial, but it was overall pretty lowbrow.
And the thing about that ‘movement’ is that it still exists. So what happened in Charlottesville and elsewhere is that no matter how hard the Richard Spencer types try, the meth addict ex-cons with arms, neck and sometimes face covered with swastika tattoos are going to show up. And of course the press is happy to photograph them when they do.
Thus the obsession with ‘optics’. The problem is that they’ve so bought into the ‘no enemies to the right’ meme and unironic Hitler shitposting on DR Twitter that they can’t actually police these people without thinking they’re ‘cucks’, so they’ve largely abandoned real life events now, other than some vaguely associated with the Dimes Square/RedScare/BAP scene.
Regarding your last period, I agree, and I think it is noteworthy to say that the "no enemies to the Right" works way less for the Right than the Marcusian "no enemies to the Left" works for the Left. No amount of red terrorism, entrenching with Stalinism and Maoism, online furry and trans communities and femcel feminism has been enough to damage the left-brand among the western upper-class.
At least in the Anglosphere, and excepting the relatively minor Weather Underground type stuff in the 70s, there hasn’t really been a major wave of far left terrorism in over a century. No Anglo country has ever come even remotely close to falling to full socialism, the closest was probably the US in the early 30s and the UK in 1926, and both of those weren’t actually close at all. In parts of Eastern Europe associating with Soviet / ML aesthetics is low status even among progressive liberal elites, but they’re a lot closer to that history.
Of course, that same distance also applies to the radical right, but I think there’s almost an inherent understanding that the reactionary message is more compelling to much of the population (especially in a diversifying society) than the socialist message - and that’s true on both sides. There’s a reason no rich countries ever fell to socialism except for East Germany and Czecheslovakia, and in both those cases it happened at the end of the barrel of a Soviet gun.
Obviously history tells us a lot about the kinds of dictatorships that pop up in wealthy countries, but can you expound on this point? Are you saying that the left gets away with ‘no enemies to the left’ because the elites know there isn’t about to be a commie regime and so aren’t scared off by Unironic Marxists?
Yes, I think that’s true. I also think the experience electing conservative populists in the developed world suggests the people are drawn more to that messaging than leftist populism - Trump became President, Bernie couldn’t even beat Hillary in the primary. Corbyn bombed with the public, who mostly hated him by the time he was on his second election. Melenchon didn’t go anywhere in France. Leftist populists do better in poor countries, principally in Latin America.
Or rather, the steps for a reactionary populist coming to power in the US - if you’re a progressive elite - look something like Tucker Carlson winning a presidential (or maybe just being the trusted advisor to someone more competent than Trump who does), the GOP controlling both chambers (happened in Trump’s first term) and a conservative majority on SCOTUS (currently extant). Sure maybe the deep state still stops him, and obviously we know Carlson’s not a fascist really, but from their perspective that’s a risk.
The steps for an actual honest to god socialist coming to power in the US involve what, the total implosion of both existing parties and a nationwide movement of such strength that it could rewrite the constitution, pack the court and reshape American political economy? It seems unlikely, to say the least.
We'll never know if he could've beaten her, as the Hillary-funded DNC fixed that race.
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