Paul Bryant's Reviews > Making Sense of the Alt-Right

This author calls the alt-right some bad names. They are all white nationalist, racist and antisemitic. And they hate women too. But alt-righters say

We just don’t care what you call us anymore

WHO ARE THEY? WHAT DO THEY WANT? WHY DON’T THEY LEAVE ME ALONE?

Your average alt-righter, I would probably say someone who is thirty years old, who is a tech professional, who is an atheist, and who lives on one of the coasts (Richard Spencer)

They write a lot of nasty trolling stuff but they write as if nothing is really serious. This is Andy Warhol cut and paste so-what politics.

A penchant for aggressive rhetoric and outright racial and anti-Semitic slurs, often delivered in the arch, ironic tones common to modern internet discourse (Rosie Gray)

This is really different from what we remember the radical right to have been only a couple of decades ago.

In the past, the stereotypical young white nationalist was an angry bitter skinhead with limited skills and prospects

That’s right. We remember those skinhead guys! They were scary but they had no brains at all so they weren’t much of a threat. We see them in movies like American History X and The Believer (both recommended).

THE ALT RIGHT IS NOT VIOLENT? OH, I DID NOT QUITE REALISE THAT

This book is entirely concerned with the USA. That’s okay but I did not quite realise that. George Hawley says :

I am not implying that the alt-right is a terrorist movement. At the time of this writing, I am aware of no acts of physical violence directly connected to the alt-right – online harassment is another story

I was very surprised at this. I immediately thought of Dylann Roof, the lunatic who shot 9 people in a black church in June 2015. He was a white supremacist, wasn’t he? But George says

Dylan Roof’s manifesto suggests he was more influenced by older white-nationalist writers

Well, if you say so. If that is a distinction you wish to make.

RIGHT WING VIOLENCE

In June 2016 Jo Cox, British Labour MP, was shot and stabbed to death in the street by a guy associated with various online far right groups.

Previously to that, of course, you had the Anders Breivik attack in Norway in 2011. He killed 77 people in support of his anti-immigration white-nationalist cause. (He described the attack itself as “the book launch”, referring to his online manifesto.) He was the poster boy for white supremacism.

And only a month ago we had the horrible mosque shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand.

So, there are increasing real-world manifestations of the type of white-nationalism & racism that is peddled in arch, ironic tones by the American alt right, those boys sitting in their mothers’ basements.

I did not think that this book should have so clearly exonerated the alt right of violence. But this book is nothing if not carefully argued.

THE ALT RIGHT IS EITHER VERY HONEST, FINALLY, OR DISGUSTINGLY WRONGHEADED ABOUT THE USA

George himself says, most bracingly,

Despite the egalitarian rhetoric of the Declaration of independence, the United States operated as a de facto white supremacist nation for most of its history

He adds that the alt right and Bernie Sanders would agree that “the United States was viewed by its founders as a country for people of European ancestry”

Of course, Bernie would then say “and that was bad” and the alt-right would say “and that was good, and we should get back there again”.

Over the past two decades, Americans have constructed systems of intellectual silencing that stifle the range of debate among responsible and public-spirited people, They’ve resigned hugely important topics to the domain of cranks and haters.

A growing percentage of white America no longer views racism as a moral failing

THE ALT RIGHT LOVES TRUMP BUT THEY DON’T LOVE THE TYPICAL TRUMP VOTER. MEANWHILE TRUMP DOES NOT LOVE THEM BACK

Greg Johnson : Like an icebreaker, Trump has plowed through the frozen crust of artificial political consensus, smashing it to bits and releasing the turbulent populist currents beneath

But the alt-right are a whole different bunch to the Trumpanistas :

Evangelical Christians are more likely to be mocked than defended, and bald eagles and American flags are few and far between

I'M SO BORED WITH THE USA BUT WHAT CAN I DO?

So, it’s a new and different beast, and according to George, these guys (no surprise it’s always guys) actually want to dismantle the USA and erect in its place either one or several white race enclaves in North America, removing all non-whites from their territories. Pretty apocalyptic. I really don’t think you could do that without a little bit of violence here and there.

George Hawley’s little book is probably for politics geeks only, and I would instead recommend for those interested in the more disturbing or alarming areas of internet culture two other books :

This is Why we Can’t Have Nice Things by Whitney Phillips

and

Troll Hunting by Ginger Gorman