An article on the conservative vs alt-right distinction

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Someone posted this on my Facebook feed and I thought it was a short as well as productive/informative article.

One of the things that's been a big problem in at least US media and it seems to be the case increasingly elsewhere is caricature painting of everyone and anyone whose political views a media outlet's internal culture disagrees with. Part of this can be blamed on social media killing traditional media, 'if it bleeds it leads' going into hyper-drive with all out click-bait, and then you have the rather ugly situation where leading a false but sensational story and then retracting it later gets you twice the revenue that getting it right the first time yields.

This article starts with an example - ie. The Economist calling Ben Shapiro a 'sage of the alt-right'. It can be difficult to tell at times how much of this is sincere ignorance vs. willful malice, and it would be sadly normal perhaps and survivable if it were just idiots at a bar being snide with each other but these are the institutions that drive narratives in the country and it's really detrimental when they're putting the megaphone to a breakdown in public reality.


Why The Left Can’t Understand The Alt-Right by David Marcus:

https://thefederalist.com/2019/03/29/le ... fIt5wmPilY

Some liberals get it wrong re alt-right vs conservative. Some conservatives get it wrong re socialism vs communism . It's been going on for ages.

The classic case is American right-wingers (who may or may not be conservative) branding liberals like Obama as socialists. You could maybe justify calling Obama a social democrat, but a socialist he isn't. You also see it with neoliberalism, which by its detractors is used to mean something like Thatcherism/Reaganism but by its supporters is usually used to mean a more liberal modernisation of the Third Way.

There are a lot of things I disagree with in this article:

0) I'm going to note straight away that halfway through the article, it makes reference to an outlet I hadn't heard of - the Federalist. This is the outlet that this piece of work is published in, so be aware of the slant on it.

1) the notion that conservative views are rare in the mainstream media. The mainstream media is dominated by conservative view. For example, there are eight national newspapers in the UK and five of them are conservative (with the Daily Express being much further right than any mainstream outlet is to the left). Even outlets that aren't expressly conservative will routinely represent conservative views. Question Time has a five person panel; typically this will consist of a Conservative MP, a Labour MP, a right-wing pundit, a left-wing pundit, and a wildcard. The Big Questions routinely gives a platform to religious conservatives of all flavours. Piers Morgan hosts the biggest TV breakfast show. Jeremy Clarkson only got fired from the BBC due to assault - years of racist jokes weren't enough. It's relatively easy to find people who are to the right of Theresa May being represented in the mainstream media, but outside of comedy it is very hard to find people to the left of Jeremy Corbyn being represented in the mainstream media (I can only really think of that one woman who keeps humiliating Morgan). It was even worse before Corbyn was leader, when left-wing MPs didn't get the same air time but UKIP and the ERG still did.
In the US, the NYT runs David Brooks, Bret Stephens, Ross Douthat, and Bari Weiss. The Washington Post runs Jennifer Rubin, Max Boot, and Michael Gerson. You have the Wall Street Journal, the New York Post, the Chicago Tribune, and especially the Washington Times. You have Fox News. You have every news outlet in the world hanging on everything Donald Trump says. There is no lack of conservative opinion in the mainstream media.

2) Claiming that the alt-right is strictly hierarchical and that an essential feature of it is allegiance to leaders like Richard Spencer. I would contend that this is the opposite of true. The alt-right is a decentralised movement. Its base is, in no small part, totally anonymous users on chan boards and pseudonymous users on Reddit and Twitter. The terrorists who go around shooting up mosques aren't being directed by Spencer or Southern or Trump in the way that a lot of Al-Qaeda activity up to 9/11 was masterminded by Bin Laden, they're autonomous self-directed terrorists modelled more after the AQ cells between 9/11 and the rise of ISIS (who gave us the attacks in Madrid and London).

3) Claiming that the alt-right is necessarily explicit and in-your-face. Again, this is just wrong. The alt-right is very rhetorically clever. They make extensive use of dogwhistles, irony, and innuendo. They use memes as cover, they disguise everything as jokes. They have even tried to create meta-dogwhistles - they know that people who are out of the loop find the whole concept of dogwhistles to be ridiculous, so they turn innocuous words and gestures ("subscribe to PewDiePie!") into dogwhistles with the intent of making people who call them out lose credibility. They mostly know that talking about white genocide marks them as a lunatic, so they only do so in explicitly anti-alt-right spaces as a trolling method. In more public spaces (Twitter for example) they'll talk about how "it's OK to be white" (because of course it is!) or how much they hate SJWs or why it would be bad if there was more Islam in this country (and take a look at that country, where there are more Muslims and a bad thing happened last week!).

(Note that combining points 2 and 3, every single claim this article uses to distinguish Shapiro from the alt-right falls apart. I don't think Shapiro is alt-right, but the article doesn't do anything to convince me of that!)

4) Claiming that Breitbart is not an alt-right publication. I'm not familiar with the other two outlets. However, Breitbart's ties to prominent alt-right figures like Steve Bannon and Donald Trump is well documented. Bannon has explicitly described Breitbart as "the platform for the alt-right". Breitbart has written in defence of the alt-right, such as their article "An Establishment Conservative’s Guide To The Alt-Right" which presents precisely the opposite view of the alt-right to the Federalist article ("they're just a bunch of kids messing around who want to preserve white culture, no big deal!"). Breitbart often publishes alt-right conspiracy theories such as Pizzagate. It has invented terrorist attacks and accused German international footballers of being child smugglers. It supported Trump's Muslim ban and routinely writes articles othering refugees.

5) The claim that Shapiro is not at all associated with the alt-right. The Economist article touches upon Shapiro's YouTube celebrity status amongst young conservatives. While Shapiro has made a few statements that I think could fairly be characterised as racist or xenophobic, he has retracted most of them, sometimes in quite humbling ways, and most of the worst of them were 15 years ago. People do change. However, in recent years Shapiro has called Muslims in Europe a "disease".
So while I think Shapiro's main motivating ideology is traditional conservativism - his most extreme views are on abortion and LGBT+ rights, where I think it would be fair to call him hateful but which are low priorities for the alt-right - he does sometimes step outside mainstream conservativism and into alt-right territory. I don't think he's quite as far gone as someone like Mike Cernovich, but it would be fair to describe him as a gateway to the alt-light, if not an alt-lighter himself. He certainly isn't actually alt-right. Probably fairer to group him with Jordan Peterson and Philip Davies rather than Spencer and Bannon.
As with Peterson, the alt-right may attack Shapiro on occasion for not going far enough, but they're also happy to use his material to convert people to their cause. The fact that Shapiro has been both attacked by and an attacker of the alt-right in many ways just makes him more useful to them - it's that plausible deniability that they make such great use of.

So, based on this article, I would argue that David Marcus doesn't understand the alt-right.

Lots of things I'd disagree with in the above.

One - it's written from an American perspective about an American media, part of why I brought up the 'US media' in my first post.

The other thing - the whole idea of dog-whistles gives the worst kinds of people inordinate power. It made my stomach turn when Christian Picciolini went on about them for as long as he did in the Sam Harris interview and especially saying that 'liberal media' and 'globalism' were both white nationalist dog-whistles. All they'd need to do to completely crash civil discourse on important topics is co-opt any or even most of the key terms needed to have a conversation. I mean, maybe a new civil war, blood-letting, disease, and famine would cure racism and inequality - just that I'm not familiar with many success stories that go down that road.

I also have to ask - with Ben Shapiro, what's your take on him being sort of the conservative US member of the Intellectual Dark Web and you have Sam Harris, Bret Weinstein, Eric Weinstein, Jordan Peterson, Dave Rubin, etc. having good and meaningful conversations where they're holding equal tact? I can't help but get the impression that your radar on this is radically different from my own.

distinguishing people far in the distance is hard, if one is myopic.
But Shapiro in particular could well be an icon of the alt-right - because he's annoyingly aggressive. Sure, if you actually listen to him for a while, it turns out he's a conservative, but also not the smartest one, and he makes up for it in aggressive tone. Which in turns seems make him popular with a certain audience, and I'm guessing, his audience could have a blurry border with "alt-right".
alt-fight adjacent. haha.
but that goes for peterson etc. as well. alt-right adjacent.
now before someone complains: have you seen the peterson interview with the swedish rightwing as*hole?

Annoyingly aggressive, that's dead-aim. You only see that on the far and alt-right.

Walrus, you usually put together well informed statements but in this case you are incorrect when describing the America Media. 4 times the number of journalists identify as Democrats than identify as Republicans: source politico

Now party affiliation is an imperfect predictor of politics, but the democratic party has been swinging increasingly leftward during the same time. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/mo ... s-liberal/

I always say the liberal bias in the media is rarely intentional. It's just that liberals tend to go into journalism more often than conservatives, and even those trying to report in an unbiased manner occasionally let their biases slip through.

I also reject that the media hanging on every word Trump says is presence of conservative voices in the media. For one most press coverage of Trump is negative https://www.npr.org/2017/10/02/55509274 ... presidents. For another I and many others with center-right libertarian tendencies do not consider Trump conservative so much as a nationalistic populist. There are overlaps with traditional conservatism, but also substantial disagreement and even more so when you compare to the libertarian wing of the party.

I wonder how one calculates that Ben Shapiro isn't intelligent? Sounds more like people just hate him so they choose to not accept that he is intelligent, same can be said for Jordan Peterson. Now I'm sure there are a few here that will lie and say otherwise, and it's simply because they disagree with him. I honestly see that kind of stuff quite childish, stupidity does exist, neither of these people are stupid though, I don't call intelligent people stupid because I disagree with them.

Last edited by Crimadella on 30 Mar 2019, 3:53 pm, edited 1 time in total.

From what I can tell, one of the central problems is the extreme plurality of information distributors and their need to cut through the noise and attract readers. The filters erected not only in social media but also in other content delivery systems like search engine results also embolden everything further.

I feel like maybe the best way to de-escalate is just to disconnect from all the narratives, regardless of which direction they're pushing things. Person A cites something person B disagrees with and then person B feels compelled to correct the narrative by citing something else (kinda like here). But they're all just opinions on things, laden by the leanings of the opiner, and backed with some other person's opinion or poll that's given some kind of weight because it got published on the internet.

I've met people who give me crap for not following the news, but they tend to be in some way a person that I wouldn't want to be friends with. Over-opinionated and condescending.

We need some way to establish reward incentives again toward boring, objective news.

Yeah, and we need a way to incentivize people against salacious gossip, but we haven't gotten there in a few thousand years. The news is an outgrowth of a fundamental behavior that started at the scale of a tribe, but exceeded word-of-mouth as the scale of it grew. Economic pressures are just making it worse and society simply won't tolerate a modification of its structure that goes against the nexus of interacting forces that are already present in it or against human nature.

I often feel the same way whenever someone calls Donald Trump stupid. It's my opinion he's a delusional narcissistic with a skewed view of reality, but dumb he is not.

How is he delusional? What gives you that belief?

It's more of a perception thing than based in fact. The way he talks about himself. The way he talks about other people. The way his former cabinet members describe him. The fact that his cabinet has the highest turnover in presidential history.

Statements like "I know more than the generals." I think he actually believes those things. This doesn't make him dumb, as I think his personal thinking ability is much higher than many of his detractors give him credit for. It does make him delusional.

I don't know if Shapiro or Peterson are smart.
But one gets dumber from listening to them, while they fight their strawmen.
When I hear someone blame Stalin on Marx, I know the person has not engaged with Marx beyond the common knowledge.
When I hear someone conflate post-modernism and marxism, he's creating a scapegoat and I wonder what he's hiding.

Since I've read some Marx, I'd guess they're trying to gloss over the "creative destruction" inherent in capitalism and its effects on tradition and the notion of the sacred; and blame it on Marx because ... Well, he diagnosed it, so he must have something to do with it, right?

Shapiro and Peterson are not engaging with the history of ideas that brought us here, at all.

Peterson in particular is a Jungian, so... Yeah, that makes him an idiot in my eyes. I've read Jung. That's why I think I can judge. Jung's theories are permeated with the worldview of a European of the late 19th century/early 20th century. Peterson doesn't take into account at any point, that Jung's theories come from a very specific place and point in time. Peterson calls himself a scientist but forgets to let his audience know that Jung was an esoteric prophet who had visions of angels and believed "symbols" in dreams he had years prior to some events were deeply connected to those events - after they had taken place... Jung also believed that events happening at the same time were connected to each other. He worked on developing a rival-theory to "cause and effect" that would be able to account for this.
In other words, Jung was a nutjob.
If you teach Jung eithout even mentioning he was a nutjob, you're misleading your audience who's considering you an authority, based on your academic title and position.

Shapiro is pro-gun, because he wants to be able to defend himself against the government in case the third reich happens again in the US, as it did happen to his ancestors in Europe. Fair enough.
Should he be paying so much taxes, a large proportion of which goes to the defense budget, then?
I wonder how many predator drones he will be able to shoot down...
So... Shapiro is making this argument from conviction, not from any rooting in reality.
To be fair, I haven't listened to much of what he says, his voice is too grating and I don't have the impression I can learn much from him, other than things about him.

To conclude: they may be smart - they figured out how to make money - but they aren't making people who listen to them smarter.

I wrote a long reply to this but then closed the tab, bah.

American perspective - sure. I did try to acknowledge that in the second half of that paragraph but my formatting probably made that harder.

Dog whistles - I don't like the concept for the same reasons as you, but unfortunately it's real. We've reached a stage where things are now even more meta - the alt right know that the concept of dog whistles sounds far fetched to the uninitiated, so they're using increasingly mundane (or zany depending on your point of view) ones to make their opponents sound unhinged. The OK sign is one example, as is "subscribe to PewDiePie". Globalism is absolutely a common anti-Semitic dogwhistle. The solution isn't "never talk about globalism" or whatever, but simply being aware, and encouraging others to be aware, that certain terms may signify that other terms which seem innocuous might have a second reading. Think critically, basically, while also accepting that there may be things you don't know (particularly important when considering fast-moving internet culture).

Shapiro as part of the "Intellectual Dark Web" - I think he's routinely identified alongside those individuals. I don't know much about the Weinsteins but I'd group them alongside Harris as the more "moderate" members of the group. Those three and Peterson are genuine intellectuals, but ultimately only in their narrow specialisms - they don't have enough perspective to engage with a lot of the cultural issues that they like to complain about. I might be being harsh on Harris there, but Peterson is a complete dope on a lot of basic biology, which is fairly close to his specialism, so I don't see what hope he has with more distant issues. Rogan and Shapiro, on the other hand, I wouldn't class as intellectuals, particularly Rogan.

Not sure there is a hard and fast line between the alt-right and the more conservative part of the IDW, particularly Rogan. Rogan has no qualms allying himself with the alt-right, and his audience overlaps very heavily with that of the hardcore alt-right. Peterson isn't quite as bad, but yet he focuses his energy disproportionately on the left and gives the alt-right an easy ride. There is an ideological coalition between these various shades of "anti-SJW". I would point to an excellent article that Ezra Klein wrote for Vox entitled "The rise of YouTube’s reactionary right", which makes for interesting reading. Would also check out the /r/SamHarris thread about Rogan's interview with Lauren Southern, which highlights quite well the divide between Harris' followers and those of Rogan and Peterson (although of course there is overlap - but the non-overlapping part is Harris's followers who think Rogan and Peterson are dopes for associating with the alt-right).

I think civility alone is worth very little. Don't get me wrong, it's better than rudeness, but your idea isn't better because you said please. I'm also not entirely sure that these people are all that civil. Joe Rogan called liberalism a mental disorder. Jordan Peterson sues people who criticise him. But at the end of the day, I value insightful analysis above all else. Hbomberguy is abrasive and uncouth and personally incited a Twitter mob against me, but give me his insightful critiques of the alt-right ahead of Jordan Peterson's straw men. And certainly give me someone who is both polite and insightful, like ContraPoints. Both of those people are much further from me politically than the IDW are from the alt-right, but there's some allyship there because we're all opposed to the alt-right (but also prepared to call each other out when we disagree).

On the other hand, most of the IDW would rather side with the alt-right than against them. They are defined in large part by their shared opposition to "campus leftists" (truly the most pressing political issue of our times!). When I say "sure your economical ideas would reduce the level of growth we'd experience and therefore our ability to help the needy, but you're helping stop the rightward shift in our society with insightful and entertaining political commentary", I'm showing that I prioritise anti-fascism over liberal economics. Maybe I'm wrong to do so, and if so I'll have to live with that, but I'm entirely comfortable with that choice. When Joe Rogan or Jordan Peterson chooses to side with the alt-right because of their shared dislike of content warnings and trans people, they're prioritising opposition to "campus leftists" over the threat of rising ethnic nationalism. It's my view that this reflects poorly on them.

(Ironically, I'd excuse Shapiro despite being being the most conservative of the lot, because he actually makes efforts beyond the token to oppose the alt-right. The overlap there is much more uneasy.)


It's insulting to people who are diagnosed narcissists to compare them to Trump in a derogatory fashion. I'm not even joking or using rhetoric to double-down on the Trump insult. Narcissism is a mental illness which is difficult to live with, and sufferers do not deserve to be demonised. Trying to slur Trump by calling him a narcissist unfairly stigmatises mental illness.

I also don't think Trump suffers from a delusional disorder. His delusions, such as they are, are purely the result of his stupidity. This is a man who routinely bungles basic facts. He doesn't just lie when it benefits him, but he lies about utterly trivial things where it's easy to verify that he's lying. He often loses his train of thought mid sentence. He repeatedly does things that he knows are bad for him. He thinks exercise is bad for you. He bankrupted a casino. His decision making is ineffective. He shows little sign of intellect. He's not a clever man.

Now Dominic Cummings? There's a clever man. Don't know who the American equivalent would be, but there must be some smart people in the Trump camp. The Russia investigation has made most of them look like complete buffoons though.