{"id":36601,"date":"2016-12-10T02:00:59","date_gmt":"2016-12-10T07:00:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=36601"},"modified":"2018-09-18T10:34:17","modified_gmt":"2018-09-18T14:34:17","slug":"esr-spelunks-the-alt-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2016\/12\/10\/esr-spelunks-the-alt-right\/","title":{"rendered":"ESR spelunks the alt-right"},"content":{"rendered":"

ESR has been busy with absorbing technical projects, so he’s not blogging as frequently as he used to. Here’s his take on the alt-right phenomenon<\/a>:<\/p>\n

First, while I\u2019m not entirely sure of everything the alt-right is (it\u2019s a rather amorphous phenomenon) it is not the KKK and neo-Nazis. The most that can truthfully be said is that \u2018alt-right\u2019 serves as a recent flag of convenience to which some old-fashioned white supremacists are busily trying to attach themselves.<\/p>\n

Also, the alt-right is not Donald Trump and his Trumpkins, either. He\u2019s an equally old-fashioned populist continuous with William Jennings Bryan and Huey Long. If you tossed a bunch of alt-right memes at him, I doubt he\u2019d even understand them, let alone agree.<\/p>\n

The defining characteristic of the alt-right is, really, corrosive snarkiness. To the extent an origin can be identified, it was as as a series of message-board pranks on 4chan. There\u2019s no actual ideological core to it \u2013 it\u2019s a kind of oppositional attitude-copping without a program, mordantly nasty but unserious.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s also some weird occultism attached \u2013 the half-serious cult of KEK, aka Pepe, who may or may not be an ancient Egyptian frog-god who speaks to his followers via numerological coincidences. (Donald Trump really wouldn\u2019t get that part.)<\/p>\n

Some elements of the alt-right are in fact racist (and misogynist, and homophobic, and other bad words) a la KKK\/Nazi, but that\u2019s not a defining characteristic and it\u2019s anyway difficult to tell the genuine haters from those for whom posing as haters is a form of what 4chan types call \u201cgriefing\u201d. That\u2019s social disruption for the hell of it.<\/p>\n

It is worth noting that another part of what is going on here is a visceral rejection of politically-correct leftism, one which deliberately inverts its premises. The griefers pose as racists and misogynists because they think it\u2019s the most oppositional stance they can take to bullies and rage-mobbers who position themselves as anti-racists and feminists.<\/p>\n

My sense is that the true haters are a tiny minority compared to the griefers and anti-PC rejectionists, but the griefers are entertained by others\u2019 confusion on this score and don\u2019t intend to clear it up.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As has been pointed out many times, the habit of all too many on the left to describe anyone to the the right of them politically as being racist, sexist, homophobic, Islamophobic, etc., has reduced the effectiveness and even encouraged otherwise sensible people to start describing themselves<\/em> in those terms. In the same way that the epithet “fascist” no longer has any meaning beyond “something or someone I don’t like”, these other terms have also lost much of their power through massive over-use.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ESR has been busy with absorbing technical projects, so he’s not blogging as frequently as he used to. Here’s his take on the alt-right phenomenon: First, while I\u2019m not entirely sure of everything the alt-right is (it\u2019s a rather amorphous phenomenon) it is not the KKK and neo-Nazis. The most that can truthfully be said […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28,53,13],"tags":[1079,828,1235,622,351,99,593],"class_list":["post-36601","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media","category-politics","category-usa","tag-altright","tag-bullying","tag-esr","tag-ideology","tag-politicalcorrectness","tag-racism","tag-socialmedia"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-9wl","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36601","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36601"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36601\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36602,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36601\/revisions\/36602"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36601"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36601"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36601"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}