How the Alt-Right Grew From an Obscure Racist Cabal

[demmiblue]

Source: Wired

The term “alt-right” probably makes you think of Twitter or a dark subreddit, or 4chan, or some social medium occupied by meme-slinging, Trump-supporting, unapologetically bigoted provocateurs. You probably don’t think of a PO box in Whitefish, Montana. But that’s the alt-right’s street address.

More precisely, it’s where you send mail to the National Policy Institute, the think tank that built the movement. The president is Richard Spencer, who coined the term “alternative right” in 2008 in an article he wrote for a far-right website. And when you follow the alt-right back home, the movement’s goofy, social media-friendly trappings fall away. NPI doesn’t actually traffic in cartoon frogs and fedoras. The people who run it are just white supremacists.

On paper, NPI doesn’t look influential. It’s a website, a PO box, a Google Voice number, and—according to its last available tax forms—$16,000 worth of assets and an annual income that barely cracks six figures. NPI publishes research papers and books—classics like “Racial Differences in Intelligence, Personality, and Behavior” and The Red Pill. (The phrase “red pill” has mutated from a Matrix reference about embracing painful truths to a shorthand for supporting racism and misogyny.) NPI’s mission statement describes its members as “dedicated to the heritage, identity, and future of people of European descent in the United States, and around the world.” They’re serious: Spencer himself was denounced by and deported from Hungary—a famously xenophobic country—for organizing a pan-European white supremacist event.

According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks extremist groups in the US, NPI is one of the four most influential organizations of academic racists in the country. Its companions on that list include the Charles Martel Society, run by NPI’s founder, millionaire publisher William Regnery. Also on the list: the New Century Foundation, which is run by Jared Taylor, one of the founding members of NPI’s board. It’s a small pond, and just about everything you fish out of it has some connection to NPI.

But now that clique’s ideas, the ideological tentpoles of the alt-right movement, have swum out into the mainstream.

Read more: https://www.wired.com/2016/10/alt-right-grew-obscure-racist-cabal/

[bmstee01]

1. The Republican Party

They let this happen.
They need to own it.

[demmiblue]

2. SPLC:

The Alternative Right, commonly known as the Alt-Right, is a set of far-right ideologies, groups and individuals whose core belief is that “white identity” is under attack by multicultural forces using “political correctness” and “social justice” to undermine white people and “their” civilization. Characterized by heavy use of social media and online memes, Alt-Righters eschew “establishment” conservatism, skew young, and embrace white ethno-nationalism as a fundamental value.

The Alternative Right is a term coined in 2008 by Richard Bertrand Spencer, who heads the white nationalist think tank known as the National Policy Institute, to describe a loose set of far-right ideals centered on “white identity” and the preservation of “Western civilization.” In 2010, Spencer, who had done stints as an editor of The American Conservative and Taki’s Magazine, launched the Alternative Right blog, where he worked to refine the movement’s ideological tenets.

Spencer describes the Alt Right as a big-tent ideology that blends the ideas of neo-reactionaries (NRx-ers), who advocate a return to an antiquated, pseudo-libertarian government that supports “traditional western civilization”; “archeofuturists,” those who advocate for a return to “traditional values” without jettisoning the advances of society and technology; human biodiversity adherents (HBDers) and “race realists,” people who generally adhere to “scientific racism”; and other extreme-right ideologies. Alt-Right adherents stridently reject egalitarianism and universalism.

At the heart of the Alt-Right is a break with establishment conservatism that favors experimentation with the ideas of the French New Right; libertarian thought as exemplified by former U.S. Rep. Ron Paul (R-Texas); anarcho-capitalism, which advocates individual sovereignty and open markets in place of an organized state; Catholic traditionalism, which seeks a return to Roman Catholicism before the liberalizing reforms of the Second Vatican Council; and other ideologies. It is a reaction to the conservative establishment as exemplified by the nomination of Barry Goldwater for the presidency in 1964. According to Spencer, that solidified several aspects of contemporary conservatism, including an emphasis on liberty, freedom, free markets and capitalism. Spencer considers these ideas to be “anti-ideals” and says the Alt-Right is redefining categories for a new kind of conservative.

Spencer describes Alt-Right adherents as younger people, often recent college graduates, who recognize the “uselessness of mainstream conservatism” in what he describes as a “hyper-racialized” world. So it’s no surprise that the movement in 2015 and 2016 concentrated on opposing immigration and the resettlement of Syrian refugees in America. Although such stances align with older forms of white racism, Spencer insists that the Alt-Right is “a liberation from a left-right dialectic.”

The Alt-Right is intimately connected American Identitarianism, a version of an ideology popular in Europe that emphasizes cultural and racial homogeneity within different countries. One difference is that while European Identitarians indict the generation known as the “68ers,” a reference to the left of the 1960s, their American counterparts attack baby boomers, who are presumed to comprise the bulk of the current Republican Party’s base. But the movements on both continents are similar in accusing older conservatives for selling out their countries to foreigners.

Read more: https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideology/alternative-right

[Volaris]

3. Did collages recently start giving out degrees in Stupid???

Because thats what Conservative Intellectulism seems to be.

'Yeah, I passed Econ, and History, and maybe an Ethics or Philo class here and there, (I didnt need Government, my HS Civics class was enough, and Ive never really liked science--but they said I had to take it), so now I got me a degree...cept I didnt learn ANYTHING, because actual learning and Critical Thinking Skillz are for dirty liberals and Scientists who are paid to be wrong and who just want to control the government and control me and what I believe and the college I went to. Its the CORPORATIONS (the good christian ones, anyway) who want whats best for me and so we should just exempt them from ALL TAXES and most Laws because then they will be able to pay me the money I need to buy things like a good life for my Family.'

This bullshit is the reality of people who were smart enough to be taught how to do their jobs and cash the check, but too dumb to acquire a real, questioning, liberal Education. They work hard at those jobs, and when they DONT get ahead or get what they (probably rightfully) worked hard for, SOMEONE has to be blamed..so I'll vote for Trump.

Its also the political fever-dream of those people who ARE liberally educated, and OWN the Corporations, and are so venally evil BY CHOICE that they will absolutley exploit the former for their own greed...keeping their workers dumb is PROFITABLE for them. If they could find a way to vote for mass illiteracy, they would do it in a fucking heartbeat.

Did colleges recently start giving out degrees in Stupid? They sure did..and Trump 'University' cashed IN.