Why there is no alt-left

[BainsBane]

Trump used the term to refer to protesters against racism. There is nothing "alt" about standing up to racism. That is something decent human beings do, and the protesters in Charlottesville put their safety on the line to take a stand against White Supremacy. Heather Heyer lost her life for it, and many others were injured. There is no equivalency between that and the alt-right--who are in fact Nazis and should be referred to as such.

I find it interesting how many people around the internet are simultaneously offended by the term and eager to apply it to themselves. They didn't protest in Charlottesville and haven't tended to identify racism or the rise of fascism as points of concern. Quite the contrary.

I support the call to stop using the term alt-left, largely because it is wildly inaccurate.

Link to tweet

Where I disagree with Giordano is in the use of the term "left." People who denounce civil rights activism as centrism and Third Way have lost all rights to call themselves the left.

Trump's comments aside, what commonly has been referred to as "alt-left" or the "dirtbag left" is not left at all. Leftist ideologies, whether oriented toward Marxism or Anarchism, center around the principle of equality, on collective responsibility. The dirtbag left revolves around power and dominance of a privileged minority, who demand Democrats "bend the knee" in submission to them. It eschews class solidarity in favor of political factionalism and demands for power. Nothing about that is leftist. In fact much of what they hold up as "leftist" demands are in fact nationalist.

So why such eagerness to assume the term "alt-left" applies to them? They haven't spent the last several months denouncing the rise of fascism. They've focused their anger toward the Democratic Party. Some make endless excuses for Donald Trump, even now insisting what we are witnessing is nothing new. "Racists are people too," they proclaim. Clinton threatened war toward North Korea too, they insist, equating Trump's bellicose remarks about North Korean were no different from Clinton's statements:

When North Korea conducted a nuclear test in September 2016, she released a statement, if not quite promising “fire and fury,” that did declare: “North Korea’s decision to conduct another nuclear test is outrageous and unacceptable. … This constitutes a direct threat to the United States, and we cannot and will never accept this.”
https://consortiumnews.com/2017/08/15/hillary-clinton-promised-wars-too/

Exactly the same, for people seeking to normalize the fascist in the White House. They malign Robert Mueller, talk about how the "deep state" is out to get Trump, all in defense of the Nazi in the White House. What about that says leftist?

They call themselves left, I think, because they were once Democrats and they've convinced themselves their contempt for the Democratic Party is because it has moved to the right, even as they go out of their way to legitimize fascism. I submit it is they, and not the party, who have moved to the right. Yet like many who use terms like left and right, I am a child of the Cold War. We, however, are in an entirely different era now, with new political actors, alliances, and issues.

French commentator Yasha Monk has talked about how left vs. right are increasingly obsolete in describing contemporary politics. Divisions, he observes, break down according to nationalism vs. liberal globalism. http://www.npr.org/2017/04/24/525441567/french-presidential-election-serves-as-test-of-liberal-democracy. The linked discussion is in the context of the French election, but is every bit as relevant to our current political standoff.

This is not to say all nationalists are racists or fascists. Of course that isn't the case. But we are increasingly seeing a muddying of left-vs. right, and that may be because those terms are no longer adequate to describe the current state of American political culture.