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The Radical Roots of the Alt-Right

Josh Vandiver

Assistant Professor, Ball State University

Various source media, Political and Radicalism in the Twentieth Century

EMPOWER™ RESEARCH The radical political movement known as the The Alt-Right described here is the hard Alt-Right is, without question, a twenty-first- core of the movement.3 Ideologically, the century phenomenon.1 As the hipster-esque Alt-Right fuses together three previously ‘alt’ prefix suggests, the movement aspires distinct political and social phenomena: to offer a youthful alternative to conservatism or the Establishment Right, a 1. A ‘reboot’ or revision of earlier clean break and a fresh start for the new forms of American white century and the Millennial and ‘Z’ , sometimes designated generations.2 Unlike earlier ‘ 1.0.’ movements, the Alt-Right operates natively 2. A theoretical and discursive within the political medium of late programme centered on modernity – cyberspace – because it appropriating and adapting emerged within that medium and has been European right thought – especially continuously shaped by its ongoing that of the French New Right, the development. This operational innovation German Conservative Revolution, will continue to have far-reaching and and Evolian Traditionalism – for an unpredictable effects, but researchers American audience. should take care to precisely delineate the 3. A refined and intensified gender Alt-Right’s broader uniqueness. , a form of ‘ultra- Investigating the Alt-Right’s incipient masculinism.’ ideology – the ferment of political discourses, images, and ideas with which it While the first has long been a feature of seeks to define itself – one finds numerous American political life (albeit a highly links between it and twentieth century radical marginal one), and the second has been right movements, like those seen in the present paralleled elsewhere on the transnational collection. right, together the three make for an unusual fusion.

1 For a general overview of the focused on the Shift, ed. Gabriella Lazaridis and Giovanna Campani 2015-16 period in which the movement came to public (London: Routledge, 2016). awareness, see George Hawley, Making Sense of the Alt- 3 In order to maintain an analytical distinction between Right (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017). the loose media and partisan usage of ‘alt-right’ and a 2 For a good introduction to contemporary research on more precise designator for the movement’s hard core, radical right youth movements, albeit with an emphasis the latter will here be consistently capitalised ‘Alt- on Europe, see Anna Krasteva, ‘Re/De/Constructing Right’—save in the case of quotations, as in Clinton’s Far-Right Youth: Between the Lost Generation and speech below, which are unaltered. Contestatory Citizenship’, in Understanding the Populist

Seminal Alt-Right figures, such as Andrew opponent Donald Trump’s supporters were Anglin,4 Richard Spencer,5 and Greg ‘Alt-Right,’ which she defined as an Johnson,6 have been active for less than a ‘emerging racist ideology’ comprised of decade. While none has continuously ‘race-baiting ideas, anti-Muslim and anti- designated the movement as ‘Alt-Right’ immigrant ideas, anti-woman.’ While (including Spencer, who coined the term), Clinton’s characterisation of the Alt-Right – each has consistently returned to it as if understood as the movement’s hard core demarcating the ideological territory they – rings true in some ways, it is a serious share. No attention is here given to the less error to confuse the movement’s hard core ideologically radical and less with far larger and electorally significant, organisationally cohesive ‘Alt-Lite.’7 Nor is but also far less radical, populist and attention given to the distinct and much nationalist phenomena. The Alt-Right’s broader phenomena of and overt and pervasive fixation on race, ‘the nationalism.8 Mainstream media in the politics of ,’ and a homogenous United States often refers to populism and future ‘ethnostate’ clearly demarcate it from nationalism as ‘alt-right.’ Analytically, such other political forces. Yet, while it is crucial conflations are unhelpful. They were to recognise that the Alt-Right is a radical exacerbated by an August 2016 presidential movement and, as such, will likely never campaign speech by Hillary Clinton in which enjoy widespread appeal in anything like its she expansively asserted that many of her current form, the small size of a radical

4 After having first created and operated a now-defunct White Nationalist Who Wins Even If Trump Loses’, web publication called Total , for the past five Mother Jones, 27 October 2016 (the title was years Anglin has led the lowbrow Daily Stormer, a subsequently changed). While Anglin and (until crudely racist and anti-Semitic web publication named recently) Johnson are very reclusive, Spencer actively after the Nazi-era Der Stürmer; on the latter, see courts the limelight,so popular media interviews and Dennis E. Showalter, Little Man, What Now?: Der portrayals of Spencer are legion. Stürmer in the Weimar Republic (Hamden: Archon 6 Editor of Counter-Currents, Johnson, who claims to Books, 1982). It has been estimated that the Daily hold a PhD in philosophy, publishes extensively online Stormer was responsible for a third of all web traffic and in print on topics ranging from Martin Heidegger’s associated with the alt-right before the events in conception of ‘Jewry’ in his Black Notebooks, to Julius Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017; Thomas J. Evola’s conception of ‘spiritual’ , to the perceived Main, ‘What's the Alt-Right, and How Large Is Its theoretical and philosophical foundations of white Audience?’, Los Angeles Times (Online), 26 August 2017. nationalism. For the most prominent journalistic portrayal of Anglin 7 The term ‘Alt-Lite’ is used in a denigratory sense to date, see Luke O'Brien, ‘The Making of an American within the Alt-Right to designate its most proximate Nazi’, The Atlantic Monthly, December 2017. political rivals, a loose and ever-shifting collection of 5 Infamously described by the leftwing Mother Jones as ‘civic’ nationalists who shun the Alt-Right’s overt ‘dapper,’ Spencer – fond of tailored suits for himself ethno-nationalism, racialism, and anti-Semitism. On and polo shirts for his men – strives to reach middle the Alt-Lite, see Hawley, Making Sense of the Alt-Right, America through various college speaking tours, his ch. 6. annual National Policy Institute conference, his journal 8 On which, see Jan-Werner Müller, What Is Populism? Radix, and the website AltRight.com. On the sartorial (London: Penguin Books, 2017) and Cas Mudde, The Far designation, see Josh Harkinson, ‘Meet the Dapper Right in America (New York: Routledge, 2018).

movement or ‘groupuscule’ should by no Rockwell’s of the 1960s means preclude sober scholarly and its lesser-known successors and investigation and analysis.9 imitators.11 In addition to having no hierarchical apparatus, the Alt-Right In the most revealing overview of the Alt- features no well-trained paramilitary Right’s genesis yet produced within the cadres, no mass rallies of besotted movement, Anglin identifies twentieth- supporters, no cult following of a century American white nationalism as a key charismatic leader – all crucial features of precursor of the Alt-Right.10 How does the the archetypal fascism of Benito Mussolini’s Alt-Right attempt to ‘reboot’ earlier forms of Italy and ’s Germany aped by white nationalism? In terms of significant many neo-fascists, including Rockwell. Nor departures and differences, seven can be do we find a flag or symbol used noted here. Comparative analysis gives us a consistently across the movement, as were clearer picture of how the Alt-Right the fasces and the swastika. (The issues of innovates (or fails to). Such analysis can political violence and aesthetics are also support hypotheses and forward- addressed more fully below as distinct looking research agendas mapping potential matters separable from hierarchical party routes the Alt-Right will take in the future. organisation.) Each of these seven departures may yet be revisited and reversed as the movement Second, the Alt-Right abandons the develops. emphasis on religion seen in earlier forms of white nationalism, like ,12 First, the Alt-Right is not a party and lacks, ’s Cosmotheism,13 or in particular, any hierarchical organisational Ben Klassen’s Church of the Creator (COTC) structure. In this respect it breaks from the and its successor, Matthew Hale’s World kind of neo-fascism seen in George Lincoln

9 A cogent case for studying small and seemingly 12 James A. Aho, The Politics of Righteousness: Idaho unimportant groupuscules is made by Roger Griffin, Christian Patriotism (Seattle: University of Washington ‘From Slime Mould to Rhizome: An Introduction to the Press, 1990); Michael Barkun, Religion and the Racist Groupuscular Right’, Patterns of Prejudice 37, no. 1 Right: The Origins of the Christian Identity Movement, rev. (2003). ed. (Chapel Hill: University of Press, 10 , ‘A Normie's Guide to the Alt-Right’, 1996). Daily Stormer, 31 August 2016, 13 Brad Whitsel, ‘Aryan Visions for the Future in the West https://dailystormer.name/a-normies-guide-to-the-alt- Virginia Mountains’, Terrorism and Political Violence 7, right (last accessed 1 August 2018). no. 4 (1995); Idem, ‘ and 11 Frederick J. Simonelli, American Fuehrer: George Cosmotheism: William Pierce's Theology’, Nova Religio: Lincoln Rockwell and the American Nazi Party (Urbana: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions 1, no. 2 University of Illinois Press, 1999). (1998).

Church of the Creator (WCOTC).14 Spencer The Alt-Right has nothing akin to Richard frequently invokes Nietzschean critiques of Butler’s in northern Idaho or Christianity, and Johnson publishes similar James Ellison’s Covenant, Sword, and Arm critiques along with explorations of of the Lord compound in southern alternative religious forms. But the Alt- Missouri.16 Right has little in the way of a robust neo- paganism, for example, nothing akin to the Fourth, the Alt-Right features no prominent Odinism of Robert Jay Mathews and David female leaders akin to the WCOTC’s Lisa Lane.15 Turner, founder of the Women’s Frontier in the late 1990s and editor of a publication of Third, and as one would expect of a cyber- the same name.17 Much less do we find an spatial movement which has denigrated Else Christensen, founder of the influential ‘IRL’ (‘In Real Life’) activities, the Alt-Right Odinist Fellowship in the early 1970s.18 Most has abandoned physical place, including Alt-Right leaders are unmarried men. public spaces and streets. The Alt-Right’s Female leaders are rare and, when they do one major street-level foray – the August emerge, are consistently subjected to 2017 ‘Unite ’ rally in Charlottesville, shaming within the Alt-Right for not being Virginia – was catastrophic. Save for tightly married, not bearing children, and the like. controlled, situationist appearances designed solely to produce video and images Fifth, the Alt-Right largely avoids hints of for distribution online, open IRL practices organised violence in its public discourse. It have been abandoned. Gone too are the publishes no texts akin to Pierce’s The isolated communal compounds in Western Turner Diaries and Hunter.19 The Alt-Right mountain retreats and Southern backwoods. eschews extremist models and has formed

14 George Michael, Theology of Hate: A History of the 18 Kaplan, Encyclopedia of White Power, 46-48 World Church of the Creator (Gainesville: University 19 Andrew Macdonald [William Luther Pierce], The Press of Florida, 2009). Turner Diaries (Washington, D.C.: National Alliance, 15 Betty A. Dobratz, ‘The Role of Religion in the 1978); Idem, Hunter: A Novel (Hillsboro: National Collective Identity of the White Racialist Movement’, Vanguard Books, 1989). See Terence Ball and Richard Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 40, no. 2 Dagger, ‘Inside the Turner Diaries: Neo-Nazi Scripture’, (2001); Mattias Gardell, Gods of the Blood: The Pagan PS: Political Science & Politics 30, no. 4 (1997); Brodie Revival and White Separatism (Durham: Duke University Renee, ‘The Aryan New Era: Apocalyptic Realizations in Press, 2003). the Turner Diaries’, Journal of American Culture 21, no. 3 16 Jeffrey Kaplan, Encyclopedia of White Power: A (1998); Jonathan S. Cullick, ‘The Literary Offenses of a Sourcebook on the Radical Racist Right (Walnut Creek: Neo-Nazi: Narrative Voice in the Turner Diaries’, Studies AltaMira Press, 2000), 6-11, 71-76. in Popular Culture 24, no. 3 (2002); and Rob McAlear, 17 Carol Miller Swain, The New White Nationalism in ‘Hate, Narrative, and Propaganda in the Turner Diaries’, America: Its Challenge to Integration (Cambridge: Journal of American Culture 32, no. 3 (2009). Cambridge University Press, 2002), 344-345.

nothing like ’s ,20 Mathews’ Brüder Schweigen Seventh, while twentieth-century white (Silent Brotherhood), an armed cadre better nationalists were fantastically fractious, known as The Order, or Joseph Tommasi’s constantly riven by leadership rivalries and National Socialist Liberation Front.21 mutual anathemisations (often accusing one another of being predatory homosexuals, Sixth, the Alt-Right cultivates a public-facing covert Jews, or undercover Federal agents, political aesthetic or ‘optic’ that largely and sometimes all three), the Alt-Right avoids imagery, symbols, and uniforms that manages a fair degree of coordination or, at could be construed as deriving from Fascist a minimum, benign indifference among its Italy or Nazi Germany, the , or a component parts. Spencer’s platforms and subculture like that of skinheads.22 Indeed, Johnson’s Counter-Currents have both Anglin and Johnson are increasingly worked closely with , the other converging in their aesthetic and discursive major publishing enterprise that has driven strategies, each urging their followers to the Alt-Right’s highbrow discursive output. coopt and colonise the accoutrement of Headed by Daniel Friberg, a Swedish mainstream American patriotism (the flag, national, Arktos primarily publishes the Founding Fathers, etc.) as well as its translations of European right thinkers; attendant discourses. From the classical these have been excerpted on Spencer’s world, the European Generation Identity and platforms, and Friberg is European editor of the American movements AltRight.com. Arktos books have been sold have appropriated symbols like the Greek and reviewed by Counter-Currents, and the lambda and images of muscular male former editor of Arktos, John Morgan, is sculptural figures like the youthful Hercules now a prominent editor there.24 For years, housed at New York’s Metropolitan Museum Anglin’s Daily Stormer has helped define the of Art.23 Alt-Right (as opposed to starting a separate

20 George Michael, ‘This Is WAR!: Tom Metzger, White Ambedkar, ‘The Aesthetics of the Alt-Right’, Post-Office Aryan Resistance, and the Lone Wolf Legacy’, Arts Journal, 11 February 2017. International Journal of Terrorism & Political Hot Spots 23 On the former, see Fabian Virchow, ‘The “Identitarian 11, no. 1 (2016). Movement”: What Kind of Identity? Is It Really a 21 Jeffrey Kaplan, ‘‘Leaderless Resistance’’, Terrorism Movement?’, in Digital Media Strategies of the Far Right and Political Violence 9, no. 3 (1997), 81-84; Idem, ‘Right in Europe and the United States (Lanham: Lexington Wing Violence in North America’, Terrorism and Political Books, 2015). Violence 7, no. 1 (1995), is a more synoptic treatment of 24 Arthur Versluis, ‘A Conversation with John Morgan’, extreme Right movements and includes discussion of Journal for the Study of Radicalism 8, no. 1 (2014), is very the KKK and its legacy. useful but occurred before Morgan’s split with Arktos. 22 On the often bewildering profusion of images Morgan’s departure was acrimonious (he accused developed and deployed by the Alt-Right, see M.

movement), and while Anglin’s métier is are under dire threat – especially from non- now consistently lowbrow, in earlier years white mass immigration – and may well be he would praise and cite the more beyond saving.26 The heroic few must stand intellectual Alt-Right platforms. fast in the face of doom. Third, the Alt-Right reprises a virulent anti-Semitism. One anti- Having considered seven ways in which the Semitic discourse, long-standing in white Alt-Right differs or departs from twentieth nationalism, attributes national and world century white nationalism, in what ways does domination to ‘ZOG,’ the ‘Zionist Occupation the Alt-Right more straightforwardly reprise Government’, which controls foreign and earlier movements? Three significant domestic policy, finance, media, academia, similarities can be highlighted here. First, Hollywood, and seemingly everything else.27 and most obviously, the Alt-Right maintains The Alt-Right also relies heavily on the fixation on race, on whiteness as a Professor Kevin MacDonald’s Culture of perceived biological and cultural marker Critique: An Evolutionary Analysis of Jewish uniting all Americans of European descent. Involvement in Twentieth-Century Intellectual Like Pierce’s National Alliance, it even and Political Movements.28 And the Alt-Right entertains strands of Nordicism, openly is developing other anti-Semitic discourses invoking public intellectuals like Madison through its appropriation of recently- Grant and Lothrop Stoddard, early translated writings by Martin Heidegger and twentieth-century advocates for a restrictive Julius Evola, an example of how white immigration policy along Nordicist lines.25 nationalism is being supplemented – even, Second, the Alt-Right is pervaded by to a degree, supplanted –by European similarly apocalyptic discourses: the white influences. race, white nations, and white civilisation

Friberg of embezzlement). And Friberg and Spencer Expansion of Races in America (1933; Abergele: Wermod have at times attacked Johnson in homophobic terms. and Wermod Publishing, 2013). 25 Madison Grant, The Passing of the Great Race, or, the 26 For an overview of representative white nationalist Racial Basis of European History (New York: Charles literary works sustaining such discourses, see Jeffrey Scribner's Sons, 1916); Lothrop Stoddard, The Rising Kaplan, ‘America’s Apocalyptic Literature of the Radical Tide of Color against White World Supremacy (New York: Right’, International Sociology 33, no. 4 (2018). Charles Scribner's Sons, 1920). For a scholarly 27 Idem, Encyclopedia of White Power, 367-372. biography of Grant, see Jonathan Peter Spiro, Defending 28 Kevin B. MacDonald, The Culture of Critique: An the Master Race: Conservation, , and the Legacy Evolutionary Analysis of Jewish Involvement in Twentieth- of Madison Grant (Burlington: University of Vermont Century Intellectual and Political Movements (Westport: Press, 2009). Whitsel, ‘Aryan Visions’, 19, reports that Praeger, 1998); MacDonald is a California State Pierce placed Grant and Stoddard together with Francis University, Long Beach, emeritus professor of Parker Yockey as writers who shaped his views on race. psychology. On MacDonald, see George Michael, Spencer wrote the forward to a recent edition of ‘Professor Kevin Macdonald's Critique of Judaism: Madison Grant, Conquest of a Continent, or, the Legitimate Scholarship or the Intellectualization of Anti-Semitism?’, Journal of Church and State 48 (2006).

Beyond anti-Semitism, the Alt-Right looks to on earlier forms of American white the European right in other ways. We do not nationalism. One of the rare outliers in this find the Alt-Right republishing and respect, a man who sought to bridge the two extensively commenting upon texts like spheres, was . A Rockwell’s White Power or Klassen’s White graduate of Notre Dame Law School, Yockey Man’s Bible.29 These are ignored by white was a WWII Army officer who vehemently nationalism ‘2.0.’ Instead, Alt-Right disagreed with the Allies’ conduct of the war platforms have translated, edited, and crimes trials in Germany, left military published dozens of European thinkers service, and then undertook decades of aligned with the French New Right, the shadowy effort towards a transnational German Conservative Revolution, and the renaissance of the radical Right. Yockey’s Traditionalism of Julius Evola. Imperium, a massive work influenced by Furthermore, these platforms publish work Oswald Spengler and Carl Schmitt, was by contemporary Alt-Right figures – several certainly totemic among twentieth-century with advanced graduate academic training – white nationalists, if not widely read or who seek to interpret and adapt the understood.30 European thinkers to suit the needs of the American movement. White nationalism 1.0 The Alt-Right seeks to build a transnational generated no transnational theoretical and radical right intellectual and discursive discursive enterprises on the scale of those sphere. Of French New Right thought,31 the presently seen on the Alt-Right. Alt-Right publishes translations of work by Alain de Benoist and Guillaume Faye.32 Indeed, with the partial exception of fascism, European right thought had little influence

29 , White Power (Dallas: Right: Anti- in Postmodern Europe (London: Ragnarok Press, 1967); Ben Klassen, The White Man's Arktos Media, 2013), a work produced within the Bible (Lighthouse Point: Church of the Creator, 1981). movement itself. 30 Ulick Varange [Francis Parker Yockey], Imperium: On 32 A representative selection: Alain de Benoist, The Political Theory with Special Reference to the Problem of Democracy (London: Arktos Media, 2011); Authoritarian State (London: Westropa Press, 1948). For Idem, Beyond Human Rights: Defending Freedoms an investigative biography of Yockey, see Kevin Coogan, (London: Arktos Media, 2011); Idem, Manifesto for a Dreamer of the Day: Francis Parker Yockey and the European Renaissance (London: Arktos Media, 2012); Postwar Fascist International (Brooklyn: Autonomedia, Idem, On the Brink of the Abyss: The Imminent 1999). For one of the few scholarly analyzes of Bankruptcy of the Financial System (London: Arktos Imperium, see Matthew Maibaum, ‘F. P. Yockey's Media, 2015); Idem, The Indo-Europeans: In Search of the Imperium: Blueprint of the Far Right’, Patterns of Homeland (London: Arktos Media, 2016); Guillaume Prejudice 7, no. 2 (1973). Faye, Archeofuturism: European Visions of the Post- 31 Tamir Bar-On, Rethinking the French New Right: Catastrophic Age (London: Arktos Media, 2010); Idem, Alternatives to Modernity (London: Routledge, 2013); Why We Fight: Manifesto of the European Resistance also noteworthy is Michael O'Meara, New Culture, New

From the German Conservative Revolution,33 ecologist Pentti Linkola.39 Finally, the Alt- the Alt-Right publishes translations of, or Right looks to Traditionalism, especially that commentaries upon, Carl Schmitt,34 Oswald of Julius Evola.40 Arktos has committed to Spengler,35 Arthur Moeller van den Bruck,36 publishing all of Evola’s hitherto and Ludwig Klages.37 Spencer’s untranslated major writings; it has also Radix/Washington Summit imprint produces published selections of Evola’s work under an edition of Eurasianist Alexander Dugin’s titles like The Metaphysics of War and A book on Heidegger, translated by Spencer’s Handbook for Rightwing Youth.41 wife.38 Counter-Currents publishes on most of the above and on right literary figures like The third and final element of the Alt-Right’s Ernst Jünger, Ezra Pound, W. B. Yeats, and emerging ideology is ultra-masculinism. H. P. Lovecraft. Other trends, less American white nationalists displayed and influential but noteworthy, include Counter- codified numerous forms of masculinity. Currents’ publication of esoteric Hitlerists Consider, for example, the virile posturing of like and and Rockwell or the patriarchal family Arktos’ publication of the radical right structures of the Covenant, Sword, and Arm

(London: Arktos Media, 2011); Idem, The Colonisation of and Death: Ludwig Klages and the Rise of a Nazi Europe (London: Arktos Media, 2016). Biopolitics (Basingstroke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015). 33 Roger Woods, The Conservative Revolution in the 38 Aleksander Dugin, Martin Heidegger: The Philosophy of Weimar Republic (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996), Another Beginning, trans. Nina Kouprianova (Arlington: remains the standard source in English despite being Radix/Washington Summit Publishers, 2014). by no means comprehensive. The term was created 39 An example of the former: Savitri Devi, The Lightning and developed by Armin Mohler in his Die Konservative and the Sun (San Francisco: Counter-Currents Revolution in Deutschland 1918-1932, first completed as Publishing, 2015), part of a multi-volume ‘Centennial a doctorial thesis in 1949 and subsequently published in Edition’ of Devi’s work; Pentti Linkola, Can Life Prevail? several revised and updated forms. Roger Griffin, (London: Arktos Media, 2011). ‘Between Metapolitics and Apoliteia: The Nouvelle 40 Mark Sedgwick, Against the Modern World: Droite's Strategy for Conserving the Fascist Vision in Traditionalism and the Secret Intellectual History of the the “Interregnum”’, Modern & Contemporary France 8, Twentieth Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, no. 1 (2000), 39, emphasizes that Mohler’s book ‘is 2004); Paul Furlong, Social and Political Thought of Julius conceived as a survivalist manual for those who do not Evola (New York: Routledge, 2011). wish to lose their spiritual bearings in the present age.’ 41 Julius Evola, The Path of Cinnabar: An Intellectual Spencer has announced plans to publish the first Autobiography (London: Arktos Media, 2010); Idem, English translation of Mohler’s work. Metaphysics of War: Battle, Victory and Death in the World 34 Alain de Benoist, Carl Schmitt Today: Terrorism, ‘Just’ of Tradition (London: Arktos Media, 2011); Idem, War, and the State of Emergency (London: Arktos Media, Fascism Viewed from the Right (London: Arktos Media, 2013). 2013); Idem, Notes on the Third Reich (London: Arktos 35 Oswald Spengler, Man and Technics: A Contribution to a Media, 2013); Idem, A Traditionalist Confronts Fascism: Philosophy of Life (London: Arktos Media, 2015). Selected Essays (London: Arktos Media, 2015); Idem, A 36 Arthur Moeller van den Bruck, Germany's Third Empire Handbook for Right-Wing Youth (Originally published as (London: Arktos Media, 2012). Jobboldali fiatalok kézikönyve by Kvintesszencia Kiadó in 37 Ludwig Klages, The Biocentric Worldview: Selected Debrecen, Hungary, 2012; London: Arktos Media, 2017); Essays and Poems of Ludwig Klages (London: Arktos Idem, Recognitions: Studies on Men and Problems from Media, 2013); Idem, Cosmogonic Reflections: Selected the Perspective of the Right (London: Arktos Media, Aphorisms from Ludwig Klages (London: Arktos Media, 2017); Idem, Bow and the Club (London: Arktos Media, 2015); on Klages, see Nitzan Lebovic, Philosophy of Life 2018); Idem, Myth of the Blood: The Genesis of Racialism (London: Arktos Media, 2018).

of the Lord community. But masculinity movement discourse, but something is itself, a normative conceptualisation and unusual about its invocation, a kind of social formation of gender (intersecting but sarcastic reflexivity – as if the Alt-Right distinct from sex and sexuality), was rarely knows these forms cannot be revived discussed or even understood as in need of unaltered. The Alt-Right believes itself to be discussion. Anglin thinks the ‘Manosphere’ adaptively responding to an awareness of and gendered events like ‘#GamerGate,’ how earlier forms of masculinity were understood as reactions to the perceived successfully subverted in late modernity. triumph of feminist and LGBTQ politics, The Alt-Right is developing a meta- were crucial to the formation of the Alt- discourse on masculinity itself. Right.42 The Alt-Right is unique, and a product of its time, in making masculinity an Across the Alt-Right, one finds hundreds of overt discursive subject and a core (if webpages, posts, and podcasts in which contested) concept in its ideology, a type of masculinity is openly named and its relation masculinism.43 to politics, culture, society, sex, and sexuality debated. Spencer featured the The Alt-Right is ultra-masculinist because ‘androphile’ thinker Jack Donovan at his NPI it, seemingly paradoxically, seeks to move annual conference and on his Radix podcast. ‘beyond’ earlier forms of masculinity Counter-Currents has distributed and precisely in order to put them on firmer reviewed Donovan’s books and published foundations. The Alt-Right tends to avoid related works that depart from the typical arguing for a straightforward revival of conflation of gender and sexuality found earlier forms of patriarchy, paternalism, elsewhere on the right.45 And several Alt- sexism, , and the like.44 Such Right platforms have revived the concept of reactionary revivalism can be found in the Männerbund, the intensive grouping of

42 Anglin, ‘A Normie's Guide to the Alt-Right’; scholarly 44 Pace Annie Kelly, ‘The Alt-Right: Reactionary work on the Manosphere is rare, but see Lucy Nicholas Rehabilitation for White Masculinity’, Soundings: A and Christine Agius, ‘#Notallmen, #Menenism, Journal of Politics and Culture 66 (2017). Manospheres and Unsafe Spaces’, in The Persistence of 45 Jack Donovan, Androphilia: A Manifesto Rejecting the Global Masculinism: Discourse, Gender and Neo-Colonial Gay Identity Reclaiming Masculinity (Baltimore: Re-Articulations of Violence (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, Scapegoat Publishing, 2006); Idem, The Way of Men 2018). (Milwaukie: Dissident Hum, 2012); Idem, A Sky without 43 Masculinism as a feature of white nationalism is Eagles: Selected Essays and Speeches, 2010-2014 briefly discussed in Mark Rupert, ‘Hegemony and the (Milwaukie: Dissonant Hum, 2014); James J. O'Meara, Far-Right: Policing Dissent in Imperial America’, in The The Homo and the Negro: Masculinist Meditations on Longue Durée of the Far-Right, ed. Richard Saull, et al. Politics and Popular Culture (San Francisco: Counter- (New York: Routledge, 2014), but he doesn’t define it in Currents Publishing, 2012). the sense given here.

male warriors and initiates understood to the world. When accused of being ‘ghey,’ have dominated pre-Christian Indo- his preferred spelling of ‘gay’ – one of many European societies, especially Germanic insider code words, partly necessitated by ones.46 social media censors – BAP accuses his accusers of being themselves hopelessly Alt-Right ultra-masculinism, as part of a effete, often by way of comparison to threefold fusion with American white imagined forefathers from a more virile, nationalism and European right thought, will ‘bronze’ age. If a religion emerges out of continue to take the movement into unusual the Alt-Right, BAP may prove, in retrospect, and uncharted territory. One of the most to have been one of its founders. popular Alt-Right figures on Twitter, ‘Bronze Age Pervert’ (BAP), describes himself as a

‘Steppe barbarian, Nationalist, Fascist, Citation Nudist Bodybuilder!’ and calls for the ‘Return of spirit of the Bronze Age – revolt Josh Vandiver, Radical Roots of the Alt- of vitalism, destruction of the cities in fire!’ Right, Political Extremism & Radicalism in the BAP frequently posts images of youthful, Twentieth Century: Far-Right and Left Political muscular men, always white and usually Groups in US, Europe and Australia, Cengage positioned in front of grandiose natural Learning (EMEA) Ltd, 2018. backdrops. Followers of BAP’s aestheticised masculinism post images of their own physiques, sometimes under the hashtag ‘#frogtwitter,’ seeking BAP’s approval and coveted retweet. BAP’s cult following appears global: after the summer 2018 release of his (self-published) first book, Bronze Age Mindset, images appeared on social media of readers holding the book aloft before beaches and mountains across

46 On the Männerbund concept, see Kris Kershaw, The ‘“Männerbund” and “Mutterrecht”: Herman Wirth, One-Eyed God: Odin and the (Indo-)Germanic Sophie Rogge-Börner and the Ura-Linda-Chronik’, Männerbünde (Washington, D.C.: Institute for the Study German Life and Letters 60, no. 1 (2007); Robert Drews, of Man, 2000); Stefan Arvidsson, Aryan Idols: Indo- Militarism and the Indo-Europeanizing of Europe (New European Mythology as Ideology and Science (Chicago: York: Routledge, 2017), 86. University of Chicago Press, 2006), ch. 4; Davies Peter,