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Challenging the Right, Advancing Social Justice CTRL-ALT-DELETE The origins and ideology of the Alternative Right 2017 JANUARY BY MATTHEW N. LYONS THE RIGHT’S MARRIAGEWWW.POLITICALRESEARCH.ORG MESSAGE <<< PAGE 1 >>> WWW.POLITICALRESEARCH.ORG This report is excerpted from Matthew N. Lyons’s forthcoming book, Insurgent Suprema- cists: The U.S. Far Right’s Challenge to State and Empire, to be published by PM Press and Kersplebedeb Publishing. MAYBE YOU FIRST HEARD ABOUT THEM in used internet memes effectively to gain visibili- the summer of 2015, when they promoted the ty, rally supporters, and target opponents. Most insult “cuckservative” to attack Trump’s op- Alt Rightists have rallied behind Trump’s presi- ponents in the Republican primaries.1 Maybe dential bid, yet as a rule Alt Rightists regard the it was in August 2016, when Hillary Clinton existing political system as hopeless and call for denounced them as “a fringe element” that had replacing the United States with one or more “effectively taken over the Republican party.”2 racially defined homelands. Or maybe it was a couple of weeks after Trump’s This report offers an overview of the Alt surprise defeat of Clinton, when a group of them Right’s history, beliefs, and relationship with were caught on camera giving the fascist salute other political forces. Part 1 traces the move- in response to a speaker shouting “Hail Trump, ment’s ideological origins in paleoconservatism hail our people, hail victory!”3 and the European New Right, and its devel- The Alt Right helped Donald Trump get elect- opment since Richard Spencer launched the ed president, and Trump’s campaign put the Alt original AlternativeRight.com website in 2010. Right in the news. But the movement was active Part 2 surveys the major political currents that well before Trump announced his candidacy, comprise or overlap with the Alt Right, which and its relationship with Trump has been more include in their ranks White nationalists, mem- complex and more qualified than many crit- bers of the antifeminist “manosphere,” male ics realize. The Alt Right is just one of multiple tribalists, right-wing anarchists, and neoreac- dangerous forces associated with Trump, but it’s tionaries. Part 3 focuses on the Alt Right’s rela- the one that has attracted the greatest notoriety. tionship with the Trump presidential campaign, However, it’s not accurate to argue, as many including movement debates about political critics have, that “Alt Right” is just a deceptive strategy, online political tactics, and its rela- code-phrase meant to hide the movement’s tionship to a network of conservative supporters White supremacist or neonazi politics. This is a and popularizers known as the “Alt Lite.” A con- movement with its own story, and for those con- cluding section offers preliminary thoughts on cerned about the seemingly sudden resurgence the Alt Right’s prospects and the potential chal- of far-right politics in the United States, it is a lenges it will face under the incoming Trump story worth exploring. administration. The Alt Right, short for “alternative right,” is a loosely organized far-right movement that PART 1 - ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENT shares a contempt for both liberal multicultural- ism and mainstream conservatism; a belief that Ideological roots some people are inherently superior to others; a Two intellectual currents played key roles in strong internet presence and embrace of specific shaping the early Alternative Right: paleocon- elements of online culture; and a self-presenta- servatism and the European New Right. tion as being new, hip, and irreverent.4 Based Paleoconservatives can trace their lineage primarily in the United States, Alt Right ideol- back to the “Old Right” of the 1930s, which op- ogy combines White nationalism, misogyny, posed New Deal liberalism, and to the America antisemitism, and authoritarianism in various First movement of the early 1940s, which forms and in political styles ranging from intel- opposed U.S. entry into World War II. To vary- lectual argument to violent invective. White na- ing degrees, many of the America Firsters were tionalism constitutes the movement’s center of sympathetic to fascism and fascist claims of a gravity, but some Alt Rightists are more focused sinister Jewish-British conspiracy. In the early on reasserting male dominance or other forms 1950s, this current supported Senator Joe Mc- of elitism rather than race. The Alt Right has Carthy’s witch-hunting crusade, which extended little in the way of formal organization, but has red-baiting to target representatives of the cen- CTRL-ALT-DELETE <<< PAGE 2 >>> WWW.POLITICALRESEARCH.ORG trist Eastern Establishment. After McCarthy, the on culture and foreign policy.7 After the Sep- America First/anti-New Deal Right was largely tember 11th attacks in 2001, the resurgence of submerged in a broader “fusionist” conservative military interventionism and neoconservatives’ movement, in which Cold War anticommunism prominent roles in the George W. Bush admin- served as the glue holding different rightist istration solidified the paleocons’ position as currents together. But when the Soviet bloc political outsiders.8 collapsed between 1989 and 1991, this anti- The Alt Right’s other significant forerunner, communist alliance unraveled, and old debates the European New Right (ENR), developed along reemerged.5 different lines. The ENR began in France in the In the 1980s, devotees of the Old Right began late 1960s and then spread to other European calling themselves paleoconservatives as a re- countries as an initiative among far-right intel- action against neoconservatives, those often for- lectuals to rework fascist ideology, largely by merly liberal and leftist intellectuals who were appropriating elements from other political then gaining influential positions in right-wing traditions—including the Left—to mask their think-tanks and the Reagan administration. The fundamental rejection of the principle of human first neocons were predominantly Jewish and equality.9 European New Rightists championed Catholic, which put them outside the ranks of “biocultural diversity” against the homogeni- old-guard conservatism. Neocons promoted an zation supposedly brought by liberalism and aggressive foreign policy to spread U.S. “democ- globalization. They argued that true antiracism racy” throughout the world and supported a requires separating racial and ethnic groups close alliance with Israel, but they also favored to protect their unique cultures, and that true nonrestrictive immigration policies and, to a feminism defends natural gender differences, limited extent, social welfare programs. Pale- instead of supposedly forcing women to “divest conservatives regarded the neocons as usurp- themselves of their femininity.” ENR writers ers and closet leftists, and in the post-Soviet also rejected the principle of universal human era they criticized military interventionism, rights as “a strategic weapon of Western ethno- free trade, immigration, globalization, and the centrism” that stifles cultural diversity.10 welfare state. They also spoke out against Wash- European New Rightists dissociated them- ington’s close alliance with Israel, often in terms selves from traditional fascism in various other that had anti-Jewish undertones. Paleoconserva- ways as well. In the wake of France’s defeat by tives tended to be unapologetic champions of anticolonial forces in Algeria, they advocated European Christian culture, and some of them anti-imperialism rather than expansionism and gravitated toward White nationalism, advo- a federated “empire” of regionally based, ethni- cating a society in which White people, their cally homogeneous communities, rather than values, interests, and concerns would always a big, centralized state. Instead of organizing be explicitly preeminent. To some extent they a mass movement to seize state power, they began to converge with more hardline White advocated a “metapolitical” strategy that would supremacists during this period.6 gradually transform the political and intellectu- These positions attracted little elite support, al culture as a precursor to transforming institu- and after Reagan paleocons were mostly frozen tions and systems. In place of classical fascism’s out of political power. But they attracted signifi- familiar leaders and ideologues, European New cant popular support. In 1992 and 1996, Patrick Rightists championed more obscure far right- Buchanan won millions of votes in Republican ist intellectuals of the 1920s, ‘30s, and beyond, presidential primaries by emphasizing paleo- such Julius Evola of Italy, Ernst Jünger and Carl con themes. Paleocons also played key roles in Schmitt of Germany, and Corneliu Codreanu of building the anti-immigrant and neo-Confeder- Romania. ate movements in the ‘90s, and influenced the ENR ideology began to get attention in the Patriot movement, which exploded briefly in the United States in the 1990s,11 resonating with mid-90s around fears that globalist elites were paleoconservatism on various themes, notably plotting to impose a tyrannical world govern- opposition to multicultural societies, non-White ment on the United States. Some self-described immigration, and globalization. On other is- libertarians, such as former Congressmember sues, the two movements tended to be at odds: Ron Paul, embraced paleoconservative positions reflecting their roots in classical fascism but CTRL-ALT-DELETE <<< PAGE 3 >>> WWW.POLITICALRESEARCH.ORG in sharp contrast to paleocons,