Tag: alt-right

  • Big Tech’s (apparent) crackdown on the far right

    In the last few months we’ve seen the large social platforms take what appears to be a stand against the far-right. This point from Richard Seymour is absolutely crucial in understanding the ideological significance of this move, lest it be seen as a damascene conversion to civic responsibility rather than a business decision: Hitherto, the […]

  • “Free speech” in the attention economy

    This is an important point by Current Affairs editor Nathan Robinson which echoes an argument Will Davies made a couple of years ago. The claim of being suppressed, being denied a platform, plays an increasingly crucial role in how reactionary celebrities build their platform. It draws attention for their work, provides them with their narrative and […]

  • Nigel Farage the YouTube star 

    This was completely new to me. How much of the audience for these right-wing speaking tours are coming through YouTube? Is there a left wing equivalent? It’s not until I sit through An Entertaining Evening With Nigel Farage in Melbourne that I realise he’s not just a seven-times failed UK parliamentary candidate, but a bona […]

  • The ideas industry and funding the new right

    While Tommy Robinson has been denied a visa for his planned Washington visit, it seems he’s off to Australia for a speaking tour with Proud Boys founder Gavin McInnes: Robinson is set to visit Australia in December for a five-city speaking tour with the Vice co-founder Gavin McInnes. The pair call themselves The Deplorables, a reference to […]

  • Alt-america and the epistemic confusion of liberalism

    In the conclusion to Alt-America, David Neiwert indites liberalism for its contribution to the circumstances within which Trumpism has emerged. These are circumstances within which, as he puts it on loc 5859, Trump “is simultaneously responding to and creating the conditions that could easily lead to the genuine growth of fascism”. From loc 5981-6001, he takes aim […]

  • The uncoupling of transgression from progress

    For a book of only 126 pages, Kill All Normies covers a remarkable amount of ground. Inevitably, the argument is underdeveloped at points and it perhaps offers less empirical detail about the alt-right than it promises, largely restricting its analysis to the study of (relatively) high profile cases and the inferences that can be made […]

  • Online armies at your command

    Towards the end of Kill All Normies, Angela Nagle discusses the chilling effect liable to ensue from the online harassment which journalists critical of the alt-right often now find themselves subject to. From pg 118: Multiple journalists and citizens have described in horrifying detail the attacks and threats against those who criticize Trump or figures of […]

  • The Elite Roots of the Alt-Right

    A fascinating Jacob article about the roots of contemporary alt-right racism in mainstream elite discourse in Conservative America: https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/12/richard-spencer-alt-right-dallas-texas/

  • Was Sloterdijk an early originator of contemporary right populism?

    Reading the excellent Selected Exaggerations, a book of interviews with Peter Sloterdijk, I was struck by his remarks about taxation and the state in an interview from 2001. He bemoans the punitive taxation he claims exists in Germany, arguing that it reflects a broader domination of society by the state. German citizens are “punished for success” and the […]

  • The Pseudo-Catharsis of Social Media

    From Rethinking Social Exclusion, by Simon Winlow and Steve Hall, pg 73: Political protests these days are taken not as an indication that something is going wrong and that a significant number of the population are dissatisfied with the nation’s political leadership. Rather, they seem to indicate that a healthy and vibrant democracy is in […]