Richard Spencer came up with the term “alt-right” some years ago in an attempt to provide a cool-sounding euphemism to describe a bunch of people who might otherwise have been labeled “f*cking Nazis.”
This past weekend, Spencer and roughly 200 other “alt-rightists” put on suits to attend the annual conference organized by Spencer’s innocuous-sounding National Policy Institute and held in the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, D.C. And Spencer apparently forgot the number one rule of alt-right club, which is: Don’t talk about Adolf Hitler, at least not anywhere where non-alt-rightists can hear you.
Spencer didn’t literally bring up Hitler by name, but his evocation of the old man was not what you’d call subtle. After most journalists had left the premises, Spencer gave a speech the Atlantic describes as “dripping with anti-Semitism” and blatant racism, declaring the United States a “a white country” that rightfully “belongs to us.”
“Hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory,” Spencer called out, raising his right arm in what looked more than a little bit like a Nazi salute. Many in the audience responded with Nazi salutes of their own, no ambiguity about them.
Here’s video of the whole embarrassing spectacle, courtesy of The Atlantic.
OK, fellow Muricans! Not entirely on topic, but I’m feeling pretty activistic today. Many of you’ve probably heard of this stuff before. Still, could use a boost:
1)
https://mobile.twitter.com/LisaBloom/status/800982195464638464
It should take 2 minutes exactly, and ya don’t need to say a word
2)
https://mobile.twitter.com/leahmcelrath/status/800891683340623872
This one’s more involved. Going thru the switchboard looks to be the best bet. Press 4, and you’re in to leave a message. Here’s a solid outline of what to say:
https://mobile.twitter.com/Shoq/status/800802997731086336
(I know it says Senate, and you can totally call them too, but the focused effort seems to be DOJ. Choose your words accordingly)
Finally, just to prove not everything is complete shit quite yet:
http://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/federal-court-says-wisconsin-s-gop-redistricting-maps-unconstitutional-n686991
Not getting my hopes up too much, but I’m filing this under promising
I thought you were new! Welcome, @Shadowplay!
Skiriki quoted from Wikipedia:
The article also says:
I should note that this classification long predated the Nazis in German anthropology. Uralic speaking peoples were thought to be at least in large part Asian, and that really pissed Finnish nationalists in the late 19th/early 20th century. So unfair of the international community to not recognize our totally real whiteness! When Finland first succeeded in the early international beauty contests – essentially whiteness contests for white nations – that was a huge deal here just from white supremacism standpoint.
@Shadowplay
Agreed. It’s why we call pedophiles pedophiles, not “alt mentors”. And people who have sex with goats are goat-fuckers, not “alt farmers”. Hiding behind cutesy-hip euphemisms is part of the normalization strategy, and a way of making our side sound more unhinged when we protest against a group whose name sounds harmless to uninformed ears. It’s the same reason far-right think tanks are always named things like The Family Freedom Puppy And Kitten Quilting Bee Institute.
(Welcome, btw! Help yourself to a welcome package from the sidebar, if you haven’t already.)
I agree with everyone who objects to the term “alt-right”. I shall henceforth call the “alt-right” Internet Nazis, because that’s what they are. They’re Nazis whose primary medium of propaganda dissemination is the Internet. Also, it’s much more demeaning and less pretentious than “alt-right”, and Internet Nazis deserve to be demeaned.
I’m really freaked out about the situation in North Carolina right now; it looks quite possible that the governor is just going to be able to overrule an election kicking him out. I’m seriously wondering if democracy in the USA is over right now.
@Scildfreja
That’s one pretty ass bug indeed.
What.
So, there’s something I’ve been thinking about over the past couple of days, and I need to bounce it off you guys: I don’t know if I’m comfortable with only calling alt-rightists neo-Nazis. Not because they’re not neo-Nazis (of course they are) or because something something Godwin’s Law (Godwin’s Law is dead and buried), but because it seems like it’s completely ignoring their MRA half. Like, the general public knows that Trump’s a gross racist but has absolutely no idea that he’s also a gross rapist, and that feels really fucked up to me… I agree that they don’t deserve their dumbass sanitised moniker, but there has to be another name we can use that emphasises their pro-rape misogyny as much as their pro-genocide racism.
Or maybe I’m being oversensitive because misogyny always takes a back seat in and to everything. I dunno.
@Seshia: I just can’t begin to comprehend what it must be like to truly believe that the other side has no legitimacy. That’s where they’re coming from: Every Democratic win is a cheat, nobody likes the Democrats, we have to Take Our Country Back.
Well, okay, I imagine that it fosters the most inassailable feeling of righteousness.
I remember, fifteen years ago, they were talking about a Permanent Republican Majority. No, the majority is apathetic and don’t turn out to vote. Of those who did turn out, they voted for Clinton by two million votes, and it’s been estimated that only about an eighth of the total electorate thinks it’s cool to assault and harass minorities. Unfortunately for the rest of us, another eighth or so thinks that’s acceptable when faced with voting for a woman.
@SFHC
Well, Brianna Wu agrees with you
Truth be told, I don’t like ‘altright’. Not least cos they came up with it. I get the trepidation around defaulting to neonazi tho. Hope a better term comes along *shrug*
@Rugbyyogi:
Ted Rall spent a good portion of the Obama administration drawing the President as a little Hitler because of his drone program.
Maybe at some point he stopped. I don’t know. I stopped reading him because every cartoon was “Obama is Hitler!”
So I don’t know what he’s going to do now, with an actual fascist-adjacent grifter in the Oval Office beginning in late January.
Looks like Mike Pence just appointed an unqualified woman to be a judge in an Indiana county.
She has a law degree but never practiced law. She was the local Republican Party chair, though.
The county mayor and the judge pro tempore were not consulted or notified, and apparently found out through social media early this morning.
@Falconer
http://67.media.tumblr.com/7bb4986661e6948e51bd7febcb5b2211/tumblr_mhrrxqvTjd1s5p5xno1_400.jpg
We live in too large of a country with too fast of communications for this to fly.
very late but
re: Nazi/Jewish woman action in text form, poorly done and poorly thought-out
The first peer whom I learned was Jewish (in middle school) was blond-haired and blue-eyed, but he didn’t eat pepperoni pizza. (Neither did I, but I just don’t like pepperoni.) Ironically, another friend of mine is genetically Jewish, but casually mentions eating bacon. (…And those are two of the three Jewish people I personally know, the remaining one being first guy’s dad. Probably has to do with the demographics where I lived.)
@Scildfreja
Ah, the orchid mantis! I fondly recall catching those in Animal Crossing. They sold for a healthy bag of Bells.
How about white nationalist/supremacists?
So some of the discussions going on around me lately…it feels like I might as well be running straight into a wall over and over – I’d more likely get through the wall than get through to some of these individuals..
I know most people don’t think of themselves as racist, or having racist views – it’s an uncomfortable thing. The only way I know of to not be racist is to consciously make the effort, deal with that discomfort and don’t dispute the validity when POC talk about their experiences with racism – especially don’t interrupt with some nonsense about why they need to let it go, or offer some anecdotal story of the time you met a lovely group of African Americans with college degrees who work hard and they said the country should no longer be defined by racism!
And the next time someone tells me that ‘liberals’ need to wait for Trump to begin his 4 year term and give him a chance, I’m going to be hard pressed to NOT smack them upside the back of their head. Or that Trump’s choices of cabinet appointees are quality individuals with the right experience for such positions – …who will help Trump as he makes America all for the rich white men again!
Another reason to avoid the term “alt-right”: most of the non-alt-right conservatives (or at least, most of the vocal ones) think that it’s a slur liberals made up to use against all conservatives, for some strange reason. So if they’re going to take anything not directed at them as an attack against them anyway, then there’s no reason to hold back in pointing out that some of the guys on their side are a darker shade of evil.
@Handsome “Punkle Stan” Jack, @Kobun37, @Guts the Black Swordsman and others…
The sexuality thing was a big push towards my view on how people project their own desires onto others – and use that projection to enforce social mores.
The guys I met in porn were varied, but all of the people I met running the studios were het white dudes, most pretending to be women to their customer base (men). They had female nom de plumes. So they really reinforced to each other that women were poly with women and mono with men in the language they used. They all knew each other’s secret identities (‘Abby Winters’ was really ‘Gary’, I think), but they would quote one another about what women and men were like. And those ideas were uniformly nonthreatening to their identity – those who stated difference were always outliers. It is really, really weird to be told to your face what your sexual orientation is because of your gender.
I mentioned shipping and so forth, but it was dismissed immediately and forgotten in ten minutes. It did not match what they expected (needed?) reality to be like. Therefore it was not how most people thought and anyone who was different was different because of a flaw.
This sort of behaviour is huge in PUA cultures, and in any group where people’s identity requires someone else to be exactly what they need. Maybe it’s attached to very fragile identities that are easily violated? I’m not sure, but there’s something – something nagging me about the whole political identity thing as well. As if the right needs the left to be violent, needs the left to be unpredictable or renege on deals, to bolster who they think they are. Like the guys who only know masculinity through it not being associated with anything female. Like racists who only see their race as something that lacks the assigned attributes of others. Like there is NO CENTER.
@Snowberry
Possibly because they agree with everything the nazis say, except the parts about what a great guy Hitler was. They would agree with that, but that would mean saying the U.S. was on the wrong side in WWII, and it’s an article of faith for that lot that the side the U.S. is on is intrinsically the right one.
@msexceptiontotherule – I used exactly that suggestion to some people who were expressing ‘people are calling me racist!’ annoyance on Facebook the other night. I was immediately assailed with douchebros asking ME to ‘prove’ I wasn’t racist myself. Sigh. (They also said I had a stupid hat. The hat I wear in my FB profile is Nepalese, knitted, rainbow-coloured and made of awesome. But hey, that seems to be some people’s level of debate.)
@Magpie
http://i.imgur.com/VQLrbTVm.png
@Magpie That is indeed an awesome hat. 🙂
@Steampunked,
Marginally related video game dorkiness incoming
The creator of Rimworld believes basically exactly what you believe, and programmed the characters in his game to behave that way. Women pawns are effectively always bi; when pursuing men they always pursue men who are older than them, and when pursuing women they aren’t at all picky. Men, on the other hand, are always gay or het, and are coded to prefer partners that are young on an absolute scale (unlike women, who always judge partnership relative to their own age). Men get negative moodlets when rebuffed for flirting or romantic exchanges; women never get negative moodlets for having to rebuff flirting or romantic exchanges. This results in women being constantly barraged by romance requests from older men, and apparently being okay with that.
When confronted by a journalist with “That’s not actually how it works at all, have you ever talked with a woman about this?” he proceeded to trot out some shitty evopsych nonsense and said “go look at my Reddit thread on this and you’re one of those bought out games journalists #GG4lyfe” (well, maybe not the hash tag).
The world’s soaking in this sort of awful stuff.
@Steampunked
Yeah I sort of figured that there might be a guy behind ‘abby winters’ . I just hope the this ‘gary’ isn’t too much of a creep.
From the Guardian article’s romance novel part:
“…and I have both!”
http://65.media.tumblr.com/5a99ac36085c1d79f437db37c8df0063/tumblr_mkefl6Rsut1rawb5do1_400.jpg
@AsAboveSoBelow
*snnnnrrrrrrk!* One of the best scenes in that movie.