You might think the Alt-Right — that motley gang of Nazis, Nazi-apologists, and Nazi-apologist-apologists that has provided Donald Trump with some of his most fervent support — would be riding high right now.
Their “God Emperor” has been elected president. Traffic to their most popular websites, from Breitbart to the Daily Stormer, is soaring. The latest National Policy Institute conference, which brought hundreds of alt-righters to Washington DC this past weekend, got more attention from the mainstream media than it ever has before.
It’s that last item that’s turning into a bit of a problem — at least for those alt-rightists who like to pretend that they’re not really Nazis at all. Yesterday I posted a chilling video from the event, showing conference-organizer Richard Spencer, clearly feeling a bit chuffed by the at-right’s recent victories, crying out “hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory” to a large crowd, some of whom responded with Nazi salutes.
D’oh! They’re not supposed to be doing that in public.
And so, as the video of Spencer’s speech went viral, posted on countless news outlets and replayed on cable news, a veritable civil war erupted on the alt-right over Spencer’s words and the now infamous “Hail Trump” salutes.
Alt-right fellow traveler (and erstwhile juice seller) Mike Cernovich, clearly upset by the bad publicity the video was bringing to the movement he has hitched his star to, accused Spencer and the Nazi saluters of being secret shills trying to make the good men of the alt-right look like the Hitler-loving Nazis they so often declare themselves not to be.
“Let’s assume your goal is to normalize Nazis, which is what has been said at Richard Spencer,” Cernovich declared in a blog post with the combative title This is What Controlled Opposition Looks Like.
If you wanted to normalize being a Nazi, would you throw up an Heil Hitler in public after you invited over 100 fake news journalists to your event? Think this one through before forming an opinion.
Note: By “fake news journalists” Cernovich of course means real “news journalists.’
Why then were people at the event throwing up the HH? What tactical or strategic purpose could that possibly serve?
This is what controlled opposition looks like.
The Atlantic (and perhaps the CIA) is building up Richard’s brand, giving him millions in free PR. The fake news media ties Richard to Trump. In exchange for these goodies, Richard throws up a HH.
Damn you, The Atlantic (and perhaps the CIA)!
Cernovich was hardly the only one to cry foul.
Fantasy author and bigot extraordinaire Theodore “Vox Day” Beale didn’t go quite as far as Cernovich. But, in a post on his Vox Popoli blog, he declared the Nazi saluters “idiots” and attacked Spencer himself for being “tactically retarded.”
Beale dismissed the whole “Hail Trump” business as a “minor incident” that had been magnified by the evil mainstream media. He then offered a rather spectacularly backhanded “defense” of Spencer
No, I don’t think Richard is a federal agent or an actual controlled opposition figure,” Beale wrote, before twisting the knife a little.
I think Mike would have been more accurate to say “controllable opposition” or “dancing monkey”.
Usually when you’re defending someone you don’t call them a “dancing monkey,” but whatevs.
There was nothing actually wrong with what Richard said. … It wasn’t a big deal. But it was a foolish thing to do. The media is absolutely slavering to be able to have REAL PROOF that the Alt-Right are no-good, very-evil Nazis so that they can use it as a weapon against President-elect Trump, giving them ANYTHING is tactically retarded.
Nazi salutes in public, in full view of the media, are bad for the Trump.
It’s not about Richard. It’s about Donald Trump. If Richard is genuinely supportive of Trump, then pulling that sort of stunt was the very last thing he should have done. Making yourself the news story at the expense of the individual you are supposedly supporting and celebrating smacks of being self-serving. As Mike said, dress up like a Nazi, speak bad German and wear a swastika armband if you want, just leave Trump out of it.
Richard has failed to learn the lesson of #GamerGate and the principles of 4GW. He wants to be the media-anointed leader of the Alt-Right because he believes, wrongly, that this will help him achieve his objectives. It won’t. As Mike and I have both noted, the media elevates fringe figures to “leadership” specifically in order to attack the movement through them.
Oh, but Beale isn’t jealous of the attention Spencer has been getting. Ha! As if! So not jealous.
I am not opposed to Richard or jealous of Richard, nor do I want the attention he is receiving. I rather like him, I simply don’t think he understands that the media intends for him to become a David Duke figure, a weapon available for deployment against any politician or program that he nominally supports.
Yes, how terrible it is that the media compares people with basically the same views as David Duke to … David Duke!
On VDare.com, meanwhile, anti-immigrant crusader Peter Brimelow attacked the saluters, declaring that their “juvenile bravado undercut NPI’s conference triumph, the cause of immigration patriotism, and VDARE.com.”
But Brimelow somehow managed to blame not them but the media and the anti-anti-immigrant left, noting unhappily that fans of his website “came up to me in consternation” after
Spencer concluded his emotional defense of whites with the words, apparently extemporized: “Hail Trump! Hail Our People! Hail Victory!” He got a standing ovation, but several in the crowd added Nazi salutes. We had been assured that the press had been excluded but experience has taught this cannot be relied upon.
Damn those reporters for … actually reporting!
Also, leftists and the media were also responsible for the Nazi salutes themselves — by unfairly smearing totally not racist anti-immigration crusaders like himself. “[T]his continued vilification,” Brimelow sniffed,
has resulted a younger generation of Americans who, 71 years after the end of World War II, are clearly indifferent to accusations of Nazism, even if just out of bravado. This, too, is the fault of the Left and the gatekeepers of our public debate.
Well, that’s one way of looking at it, I guess. One bizarre, wrong way.
The unlovely and untalented Matt Forney offered a somewhat less backhanded defense of Spencer and his fans’ “Roman salutes.”
While Mike Cernovich recently accused Spencer and NPI of being controlled opposition due to several of the attendees jokingly making Roman salutes at the end of the conference, I have to pour cold water on this notion. The alt-Right is increasingly driven by young men who enjoy trolling for trolling’s sake and getting a rise out of the normies.
IT WAS ALL A JOKE HA HA HA HOW could anyone think that a bunch of people who walk like Hitler, talk like Hitler and salute like Hitler could actually have anything to do with Hitler.
Hell, our nametags even had pictures of Pepe the Frog on them.
PEPE THE FROG. Q.E.D.
While I can see why Cernovich might think the stunt was dumb, it wasn’t motivated by anything other than a desire to offend the MSM’s sensibilities. There are certainly feds who have infiltrated the alt-Right—he’s right to warn us on that front—but Spencer and NPI aren’t among them.
An even stranger, er, analysis of the whole kerfuffle comes from the farther reaches of Anton Lavey cosplayer and skull enthusiast Davis Aurini.
Vox Day corrects some of the wilder claims made by Cernovich (it is unlikely that Richard Spencer is a government plant; his hair is too fabulous), but the thrust of the argument remains. We have been using the tactics of the underdog for some time now. As many have noted, we’re the new anti-establishment hippies … but we’re no longer the underdog – and if we continue to use underdog tactics, we will become no different than the neo-hippies whom we are in the process of replacing. We will continue to fight the last war, and we will lose as certainly as Hitler’s Germany did, paving the way for the destruction of our own people.
So is he suggesting that the main problem with Hitler is that he lost? Who knows.
We cannot hope to get anywhere if we continue to be reactionary. The way to crush the Left isn’t to fight them; then we merely become them. The way to crush the left is to return to the upward pull, to build a civilization which glorifies God and which has earned the Mandate of Heaven. To strive for perfection while forgiving imperfection, rather than defining perfection as whatever we are already, while attacking those who are unlike us.
I’m sorry, I dozed off for a minute there.
What of the man at the center of this alt-hurricane? Richard Spencer is taking the Forney Way, declaring that it was all just one big hilarious joke.
“There’s an ironic exuberance to it all,” Spencer told NBC news. “I think that’s … one of the things that makes the alt-right fun, is that we’re willing to do things that are a bit cheeky.”
SO CHEEKY.
Here’s that video again. I don’t know about you, but I’m having a hard time seeing anything he said as “cheeky” or “ironic,” much less “fun.”
Who are you going to believe, Spencer — or your lying eyes?
And that is more than enough solid irony to power my time machine. I’m off, guys. Anyone comes asking, tell ’em I’m in 2002 watching the fascists actually lose an election.
Uhhhh isn’t the Mandate of Heaven an Imperial Chinese sort of thing? Unless it’s the subtitle of a Might & Magic video game.
Ah yes, it was all those other Nazis, nothing to do with us, nosirree! What a bunch of damned fools, they can’t even go an entire article without a conspiracy theory or a defense of literally making a Nazi salute.
My takeaway from this is that Aurini pines for Spencer’s hair.
I wouldn’t mind seeing some Germans’ takes on this.
@banned
I don’t know any German people, but I personally wonder what my old German teacher would think of it.
I think I’d take these asshole’s outrage much more seriously if they didn’t have entire websites and videos that showing just how racist and fascist they are. They’re all “white nationalists on paper” after all.
“Have you noticed our badges Hans?”
“Yes, a bit, what about them?”
“They’ve got frogs on them!”
This confirms my theory that these people get so focused on a single thing that they always think that this is the one victory that will crush progressivism forever. They thought a Trump victory would mean everyone but the SJW menace would spontaneously become an overt Nazi and progressives would just lay down and die. Now they’re finding out that no, the reactionary rhetoric they’ve been spewing for years is still scandalous. Even though Spencer is not saying anything different than what they say, they have to distance themselves from him. For now anyway. This is why we can’t let this become normalized.
Ugh. I’m babbling. Sorry,
@[email protected]
German here, and this is my take.
First of all, if this were to happen in Germany, those people who mad Nazi salutes would likely face some sort of court case. make of that what you will. Secondly, I am absolutely horrified that certain parts of the US actually think that Hitler was anything but a genocidal maniac to the highest degree or that any sort of fascism/ur-fascism is acceptable. Thirdly, I would like to note that I agree very slightly with the point made by Brimelow in his article, in that the overuse of references to fascism can lead to ignorance as to how bad fascism is. See as an example East Germany: In East Germany under Soviet rule, propaganda taught at schools said that West Germany was fascist (and racist and intolerant etc.), and thus people in East Germany thought that such labels only applied to others, hence why the NPD and AfD, both far-right neo-nazi parties (AfD is the more civilized, acceptable one of the two, which isn’t saying a lot), have such a large base in East Germany and why, despite having a population including 0,5% muslims, East Germany is where the now-infamous group PEGIDA first appeared. as for the rest of what the articles mentioned in this post say: horrifying BS reminiscent of Nazi propaganda about the “Lügenpresse”, which was referred to in the speech that started this controversy.
ETA: Sorry for ranting a bit, I just can’t believe that someone with supporters like this would ever gain power as “Ruler of the Free World”. Not so free now, is it?
@banned & Troubelle
Long story short, they ain’t amused. At all.
Nazis are a touchy subject in Europe, but even more so in Germany. They really don’t fuck around when it comes to swastikas and shit like that : usually it’s a ticket to court.
@Alan
“Hans, are we the dummies ?”
ETA : No Man Rules Alone said it better than I could. Thank you, dear neighbor.
good, good – let them tear themselves up – alas, I don’t trust them to be effective enough.
You know what I found MORE disgusting than the Richard Spencer disgustingness – the NORMALISATION of it on CNN.
“Hmmm this guy wonders if Jews are really people…”
“Well, blah blah blah, some denouncement, blah blah…”
“yes, this is a really hard question…”
No – no it’s not a hard question, there’s not much in-between. Either you’re a hater and you say “Yay right on Spencer!” or you have a shred of decency and you say “WTAF? WTF? No. Never. Not here. Not on my watch.”
—
@Tabby Lavalamp – I think you have a valid point there. And yeah, Richard Spencer, he’s got a good head of hair, nice hair – and then he goes and gets a haircut like that. Dang.
Oops I thought – why DOES he have his hair like that? It looks shit – so just before posting I just googled image searched “Nazi haircut”. And it looks like Richard Spencer showed his barber that page. Gross.
@ Troubelle
My ol’ German professor participated in the liberation of the death camps, and a focus of his scholarship was reminding people that the Holocaust DID happen. A very sweet, gentle man, except when Holocaust deniers crossed his path.
In other news, Cary Elwes has suggested the nickname “Trumperdink,” to which I can only say, “As you wish.”
Did… did Aurini just admit to being a government plant?
Interesting and ironic how my country’s supposedly non/anti-fascist (alt) right-wing main blog covered nothing of this event. I can 1000% guarantee you that they would if the people in the video were left-wingers, animal rights activists, feminists etc. They love pretending objectivity but this truly shows their colours, now they don’t even try. (and it’s not because it’s in the US, they do cover some US stuff, well, if it suits them I guess.
Everything is spiraling into ugliness.
re: German reaction
Roughly what I suspected. The question was mostly pertinent to the level of “WTF” (or the German equivalent) inherent in their expression.
@VP
Good teacherperson.
In related news, I’ve been reading recaps of classic Twilight Zone episodes, and….there’s a distinct class of them that needs to be aired. “He’s Alive,” for instance.
@IP
I think he admitted to having no political opinion worth listening to.
By the way, y’know this whole thing with terrible people and their hair is starting to worry me. I’m guilty of having an “unusual” haircut as well (although far more, erm, traditional than them, the irony of which is slowly leading me to a pair of scissors and a razor).
Will the Hairstapo knock on my door in the foreseeable future to notify me of my obligation to join the Party ?
@Handsome Jack
Right? They’re trying so hard to avoid the labels of “nazi” and “fascist” et al, despite categorically belonging to them. They don’t think that the Nazis were bad, they just know that everyone else thinks the Nazis were bad, and they hope that if they can avoid being put into the “bad” box they can retain some legitimacy. It’s basically the same thing as anti-feminist > MRA and racist > race realist. If they make the discussion about the of labels (and the vast conspiracy to manipulate those labels) they can distract from their actual beliefs, which deep down they know are repugnant to the general public.
FALSE FLAG! HILLARY PLANTS! BIASED MAINSTREAM MEDIA! DARK HUMOUR! WAKE UP SHEEPLE!
‘You feminists/liberals/SJWs/etc are so closed minded and intolerant. Why don’t y’all listen to the other side’s perspective’
Muffuga, which one?
@Axe
The one that makes it so they can to do what they want without causing a fuss, of course.
Off-topic, but there hasn’t been a sexism post for a bit:
Sexism may be harmful to men’s mental health.
Some interesting related topics in the sidebar, too.
Man, who’d have thought toxic masculinity is called such for reasons.
@Axecalibur:
women, POC, LGBT, disabled and non-neurotypical people and people with beliefs that alt-righters deem ‘stupid’ (anything from islam to New Age beliefs) are only free from constant hate and scorn if they:
-make enough self-deprecating jokes, hinting at how the average alt-righter is a superior human being;
– don’t assert themselves and their rights/humanity too much
-are ’embarrassed’ of the rest of their group/demographic
-or simply hate on said group/demographic, based on these white, (alt-) righters criteria.
So they don’t mind black people, women, gay people etc etc at all! /s (they just have to say what they want to hear and they won’t be respected, but will serve as an I’m actually not racist/sexist/etc’ excuse)
At least, that’s the general situation in my country.
I just want to say that as a Warhammer Fan, I want to puke whenever these morons call Trump their god emperor.
Trump isn’t their emperor, he’s not a primarch, he’s not even Gogh Vandire.
He’s a nurgling on his best day.
Then again, I suppose that Warhammer is a big trap to people who take things too critically and don’t have much intellectual depth.
Just damn shame
Like when Steve Bannon thinks that Dick Cheney and Darth Vader are good Role Models.