Image by Gage Skidmore 
How Donald Trump Broke The Conservative Movement – And My Heart (Katherine Miller, Buzzfeed)
Something unusual happens before Donald Trump speaks at some rallies. A young man in a sharp, slim-cut suit walks onstage and delivers an ideological speech. And maybe because people are expecting Trump to finally appear instead of his adviser, or maybe because his speech is immediately and jarringly followed by “Tiny Dancer,” Stephen Miller does not garner the response he deserves.
The Deloitte recruiter, the college tour guide, that one Walgreens clerk who always tells you to take the survey on your receipt, to tell us how we’re doing — this is the tone in which Stephen Miller addresses a crowd. Forceful yet chipper, familiar yet contained. Practiced passion. He’s a good speaker, folks.
“Are you ready,” he begins, “to elect a man who’s going to finally secure the border of the United States of America? Are you ready to elect a man who will never apologize for putting the American people first?”[…]
“There can be no prosperity without law and order.”
“Our plan will put America First,” he said, as the room exploded with applause, then whistles, then a USA! USA! USA! chant. “Americanism, not globalism, will be our credo.”
Trump’s America is in crisis. The country now is all “crying mothers” and “wounded American families,” a place of death and killing, a place where “innocent people suffer.” Only if it is strong again, proud again, safe again, can it be great again. […]
And yes, it could be that this year has been a fever dream rather than an unraveling, that the political process will right itself, that the next thing will look a lot like the last thing. But if it isn’t, if the jaggedness doesn’t recede, if something doesn’t break, if things continue to be so disorienting, if you always suspected that this was coming, well, Stephen Miller and I have one last question for you and, baby, we want to hear you scream:
Are you ready for a new era of American history?
There's a reason the most hateful fringe of the right wing is supporting Donald Trump.https://t.co/AqB3DM2m0N
— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) August 25, 2016
I’m a Jew, and I’m a Member of the Alt-Right. (Joshua Siedel, The Forward)
These questions led me to an unavoidable conclusion: I was no longer a liberal, and liberals no longer cared about the truth. The “tribalization” of American politics was complete. It was time to go right, not to the neocons, but a right wing that rejected their failed economic and foreign policy, and fought back against leftist identity politics. I found like-minded people online. Some of them were overtly anti-Semitic, but I found that their critique of the Jewish community was similar to mine. Neo-cons were dangerous and disloyal, liberals stuck in hypocritical identity politics. I found myself respecting Evangelical Christians who supported Israel and the Jewish Community despite our hatred towards them. I found myself offended, rather then amused, as “white” became a slur in our media, government, and universities.
I sometimes wonder what Jews who enthusiastically go on about “white privilege” think the endgame is. They seem to think this concept will serve to shut the mouths of middle and working class whites in flyover country, while liberal Jews hold the clipboards and direct victorious POC in a dismantling of “whiteness.” Privileges will be checked, and all will be well in the world. I don’t see it.
So, I could have ended up a nice liberal Jewish boy, but my wandering nature put an end to that. I’ve seen too much, experienced too much, to be bothered by the memes of the alt-right. I’ve lived with and befriended people most Jews would dismiss, and found that the meanest and the roughest can hold forth with truth. As a community we’re quick to ignore certain speech because of who the speaker is. I focus on the speech.
First Comment: From Sassenach:
There is no such thing as a Jewish “alt righter” as the alt right is centered around the fundamental truth that Jews have been a cancer upon European civilization since the classical era. We are a White nationalist/ethno-nationalist movement. So far as preserving “western civilization” is concerned, we correctly see that there is no such thing without the indigenous European people. –
Second Comment: From SeventhSonOfA:
You are not part of the Alt-Right. You are not wanted. You are not welcome. If you’d like to help the Alt-Right, live out your days in Israel, convince as many of your people to go with you, and stay out of The West’s affairs.
Third Comment: From A Wyatt Mann:
Jews are not welcome in the alt right. The alt right is not rejection of “pc” its rejection of jews that imported it here.
Fourth Comment: From StormOfGoy:
It’s peak irony that your main motivation for being “alt-right” is the fact you think our counter-semitism is less of a threat to your Tribe and ethnostate than anti-Zionist nonwhites who think Jews are white and therefore see Israel as simply another manifestation of the evil white colonialism meme (that, of course, jews promoted in the first place). Do you ever stop to think how incredibly neurotic your people are, yourself included? Inbreeding + vanity is a helluva drug.
Bonus Comment: From StopTheNWOandZog
Why are you pushing for students to be punished by school administrators for expressing anti-Zionist views? (After all, even though we generally want Jews to leave the US, and Israel is a convenient destination for them from that point of view, Israeli supremacy towards Palestinians seems like a “preview of coming attractions” if Whites lose all political power and the Zion World Order advances towards the endgame–i.e. Whites might be subject to a repeat of the atrocities committed by [[[Soviet authorities]]]. After all, the Torah preaches that Jews will rule the world, and specifically from Israel [by controlling the wealth of the Goyim–Isaiah 60 & 61])
Instead of trying to “help” our movement (in a way that might, intentionally or not, dilute its racial focus), why not focus on convincing your fellow Jews to quit with the parasitism and leave Whites alone? In particular, this is something that we Whites are obviously going to be unable to do, having no access to your community. If you do that, you WILL be acknowledged as an ally (if not an actual member)–e.g. like Paul Eisen.
I do appreciate you acknowledging a few facts about negative Jewish behavior towards Whites in your article, but I don’t think any of us will trust you until you make improving the behavior of your co-racialists your primary focus, not influencing Whites. And, obviously, promoting racial integration (even in limited quantities) gets the hackles up of people who want to improve and purify the White race, not debase it. Doubly so when you pretend to be in the alt-Right.
About the Author
32 Responses to Are You Ready For a New Era of American History?
Leave a Reply
please enter your email address on this page.
No question about it; the alt-right is who we thought they were.
With gusto! I feel a little less guilty about using the alt-reich moniker. For some of them, at least. I mean, the crazy thing isn’t that people left these comments… but that it was the first four comments left.
I can’t seem to get to the comments now, but I think you were probably using the “Best” sort option in Disqus (which is the default). The “Oldest” sort order showed the author making the first comment and a number of non alt-righters.
That could be. I can’t find the comments now, which means I either need to drink more coffee or they took them down.
I couldn’t find them either, so I suspect taken down. Too bad; I wanted to ask the author how he liked his new friends
He was active in the comment section. Wish I had read more of his replies. Some might be in the screen captures. (Hyperlink on author names). Away from the computer so can’t easily check.
There’s a little ‘348’ in the corner you can click on and see all the comments.
Did that work for you? It’s just a hyperlink to a URL fragment (# sign) and what it’s pointing to is no longer on the page.
Not anymore, maybe they took it down? I can see how it might hit the Forward’s ‘antisemitic comments’ buttons (heck, if that doesn’t nothing does) but it’s an important piece of context to the article.
So wait, is Miller delivering that exact same line, word for word, from Trump’s convention speech at the rallies, like, all sing-songy-like? Because if that is the case, that is fishing creepy and truly fascistic. Like, out of the The Third Wave or something.
That wasn’t really how I read it. At least, nothing in K Miller’s comments suggest that she’s brought in. So I read it with more of a nervous voice from her (while enthusiastic from S Miller).
It’s going to get worse.
I think this is the official motto of 2016.
The main thing that I’m wondering at is the likelihood of the counter-culture becoming the culture (again).
We saw Lenny Bruce get arrested in 1961 for obscenity and it was only 15 years later that George Carlin was on The Midnight Special.
The counter-culture became the culture and one of the things that made the counter-culture so very powerful was its ability to get in the face of the staid and uptight “this is no laughing matter” suits and give a good solid raspberry.
The alt-right is not only a new version of national socialism, it’s punk rock at the same time.
There’s an important difference, though.
The examples you give are ones where the culture embracing the heretics is a growing one. In the case of the alt-right, it’s a shrinking.
To put it another way, there were a whole lot of people who wanted to yell ?MOTHER FISHER!!!” when they hit their thumb with a hammer before Lenny Bruce cam a long. There really aren’t that many people who want to send all the Jews packing at gunpoint to Israel. The internet might allow the alt-right to amplify the voices of people with little support, but that doesn’t mean the support follows the amplification.
I want to say that there was more going on with Lenny Bruce/George Carlin than the seven words.
Perhaps I ought to have used Abbie Hoffman as an example.
Where you say “in the case of the alt-right, it’s a shrinking”, I think back to where the alt-right was in, say, Romney’s time.
They weren’t anywhere, as far I could tell. We had to compare Romney to Hitler and the Romney Republicans to Brownshirts. (Remember how he treated his dog?)
This stuff sprung up overnight.
And it reminds me of nothing so much as that picture of protesters taunting police at the 1968 Democratic Convention. You remember the one. The one with the guy giving the finger.
There’s nothing new about anti-semitism from the Right: you’ve been able to find it as Taki’s, at VDare, at AmRen from the site as a whole, and from selected posters and commenters at TAC as ar back as I’ve been aware of them, not to mention Stormfront, Occidental Observer (Kevin MacDonald’s new hangout. Since retiring from UCSB he’s given up any pretense of not being a Nazi). etc. The only new things are the amount of attention they’re getting from people who should have the sense to shun them, and from Trump retweeting them.
If it wasn’t’ for Milo what’shisopolous nobody would see the alt right as anything but the various nasty sub groups that, like mike said, have always been there. Nothing new about nazi’s or hardcore anti semites. They just have a better press agent and trumpy’s wake to follow in.
The lunatic fringe has, suddenly, become mainstream enough for the Democratic nominee to address.
The overton window has shifted.
I suspect if we polled White Men between 25-45 (roughly) twenty years ago, and polled them now, we’d get different (and worse) answers.
We’re still talking a fraction, but I think the numbers have moved. Some people are attracted to trendy-fringy ideas, and I think neoreactionarism has hit its stride, which has in turn provided an umbrella for anti-semitic ideas.
As someone who has some serious neoreaction sympathies, I’d point out that the problem is not one that would be prevented or even kicked down the road by having fewer people writing long-form essays.
Are there more anti semites and nazis then 20 years ago? No idea. It’s become more acceptable in that community to be open and loud about it. Have those views become more acceptable in the society at large. Not so much.
Has the overton window moved. Don’t think so. It seems more like a reaction to society moving so far away from them they are going for a primal scream of fear and rage. Fear and rage that has always been there.
Sometimes people say “how can people join ISIS???” Well extremism always has features that appeal to some people. It seems clear and pure and energetic. Of course that is due to dogmatism, being ideologues blind to anything that doesn’t fit their world view and a manic desire to bend the world to their wishes. Same deal with the alt right.
There have been hard right wing themes in the rise of militias, some of it in the Moral Majority era and the reactions to O being prez. This isn’t really all that new at all.
I’d say that it depends on how you package them.
“FREE PALESTINE! BOYCOTT! DIVEST! SANCTION!!!!” is a fairly socially acceptable way to be anti-Semitic. As such, it seems like, overall, there’s more out there than there used to be.
The college campuses of 20 years ago, for me, were more interested in Tibet and Mumia than the Settlements.
While the fear and rage has always been there, it seems like it’s getting out and mentioned more than I recall at any point in the past.
That’s what I mean by the overton window moving.
Once upon a time, these people were limited to fringe websites. Now they are not. That’s a significant change.
Always nice to get the BSDI in. No conversation is complete without it.
The internet is a wondrous place. One skill we need to learn and hone is to judge how big in meatspace a phenomenon is compared to the internet. It’s easy to seem like a giant on the net even if you aren’t that way in real life.
Greg, if we’re talking about “is there more of this phenomenon than there used to be?”, pointing out that, yes, there is ought to be seen as “huh, there is more of this phenomenon than there used to be” rather than “OH HE’S JUST SAYING THAT HIS SIDE ISN’T BAD”.
Please look at the increase in the phenomenon as an increase in the phenomenon and not as me saying “the left does it too”.
Perhaps we can come to conclusions that “huh, there is an increase in this phenomenon if we look at instances of the phenomenon showing up.”
Because, seriously, it’s showing up on college campuses now and it didn’t used to.
(And, of course, not every BDS person is doing it because they’re anti-Semitic. Some legit care about the phenomenon of the settlements and whatnot. I’m not talking about those people.)
I don’t think any of us know if there are more nazis and anti Semites now. They have always been with us. They are getting some press now due to trumpy and the troll guy. Does that equal more or they are getting bigger. No. All we know is they have the internet as a platform which often wildly distorts how much of something is out there. There was a sharp up tick in joining a variety of nazi/race based orgs when O was elected. What did that prove? There was the militia movement.
These groups and their message isn’t new nor are the groups nor are the people in them. I’m not seeing some increase in the phenomenon per se, just a light shined in the corner and some more reporting. I don’t see the overton window being shifted to make their views suddenly more acceptable. In fact most people seem horrified or disbelieving that these views exist. Plenty of Republicans are clearly not thrilled at all with having Trumpy bring them into the R coalition. (Good for them btw for not wanting the nazis in the R club)
If we can’t say whether there are more or less, can we say “well, stuff that used to not be said in public is now being said in public” and go from there to saying that the overton window has shifted?
With alt-rights in particular and with many political conversations in general, the problem arises about how to talk about (usually informal) groups of people as if they were monolithic. There are people in the alt-right orbit (Seidel is obviously one) who are attracted to some of the counter-culture elements but not the most brazenly racist ones — but the racists inevitably draw most of the attention. If you’re like Seidel and think that identity politics has gone too far and needs some push-back, what group can you turn to that wouldn’t also include people who want to push things back way too far?
It’s fairly impressive that he can participate in that group and just shrug off the people who don’t want his support.
I don’t think he’s done anything but post on Twitter from what I can see of this guy–and he may be trying to launch a Milo-like career as an unlikely spokesman for the alt-right (Milo was half Jewish if you recall).
There was a ‘cultural libertarian’ movement (involving Milo) a little while ago, and there are guys like Sargon of Akkad (who isn’t even American) who are against the SJWs and the alt-right, but overall (probably due to polarization) you’re probably going to have to pick one side or the other.
If I didn’t need my job I would totally start a ‘Pox on Both Your Houses’ facebook group mocking the alt-right and the SJWs on alternate days. As you say,there are probably people who think identity politics has gone too far but don’t want to go back to 1936 (in Germany).
I read that and the comments a while back (someone linked to it at-you-guessed-it-Lion of the Blogosphere). I wasn’t surprised at the response (these guys are like that) but I was at the numbers. Of course he could have gotten linked on Stormfront or something.
You can wait for the 2017 survey from the ADL to see if antisemitic opinions have gone up specifically. (Keeping in mind they overstate everything–‘Jews talk too much about the Holocaust’? Heck, I think that, and I’m a halfie. It happened, it was very very bad, similar things happened to Armenians, Ukrainians, Tutsis, and lots of others I’ve forgotten right now.)
You also should mention (since it’s relevant given Seidel’s post and its response) Miller is himself of Jewish extraction, though I have no clue if he practices (not that it matters to Nazis). Trump’s also got quite a few Jews in his organization, likely as a carryover from his pre-white-supremacist days (he does work and play in New York after all).
One somewhat unrelated thing is that I suspect Trump’s massive groundswell of support has to do with people unhappy about trade and immigration rather than Nazis sending frog memes. He’s getting his votes and his Internet buzz from (mostly) different places. I could be mistaken but there are a lot of blue-collar white guys who would never think of joining a Klan rally but are uncomfortable when everyone downtown speaks Spanish now. Trump’s probably appealing to them. The liberal tendency to find any microaggression (just look at the word) and scream ‘RACIST!’ lumping those guys together with internet Nazis kind of washes over this distinction, with the obvious danger of turning the first type of guy into the second.