Amerika

The term “alt-right” came to us from 1990s terminology like “alt-rock” and “alternative lifestyles.” It simply meant the ability to do something other than what the mainstream was doing if our way achieved similar results.

Let us use another 1990s term: unlike the “alternative,” the underground aimed to be a way of doing things differently that the mainstream would not accept as an alternative, therefore had to be clandestine and operate according to its own rules, out of sight of the normies.

Where the alternative wants to present itself as an extension of the mainstream, the underground wants to avoid it entirely, viewing it as a kind of infection or poison because of what makes it mainstream: its popularity, meaning its reduction to lowest common denominator.

Those of us on the underground Right — far-Right, alt-right, dissident Right, and Old Right — realize that the tendency of human civilizations is to decay through egalitarianism, and so we are fighting an enemy with massively more popular appeal than we have.

We also realize, unlike the mainstream Right, that we cannot win against this enemy by accepting any portion of its precept that equality is good (in fact, to them it is the singular absolute good and salvation, and what we were deprived of when we left the last Golden Age).

This leads us to a difficult position. All sane people accept “by any means necessary,” which does not mean to reach for the most extreme means, but to escalate — possibly in parallel — from the easiest legal means to anything more extreme that is required.

A “by any means necessary” approach in its most ideal form would mean that we continue the cultural wave, electing leaders, organizing, and simultaneously preparing for armed conflict so that we present a threat alongside our offer of a better way of life.

However, this is unsatisfying, which has caused many on the underground right to give up on Donald Trump:

President Donald Trump’s July Fourth “Salute to America” was supposed to be a patriotic extravaganza, complete with military tanks, to affirm the country’s greatness under his leadership.

But many within his once-loyal cadre of far-right extremists, racist trolls and white nationalists who latched onto his campaign under the banner of the “alt-right” in 2016 were looking the other way. Online forums home to the alt-right, such as 4chan and 8chan, were filled with chatter about Disney’s decision to cast a black actress as Ariel in the upcoming live-action version of “The Little Mermaid.” Discussions around “Salute to America” were decidedly muted.

Extremism experts say their apparent lack of interest in Trump is partly because the heyday of the “alt-right” as a coordinated bloc is over — and partly because they feel betrayed by Trump, who, by operating in the political mainstream, is now tainted by the very swamp he promised to drain. Many also feel like he has failed to deliver on the sweeping immigration enforcement he promised during the campaign.

To my mind, their blackpill is premature. We knew that Trump would encounter major resistance on the level that Reagan faced or greater; we knew that the American Constitutional system is designed to restrict the power of the executive; we knew that many things would have to be undone.

I suggest that instead of thinking in apocalyptic terms, such as “we need to fix this now or tomorrow will be the apocalypse,” we dial it back and focus on steps that we want to see taken in the future. For now, Donald Trump is step one, running in parallel with our other efforts.

Step one will not be inspiring. It means establishing a beachhead, or a foothold from which we can move in further directions. If Trump succeeds and life gets better, we will get more conservatives into office, the judiciary, and positions of importance.

Even more, the national mood will continue to swing Right, as it does when the Right is succeeding. Bush I was an easy accomplishment after Reagan, but then broke down because Bush I focused on too many ideological initiatives instead of making domestic life better.

This shows us part of the secret of Trump: he realizes that voters care very little for what happens in foreign lands, so long as it does not either blow up in our faces or result in decreased quality of life. You can have foreign wars if they are quick with few casualties.

If Trump accomplishes his full agenda, he will have America headed for autonomy. That means no more reliance on China or international trade, nor getting tied up in projects to spread democracy. He will also reduce the burden of government on our economy, leading to better lives for most.

His approach with immigration may not be fast, but he has avoided the missteps of radical action which would galvanize the country and make the Right appear to be the first aggressor. We want to be the first mover, or the side who acts first, but not in aggression.

The big point of Trump will be to stop the bleeding created by the Obama-Clinton years, make life actually better again in tangible ways, and to direct people toward this realist way of thinking. That in turn leads to wondering what makes a healthy nation and therefore the best life for us.

Over time, that thinking will lead away from a great quest to make everyone equal and point us toward a need to fix all of the broken stuff that we have done for the past century. This means cutting away the socialist-style entitlements state, affirmative action, and other bad law.

As that happens, and life gets better for normal functional healthy people, the interest in saving everyone in the world from themselves will also fall. We will know that we tried the ideological quest in the past, and it just destroyed us, and actually helped no one in the long term.

This paves the way for more conservative presidents or open revolution when the assembled neurotic misfits of the Left — taken from cat ladies, pyjama boys, minorities, homosexuals, criminals, unions, sociopaths, and schizoids — refuse to allow us to move forward.

We have to show people a better life first, however. Claims of what is right and true go only so far. Similarly, intense ideology has little appeal, and this causes the fundamental division in the alt-right. As the article observes:

The 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, which left one woman dead and dozens injured, was meant to bring the disparate factions of the alt-right together in the real world. In the end it did quite the opposite — and turned out to be a breaking point.

“The events there really laid bare the tensions in the movement — between the actual neo-Nazis who were rallying on the streets and the larger mass of Pepe-wielding meme anons online,” said Mike Wendling, editor of BBC Trending, a podcast that investigates social media, and author of ‘Alt-Right: from 4chan to the White House.“To be sure some, though perhaps not all, of the latter had deep sympathy with the extremists. But murder and extreme violence tends to make people very queasy.”

Infighting, expensive lawsuits and criminal charges tore the alt-right apart in the aftermath of Charlottesville. Preppy white nationalists like Spencer realized that marching alongside neo-Nazi skinheads did nothing for his aspirations of legitimacy even if they shared the same ideas deep down.

Spencer most likely — being astute — recognizes a deeper division here: modernists versus traditionalists.

Modernists want some sort of ultra-modernist solution like Fascism or National Socialism, both of which are modeled on the Communist “total state” model and driven intensely by ideology or at least aesthetics.

He realized quickly that while these movements and their symbolism have great “screw you” troll power (nothing is more taboo than swastikas, racism, and anti-Semitism) they do not translate into reaching the desired audience, which is the Remnant or Silent Majority.

This group does not want to engage in another ideological experiment. They want what they had before diversity kicked in hard during the late 1990s, and that will reach out from that to the idea of an eternal method of civilization that produces Golden Ages.

Traditionalism holds, as Plato did, that all of the patterns we see on this Earth correspond to inherent mathematics of the universe. Civilizations rise to greatness because they discover this truth and aim toward emulating the order of the universe instead of worshiping humans.

Spencer describes this roughly as “hierarchy,” which is a good opposite to egalitarianism, with the meaning that hierarchy extends beyond the human. We have a place in nature and in the order of the stars and the metaphysical layers of reality beyond the visible. We simply must discover it again.

All of us enjoy a good troll. The “It’s Okay To Be White” signs provoked the Left into revealing what nagging nanny stuffed shirts they all are, and occasionally posting “Hitler Did Nothing Wrong” to watch social media recoil is good innocent fun, sort of.

However, ideas have a way of leading people to places that serve the ideas best of all. If you declare anti-Semitism and racism your founding principles, you will cultivate a movement that wants to harm people, whether you intend that or not. Hitler found this out the hard way.

The alt-right succeeded when it offered people a different view of life. Remove diversity, the entitlements state, and the civil rights agenda that sees government intruding into every area of life, and replace it with culture, art, strong community, and looking toward future conquest.

People can get behind this eventually, but first what they need is a sense of the Good Life. That is, if we strip away all of the government and ideology, and return to what has always worked, we can live well and die confident that our lives were the best possible version of what they could be.

This modernist-versus-traditionalist tension is what bothers the underground Right at this time. The modernists want radical action on immigration and diversity, where the traditionalists want us to head toward a whole vision of society, and do so gradually.

We do not want to repeat the mistakes of the past. For whatever reason, or no reason, National Socialism is not the way to break out of modernity. Perhaps that basis in emulating the Soviet state could be the reason why, or the radical symbolism translating into mass murder.

People want a good life, and they finally recognize that Leftism destroys the good life. Even more, so does any type of trying to find a consensus about what is universally true and applying it to everyone. We want breathing room again to find our own place.

We realize that we cannot save everyone as the egalitarians want us to do, nor force everyone to do the right thing as Moral Majority types and National Socialists desire. There is going to be a great sorting where the good rise above the rest, and the worst are sent away.

For this reason, supporting Trump is the right thing to do, even if results are far from perfect. We all wish we could click our heels and make diversity, entitlements, civil rights, and utilitarian nanny states go away, but that is not how the world works.

Instead, we need to take the parallel approach. We will keep changing cultural attitudes about human biodiversity, Austrian economics, and theories of power. We will push for traditional aesthetics, music, attire, behaviors, and lifestyles. We will also push for more conservatives in power.

Where the wildmen of the far-Right understand politics correctly is that we must also be a threat. The government must fear armed uprising, and the Leftist must fear that at some point, we will simply start shooting all of them in the streets. They must know fear to respect us.

In turn, they will come to accept that their age is over. Leftism/liberalism is as dead as National Socialism, Communism, and Fascism now. It had its day and failed. Trump has set us back on the path of realism, and we owe it to him to keep pushing that, even if he falters.

Tags: alt-right, donald j. trump, far-right, old right, revolution, underground right