In Want of a Sovereign: Metapolitics and the Populist Formation of the Alt Right (Introduction) (original) (raw)
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Cultural Politics, 2018
This article examines rise of the alt-Right and Donald Trump’s successful campaign for President of the United States in the context of three overlapping contradictions: that of subversion in postmodern culture and politics, that between the democratic and commercial logics of the media, and the failure of the Left in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Referring to these three contradictions, this article looks at the rise of “Trumpism” and the new brand of White nationalist and misogynistic culture of the so-called alt-Right in its historical context to show how it is consistent but also distinguished from previous Right wing ideologies. More generally, the three contradictions presented here are proposed as explanations for understanding the mainstreaming of the alt-Right in contemporary politics and culture.
Obscure Subjects: Myth and Metapolitics on the alt-Right
Critical Theory Network
In this essay, I situate the neo-fascist movements, specifically the alt-Right in an historical context that examines both the conditions that capitalism reaches wherein it begins to produce fascism. I also provide an account of the internal development and deployment of the alt-Right compared to prior fascist movements of the twentieth century. The historical period in which fascism first arose, the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, provides an important point of reference for understanding the external societal conditions as well as the internal function of fascism. In The Birth of Fascist Ideology Zeev Sternhell notes two defining characteristics of what led to the fascism of the 1920's and 1930's in France and Italy: Firstly, there was a steady cultural revolution aimed at overthrowing liberalism in response to the failure of Marxist approaches to revolution which emphasized an economic revolution to the modes of production. Secondly, and this is perhaps a distinctive feature of every fascist movement, these political movements of the early 20 th century turned against Enlightenment metaphysics of materialism and science, replacing the reason of Marxist revolutionary thought and action with an emphasis on mobilizing followers around a romanticized myth. Sternhell argues that the myth that began early 20 th century fascism was the event of the violent general strike as theorized by the reactionary socialist syndicalist Georges Sorel (1847 – 1922). This myth would eventually be modified to adhere to nationalist and biological racism with the rise of the Nazi's, but the important functionalist point is that fascism requires the deployment of a myth to organize its followers.
The Alt-Right's Platformization of Fascism and a New Left's Digital United Front
Democratic Communique, 2019
Platforms constitute a political communications battlespace in which a plurality of social actors-from Left to Right-struggle for recognition and attention, try to organize consent to their ideologies, and seek to influence how people think and behave. In the spirit of this special issue's investigation of the tactical political uses of new media to bring about social change, this article demonstrates how contemporary platforms are a space of battle, fought over by the alt-right's white nationalist fascists and a new Left's "digital united front." Drawing upon numerous examples of fascist and antifascist tactical interventions across the platforms, this article is optimistic that the power of the alt-right to win hearts and minds may be waning due to the growth and widespread support for the Left's digital united front. To this end, this article's first section contextualizes the revival of the hard Right's "authoritarian populism" under the auspices of the US Trump presidency and defines the contemporary "alt-right." The article's second section surveys the alt-right's political uses of platforms, and highlights some of these platforms' affordances to the alt-right's reach and ideological influence. The third section conceptualizes the Left's "digital united front," and catalogues some of its tactics for countering platform fascists: no-platforming, doxing, video ideology critique, and memes. This article's overview of the alt-right's platformization of fascism and the Left's digital united front is not comprehensive, but aims to highlight some salient instances of "what's being done" by the alt-right to platform fascism, and "what's being done" by the Left to disrupt this threat. By scrutinizing the alt-right's platformization of fascism and championing the Left's digital united front, this article aims to contribute to knowledge about the politics of tactical media in the age of platforms, and be a praxiological primer for battling the alt-right. The conclusion critically assesses the notion that the US has become a "fascist" country.
This project aims to explore the political ideology and online activities of alt-right and establish a multifaceted analysis. Our research evaluates the historical background of fascism, its transformation into the extreme right and finally the emergence of alt-right in order to expose the links between each ideology and the ways in which they are associated with each other, as well as the contrasts. In this project, the online activities of alt-right groups are examined in various aspects. Including the transformation of fascism to alt-right, the psychological profile, the ideological structure of alt-right and the economic aspects that affect the movement are used to create a multifaceted synthesis of alt-right.
Social Policy Review 31, 2019
A series of journalistic books and articles exploring the Alt-Right provide detailed empirical data critical to understanding the underpinning social networks of the Alt-Right. However, intensive media focus on young, working-class-usually American-white supremacists sharing extremist material over the internet masks incidences of closely related racist, conspiracist, misogynist, and 'anti-elitist' ideology in wider, often middle-class mainstream media, politics, and social policy discourse. This article problematises these narratives. Drawing partly on the work of Mary Douglas and Antonio Gramsci, we contribute to ongoing national and international 'Alt-Right' debates with an interdisciplinary, political-anthropological model of 'mainstremeist' belief and action. This approach highlights the links between 'fringe' and 'centre' into an entangled social network seeking to deploy social policy as a tool of misogynist, patriarchal, racist, and classist retrenchment.
Nowhere has xenophobia, racism and misogyny challenged International Human Rights Conventions, humanitarian principles and the core values of Cosmopolitan Solidarity more than in the United States with the election of Donald J. Trump. In the aftermath of the 2016 Presidential election in the United States, as media, political operatives, the American public and the global community began to come to terms with the outcome, it soon became evident that the use of new media was key to the resurrection of old hates. The chapter explores the message content, construction and dissemination of alt-right themes—misogyny, racism, white supremacy, xenophobia, Islamaphoboa, fear of immigrants and “white genocide”—employed in the campaign discourses of Donald J. Trump and outlines how they propelled him into the White House. Online hate groups from alt-right activists to the anti-woman crusaders of Gamergate, together with political activists adept at the creation of propagandized fake news such as Stephen Bannon of Breitbart, were key in spreading xenophobia and white supremacy over social media platforms, most notably Twitter and Facebook. Trump provided the Alt-right with a megaphone, and they thanked him be shouting Sieg Heil outside his rallies. The effects of these messages are drawn out in an analysis of voting patterns and exit polling data, which demonstrate the efficacy of the alt-right influences of pushing Trump over the top in key swing states.
‘The fire rises’: identity, the alt-right and intersectionality
Journal of Political Ideologies, 2018
This article examines the ideology of the 'alt-right, ' specifically in its relation to the importance of identity. Placing the alt-right within the context of the rising importance of identity within American society, the article discusses the alt-right as overlapping in significant ways with the identitarian elements within the American Left. Investigating the manner in which national/racial identity plays a central role in altright thinking and using the notion of 'category-based epistemology' for guidance, this article argues that the alt-right-rather than a quirk of the 2016 electoral cycle-is likely to increase in its importance as a 'rightist' form of intersectionality. Who you are elucidates who you hate. As identity becomes more central in political confrontations, the importance (and danger) of in-group/out-group dynamics increases. In various parts of the Western world-be it in the nationalist rhetoric of Donald Trump's presidential campaign and its supporters, the nationalist rhetoric of many 'Brexit' supporters within the United Kingdom, or the electoral fortunes of the Freedom Party in Austria's 2016 presidential election-the saliency of national identity (at times with an ethnic/racial undercurrent) has increased in recent years. But unlike much of the nationalist rhetoric of earlier periods (particularly between 1922 and 1945), this current form of nationalist identity is separatist rather than imperial. In the American context, the 'alt-right' best represents this identity-focused movement on the Right. This movement is less an outlier, however, when seen in the context of the broader identity focus in the West: in effect, the ideational structure of movements like the alt-right becomes much clearer once one sees it in comparison with the importance of identity for the progressive Left, exemplified by the notion of intersectionality. This article will present the alt-right as engaged with identity politics in the United States as it has developed in recent decades. In particular, this article places the alt-right as a continuation of identitarianism that saw its initial growth in progressive politics. The discussion will be in three parts. The first section examines the similarities and overlaps between the alt-right and what can be called the 'intersectional Left, ' presenting them as two subtypes of 'category-based epistemology. ' The second section explicates the role of identity within the alt-right, especially as it differs from some earlier political forms of racial/national
A journey through the Alt-Right
die Taz, 2017
The following article was published as three episodes’ series for the German newspaper die Taz on 17-18-19 February 2017 (see attachment). It was also part of a lecture delivered at “die Börse Zentrum” in Wuppertal, Germany, on November 24, 2017.
The Synthesis of Social Media Dialectics & the Rise of Alt-Right Memes
2019
The conference paper follows Lacanian and Freudian discussions concerning (obsessional) neurosis to locate the development of alt-right meme culture expression in a dialectic of political affect. The internet meme response to the MAGA hat kid scandal of January 2019 is analyzed under the scope of recent transformations in media culture and illuminates the psychoanalytical foundation of political reactionism as a counterproductive mechanism of identity politics, namely, the desire for identity legitimization.
Propaganda and the Nihilism of the Alt-Right
Radical Philosophy Review, 2020
The alt-right is an online subculture marked by its devotion to the execution of a racist, misogynistic, and xenophobic politics through trolling, pranking, meme-making, and mass murder. It is this devotion to far-right politics through the discordant conjunction of humor and suicidal violence this article seeks to explain by situating the movement for the first time within its constitutive online relationships. This article adds to the existing literature by viewing the online relationships of the alt-right through the genealogy of propaganda. Through situating the alt-right alongside the genealogy of propaganda, the article offers new insights into the social isolation, increasingly extreme social and political positions, nihilism, and violence that have emerged within the alt-right. The article concludes by applying the lessons of the alt-right for online organizing across the political spectrum and argues that a class-based politics of the left is an important part of countering the rise of the alt-right.