The alt-right and the death of counterculture (original) (raw)
Related papers
Revenge of the Nerds: Recidivist Masculinity, Identity Politics and the Online ‘Culture Wars’
Journal of Extreme Anthropology, 2017
This paper is longform commentary and analysis of Angela Nagle's recent work Kill All Normies Online culture wars from 4chan and Tumblr to Trump and the alt-right. It explores the work's relevance to 'Extreme Masculinties', and places it within the context of the contemporary poltiical situation. The work's main thesis on the aesthetic and libidinal forms and characteristics of the 'Alt-Right' are heavily interrogated and placed within the historical context of previous 'crises' in masculinity. This analysis proceeds to further explore the existence of this contemporary crisis through the broader spectrum of identity politics, and its problematic ideological conflicts and consequences.
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 paper is longform commentary and analysis of Angela Nagle's recent work 'Kill All Normies Online culture wars from 4chan and Tumblr to Trump and the alt-right'. It explores the work's relevance to 'Extreme Masculinties', and places it within the context of the contemporary political situation. The work's main thesis on the aesthetic and libidinal forms and characteristics of the 'Alt-Right' are heavily interrogated and placed within the historical context of previous 'crises' in masculinity. This analysis proceeds to further explore the existence of this contemporary crisis through the broader spectrum of identity politics, and its problematic ideological conflicts and consequences. This article appears in the journal of Extreme Anthropology, published by the University of Oslo, and is reproduced here through Creative Commons: https://www.journals.uio.no/index.php/JEA/article/view/5359
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.
The “Great Meme War:” the Alt-Right and its Multifarious Enemies
2020
The alt-right has been a major actor of the online culture wars of the past few years. Since it came to prominence during the 2014 Gamergate controversy, 1 this looselydefined, puzzling movement has achieved mainstream recognition and has been the subject of discussion by journalists and scholars alike. Although the movement is notoriously difficult to define, a few overarching themes can be delineated: unequivocal rejections of immigration and multiculturalism among most, if not all, altright subgroups; an intense criticism of feminism, in particular within the manosphere community, which itself is divided into several clans with different goals and subcultures (men's rights activists, Men Going Their Own Way, pickup artists, incels). 2 Demographically speaking, an overwhelming majority of alt-righters are white heterosexual males, one of the major social categories who feel dispossessed and resentful, as pointed out as early as in the mid-20 th century by Daniel Bell, and more recently by Michael Kimmel (Angry White Men 2013) and Dick Howard (Les Ombres de l'Amérique 2017). But one of the defining features of the larger alt-right 3 is its overall self-appointment as defender of a declining western civilization.
From Postmodernism to the Alt Right: Notes on the Loss of Objective Reality
Making & Breaking , 2021
Part of Making & Breaking's special issue on the Postcontemporary, the article considers the links between postmodernism in the 1970s-1980s and the alt right today. https://makingandbreaking.org/article/from-postmodernism-to-the-alt-right-notes-on-the-loss-of-objective-reality/ "Angela Dimitrakaki’s point of departure is the observation that a potential leap into a post-contemporary future will always have to be based on such a sense of collectively shared reality which is necessarily located in the present (the con-temporary). Today, such a sense of shared reality is under attack from the alt-right, enabled by the aforementioned social media/platform technology. However, as an art historian, Dimitrakaki’s argument goes in a different direction. ‘From Postmodernism to the Alt-right: Notes on the Loss of Objective Reality’ explores the historical relationship between globalisation, postmodernism and the alt-right. Didn’t postmodernism, she asks, introduce the relativism and scepticism about the existence of objective reality that has become the cornerstone of the current success of the ideologies of the alt-right? And by extension, doesn’t the art world bear a certain responsibility for having so eagerly and uncritically embraced postmodern theory? These are fascinating questions because their discussion reveals that the attempt to take refuge in the seemingly political neutrality of (in this case) postmodernism has had catastrophic political consequences. Following Dimitrakaki’s argument, one could almost quip that much of contemporary art has been a super-spreader for the alt-right’s attack on our sense of a collectively shared reality. A post-contemporary artistic practice will have to learn from this historical failure, and do so fast." Excerpt from S. Olma's Introduction to the special issue.
The Alt-Right's Aesthetic War: Anti-Semitism, Nazi Pepe Trump, and the Cult of Kek
National Communication Association, Baltimore MD, 2019
This paper describes some of the history of white supremacy online, its morph into its current most popular format (i.e. The so called 'Alt-Right'), and the processes by which the Alt-Right has insinuated fascist ideology into popular internet culture. My research shows that fascist discourse online is the product of a prolonged, persistent campaign that prepared the ground for a series of accidental and intentional incidences which culminated in the 2016 presidential election. The election of Donald Trump to the office of President was taken as both validation and license to openly attack Jews, women, immigrants, and other minority people online and in popular media. Overcoming this problem entails grounding our understanding of the content we are consuming in physical-world results before sharing on social media, not clever symbolic online intentions.
Post-Digital Cultures of the Far Right (2019)
2019
How have digital tools and networks transformed the far right's strategies and transnational prospects? This volume presents a unique critical survey of the online and offline tactics, symbols and platforms that are strategically remixed by contemporary far-right groups in Europe and the US. It features thirteen accessible essays by an international range of expert scholars, policy advisors and activists who offer informed answers to a number of urgent practical and theoretical questions: How and why has the internet emboldened extreme nationalisms? What counter-cultural approaches should civil societies develop in response? More information: https://www.transcript-verlag.de/en/detail/index/sArticle/4371
Capitalism with a Transhuman Face: The Afterlife of Fascism and the Digital Frontier
Third Text, 2019
The most salient feature of the far-right movement, which became known as the alt-right is its relation with IT, rather than with the diminished expectations of the post-industrial working class. This, I would argue, points to a new configuration of fascist ideology taking shape under the aegis of, and working in tandem with, neoliberal governance. If every rise of Fascism bears witness to a failed revolution, one could say that the rise of cryptofascist tendencies within the tech industry bears witness to the failures of the “digital revolution,” whose promises of a post-scarcity economy and socialized capital never came to pass. From this perspective the online cultural wars are a proxy for a greater battle around de-Westernization, Imperialism and white hegemony.