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| The medium is the message |
The history of the Alt-Right really starts to make sense once you eradicate all the pointless detail. Here, let me show you:
Firstly, why did the Alt-Right emerge in the years leading up to 2010?
Simple, because following the popularisation of the internet and the emergence of social media, people could finally re-explore all the brilliant, honest, true, and sensible ideas that had been swept under the carpet by the gate-keeper academic and media classes. These two classes, of course, were serving the agenda of the globohomo capitalist consumer society, which, on a longer-than-one-lifespan timescale is completely self destructive.
Secondly, the Alt-Right was an intellectual movement that manifested itself in written form.
This allowed it, with some occasional stretching, to exist at an IQ level of approximately 120 and sometimes higher, which is sufficient to deal sensibly with most major civilizational problems. The written word allows humans to operate on a higher IQ level than the spoken word because it allows an extension of the factor of time in the intellectual process. This ensures that weaker points can be elucidated and therefore reinforced or else rejected if found wanting. (I will not touch on the anti-IQ effects of obtuse, long-winded, and over-elaborate intellectual writing here, except to note that they exist.)
Thirdly, between 2012 and 2015 the Alt-Right largely moved from the written word to the spoken word through the increasing use of podcasts.
The result of moving to the spoken word lowered the effective IQ of the movement by at least 20 points.
While some podcasts can operate successfully at a higher IQ level, these do not tend to be as popular as they should be. But generally speaking, the spoken word forces humans to operate on a lower IQ level than the written word, because it greatly reduces the factor of time in the intellectual process. The simpler (or lower IQ) the basic message is, the easier it is for the speaker to operate effectively. This means that more complex, dialectical, nuanced, or data-driven critiques are avoided, and weaknesses in thought are glossed over in favour of simplistic messages that avoid reality and its falsification traps.
Richard Spencer's Vanguard podcasts played an important role in this transition, but The Right Stuff demonstrated this change in its clearest form. Although it started as a blog with articles, some of which were OK, it soon turned into a regular podcast that used humour to gloss over serious intellectual and moral weaknesses.
The rise of memes and "memetic warfare" was obviously an intermediate stage in this trend towards "oral sub-intellectualism."
Fourthly, this change from written media to spoken media ended up pushing the Alt-Right towards increasingly toxic ideas and dead end positions -- in this case Jew-obsessed Neo-Naziism (aka "Inverted Jewish Supremacism," "The Semitic Panotheory").
This was because such crude anti-Semitism was the easiest, laziest, simplest, and most emotionally satisfying way to offer so-called "explanations" at the new, lower IQ level, while still focusing on the serious civilizational problems of the West.
Fifthly: By recycling Neo-Naziism, the leaders of the Alt-Right provoked a reaction from the formerly docile and passive custodians of the internet and social media, transforming them into censorious Neo-Gatekeepers, which is the situation we all now suffer under. This reaction was especially potent as it lined up with normie sensibilities, which exist in a low-information state of strong anti-Naziism. Another consequence of adopting such Neo-Nazi positions was that the Alt-Right effectively made itself porous to Fed infiltration, leading to even more intense toxification of its message.
Sixthly the change from written media to spoken media went even further, with a change from podcasting to vlogging, largely on YouTube.
The visualising of the spoken message ensured the rise of a more narcissistic type, with the intriguing character defects which that favours. However, the main problem for the Alt-Right remains the fact that ideas and problems cannot be approached in an open and honest way, because that risks pushing the performer to an IQ or data level at which he would sound stupid and cringe.
Instead, the speaker will resort to a cyclical repetition of well-tested catch-phrases and spicy "new" memes (usually devoid of much intellectual content) designed to reinforce his "optics" as a confident, informed, and "cool" speaker.
The key parameters here are the telegenic charm and "sub-masculine" attraction between the performer and his audience, as well as the IQ and short-term memory of the average listener/ viewer. To understand the mental "specs" involved here, I would refer you to the average pop-song, which, in a three to five minute period, has a fair deal of mindless repetition and quite a lot of high pitched emoting.
Conclusion: My rough estimate is that from 2010 to 2020, the effective IQ of the Dissident Right has sunk from 120+ to less than 90. Needless to say, low IQ intellectual movements seldom change the World, except by sheer, bloody chance, and at that random level there are plenty of competitors.
Connected content:
The IQ of Revolutions
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Colin Liddell is the Chief Editor of Affirmative Right and the author of Interviews & Obituaries, a collection of encounters with the dead and the famous. Support his work by buying it here. He is also featured in Arktos's A Fair Hearing: The Alt-Right in the Words of Its Members and Leaders.
