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Affirmative Right editor Colin Liddell reviews the "macro-empirical" evidence, and concludes that the Alt-Right -- and the way it was distorted -- was part of a much bigger picture, one that was intimately connected to the Trump phenomenon, which was itself part of a geopolitical "shadow war" targeting the divisions in American society and the previously open nature of the Internet.
Russia may welcome discord in the West, but the number of Russian social-media tweets was derisory and not enough to singlehandedly create the Trump phenomenon. Russia was reported as having spent $300 on promoting Trump in one state. Similarly, the recent "racism" in football boiled down to about 50 Tweets from abroad. To explain the Alt-Right like this is conspiracism, a rehash of the Russia nonsense. It is more likely that Trump follows in Ross Perot's and Pat Buchanan's footsteps, and it is possibly that he espied a gap in the market, and decided to advocate positions that he didn't previously hold. Of course, you can get more conspiracy-minded about it and start talking about Spencer's Russian wife, etc. It couldn't possibly be that Trump is a reaction to the increasingly extreme left-wing elite in America, and the fact that they are near full demographic victory? A similar conspiracy theory explains Brexit as a Russian plot...
ReplyDeleteAny operation that aimed at playing on the inherent divisions and former openness of the West would take a less obvious route than Facebook ads and Spencer's ex-wife.
DeleteThe virality that the Alt-Right achieved from 2015 onwards struck me as somewhat odd, as did the sheer unjustified virulence aimed at Trump, and the efforts of Big Tech to "reestablish control."
My theory aims to include and explain all these disparate points of evidence. Exactly how America's rivals manipulated its social media (meme farms, troll armies, orchestrated VPN accounts, hijacking Google trends, etc.) is an open question but there was clearly a lot more leeway in 2015-17 to do this, before Big Tech clamped down.
The reason for the Trump hysteria is that the deep state/established civil service/Pentagon/CIA etc oppose the dismantling of the US Empire. He was promising to end NATO and pull of Korea (seen by them as vital in terms of having a presence near China). Although Trump agreed with the deep state on Israel (v. Iran), he didn't understand the issue properly, and was also seeking to pull out of Afghanistan, Syria and Iraq. There are all sorts of vested interests here. Biden is getting away with the Afghan pull-out, although the Pentagon has repeatedly alternative plans. This is possibly because the US actually has zero interests there, apart from an interest in not wanting to see Russia or China move in there. Biden has signalled that he will be firm on China, and needs to free up troops to focus on East Asia - and so has indicated that he will not scale down the Empire as such. I doubt Biden would get away with pulling out of NK (and Japan), letting Taiwan down, letting China do what it wants in the South China Sea, folding up NATO, withdrawing troops from the Baltic and ending the $4bn a year subsidy for Israel. He seems to be rationalising imperial commitments, the better to maintain the empire over the longer term. There is also the strong ethnic component in the US media, which drives hysteria against non-system candidates. This is despite the fact that Ivanka was married into the ethnic group concerned.
ReplyDeleteTrump's early positions on opposing the Neocon agenda is one of the things what made him attractive to the Eurasianist (China and Russia) psy-op people. Once elected, Trump became generally as compliant to "the Pentagon and friends" as Obama and most previous Presidents had been. Therefore his early statements against Neocon overreach cannot fully explain the prolonged anti-Trump hysteria.
DeleteNot only was Trump not "radical", but before his run for President, American blacks loved Trump. They thought he was baller shot caller. If you listen to Ice Cube's analysis, he doesn't make it 100% clear if he's for or against Trump, but that he understands his appeal.
ReplyDeleteThe most extraordinary act of censorship was not the booting of small fry like Molynieux off of Youtube in 2017-18 or whenever, but rather the suppression of discussion of the lab leak theory, between Jan 2020 and May 2021. The establishment about-face on this issue is also extraordinary. Everything that's happening is actually about China, the center of the 21st century production system, and not about Russia. The Russian bots boosting Pepe memes in '15 are not important. The Chinese bio-economic networks everywhere are important. The new forces of destabilization in the West date to the point when power in Beijing shifted from the liberal and basically pro-West Hu Jintao to the nationalist and anti-West Xi Jinping. That was in late 2012. Am I saying China been supporting woke causes during 2013-now? Maybe it has, though I havent seen much evidence. But, more to the point, wokeness is a Western hysterical reaction to the realization that Xi means the end of the liberal illusion. Xi means America must go nationalist; means Western Europe must form an army and go Western Europeanist. But rather than doing what's necessary, which is this switch back to "Cold War mode," back to a culture which enshrines masculine eagerness to fight, instead Western elite culture (which combines elements of senile old man and hysterical teen girl), will do anything to avoid doing what's necessary. Panicking at the prospect of needing to meet Xi with nationalism, Western elites have thrown all their support at antinationalism, antimasculinism, etc. Trumpism is a reaction, an unthinking and unphilosophical one so far, to this facile response. So far the reaction has failed, but next round it will be more mature, thoughtful and philosophical. Kamala won't be ready.
ReplyDeleteWhile Trump did widen the Overton window for a while (it may have shut tighter since???), electoral politics can achieve nothing. Neither can more physical force methods. The problem the Right faces is that nothing can change until the Establishment is brought to suspect their ideas are socially destructive. In the 1940s and 1950s, after the war, most elite figures (+university professors and opinion column writers and other elite figures) suspected British nationalism and imperialism was not too far removed from Nazism. They were at least embarrassed by the experience of the 1930s and 40s. Gradually a new generation of elite figures came to power by the 1960s who rejected the old ways. The problem we face is that the new diversity cult satisfies our rulers that they are superior to us - and if the ideas don't work in terms of creating a society that feels like a society, it's because the rubes/the "racists" won't get with the programme. Of course the anti-racist idea cannot unite society. It is inherently destructive of the social fabric. Change could happen if younger members of the elite started to move away from diversity, allowing an elite shift over time. Change like that takes decades - and we don't have decades. I don't think the Right can think about getting power. The only way metapolitics can work is to chip at elite self-confidence. Eg the Rotherham rape scandal was a classic, because even elite figures suspected they shouldn't have allowed mass rape of children (even if they didn't say so). It had the potential to unnerve them, just as the Establishment of the 1940s was unnerved. Looked at this way, the Right can only ever be a pressure group that could, over time, encourage the Establishment to shift, a bit like UKIP never came to power, but got Brexit on the agenda. This is a blackpilling, but the Right will never come to power. There are instances of radical movements coming to power, but only in certain highly defined circumstances (war, national collapse, etc)...
Deletegood piece colin, any new updates by report from tiger mountain about whats going on down under for us dumb yanks? seems like the five eyes oligarchs are trying to contextualize resistance within the framework of "insurrection". its pretty pathetic how the behavior of elites in UK and AUS seem like reruns of the vomit that the imperial government in washington uses.
ReplyDeleteWill forward your comment to our Man in Melbourne, Steiner.
DeleteThe American media (and the BBC too) have back channels to the DNC. That was laid bare over the last 6 years. Hence the vehemence of their attacks against a man who humiliated their candidate. It's that simple.
ReplyDeleteRemember, it was implied early on in the Trump campaign that he was going to pull back troops from western Europe and make them defend themselves. That's why the Cameron cabinet (including one Boris Johnson) conspired with the Australians to involve the Trump campaign in a Russian scandal. It's also why the Russians,quite understandably, favoured Trump and gradually leaked the DNC emails right up to the election.
As for David Icke, they have been trying to silence him for over 30 years, as no one doubts who he really means when he talks of lizard people.
Farage was almost never off the telly for 10 years leading up to Brexit. Imagine the establishment's reaction however if Icke formed a political party. They would undoubtedly find a way to silence him permanently.
The complicity of the British media in the Russiagate hoax is surprising. I'm old enough to remember when the people behind shows like Panorama would have relished sinking their teeth into the whole affair and exposing the British government's involvement. It would have created the biggest geopolitical earthquake since the war. Yet no British journalist was interested.
ReplyDeleteIt's a real pity Moscow no longer has influence within the national executive of the Labour Party. Imagine if Corbyn had come out as a Trump guy! And supported a NATO pullback in Europe. Great fun.
Instead, they did to Corbyn what they did to Trump. Corbyn got nothing out of being anti-Trump. I remember that brief shining moment when he called the BBC 'fake news'. Sadly, it was not to be.