(02-07-2017 03:42 AM)JOwl Wrote: That's a thoughtful response, so thanks for that. And it's a cute thing you did there, as of course "Alinskiyite" was Fox and the right's favorite vague epithet for painting Obama a dirty, dirty radical. Frankly, I didn't know anything about Alinsky other than 60's organizer, but reading up on wikipedia it sounds like he was granddaddy of all trolls, and spiritual forebear of what Yiannoupolis described as the "meme team" contingent of the alt right. So you're spot on there.
You keep running down the same logical hole, though. I believe Bannon is dog whistling the anti-Semitic and white nationalist subset of the alt right, so yeah, he's a racist. Trump picked him as his guy, so Trump gets tyo wear it too. But that doesn't mean everyone else in the alt-right is racist, any more than it makes all conservatives racist. Sure they're willing to make common cause with racists, and not call them on their racism, so that tars them some in my mind, but I'm not going to call them all racists. I reserve that for those who actually are.
And here's where your firewall between the 1488ers and the non-racist "other" portion of the alt-right really falls down. Spencer is a 1488er, and so Yiannopoulos's alt-right primer puts the lie to the idea that 1488ers are some minor fringe subset of the alt-right; as I noted earlier, it states: "The media empire of the modern-day alternative right coalesced around Richard Spencer during his editorship of Taki’s Magazine. In 2010, Spencer founded AlternativeRight.com, which would become a center of alt-right thought."
Does that mean the entire alt-right is composed of white nationalists? Again, no. But it puts them directly at its center.
So Margaret Sanger was a racist and eugenicist proponent for eradicating African Americans. She founded Planned Parenthood, upon which the entire abortion rights coalesced. Using your logic above, you could rightfully tar the abortion rights movement as racist and genocidal, as Sanger was "directly at its center" (in the genesis center). Most rational people will realize that would not be a characterization that is worthy.
Or perhaps take the example of Ayn Rand, who thought that a criminal sociopath was the (paraphrase) most perfect human ever. She founded a strong strain of libertarianism. Again, using your logic, you should rightfully tar the libertarians who have read and follow the philosophies of The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged as the promotion as sociopathy, as a self admitted lover and admirere of sociopathy was "directly at its center" (in the genesis sense again.) Again, most rational people will realize that would not be a characterization that is worthy.
And yes, Spencer supposedly did help coalesce the alt-right movement. But the at least to me, the alt-right has morphed more into a movement of process, not of the goal of white supremacy. And I dont think I will fall into the trap of automatically branding them "racist" or "heavy on the racism" or "directly at the center" because of the genesis issue. If I saw the main contingent of the alt-right speaking that theme, I would say that. I do see a big theme of nationalism, but that is a variety that is not the toxic "white nationalism" or ethnocentrism variety of nationalism.
But, as I have said before, one of my touchstones is that the modern progressive infrastructure (for lack of a better word) has a knee-jerk reaction to branding anything a threat to their philosophy as "-ist" (as in sexist, racist, misogynist, homophobe, etc.). They even did it to a libertarian based movement in the Tea Party. So when I look at Mother Jones, Vox, TPM, et al., all I see is the same knee usage of the same tired adjectives describing the alt-right. (much like the only times you see the name Van Jones on Breitbart it is preceded by the nomenclature 'admitted communist'). I kind of find that usage disingenuous at best.
Truthfully, the Spencer genesis issue does give a juicy target. But when you actually look at the vast, vast bulk of the alt-right message, it comes nowhere close (at least imo).
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