I see shit-bag CPAC speaker Richard Spencer had his convention credentials revoked and won’t be addressing the annual gathering of white tribes. I guess, some smart person finally figured it out — a guy who advocates for peaceful ethnic cleansing is still way into ethnic cleansing.
“Very bad,” to borrow a line from Boss Trump.
As if to highlight how insane things are on the right side of the dial, on his way out the door Spencer denounced his fellow “alt-right” excommunicate Milo Yiannopoulos, who went from rising star to “Who?” when some other smart person realized the controversial Breitbart journo advocated man/boy love. “I totally reject Milo and I’m glad that he was disinvited,” Spencer said, making it abundantly clear, that even a no-account Jew-hating Nazi knows it’s wrong to have GAY sex with children.
Watching all this barely figurative crap smacking the fan, it’s tempting to believe there’s a Republican reset happening— that Main Street conservatism’s getting woke, chasing the rats out, and getting back to the business of bad business. But really it’s just the same old gray suits slicking back their wildest hairs, and covering up the iron cross tattoos they picked up on some hazy Florida spring break, all those years ago. See kids, there’s no such thing as an “Alt-Right.” That’s a buzzword used to describe a variety of rotten threads woven, not so loosely, into the broadcloth of contemporary American conservatism. As one of the internet’s more influential early bloggers recently noted, mainstream Righties have been doing a perfectly fine job carrying the banner for “white nationalism, bigotry, contempt for the poor, corporate immunity, environmental destruction, rigid unequal gender roles, homophobia, [and] xenophobia” all by themselves. They don’t need a bunch of blingy, goose-stepping cheerleaders with fancy haircuts.
I’m quoting the laconic Dr. Duncan Black (AKA Atrios), because the current hullabaloo reminds me, just a bit, of the wild and wooly days at the dawn of social media, when most fake news showed up in your inbox with “Re:Re: Re” in the subject field, and “citizen journalism” was a brand new bag. For some reason there was this broadly accepted idea that bloggers— especially political bloggers — in an effort to stay above the fray, should, “strive mightily but eat and drink as friends.” We would meet in public places to hoist beers! We’d listen to listen to one another’s well-reasoned arguments, and debate only the points we could support with hyperlinks. One problem with this idea: So many of the serious, open, modern, digitally savvy conservabloggers also carried the banner of white nationalism, bigotry, contempt for the poor, corporate immunity, environmental destruction, rigid unequal gender roles, homophobia, xenophobia,” etc.
Conservatives Have an Identity Problem. It’s Called Their Identity
Somehow, inside this new Platonic ideal (tweely dubbed “the blogosphere”), anybody to the left of Reagan became a dangerous extremist. Liberal bloggers, like liberal politicians, were always described as being, “far out of step” with a Main Street better represented by conservative voices. Liberals were always America-haters, crippled by their inability to reach just far enough across the aisle to fall on their faces. They were shouted down, and shamed by Godwin’s law for pointing out anybody’s similarities to Hitler even, on rare occasions, when hyperbolic comparisons might also be instructive. Progressive impatience with racism, sexism, classism etc. was always attacked as another fine example of hypocrisy and “liberal tolerance.”
That’s where the goalposts were set, way back when, as legacy media stumbled awkwardly onto the Internet, and trolls discovered the joys of pooping in comments.
So what was a liberal blogger to do when one of his esteemed adversaries, whose bold ideas you’re supposed to engage without resorting to the logical fallacy of ad hominem attack, writes a column about white feminism — an evil that has to be destroyed to insure pale-skinned beauties start getting pregnant younger, and more frequently. Because — as the post stated — we must, “fearlessly re-establish the hegomony of Euro-American WLD as rapidly as possible.”
WLD=Western Liberal Democracy. None of these things were racist or sexist, of course. Or, it was unfair and intolerant to call it that. Or something. More from the post in question:
America thinks we’re not experiencing this problem, but we are. The “native” population of white women are no longer reproducing at the replacement rate. Our nation’s growth is coming from immigration, birthrates of immigrant populations, and the birthrate of African American women… we are in a clash of civilizations — Western liberal democracy v. Arab Muslim theocracy — and in a rush to get the Arab Muslim world converted to Western liberal democracy (WLD) before their numbers overwhelm ours… I’m finding myself becoming less concerned with high immigration than I used to be. (Though border control is very important!) What we need to do is reform feminism and its ills, reform how we approach abortion and pregnancy, and fearlessly re-establish the hegomony of Euro-American WLD as rapidly as possible. It’s literally a fight for the future.
In other words, catch them gals young fellas, let’s fuck our way to victory! For the future.
Obviously, the author was just another fringe element with an internet connection, right? Well, of course, but he also became a frequent contributor to, and online editor for The Main Street Journal, a now defunct glossy publication positioning itself — as the name suggests — as the respectable voice of “main street” Conservatism. Because, again, there is no fringe. There is only the Right.
This is a personal anecdote— just a memory from the glorious digital revolution, when news delivery was by god democratized! But this kind of thing happened everywhere, all over, and at every scale. Nobody mainstreamed scary, shocking values, scary, shocking values were already mainstream. They’re still mainstream. It’s just uncivil and intolerant to call it out. We should have beers and be considerate of one another’s deeply-held values, instead.
So Richard Spencer the Nazi punching bag, and his gang-rape-obsessed frenemy Milo Yiannopoulos won’t be hobnobbing at CPAC. Yay, I guess. But that’s not really the story, is it? Because you cant revoke an invisible empire’s credentials. And the shared values — all the little things that put these fine men on the marquee in the first place — those aren’t going anywhere anytime soon.
