Tuesday, June 07, 2016

The guys in the back

While it's hardly the only reason I am #NeverTrump, a big part of the problem The Donald presents is the lurking "alt-right" movement that is part of of his constituency. Walter Hudson explains:
When called racist, the alt-right deflects by pointing to social justice warriors. Look at all these groups openly antagonistic to white people, they exhort. Look at the attacks on so-called "white privilege" and white men and white culture. How is it racist to push back against that?

They have a point, to an extent. Logically, it cannot be racist to oppose racism. To the extent social justice warriors are racist, and they are, they should be vehemently opposed. The problem with the alt-right is that they do not fundamentally oppose racial identity politics. They merely substitute one brand of it for another.

It matters not whether the beneficiaries -- or victims -- of your collectivist authoritarianism are white. What matters is whether you are a collectivist authoritarian and therefore categorically evil. That is why #NeverTrump conservatives remain indignant toward the Republican presumptive nominee for president, because he personifies a fundamentally un-American and immoral paradigm that is in essence no different than the regressive left.
Just so. There's more at the link.

3 comments:

Brian said...

A formulation that subsumes racism into a mere subset of "collectivism" to account for its "evil" both dismisses the historic scope and scale of institutional racism (and the horrors wrought by it) while simultaneously elevating (say) social insurance to a threat on par with Hitler.

That's awfully convenient if you place yourself on the right (alt or otherwise). And it's morally bankrupt nonsense.

Count that among the reasons I quit calling myself a libertarian.

Mr. D said...

A formulation that subsumes racism into a mere subset of "collectivism" to account for its "evil" both dismisses the historic scope and scale of institutional racism (and the horrors wrought by it) while simultaneously elevating (say) social insurance to a threat on par with Hitler.

If that were what Hudson is arguing, I'd agree. Of course, it isn't what he's arguing. He's addressing the racism of the alt-right in this piece. And there's a big difference between "(say) social insurance" and authoritarian collectivism.

I'd also wager Hudson might know more about racism and its effects than I do.

Bike Bubba said...

Regarding the point of collectivism and racism, the reason it's linked is that apart from crimes of violence, racism really only starts hurting people when it's enshrined into law.

Interestingly, a lot of social justice warriors on the left are more or less coming to the same conclusion about the Jews as a lot of people on the alt right. Go figure, I would have thought politics was a line, and it's a circle, I guess--at least in some regards.