There is a recent style among some in the Right to try and bully and pick on a non-existent free-market and caricatures of libertarianism as the source of their ills, while completely ignoring the Leftist and Statist monsters who bully them around. It is psychologically understandable. The big boys took your lunch, so now you try and pick on the kindergarten girls, to soothen your ego. In any case, for those struggling to put a finger on what is wrong with this new nuisance, I wrote this down.
I am a libertarian/voluntaryist/anarcho-capitalist with traditonal/social conservative values. I will try to outline the ideology of the alt-right (perhaps, a better word is populist, anti-progressive, nativist Socialist nationalism -- but, that is a mouthful). This ideology has, quite understandably, infected much of the traditional Right and some of the libertarian movement. Some leftist libertarian socialists (an oxymoron, multiple times over) characterize these latter folks are neo-reactionaries. I simply call them the alt-right. There seems to be a former Right and former libertarian --> paleo-conservative / paleo-libertarian --> alt-right pipeline. The word alt-right means a lot of things to a lot of people; for example, a prominent voice in their movement call himself a (neo-)royalist or Carlylean, and I think his manifesto is instructive in that it captures much of the main angst and "ideas" energizing this pipeline. The road that many Hoppean enthusiasts (and, perhaps, Hoppe himself) are on eventually lead to the moral confusion of Stefan Molyneux, and ultimately to the nihilism of Christopher Cantwell and Christopher Chase Rachels, among others. At this point, some readers would be tempted to up and leave. Before you do that, I will note that people's moral foibles, failings and fall do not invalidate the truths that they have labored to discern and teach, to whatever degree, in years past. In that respect, I am thankful to Hoppe for the the firm theoretical elaboration of certain lines of Rothbardian thought that he has done for us decades ago.
The alt-right ideology is not an antidote to the Left. It is the Left, in exact mirror image. While the ideology will not prevail since it is necessarily in unending political struggle with its Leftist mirror image, its growth adds fuel to the fire, which is exactly what the non-ideological elite total State needs and wants to grow and consolidate its power. So, unwittingly and inadvertently, its animating passions and internal logic serves to exacerbate the ills it decries.
Let us say that traditional/cultural/social conservative values per se espouse such things as traditions, conventions, customs, especially Judeo-Christian family values and attitudes regarding life, marriage, family, parenting, neighborliness, civic duties and charity, etc.
Many in the alt-right firmly believe that they themselves have traditional/cultural/social conservative values as outlined above. To a large degree, many of them are probably correct and not self-deceived in that belief. At the very least, to their credit, it is clear that they espouse an opposition to Leftist/progressive/cultural Marxist values. However, the enemy of one's enemy is not only not necessarily one's friend, they can actively be an enemy of one's own cause as well.
The following ideas, in no particular order, are my attempt to capture the alt-right ethos :
- Blaming the breakdown of conservative social mores squarely on a mythical non-existent free-market and laissez faire policies and "market radicalism and market fundamentalism" (what are these?! where are they?! I've been praying and longing for these gifts and people call me a utopian dreamer!), and automation and globalization, per se, without any reference to and almost completely ignoring the presence, actions and influence of the State in one's analysis
- Equating and conflating the current Statist stock market with a hypothetical free market stock market -- and completely ignoring the unjust theft of the poor and the working class by the Fed
- Adopting collectivist analysis, and seemingly ignorant of methodological individualism, and, instead, assuming Hobbesian and Marxian premises -- even when used to come to what they believe to be different conclusions about moral values
- Confusing methodological individualism (which is a value-free economic analysis axiom) with such value-laden concepts such as 'atomism', 'atomistic individualism', 'greed', etc.
- "when two thirds or three quarters of the CEOs in Silicon Valley are from South Asia or from Asia, I think...a country’s more than an economy. We’re a civic society." -- Bannon, alt-right nativism and protectionism
- Overall, exhibiting a deep ignorance of an institutional understanding of the State and Statist market interventions as the most significant institutional hurdles to peace, prosperity and, indeed, conservative values
- Decrying the breakdown of "faith in the institutions" without making a distinction between good and bad institutions and blinded to the fact that the State (along with its propaganda and militaristic arms), being one of the cherished institutions in their narratives, and often euphemistically referred to as "the civic society", has grown stronger by leaps and bounds
- Having not recognized the State as the enemy and having blamed a caricature of the market (which is exactly what the Left does), showing an eagerness to tame this strawman using the State (again, exactly what the Left does) in order to realize a return to the halcyon days of cultural glory, moral probity and Christendom, ever prevalent in their false nostalgic histories (a mix of cultural nationalism and nativism and theonomy, dominionism and reconstructionism).
I include here a meme I made for social media, to contain some of these ideas.
In response to a FB post using this, a truly cherished (still cherished!) online friend replied "blood and soil". I replied "values and culture". He said "why not both?" (in Spanish). I said, ""Blood and Body", The Holy Eucharist --> "I believe in the only Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church and the communion of saints"". For me, that interchange is the complete exegesis of this matter.
p.s. Having said all that, it's not all bad -- I do enjoy the way they troll the Left!
p.p.s. Oh yes, it is worth noting that while White supremacists, the KKK, the Neo-Nazis, anti-Semites (all 14 of them) are considered to be a part of the alt-right movement, the alt-right ideology itself does not have much, if any, conceptual overlap with any of that. One could possibly make an argument that White/ethno-nationalists are a larger faction in the movement, but, this is different from White supremacy.
p.p.p.s. And, please leave the Boog bois (and other Constitutional and Patriot milita groups) out of this -- they have different goals and different animating principles!
p.p.p.p.s. Please, please, for the love of everything good, leave Dixieland / the Neo-Confederates / Old South out of this. Again, this is an issue of different goals and different animating principles! And, in their case, they just really hate the Yankees. I do too.