Quote (excellence @ Jun 5 2017 04:19pm)
Good article indeed. Wow. Amazing how they would create a dozen charges for one single act. But if you fuck with the police, or the system, you can expect to be martyred.
Another good article linked in your article:
http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/features/2017/02/alt-stand-170218115042196.htmlThe Alt-Right is kind of like the Anti-Saloon League was back in the day...not real large but able to wag the dog pretty well.
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Al Jazeera: There has been a public discussion within the media and among activists about the use of the term "alt-right" and whether it is a euphemism for Nazism or white supremacy. What do you make of this conversation?
Matthew Lyons: You can't reduce the alt-right ideology to white nationalism, white supremacy or neo-Nazism. Those are all important elements within the alt-right, but there are other elements within the movement that are also important. If you erase the term "alt-right", you miss those.
The campaign to stop calling them alt-right comes from an overemphasis on the power of language. There is this notion that the movement will be weakened if we change the label - as if the label is where their power comes from.
For example, misogyny has also played a very important role within the alt-right. It's a kind of misogyny that, in many instances, is even more extreme than what you see in a lot of neo-Nazi groups because it's based on the total exclusion of women from any kind of political space. That idea comes primarily out of the so-called Manosphere, an online anti-feminist subculture that arose in parallel to the alt-right. They're not completely merged, but there is a lot of overlap between the two.
The kind of patriarchal politics you find in the Christian right, for example, which is very much about promoting the so-called traditional family in which men are in charge and women are subordinate, but have a very crucial role. Within the Manosphere, you have this whole drive toward a very non-family-centred model of male-female relations. That version of patriarchy has flowed into the alt-right.
This is a whole dimension of the alt-right that gets lost if you just call them neo-Nazis.
For those of us who want to combat this movement, it's important to understand those specific tensions and vulnerabilities because they can help us develop better strategies for fighting.
Al Jazeera: What are the most divisive issues within the alt-right as a movement, and how significant are those internal conflicts?
Lyons: It depends on how you define the parameters of the alt-right. I make a distinction, as do others, between the alt-right itself and the so-called alt-light. A lot of that distinction has to do with the relationship with the existing political system in the United States.
Within the alt-right proper, there is a general sentiment, if not a unanimous sentiment, that the United States as it exists is not a viable political entity or an entity that enables them to achieve the goals they want to achieve. So, you see a lot of alt-rightists talking about breaking up the United States and forming one or more white ethno-states.
The alt-light, generally speaking, doesn't go that far, doesn't call into question the existence of the United States as a political order. Often the people identified with the alt-light will hold back from explicitly white nationalist or white supremacist ideology, although they play into the dog-whistle racism that's fairly common.
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Al Jazeera: With more and more anti-fascist groups emerging to confront the alt-right, what can we expect from that movement in the future?
Lyons: The alt-right has been very effective at using the online medium. They have made various efforts to broaden their scope and to develop more of a physical presence, to hold political rallies, to have more of an impact outside of the internet; they've had some impact but it's been more limited. There has been a lot of pushback from anti-fascists.
It remains to be seen how effective [anti-fascist tactics] are, but it is important that it's happening and has at least given right-wing forces pause. The political terrain is different from how it was 20 years ago because of the increased role of the internet in politics and in culture. That has been central to the alt-right developing where it has. That has also been important for anti-fascists to address and broaden out beyond traditional tactics, which focused more on physical confrontation or no-platform strategies, which can't be applied online.
The themes the alt-right is promoting will continue to be important themes in the political sphere one way or another, whether the alt-right continues in its current form or evolves into something else.
This post was edited by Skinned on Jun 5 2017 03:35pm