[eli_gottlieb]

"Neocons" were the foreign-policy hawks of the 2000s. These guys largely call themselves the "alt-right".

They're basically as bad as you've heard, but hiding it sometimes.

Even I find this particular turn against SpaceX somewhat weird. My internal model of the alt-right has largely been that they have one wing who are basically Nazi fanfiction, another who idolize the "throne and altar conservatism" of pre-Revolutionary France, and another who think they should build Warhammer 40K's Imperium of Man as a real-life society (they're very pop-culture influenced). Turning against a private space company seems to indicate that some factions (Nazis plus... someone else?) are throwing the "far-right futurism" faction overboard.

(Again, these guys are really weird, but hey, it's all there on their blogs.)

My big question is: where's Peter Thiel in all this? Just last year, he was the one trying to assure everyone that, oh don't worry, this was all about tearing down overbearing regulations and political correctness in favor of unbound innovation, that the Right weren't anti-science religious people anymore, etc. Turning against SpaceX isn't just throwing a faction of bloggers overboard, it's thrown Thiel overboard, and he was a major billionaire backer for all of this.

[travmatt]

Conservative politics is much like French Revolution - built on successive purges of insufficiently ideologically committed members. The NeoCon / Old Bull wing of the Party was largely broken by the Tea Party’s rise and the deposition of longtime statesmen in the ‘10 elections, and has been increasingly replaced by ethnic and religious nationalist purity tests - the 2000’s era Republican Party competed for Spanish and Muslim votes, but those days have long since passed. Crucially, these populous factions are opposed to science, government, media, and academia.

Looking through this lens, Peter Thiel found the same fate as Elon Musk, Gary Cohn, Reince Priebus, and innumerable smaller republican operatives - all thought they would ride the wave and found themselves labeled as just another RINO for being insufficiently ideologically committed.

Thiel was never a major backer of this ethnonationalism, he was just someone who recognized it early and hoped to play that advantage. The Mercer’s, Koch’s and Bannon are the drivers, and everyone else is expendable.

[exelius]

I'm not saying I agree with them, but a common theme I hear from the alt-right is "no gods no masters" (Game of Thrones reference, ding on the pop-culture). Now, nevermind that these guys are setting up as many gatekeeping functions as they tear down; they simply justify it as "protecting real hard-working Americans" through xenophobia.

It's all built on the false nationalism of a flagging superpower, and if any of these people traveled in the least they would see that other countries are actually doing a lot of things better than we do here. We got arrogant, our politicians got greedy, and our voter base got complacent. It's only going to get worse too.

[pm90]

I actually highly doubt that. Most of the "research" done by these people, or those that they rely on, are papers published by think tanks and institutions funded with money from conservative billionaires (e.g. Koch brothers). They essentially live in a different system, one where the person who commits to certain principles most feverishly is considered better. This is not unlike what we have seen in other ultra-religious groups throughout history (e.g. Spanish Inquisition: "You're not Christian enough, so we're gonna kill you").

There was an op-ed published by Krugman yesterday which argued that tax cuts wouldn't really benefit the wealthy all that much since they have already so much, but cutting benefits really impact society's most vulnerable. But Republicans continue to push for tax cuts. Why? Because they live in that alternate universe.

[kevinmchugh]

> "no gods no masters" (Game of Thrones reference, ding on the pop-culture)

that's not a game of thrones reference as far as I can tell. It's an old anarchist and socialist slogan. It'd be an odd fit for that part of the right. "No gods or kings, only man" is a Bioshock reference that pops up sometimes in those parts.

[Freak_NL]

> "No gods or kings, only man" is a Bioshock reference that pops up sometimes in those parts.

Which in turn uses Ayn Rand's philosophy (Objectivism) as the basis of the fictional (failed) society in Bioshock.

(Compare with this quote: https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/207108-at-first-man-was-ens... )

Ayn Rand and her philosophy are quite popular in right-wing circles (and incidentally, largely denounced in academic circles).

[wmil]

> and incidentally, largely denounced in academic circles

Not surprising. A tenured professor getting government grants for research is a villain by Randian standards.

[jandrese]

It has been many years since I read the books, but I'm pretty sure university intellectuals were actual villains in Atlas Shrugged. IIRC didn't they say that more testing was needed before they could count the new supermetal as safe?

I remember thinking at the time that the hero was being really reckless and that advanced composites often fail in new and unexpected ways and that building an entire rail line out of the stuff before you understand how it fails is beyond risky. Of course because it was a book the metal is perfect in every way and never has a problem, but the real world is rarely so forgiving.

[hithereagain]

BB&T, through its "BB&T Charitable Foundation", spent a lot of money injecting Ayn Rand into college curricula:

https://www.insidehighered.com/news/2015/10/16/new-paper-det...

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9010409...

[Torgo]

Where are you hearing this? Many of them are literal monarchists.

[s_kilk]

> where's Peter Thiel in all this?

The evidence seems to suggest Thiel has gotten in with the "throne and altar" crowd, the Neo-Reactionaries and self-described "Dark Enlightenment".

https://thebaffler.com/latest/the-moldbug-variations-pein

How that intersects with his techy leanings, I don't really know, it's very possible that he's being thrown overboard as you describe.

[eli_gottlieb]

Bloody hell, I swear we're living in the pulpiest political-thriller novel I've ever fucking heard of.

[pault]

I don't want to go too far off topic, but every time I turn on the news lately I feel like I'm stuck in a dystopian cyberpunk thriller. Funny how we never got the flying cars and jetpacks from our 20th century utopian sci-fi, but the Phillip K Dicks and William Gibsons seem to be right on the money.

[sgift]

Cyberpunk promised us high tech and low life. Good job, we got at least one of these.

[tankenmate]

Low life is easier to distribute than high tech. The future is already here...

[PeachPlum]

The news, on TV. Where did you find that?

[api]

My personal theory for a while has been that the world actually did end in 2000. We are living in a parody alternate dimension where the previous gods have been replaced by low-rent hacks. This timeline is like a show that's been renewed for one season too many.

[rbanffy]

> the previous gods have been replaced by low-rent hacks

Do you have any idea how much an actual god costs?! This is the best we could manage. Be grateful this low-budget universe is still here.

[supernumerary]

I like to think of Thiel as someone who has access to Facebook, rather than a person. Besides - It's not clear how much of a person is left in the face of such a pool of legitimate signals.

The tendency of the signals to reach a resonant frequency is another matter...

Basically, follow Thiel, he wasn't wrong throwing down with Trump ... another way of saying it ... I don't think it was because of what he believes in.

[alexanderstears]

>"Neocons" were the foreign-policy hawks of the 2000s. These guys largely call themselves the "alt-right".

Hardly. Most nationalists (probably the LCD of dissident right movements) hate foreign entangelements. Trump saying Iraq was a waste of money is hardly an affirmation of the neocon platform of invasion.

And it's an over-simplification to identify the 'anti corporate welfare' view with 'anti-spaceX'. They're anti-spaceX to the extent that spaceX is dependent on the government. I can't imagine these people are any more thrilled by Lockheed Martin or Boeing.

[smhenderson]

>"Neocons" were the foreign-policy hawks of the 2000s. These guys largely call themselves the "alt-right".

I believe the original poster was trying to distinguish between the two groups, not state that they used to call themselves neocons but now call themselves the alt-right. Though both claim to be conservative each of them take political stances that are anathema to the other.

[arethuza]

I've just finished reading "The Shadow World: Inside the Global Arms Trade", which is a pretty bleak and depressing book - I would guess the US Military-Industrial-Congressional Complex (who the Neocons are basically cheerleaders for) would hate SpaceX as they are trying to undercut existing players and reduce the amount of pork - which is basically what makes the MICC run.

[wallace_f]

At least it's not like Russia where they have almost all of mainstream government and media in favor of funding weapons operations for foreign human-rights abusing tyrants. It's not even always for foreign policy, but sometimes they even say on their national TV that killing more people is necessary because if they stop, defense jobs will be lost.

Except that's us, right here in the US. It does not matter who wins office in that sense, both parties and mainstream media cheerlead the MIC, Wall St, etc, at the expense of human dignity: https://theintercept.com/2016/09/09/wolf-blitzer-is-worried-...

[cosmiccartel]

> These guys largely call themselves the "alt-right".

No they don't. Most of "these guys", meaning the new right, distance themselves from that term because of its association with white nationalism.

> They're basically as bad as you've heard, but hiding it sometimes.

No, they're just lumped together in popular media. Breitbart and the Daily Stormer are portrayed as part of the same package, so that distasteful ideas from one can be used to discredit the other. This erasure of the middle ground between center-left and extreme right is referred to in conservative circles as the "unthinging" of the right. It's a smear campaign.

Your statement is a perfect example. In your eyes, anyone on the right not engaging in Nazi fantasies is really just "hiding it". You're "unthinging" the views of the vast majority of them to pretend that they are uniform in ideology.

[thinkcontext]

What do you make of the leaks of Breitbart emails Buzzfeed published? That pretty explicitly shows Bannon encouraging Milo to engage with white supremacists but dress them up a bit and hide it.

Also interesting was the NYT Magazine piece that reported on the Harvard analysis of the network of links of the media. They talk about your issue head-on. Its conclusion was that Breitbart was not itself an extremist site a la Daily Stormer but that extremist sites link to Breitbart for legitimization. Breitbart had a section called "Black Crime" and it contained story after story after story of true(ish) content that Daily Stormer folks would link to say "Look what the n-words are up to now".

Its worth reading the quote:

The last thing Yochai Benkler noted before I left his office at Harvard was that his team had performed a textual analysis of all the stories in their database, and they found a surprising result. ‘‘One thing that came out very clearly from our study is that Breitbart is not talking about these issues in the same way you would find on the extreme right,’’ he said. ‘‘They don’t use the same language you find on sites like VDARE and The Daily Stormer’’ — two sites connected to the white-nationalist alt-right movement. He paused for a moment, then added: ‘‘Breitbart is not the alt-right.’’ Yet precisely because articles on the site were often less extreme than their own worst headlines, Breitbart functioned as a legitimizing tether for the most abhorrent currents of the right wing. Benkler referred to this as a ‘‘bridge’’ phenomenon, in which extremist websites linked to Breitbart for validation and those same fanatics could then gather in Breitbart’s comment section to hurl invectives.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/16/magazine/breitbart-alt-ri...

[eli_gottlieb]

>No, they're just lumped together in popular media. Breitbart and the Daily Stormer are portrayed as part of the same package, so that distasteful ideas from one can be used to discredit the other.

No, Steve Bannon said in an interview that he led Breitbart in giving a spearhead to the alt-right in large media.

>This erasure of the middle ground between center-left and extreme right is referred to in conservative circles as the "unthinging" of the right.

There are really three problems here.

* The "center" and "center-left" are already, by historic standards, quite right-wing on economic policy. This really skews the claim that we're talking about a spectrum between a "center-left" and a "right", insofar as we're really just talking about different degrees of permissiveness or authoritarianism on social issues, plus the "center-left" maintaining the barest rudiments of a vestigial welfare-state.

* Within the Right, the factions that we could have called "center-right" got tossed out as RINOs long ago. Ronald Reagan advocated employee ownership of firms as the way of the future; today Republicans would treat that as socialist heresy. Bush's "compassionate conservatism" is now unheard-of, as are Republican appeals to conservative people of color or immigrants. Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell really are far-right, in the sense that Ayn Rand is far to the libertarian right.

* The alt-right has deliberately worked to blur the boundaries between the libertarian right and the authoritarian-nationalist right, usually by invoking anti-democratic, nationalistic libertarian thinkers such as Hans-Hermann Hoppe. You know, the guy who wrote that, "in a covenant founded for the purpose of protecting family and kin, there can be no tolerance toward those habitually promoting lifestyles incompatible with this goal. … [violators] will have to be physically removed from society."[1]

When your party has come to have a political spectrum stretching from Ayn Rand on its left to Augusto Pinochet on its right, yes, you are "these guys". Stop now, turn around, purge the alt-right, purge the Tea Party, and reestablish some common-sense and humanity, or else history will remember you as the bumbling enablers of American fascism.

Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, or "physical removal" by death squads: which side are you on?

[1] -- https://mises.org/library/my-battle-thought-police

[PoliteTwig]

The first time I came across the term alt-right was in this article on Breitbart: https://www.google.is/amp/www.breitbart.com/tech/2016/03/29/....

As a ex Ron Paul supporter with a distaste for the GOP and Neo-Cons, I proudly called myself alt-right.

I joined a few alt-right forums and found similar-minded people. Libertarians, conservatives, nationalists (in the positive sense). Generally smart people. Not Nazis. Not white supremacists.

The term alt-right never seemed to me anything other than right-wing but not Republican.

Then I saw a few New York Times and CNN articles using it differently. Mixed freely with Nazis.

And I heard that white surpremecists were using it to make their views look more mainstream.

Then people started calling me a Nazi.

It’s a beautiful strategy to see a word redefined right in front of your eyes for political gain, but sad too.

If Bannon said Breitbart supported the alt-right, I’ll assume he’s referring to the definition I first understood from the article on his site, and not the one co-opted by the left-sided media and far-right groups.

[mercer]

Please do correct me if I'm wrong, but if you're in favor of Trump's presidency (which seems likely if you support(?) Bannon), how would you counter the dominant view that he's terrible in all sorts of ways, including racism and misogyny.

Is it that he's nowhere near as racist/misogynist as he's made out to be by left-side media? Is it that he's, in hindsight, a bad bet (which I sometimes feel is what Bannon might conclude)?

If you're not in favor of Trump's presidency, but supportive of Bannon, could you elaborate on how Trump failed?

And, finally, if you're not "pro-Bannon" but nonetheless alt-right by your definition, could you elaborate on the nuance between how the alt-right is presented in (quite possibly left-wing) media, and the alt-right that you are proud of?

If you're not comfortable doing this here, I'd love to discuss it over email or something like that. I truly am asking out of interest.

[PoliteTwig]

I do support Trump, despite disagreeing with some policies.

I’ll never forget when Ron Paul was called a racist by the media in 2012, and how he was screwed by the Republicans. It still makes me angry today. I don't trust our government, media, or major parties, and all are bad stewards of our Republic. From that perspective, Trump is doing great. This chaos is good in the same way that a controlled fire from time to time is healthy for a forest ecosystem.

I don’t believe he’s a racist or a mysogynist though and I feel pretty confident I could argue against every example people give. However, the only thing it would convince them of is that I am making excuses for a terrible person. It’s not worth it. I’ll just say I think he’s a generally good person operating in a tough environment, and came to that conclusion by going directly to source material.

As for Bannon, I generally like him but I'm happy he's back running Breitbart instead of in the White House. Too controversal. He gave a good interview on 60 minutes last week that I mostly agreed with. And Breitbart - it can be inflammatory, but I find it a good counterbalance to everything else.

[thinkcontext]

Um, that article was written by none other than Milo Y, does that make alarm bells go off? Richard Spencer, noted white supremacist, originated the term years before that article was written. Its inconceivable Bannon was unaware of this when he made that statement.

But bickering over what the word mean or what Bannon meant is not really the point. Give the Buzzfeed Breitbart leak story a read. In it you'll see Bannon encourage Milo to engage with white supremacists but try to dress them up publicly. They are in fact trying to hide it.

https://www.buzzfeed.com/josephbernstein/heres-how-breitbart...

[PoliteTwig]

> Um, that article was written by none other than Milo Y, does that make alarm bells go off?

I’ve always liked Milo. But even if you don't, the article is still important if you want to understand the history of "alt-right" as it was understood by many people.

> Richard Spencer, noted white supremacist, originated the term years before that article was written

Maybe, but Breitbart brought it into the mainstream for me and many others. I also doubt 99% of Americans knew Richard Spencer’s name until last year.

> Its inconceivable Bannon was unaware of this when he made that statement.

Bannon made that statement a few months after Milo’s article. "Alt-right" didn't have those connotations at the time. I read now that Bannon rejects the "alt-right", presumably because its meaning has changed.

> Give the Buzzfeed Breitbart leak story a read. In it you'll see Bannon encourage Milo to engage with white supremacists but try to dress them up publicly.

It just sounds like journalism. Milo reached out to Devin Saucier (the white supremacist) while researching the article I linked that summarized all the parts of the alt-right movement. Vice did the same thing. Or did you mean something else?

[eli_gottlieb]

>As a ex Ron Paul supporter with a distaste for the GOP and Neo-Cons, I proudly called myself alt-right.

Rather than quibble over terminology, it's better if you just state your positive political program, and then we can see what you're into.

[PoliteTwig]

Sure. Limited government, non-interventionism, merit-based immigration, human rights, freedom of speech, freedom to bear arms, protecting the environment, private healthcare, net neutrality, free trade, strong civil society, education left to states, anti-PC, anti-bailouts.

[cosmiccartel]

> No, Steve Bannon said in an interview that he led Breitbart in giving a spearhead to the alt-right in large media.

This both true and irrelevant to my point. Quick history lesson of the term:

It was originally coined by white nationalists. Later, when the new right came about, they billed themselves as an alternative to the neocons. Some of them began referring to themselves as alt-right in that sense, as did some outsiders. When made clear that the term originally referred to white nationalism, most of the new "alt-right" distanced themselves from the term, because they were not white nationalists. Some do still use the term in the sense of "alternative to the mainstream right". But, as said before, the vast majority have distanced themselves from it.

Bannon himself denounced the ethno-nationalists using the term "alt-right" multiple times. Furthermore, Bannon and Breitbart are not the new right. Many of us don't read or particularly like Breitbard. What one media outlet decides to call itself has nothing to do with a movement as a whole. Nobody that I know personally, as an active member of the new right, refers to themself as alt-right.

> There are really three problems here.

I'll address those one by one:

> The "center" and "center-left" are already, by historic standards, quite right-wing on economic policy. This really skews the claim that we're talking about a spectrum between a "center-left" and a "right", insofar as we're really just talking about different degrees of permissiveness or authoritarianism on social issues, plus the "center-left" maintaining the barest rudiments of a vestigial welfare-state.

You're muddying the waters here. Given that ardent National Socialists, while economically liberal, are considered far-right, we're obviously not talking about economics. Given that authoritarian communist regimes are considered far-left, we're obviously not talking about authoritarianism and libertarianism.

The new right is, for the most part, ardently anti-authoritarian.

And, in the sense of social conservatism, the current center is extreme left historically.

> * Within the Right, the factions that we could have called "center-right" got tossed out as RINOs long ago. Ronald Reagan advocated employee ownership of firms as the way of the future; today Republicans would treat that as socialist heresy.

Many, sure. And yet there are many of us who are being lumped into the "alt-right" for our social views, myself included, who would not react that way.

> Bush's "compassionate conservatism" is now unheard-of, as are Republican appeals to conservative people of color or immigrants.

Simply false. We have no issue with people of color or immigrants. We simply disagree with poisonous Cultural Marxist policies on such issues becoming law.

> * The alt-right has deliberately worked to blur the boundaries between the libertarian right and the authoritarian-nationalist right, usually by invoking anti-democratic, nationalistic libertarian thinkers such as Hans-Hermann Hoppe. You know, the guy who wrote that, "in a covenant founded for the purpose of protecting family and kin, there can be no tolerance toward those habitually promoting lifestyles incompatible with this goal. … [violators] will have to be physically removed from society."[1]

This is not a view shared by most of the new right, only certain more authoritariam elements. It certainly isn't any more extreme than the leftist craze for punching "Nazis".

> When your party has come to have a political spectrum stretching from Ayn Rand on its left to Augusto Pinochet on its right, yes, you are "these guys". Stop now, turn around, purge the alt-right, purge the Tea Party, and reestablish some common-sense and humanity, or else history will remember you as the bumbling enablers of American fascism.

> Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, or "physical removal" by death squads: which side are you on?

This actually made me laugh.

[eli_gottlieb]

>Simply false. We have no issue with people of color or immigrants. We simply disagree with poisonous Cultural Marxist policies on such issues becoming law.

"Cultural Marxist" means "Jewish" -- https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Cultural_Marxism

>This is not a view shared by most of the new right, only certain more authoritariam elements. It certainly isn't any more extreme than the leftist craze for punching "Nazis".

As a matter of fact, mass purges are more extreme than individual crimes.

Goodbye.

[cosmiccartel]

> "Cultural Marxist" means "Jewish" -- https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Cultural_Marxism

Association fallacy -- https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Association_fallacy

As your page admits, it has another, original meaning. One which is conveniently downplayed. This is another example of "unthinging". Don't complain about the rampant Cultural Marxism, or you're just a dirty antisemite!

> As a matter of fact, mass purges are more extreme than individual crimes.

One large segment of the population singling out another for physical harm based on political ideology is a mass purge.

[cosmiccartel]

For anyone interested, "Cultural Marxism" refers to the application of Marxist critical theory to the social sciences, particularly issues of race, gender, culture, and identity.

Current mainstream leftist memes, with a focus on issues like "white privilege", and the systematic inversion of this supposed privilege, cannot be described as anything but Cultural Marxism.

Somewhat related, and highly recommended, is the article Gramscian Damage by ESR (http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=260).

And if anyone like eli_gottlieb wants to smear you as an antisemite for speaking out against Marxism, this is why: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=125

[jbooth]

If you want to get conspiratorial about it, SpaceX is a huge threat to both the Russian space launch industry and to Boeing/Lockheed.

More seriously, in the 2017 conservative pathology, the Russian government are 'good guys' and American businessmen who quit Trump's economic council are 'bad guys'.

[api]

Putin is a neo-fascist and an admirer of Julius Evola.

[mannykannot]

With regard to Peter Thiel, I am not sure being thrown overboard is the right metaphor. He has chosen to ride the tiger, and may have trouble getting off, if he wants to.

[rhythmvs]

That metaphor is deliberate? — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Evola#Ride_the_Tiger

[mannykannot]

It wasn't an intentional reference to Evola, if that's what you mean - I was unaware of the association until you pointed it out.