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by DonHopkins 3124 days ago
He specifically meant to use the term "alt-left", parroting Trump's and David Duke's own words, just the way right-wing Republicans love to use the incorrect term "Democrat Party" on purpose as an insult.

The alt-right pretending the alt-left exists is "thing", a talking point, a false equivalence, and a mendacious lie.

It's a dog-whistle attempting to normalize the alt-right and Nazis, and accuse the left of acting as extreme and irrational as alt-right Whit Supremacists are acting, which is total bullshit.

Being anti-Nazi and anti-racist and anti-misogynist isn't "alt-left", it's "patriotic" and "democratic" and "American" and "mainstream" and "sane" and "ethical".

It's not "hard left" to be anti-Nazi. Even hard right Republicans SHOULD be anti-Nazi too, but apparently now they're not any more. Don't blame it on the left that the right has gone off the deep end and now consider Nazis "very fine people". That doesn't make the left "hard".

The "alt-left" didn't invade Nazi Germany on D-Day, the Allied Forces did. And the Allied Forces never behaved anything like the way the alt-right is behaving.

https://www.wired.com/story/what-is-alt-left/

There is no 'Alt-Left,' no matter what Trump says.

Hours after a rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, organized by white nationalists, turned deadly, President Donald Trump blamed "many sides" for the violence that transpired. Three days later, at an impromptu press conference at Trump Tower, the president doubled down on this message, condemning groups "on both sides" of the fighting. “What about the alt-left that came charging at, as you say, at the alt-right?” the president said.

https://newrepublic.com/minutes/141108/no-thing-alt-left

There is no such thing as the "alt-left". But in a piece for Vanity Fair, James Wolcott pretends otherwise:

>Disillusionment with Obama’s presidency, loathing of Hillary Clinton, disgust with “identity politics,” and a craving for a climactic reckoning that will clear the stage for a bold tomorrow have created a kinship between the “alt-right” and an alt-left. They’re not kissin’ cousins, but they caterwaul some of the same tunes in different keys.

Wolcott admits the left “can’t match” the alt-right “for strength, malignancy, or tentacled reach”—then proceeds to make just such an argument. This is bad writing in service of a bad argument: “People say things I don’t like” is not the same thing as “people advocate for a white ethnostate.” This is precisely the false equivalency Wolcott makes by using the phrase “alt-left.” It is a disingenuous characterization designed to undermine leftist claims.

1 comments

You are arguing something I'm not talking about at all.

This is obviously a heated topic for you, and as a democrat myself I don't think you are doing us any favors. The hard-left isn't a good thing, they promote violence to achieve their agendas, and say things like "centrists get the bullet too". I really despise the normalization of political violence.

You need to take a step back.

The "hard left" is a tiny minority that isn't represented and is soundly rejected by the Democratic party, and it is not running the country like the alt-right is.

There are no "hard left" senators or representatives or supreme court justices or attorney generals or campaign chief executives or presidents, but there are many alt-right ones.