White males somehow disadvantaged...by Meredith Mclaughlin Staff Politically Correct Ever since Hillary Clinton accused Donald Trump of promoting the ideals of the “alternative right,” the group has been shoved into national spotlight. But what really is the alt-right? On the surface the alt-right is a pretty interesting combination of angry young white guys who probably helped doxx the victims of Gamergate and slightly older white guys who think reverse racism is real. Some alt-righters can be found raging against sjw culture and complaining about how society is “too pc” nowadays. They’re not your grandpa’s conservatism: they use memes to push Trump into the oval office and use the word “cuckservative” to describe those on the right who ain’t pro-white enough. They’re nostalgic for the times where you could tell a “make me a sandwich” joke and it would be the wittiest thing anyone’s heard all day. If you recognise any of these traits it’s probably because you’ve seen it all in the comments section on Youtube. This is understandable, considering the alt-right movement used to be found scattered throughout obscure message boards and blogspots. However, with the movement being in the public eye more often, it’s time to look beyond the crooked Hillary memes and see what the alt-right truly represents. Many people believe paleoconservatism and the alt-right share many core values, and they aren’t wrong. Paleoconservatism is a specific sect of the right that focuses on nationalism and non-intervention from the United States. Their adversity to immigration stems from their suspicion that immigrants aren’t able to conform to western culture. They would rather have the U.S. practise isolationism than get involved in world events, and they think mainstream republicans are focused on building an “empire” than protect the nation’s interests. Now if you want to make an alt-right group, you have to take all of that, multiply it by five and add three cups of neo nazism and a few teaspoons of 4chan.
What makes the alt-right different from the other fringe conservatism groups is their use of the internet. One major alt-right figure and writer for Breitbart.com, Milo Yiannopolous, often cites the youthful energy and online presence as reasons for why their group is gaining notoriety. Because so many alt-right members love to provoke people online, the movement itself is becoming more well known. To the alt-right, memes are the gateway drug that gets young white men hooked on anti-semitism and Alex Jones. Once brought into the alt-right way of thinking, new followers learn that our social justice society has been tricking them into feeling guilty for being white, and that their “culture” is actually under attack by immigrants and african americans. “The Alt-Right's success can partly be attributed to it's protagonist role, whereas White Nationalism was always viewed as the antagonist. The Alt-Right has made White Identity cool again, and White America has been desperately seeking such.” says Hewitt Moore, from alternative-right.blogspot.com.The alt-right gives its followers a sense of heroism because they’re defending the Western culture from being erased. But… does western culture really need defending? When was the last time you were ostracised for being a christian? When did the study of greek philosophers and roman emperors suddenly become esoteric? Are hamburgers considered “ethnic” food now? There’s this very paranoid atmosphere that follows the alt-right because they seem to think the United State is ten seconds away from turning into Northern Mexico. The deeper you go into alt-right websites, the more clear it is that they think being white makes you a super smart, super special snowflake. Now you could compare them to skinheads (and considering how many of them believe the Jews control the economy, it’s not very hard.) But they’re not dumb like skinheads, ok? As Yiannopolous puts it in his article “An Establishment Conservative’s Guide to the Alt-Right,” “Skinheads, by and large, are low-information, low-IQ thugs driven by the thrill of violence and tribal hatred.The alternative right are a much smarter group of people — which perhaps suggests why the Left hates them so much. They’re dangerously bright…” (Yiannopolous)He follows this up with some classic 19th century-esque scientific racism: “Asking people to see each other as human beings rather than members of a demographic in-group, meanwhile, ignored every piece of research on tribal psychology.” (Yiannopolous) Explaining racism as being a natural tendency that we can’t avoid has obviously never been done before; we are dealing with true scholars here. These beliefs make it clear why the alt right support Trump so much. The appeal to Trump is that he says what needs to be said! He’s not in the pocket of the politicians! And for a group of people who think immigrants will wipe them out and have no respect for the mainstream republicans, Trump is a big deal. And while I can’t say with conviction that Trump is an alt-rightist himself, he isn’t doing much to call them out on the whole white supremacy thing. Trump is seen as being a mouthpiece for the likes of Milo Yiannopolous and Alex Jones, and he doesn’t want to waste their vote. All in all, the alt-right is a really loud group of racist bloggers who are trying to troll America, and we’re kind of playing into their trap. They never had any real influence in politics, and they probably never will. Even though it seems like Trump is “their” candidate, there’s a decent chance that Trump is using them just to gain more votes. It’s not like he recently hired the CEO of Breitbart.com to help his campaign, right? (spoiler alert he definitely did.)
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