Bartleby TDV: I’m not sure. I’ve given up trying to decide. Whaddya think??
I think I’m just “alt-” for now. It’s like all these gender types they pull out of their asses.
I’m alt-neutral.
I just hate elites and I want to see them disappear from the planet. So we can revert to some primitive society and in about 2,000 years we’ll have a whole new crop of them, but that’s a long way off.
I don’t know. What are your views on economics? Right and left is mostly about economics. All the rest is just BS. Scott Alexander and I are Alt Left – anti-PC, anti-SJW, anti-woke, anti-Cultural Left liberals and Leftists. The others are just rightwingers, especially Mercer, Hansen, and Bloody Shovel. I’m a “conservative socialist.” A socially conservative liberal to Left socialist. I wouldn’t link to those three if you paid me. I really dislike reactionary politics. I’ve looked at your site and you are 100% down with Trumpian conservatism. Which is just fine, of course. You’re right at home on this site.
Sadly the link between culture and economics is as deep as ever. Everyone who has had it up to here with the woketards decides that they are “conservatives” and need to vote Republican. I keep telling people that they can mix and match and be left on some things and right on others, but basically 0% of the people I talk to follow my advice.
The problem of course is that PC, SJWism, the Cultural Left, Identity Politics, and Woketardism is seen by 100% of the population as “the Left.” It’s also seen as “the Democratic Party”, “liberals”, “liberalism”, the DNC, on and on. And of course in a sense it is. It seems that the very idea of a liberal-Left that is opposed to PC and SJW retardation is seen by almost everyone as simply not possible.
For instance, for a long time, the only people who ever read here are rightwingers. And here I am, practically a Communist, and my site is nothing but conservatives. Liberals and Leftists come here sometimes, but we’ve always had White Supremacists on here, and the first time they open their mouths, these guys take off. Or the first time I start spouting my social conservatism.
The idea of socially conservative liberals and Leftists simply does not compute. I’m starting to wonder if I’m the only one.
How many people mix and match? I am starting to think zero. None, zip, zilch, nada, nothing. If you’re against PC insanity, you go rightwing on everything and I do mean everything. Against mass immigration? You go full rightwing Republican on everything. Race realist? 99% of race realists are hardline reactionaries? Against the insanity and idiocy of modern feminism? You go rightwing and usually hard rightwing at that. I think that Liberal and Left anti-feminists and MRA’s basically just don’t exist at all.
The problem of course is that everyone on the Left who sees through the stupidity of ID politics gets thrown out of the Left, and boy do they throw you out hard! They also call you Republican, conservative, reactionary, and especially fascist and Nazi. I’ve been called all these things so many times that I have started to believe that this is what I actually am. I have searched all of the conservative and reactionary movements in the US and the world over and I dislike or despise almost all of them. I simply hate the very notion of conservatism itself. It’s crap. I’ve started to wonder if I was a fascist or a Third Positionist or a National Bolshevik. I can’t be any of those things. They’re all just fascists. I searched through all variations of fascism abroad including Third Positionism, Strasserism, and National Bolshevism, and while it is more appealing on economics, the rest of it is simply horrible. I despise anything that even smells like fascism. It’s a monstrous ideology. I can never support it.
The only project I might be able to get with is the Russian conservatism of Vladimir Putin. Russian conservatism is the left of the Democratic Party on most important things, although there is an element of social conservatism running through it. I dislike the autocratic nature of Putin’s rule.
Lukashenko in Belarus is similar. He is even more left than Putin but he’s also a social conservative. He’s also much more of a dictator than Putin, albeit he is quite a popular dictator, with 80% support. Both of them crack down on minority languages as they are both nationalists involved in a nation-building project, Putin’s around the Russian language and Belarus’ around the same, believe it or not.
People on the Left like me who despise the woketards get cancelled and deplatformed everywhere on Earth to the point where the only places I can post at are rightwing websites. I despise rightwing politics.
I created the Alt Left to create a safe space for liberals and Leftists who had had it up to here with the Woketard Left, but it seems it’s as much of a pipe dream now as when it started. At one point, we had 18,000 members of Alt Left groups on Facebook. I renounced most of them. Some were just warmed over Cultural Leftism, such as anti-TERF feminists, trannies, and gays.
Many others were just rightwingers. A vast number were Libertarians, Ancaps, etc. I had to go around and keep renouncing all of the new factions sparking up because it was nothing but rightwingers and reactionaries, at least on economics. Quite a few were simply Muslim-haters. These are pretty much Cultural Left on everything except Islam. And they’re all hard right on economics, 100% of them, no exceptions. Not one person on the Left will speak against Islam, and as soon as anyone does, they quickly move all the way to the Right.
A continuous problem in all Alt Left groups was continuous invasion by conservatives. We had to keep throwing them out. And a lot of even the top Alt Lefties were not very leftwing. Most were hardcore capitalists, albeit being opposed to neoliberalism and supporting Keynesianism.
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The Alt Left, base on what I’ve read on your blog, tries to get real and point out harsh truths but yu don’t always provide a solution, much less a bromide. You were bound to fail.
Pick one friend: LAW & ORDER LET’S STOP THE COMMIES MAGAAAAAAAAAAA! or RACISTS FACIST UNDER MY BED.! WE’LL SHOW THEM!!!!!!!!!
Right. We don’t have a solution, that’s the thing. There is no solution. I don’t think that’s the problem though. It’s just that almost no one wants to marry social conservatism, race realism, anti-feminism, men’s rights, gay realism, tranny realism and criticism of the tranny cult with Left or liberal economics. Everyone who’s done with all of those things is automatically rightwing on economics and a lot of other thing.
There is starting to be an anti-Woke Left movement and they are all Alt Left by definition, but I’m not sure how many of them wish to identify with us. I haven’t been able to reach out to them very well. That is a sign of hope though. And the liberals who are against the trans cult and fad and singing the alarm about ROGD are a place to start. Even they probably think I’m “transphobic” though or whatever.
I go to ISteve, Steve Sailor’s blog on Unz. Sometimes he writes about cultural stuff and doesn’t mess with economics at all. He has a number of posts about Globohomo, the trans cult and the woketards. I agree with most things his commenters say in those posts, so I guess I’m a social conservative. But I’d say they’re all standard conservatives and probably none of them want any sort of left economics.
What is the tie in with culture anyway? What in God’s name does liberal and left economics (socialism, social liberalism) have to do with social liberalism. And why must all social conservatives be neoliberal free market fanatics. I don’t get it. I can’t think of anything worse for social conservatism than laissez faire economics. It’ll destroy every last value we have, all to make a buck.
“no one wants to marry social conservatism, race realism, anti-feminism, men’s rights, gay realism, tranny realism and criticism of the tranny cult with Left or liberal economics.”
Correct observation but I think what you are not seeing lies here:
“Everyone who’s done with all of those things is automatically rightwing on economics”
Why are they rightwing on economics? Or better question are they really rightwing or are they just being oppositional the the “Left,” aka the feminine wing of politics.
WHAT-WE-DO
Notice how many rightwingers on economics receive SS benefits, are union members, are apathetic towards welfare, may reject universal health care (i.e. don’t-wanna-share-with-Black-people-and-Mexicans-who-ain’t-working) BUT gladly accept collective healthcare and retirement benefits from large corporations. Some even choose companies based on benefits NOT salary; that is, they’ll take a small pay cut for a better benefits package. I know people who do this, on the left or right.
WHAT-WE-LIKE
It seems that apart from die-hard libertarians or neoliberal economists, the average rightwinger is in favor of only certain key aspects of capitalism: low taxes, the right to choose you own job, ease of starting a business, limited but effective regulations for safety and the environment, and overall smaller government in the sense of less pointless bureaucratic jobs leeching off taxpayer money and overpaid corrupt officials.
WHAT-WE-HATE
The other aspects – crony capitalism, descent into feudalism, stupid wars, global corporations selling out their host nations – are very hated on the populist Right, which is now the voting right. The establishment Right are elected Republicans who are all mostly sellouts and vocally hated by the people. I went to my local Republican Club recently, and almost everyone there, including the Republican trying to run for office hates the GOP!
Robert, you are probably more of a rightwinger than you realize. Of the WHAT-WE-LIKE section, your major disagreements would be low taxes and smaller government. We can compromise to medium taxes IF we get smaller government that does MORE USEFUL STUFF. We don’t need 1,000,000 pensioned bureaucrats in the alphabet soup of agencies when 1,000 would do. They are just going to outsource the work to private industry anyway.
Also, we’d happily quadruple the salaries of the remaining 1,000 in order to make them wealthier and less corruptible. The Japanese do bureaucrats right by recruiting at top universities. The pay is low, but the benefits and prestige are HUGE! I think America could do even better.
Small government can take two meanings: less people/cost or less power. Most of us agree government should be very powerful within the domains of its charter. It shouldn’t be wasteful or a wanton dictatorship however, which is what it has become.
When rightwingers like us hear of companies dumping chemicals into the environment and not suffering consequences, first we blame Bill Clinton just because, then we blame the corrupt government for letting it happen. Nothing would make us happier than having the EPA send in some Law& Order SWAT team to go berserk MAGA on those corporate execs.
What about labor laws and universal health care? Like you’ve said before, these are taken for granted in predominantly White Europe, even by rightwing parties. Why? Because as Warren Buffet said, most people (Americans) misunderstand what capitalism is about.
It’s about the efficient allocation of capital via market forces, and it is usually correct, though not always. Capitalism is not fundamentally contradicted by wealth redistribution, monetary policy, taxation, or regulation, though a government can potentially create policy in any of the above four such that they do contradict it.
Here’s an example of why populist right-wingers want “small government.”:
“[Public official’s] total taxpayer-funded cash compensation in 2019 was $380,120, and his base salary had jumped by $65,000 over eight years.”
https://www.realclearpolicy.com/articles/2021/03/11/mr_clean_in_san_francisco_was_paid_380000_per_year__it_wasnt_enough_766561.html
I’d gladly pay agency directors $500,000 if they fired 90% of their staff and did their job right. Even a $1 million would be acceptable in that case!
RL, addresses some of my points in this previous post.
https://beyondhighbrow.com/2021/03/11/why-us-conservatism-fails-social-conservatism-support-for-working-class-whites-and-neoliberalism-are-always-incompatible/comment-page-1/#comment-166325
But again, that represents the Establishment Right, GOP, neoliberals, academics, etc. Yes, neoliberalism is absolutely corrosive to a moral and cohesive society. It’s why the very conservative and rightwing Japanese manage their society in a socialist and xenophobic fashion.
However, the Populist Right, as you observed, is waking up to this fact. Libertarianism doesn’t work by itself, though it has many good ideas that can be INCORPORATED INTO a statist society. We can say that about socialism also.
Either way, I disagree that the US is libertarian. It’s really crony corporatism. Can pure capitalism ever be implemented to create an amazing society? Absolutely NOT! Laissez-faire capitalism will very quickly revert to equilibrium just like Marxism. A point I’ve made numerous times here is that there is always government, and there is always a free market, irrespective of what system you think you live in.
Laissez-faire capitalist society suffers from the collective delusion that it has done away with structures of governance. That’s like saying you don’t have HIV because you stopped getting tested for it. Communists have the complementary delusion that they’ve done away with capitalist market forces. That’s like saying you don’t have lung cancer anymore because you quit smoking. Feigning ignorance of a disease won’t vanish the symptoms, much less the disease!
American officials and business people have always known the truth about these things. Just watch The Network for an award-winning dramatization of this fact. Patriotic voters are just waking up to this reality and feeling very betrayed. Will this make them leftwingers? Nope. But do expect a populist political party to push for many of the things RL is advocating for here, from social conservatism to worker’s rights and welfare.
Hmm, that’s Alt Left though. Is the Populist Right Alt Left?
A lot of people are saying that Right and Left don’t even make sense anymore. I am starting to think that maybe they are correct.
The operational quote is this:
Exactly.
For the record, to any new reader, I am not a socialist. I disavow socialism as Catholic and a right-winger. But I recognize the need to care for society which pure greed and capitalism can’t. I think I take a fairly uncontroversial Catholic stance in regards to economics.
There is zero logical connection between race realism, disbelief in global warming and opposition to political correctness on the one hand and support for right-wing economics on the other hand. Why they are so often found together is a mystery to me.
We should separate scientific questions from political ones. Whether races are equal or whether global warming is real are scientific questions. Whether we should have affirmative action or an increase in the minimum wage are political questions. Of course, in politics we should pay attention to facts, but facts alone don’t decide policies. We need values as well.
James, consider my idea that right-wing politics is collective masculinity and left-wing politics is the feminine complement; distributed gender if you will.
What do pink dresses, child-rearing and crying when angry have to do with each other? Meh who knows but they are bundled together within the female psyche. Similar disjointed personality traits can be found in men. Somethings cluster together because they have a very very deep root cause that we are nowhere near to discovering.
This is generally true. Stereotypes are generally true and exist for that reason.