Alt-Right

I feel sorry for the alt-right. The sincere part of the alt-right anyway, not the contrarian trolls who say things just for a reaction and who would dread to be caught actually espousing those views in public; I pity the actual people who really agree with and who really believe the likes of Vox Day, Roosh V, Davies Aurini and Jordan Owen. No one is born thinking that way, for sure you can have a natural character, but something must have happened to you to end up thinking that way. For that at least I feel sorry for them, they have had to make changes and decisions along the way to get there as well but hate is ultimately a personal choice.

Obviously that’s nothing in comparison to those who suffer online and publicly because of the Alt-Right’s views, but still, I think it is good to remember that they are people albeit damaged people. You can have whatever views of the world you like (wrong as I might think them) but when you actually start hating someone you’ve never met, you have lost out on something.

I’ve been aware of the Alt-Right for a little while now, the thing I find most alarming about them is the weird mish mash of libertarianism, hard Christianity, racism and of course misogyny that they are pushing. That each one of these component parts can become a gateway to the others through the overlap of cultural spaces. What can start as a mere misunderstanding of how society works can quickly become a full blown case of anti-Semitism and rape apology.

I was reassured when I looked at the numbers on Twitter and Reddit and saw just how small their followings are, which is probably more of a demonstration of the power of the internet to spread an idea from its darker recesses through to mainstream awareness than anything else and then amp it up and multiply it for media purposes.

In a time when centre right wing feeling is sympathised with and adopted more and more by some parts of society, it is warming to see that the true extremes remain limited, lurking in basements and on moderated forums. Whilst they should be challenged, and challenged robustly it is not the case that they are a true and growing threat, its more the last adolescent backlash of a changing culture howling to anyone who will listen.

The youtube money, patreon cash and similar does seem to benefit a few of them though, who would have thought that the far right would be reduced to that? Effectively begging online! I wonder if the true views of the leading figures are actually a lot softer, that what was once indignant fury has softened despite the revolving cycle of youtube views, donations, crowdfunders and the like; now less to stop a feminist movement and more to maintain a comfortable lifestyle. It’s a cynical view and a harsh one, who would wish to be trapped performing their younger politics for cash, becoming ever more unemployable after each dwindling incoming flush of subscribers?

Its right to feel sorry for them, as long as that sorrow is matched with opposition and mockery. Whether its the great minds behind the Sarkeesian Effect or the idiots below:

http://www.maidenhead-advertiser.co.uk/gallery/maidenhead/104800/men-s-rights-campaigner-announces-bid-to-oust-theresa-may-from-maidenhead-seat.html

Big or small, they hate and they are laughable because of it.

Zombies, Masculinity and the Alt Right

When I was very depressed, I created a zombie survival bag. Tarpaulin, survival knife, various improvised stoves, compass, water purification tablets, mess tins, flint and striker, other bits and pieces all jammed into an old army surplus rucksack. After months of augmenting and improving my supplies, I gradually began to realise that I had created this zombie apocalypse bag so I could survive and prosper in a world unlike our own, I was increasingly sure that I had nothing to live for, not in the sense that I was suicidal but in the understanding that everything was awful for me and always would be. A zombie apocalypse would give me the chance to start again and my choices, successes and failures would be reduced to the acquisition of security, fuel, shelter and food, I began to fantasise and actively hope for a zombie virus to spread and for society to break down. Eventually I got better, it took several years, but I still have that zombie survival bag under the stairs in the house where I live, but it is now just a souvenir come collection of useful objects.

The zombie genre has moved away from being limited to violence in relatively enclosed environments e.g. shopping malls or any location where the plucky survivors can be seen as being under siege and has instead broadened its vision to include vast horizons. The Walking Dead and the legendary PC title Day Z both emphasise the dangerous wilderness around, the endless travel, the possibility rather than the certainty that undead or bandits lurk nearby.

I have read that the zombie genre is more popular when there are right wing governments (to fear the brainless masses) and that the vampire genre is more popular when there are left wing governments (to fear the sexually deviant, powerful rich man). Though given the diversification of media in recent decades it perhaps comes as no surprise to see both zombie and vampire genres developing independently at the same time. Now I think the zombie genre is developing because people fear for their place in the world, they feel they are expected to struggle more and harder than ever before. All around are people who they disagree with, competition is fierce.

I think there are parallels with the Alt Right movement in America and online. MGTOW, the wilder libertarians, pickup artists and the like are all part of a strange Venn diagram that rejects today’s society (in different ways) and holds to the sentiment “If only things were different, I would not be a failure and would be a roaring success by any standard.” The common identification with prepping or zombie survival is telling, everyone that I know involved in those scenes has been depressed, desperate to turn their back on dead relationships, terrible credit ratings or a simple inability to engage with society. It’s a practiced cocooning, an attempt to return to a simpler and more honest way of life where basic but brutal testing by the outside world will punish the unworthy and reward the deserving. Either way existence will be over quickly or be like nothing else before while it still lasts. Failure men of the Alt Right look to the decreased dependence of women on finding a financially solvent man and shiver. The social model of a hundred or even fifty years ago promised men that at least one woman would be sexually available to them and that their likely full employment would be enough to support a family. Libertarians often consider themselves held back by a society that limits them, they dream of the freedom at the frontier, if only these public roads and taxes didn’t exist! MGTOW reject the idea that women could have one up on them or compete on an equal playing field and so retreat to a keyboard littered with Dorito crumbs. Pick up artists attempt to reduce social interaction to a game, that out of hand women can be trained and programmed into providing the services that they require. These are massive simplifications but they speak of a frightened and pathetic masculinity compressed by poor job markets, a perceived change in society away from the model their parents experienced and the increasing influence of sources that say that being a white and male is not enough in of itself. If you want another perspective, take a look at the courses that teach improvised self-defence, lock picking, urban tracking and so on. These are pieces of reassurance, nothing more, aimed at frightened men who think that they have nothing else, that need to know that if everything was to change, they would be legitimised and have a chance. That there is a value to their continued existence.

The wider Alt Right movement reassures these damaged men and tells them that the threat is internal not exterior, there are no amazons or strange looking foreigners  about to come over the hill, they are already here and that something needs to be done about it. That they need to speak up, that the progress of a century can be undone in months. As the survivors of an apocalypse panic at the zombies straining at the shopping mall door, so do Pepe’s goons look wildly at society around them. We should be afraid of them.