What’s Wrong with the World

"Driven", huh?

Well, maybe they got driven, but they had to get in the car on their own, and had to stay in the car while being driven to somewhere.

Nobody can "drive you" to embrace error as if it were true (without actually falsifying data, at least). Your refusal to follow reason is your own, not theirs. Oh, did he mean that by "driving" evangelicals to the alt-right, he was giving them GOOD reasons to accept the alt-right? No? Then he was not giving evangelicals good reason to accept the alt-right, so ... they shouldn't accept it then, should they?

I'm still fighting the battle of women in the military,

I am too. Still fighting it. Trying to protect my daughters - and everyone else's.

Lydia, did you by any chance pay any attention to what went down in Boston, yesterday? 40,000 lefties in futile search of a Nazi to beat up?

The unjust firing of James Damore totally forgotten?

I write what I feel like writing, when I feel like it, mostly on whim. That's blogging, at least as I choose to do it. The rest of the time I'm living a life and working on other things that I consider worthwhile. I do not blog to please you or to mirror what you think my priorities should be in blogging, or, for that matter, the priorities of any other human being on God's green earth. The only reason your IP hasn't been banned yet is because your drive-by trolling is thus far occasional, but it is not appreciated. Engage in substantive discussion of the issues raised in an actual post, or go away. It's that simple.

Lydia, I agree with your objection to the word "driven," as though alt-rightists are cattle being "driven" this way and that. It's easy to see the problem with this whenever I stop to consider that many people--you, for one--have more cause for frustration with people like Moore than your typical alt-rightist does.

A better word than driven might be tempted. People frequently are, of course, tempted to take refuge in crankish political communities for all sorts of reasons, and I've been predicting for a long time that this was coming precisely because of the constant demonization (and even criminalization) of perfectly normal and healthy human sentiments. But that's more of an explanatory than an exculpatory factor. It's been said that "to understand is to forgive," and it would seem that for a lot of commenters like Wolfe, the need to understand is moving them too far in the direction of forgiveness.

You might even say he's been driven to it.

Yes, "tempted" is definitely a better word. And that allows us to see the same temptation on multiple sides, because if one isn't driven but rather tempted, then it's much less predictable which way the temptation will fall for a given person. To some extent it depends on what one is focusing on. If one is previously conservative and is focusing only on the demonization from the left, then one might look around and allow oneself to get tangled up with a community of alt-rightists. If one is focusing only on the nastiness of the alt-right and feeling disgust at that, one might actually be tempted to move leftward instead and start telling oneself, "Well, they have a point" about x or y where they (the left) don't, really, have a point.

I've seen a bit of this latter dynamic in a somewhat unexpected direction--namely, the various scandals surrounding extremely conservative complementarians concerning gender roles. If you learn about the creepiness of someone like Bill Gothard and the way he abused his position or Doug Philips of Vision Forum, or if you realize the craziness of the Pearls on husbands and wives, you could be tempted to come to think that any group that advocates clear, complementarian differences between men and women is a creepy, crazy group. Or you could be tempted to join the "always believe anyone who claims to be a victim" camp. And I've seen that drift in actual people.

When white people are viciously attacked on a daily basis it makes perfect sense why white men would be "tempted" to be part of a movement that defends white men. The Republican establishment isn't willing to, so people have to turn to a movement that will.

It is true that when a group of people perceive they are not being represented constitutionally, they may resort to unconstitutional means.

In Ireland, we have had a recent bitter conflict in the north of the island between two conflicting nationalities. Neither side has gone to the extreme of attempting the obliteration of the identity and memory of the other. The US Civil War is long over. I cannot understand the re-opening of these old wounds, except for opportunistic and dishonourable reasons. There should be an articulate and peaceful counter-argument from the conservative, political side but where is it?

Presumably, the issue is complicated by some Republicans possibly not feeling much enthusiasm for defending a history that is primarily a Democratic one. However, the principles involved should be more important.

The Republican establishment isn't willing to, so people have to turn to a movement that will.

Baloney. That's exactly the kind of talk that is completely wrong.

The US Civil War is long over. I cannot understand the re-opening of these old wounds, except for opportunistic and dishonourable reasons. There should be an articulate and peaceful counter-argument from the conservative, political side but where is it?

DeGaulle, I've been off of Facebook recently and reading a lot more at National Review. Frankly, I've been rather pleased at their balanced approach to all of this. Somewhere along the line I'd (to my own, now, chagrin) vaguely gotten the idea that they are a bunch of wusses over there, mincing around anything that would bother the identitarian left, but I don't see that at all. I see French, Shapiro, & co. making plenty of peaceful counterpoints about the evils and extremism of the left. Yet these are precisely the people who are hated and derided by the alt-right as practically fifth columnists.

Here are just two columns I googled up just now in two minutes on the monument question.

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/450500/destroying-confederate-statues-whats-end-point-washington-monument

http://www.nationalreview.com/article/450622/virginia-confederate-statues-robert-e-lee-stonewall-jackson-virtues-honor-sacrifice-valor

Did you see Victor Davis Hanson's column today, Lydia? http://www.nationalreview.com/article/450689/erasing-history-censoring-confederate-past-rewriting-memory-mob-vengeance

No, I hadn't, but it's a good example of what I mean. There's plenty of good, sensible, conservative stuff there on these kinds of topics. And enough writers in the "stable" to have interesting things to say about all the latest hot topics, be it Charlottesville, the firing of Damore, or whatever. But to hear the righter-than-thou crowd, you'd think NR is a monolithic cesspool of progressive Republicanism. It's very odd. Being glad myself to be off the treadmill of gotta-write-about-the-latest-ism, I'm still glad there are people out there still manning the treadmill from a conservative p.o.v.

This kind of talk is pervasive on the alt-right (especially in comment sections):

"When white people are viciously attacked on a daily basis it makes perfect sense why white men would be "tempted" to be part of a movement that defends white men."

Hyperbole much? Frankly, it is just silly to say "white people are viciously attacked on a daily basis." I'm someone who is tough on crime and hardcore when it comes to immigration but day to day life for many "white people" is just fine (or at least it doesn't involve vicious attacks!) One could easily say the same silly hyperbolic statement about black people who live in the inner-city and deal with high rates of crime, except even there it wouldn't be true -- people just aren't "attacked" on a daily basis (unless you live in a war zone like Aleppo, Syria.)

I understand the desire to defend and protect American history and more broadly, Western Civilization (including Christianity.) But spare me the sympathy for a "movement that defends white men" -- such a movement is not something any serious Christian conservative would want anything to do with.

The other thing that I keep scratching my head over is what seems to me this obvious fact: When you join a movement because it purports to be dedicated to the rights of your preferred biological interest group, you might as well put a sign on your back that says, "I'm stupid and desperate; exploit me."

It's obvious that feminism isn't good for women.

It's obvious that BLM & co. aren't doing anything good for blacks.

Why is it not obvious that these "white interest group" movements aren't doing anything good for whites? I guess when it comes to whatever one identifies as one's "own group," there's a huge blind spot. One assumes that one is capable of evaluating whether the group in question is really helpful, and then one just gets worked up: How dare anyone insinuate that you shouldn't identify with x group? They're the only ones who CARE about people like ME!

If you can see how silly others look when they get all blinkered and partisan like that, and how they don't realize that they are just being used by someone else who isn't really representing their best interests but just fomenting inter-group hatred and polarization for publicity and power, wouldn't you think a little warning bell might go off before you start sounding just like them?

Since I learned years ago not to fall for it when the feminists went around telling me I had to join them and endorse them because I'm a woman, I'm sure as heck not going to start now falling for the "white empowerment" groups telling me I have to endorse them because I'm white.

But spare me the sympathy for a "movement that defends white men" -- such a movement is not something any serious Christian conservative would want anything to do with.

Am I to believe that defending the European people, their nations, and their civilization is something no serious Christian conservative would want anything to do with? This simply proves my point: mainstream conservatives are not willing to defend white men. You cannot defend American history and Western civilization without defending the people that produced it; it's like trying to defend Japanese culture while simultaneously replacing the Japanese people.

As for "vicious attacks", this is mostly ideological warfare found on college campuses and mainstream media, not crime. Salon prints an article titled White men must be stopped: The very future of mankind depends on it. The course of history doesn't care what you or I think and with enemies like Salon and friends like Mitt Romney, the Alt Right is inevitable.

I swear, it absolutely cracks me up how obsessed the alt-right (and the paleo-right too, for that matter) is with Romney.

The rest of us out here in real-world-land are all like, "Mitt who?"

Any group that has to rally its troops, and even tries to attract new allies, by seething sloganeering over a washed-up, former, failed presidential candidate whom nobody listens to is in pretty pathetic shape.

Civilisation is certainly worth defending. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but none of these rioters on both sides strike me as steeped in the civil virtues, whether European or otherwise. It shows the hypocrisy of the loathing of some 'white nationalists' for Hispanic immigrants. While uncontrolled immigration is a folly for any nation, Mexicans essentialy have their roots in European civilisation as well. We in Europe can only wish that we were faced with waves of Catholic Mexicans pouring in rather than Mohammedans.

The means of ascertaining the degree of civilisation of an individual or group should hardly be based on the most superficial physical attributes.

Forgive me if I'm wrong, but none of these rioters on both sides

Only one side is rioting, not both sides.

We in Europe can only wish that we were faced with waves of Catholic Mexicans pouring in rather than Mohammedans.

If you think America, a Protestant nation btw, is benefiting in any meaningful way from the supposed Catholicism of the 1/3 of the Mexican population that has migrated to the US over the decades, you don't know what you're talking about. Rather the relative docility of the Mexican peasantry as compared to the Mohammedan has served to keep Americans asleep at the wheel as the country is being dispossessed. But they don't belong in America and should return to their homeland.

The basic point is that people don't have to turn to the alt-right because 1) they aren't in any kind of immediate danger, and 2) even if they were, the alt-right wouldn't be standing between them and that danger in any literal sense. I've got my own internet connection, and my own guns for that matter, and can stick up for myself, thank you very much. That's the problem with hyperbolic premises like, "White people are being viciously attacked every day." It suggest some sort of urgent, immediate threat that can't be addressed by other means, like joining up with people who don't dissemble on behalf of neo-Nazis.

There are sensible people who are deeply alarmed by the disintegration of Western Christendom and our civilization, who take the problems of mass immigration very seriously, and yet do not identify with the alt-right. Look it up. In fact, they're everywhere. Some of them are right here on this weblog. It's simply not true that the alt-right are the only people talking about such problems, or that one has "no choice" but to link arms with them if he is to find political allies in the fight to preserve the things that they claim to care so much about. Ultimately, it's not any kind of gain to join up with people who preach a thousand stupid and destructive falsehoods, for the sake of some shared common ground that is about a centimeter wide.

What that is, is easy. Virtually everyone you will encounter who is enthralled to this alt-right business, and certainly nearly every full-bore white supremacist you're liable to meet, knows precious little about the West when it comes right down to it. There's a lot of braying about Russia as the future defender of Christendom, which is, not to put too fine a point on it, a sick joke given its actual demographic, cultural, and moral state. What proportion of such people have ever absorbed and comprehended The Brothers Karamazov, or would sympathize with it even if they had? They love Russia because it's political system is blighted and fascistic, its people are white, and it fights Muslim militants sometimes. Which is all they need know.

Speaking for myself, I can't just make common cause with such people on the flimsy excuse that there's some minor-league Venn diagram overlap between the desire to preserve one's society on the one hand, and the deranged hatred for non-whites, Jews, and foreigners generally that is the stock in trade of white supremacists (and their enablers) on the other. I'm willing to bet I've lost more sleep over these sorts of problems than nine of ten of these poor fools "driven" into the arms of the alt-right, rending their garments over the fate of a Western world whose ethical premises and whose tradition of religion and cultural achievement they regard with total indifference.

I'd put their supposed concern over the loss of Western Civilization up against my own crisis of the spirit any day of the week. But see, I don't have to make common cause with degenerate trolls like Milo, or white supremacists like Spencer, or even with opportunists like Anne Coulter. The determination to do so even when there are other political allies with whom to band together, is simple evidence that the ones doing it just don't find the alt-right all that objectionable in the first place. All this talk of being driven to do it by some desperate necessity, reluctantly and against their better judgment, is just a verbal fog.

I'll no sooner make grumbling excuses for the alt-right than I will take the counsel of soft-headed types like Peter Kreeft, who would urge me into an alliance with political Islam--excusing, downplaying, or even denying its true nature--on the flimsy basis that, after all, they're social conservatives like me! Sorry, no sale. The chasm is too wide on too many issues that are much too grave simply to be waved away for the sake of expediency. If some combox troll wants to accuse me of "moral narcissism" and make sideways comments about my "so-called principles," well, that's life. The fact remains I'm free to make common cause with whomever I choose, and things are not so desperate that I'll soon be talking up the superior virtues of pre-Christian Germanic paganism and all the rest of it.

Well said, Sage.

Bravo.

rending their garments over the fate of a Western world whose ethical premises and whose tradition of religion and cultural achievement they regard with total indifference.

I've been occasionally intrigued (in a "watching a car crash happening" kind of way) by the dissembling of neo-pagans in these movements concerning Christianity.

Q: So, are you a Christian?

A: I send my children to Christian school, and I recognize the importance of Christianity historically. I admire fighting Christians like Charlemagne.

Q: But are you a Christian?

A: Let me tell you for several paragraphs about the animistic syncretism that Catholic missionaries are getting involved in when they work with Africans.

Q: Er, that isn't what I asked. I was wondering if you are a Christian.

A: Y'know, all of that Great Commission stuff is what is making American Christians soft on immigration and unwilling to defend their own race.

Eventually, Q just say, "Thanks, I see. I think you've answered the question, even while trying not to answer it."

Sage,

I want to second Lydia's praise! That was a great comment. I also find it grimly amusing that in response to me, Urban II suggests that daily vicious attacks = "ideological warfare found on college campuses and mainstream media." Now, I'm the first to admit there is plenty of crazy left-wing ideology bias in both institutions and if one looks hard enough I bet one could find an example just about every day of a college or media outlet doing something inimical to Western civilization. But those foul attacks are harmful to our brothers and sisters in Christ of all races and ethnicities and a couple of crazed articles in Salon (!) magazine or a couple of crazed professors who explain when it is O.K. to kill white people most of the left-wing bias you'll find is of the dreary "normal" kind (i.e. hostile to traditional hierarchies, Christianity, conservatives, etc.)

What is grimly amusing is that the New York Times has a more sober and honest critique of white nationalism -- making clear distinctions between white nationalist, white supremacist, and the alt right movement in its entirety -- than I am witnessing here. It's much easier to lump flamboyant homosexual provocateurs, neopagans, Nazis, Richard Spencer, Ann Coulter, white supremacist, people with deranged hatred for non-whites and Jews, and anyone else we don't like into one group and viewing that as the sum total of the alt right.

But those foul attacks are harmful to our brothers and sisters in Christ of all races and ethnicities

Excellent point, Jeff.

Try being a conservative black Christian and opposing homosexual "marriage" or, even worse, homosexual acts themselves and see how far being black gets you in the left-wing ideological fever swamps. Hint: Not protected.

@Andrew E:

Although there has been much more rioting from the Left, it is undeniable that a foolish section of the Right has sunk to their methods. If you disagree, I think you're denying reality.

Do you believe that those Mexicans who have entered the US legally should also return to their homeland? Which is it you dislike most about them, the fact that they are Mexican or that they are Catholic?

There are sensible people who are deeply alarmed by the disintegration of Western Christendom and our civilization, who take the problems of mass immigration very seriously, and yet do not identify with the alt-right. Look it up. In fact, they're everywhere. Some of them are right here on this weblog. ... Virtually everyone you will encounter who is enthralled to this alt-right business, and certainly nearly every full-bore white supremacist you're liable to meet, knows precious little about the West when it comes right down to it.

Great stuff, Sage!

Well, Urban, when somebody here writes an expose, the sole purpose of which is to break down all the nuances and distinctions that make up the broad coalition that includes the alt-right, reactionary noepaganism, etc., you can look forward to lots of careful line-drawing and patient definition of terms. That's not the point of this particular thread though, and a fair-minded reading of what we've written--to take the quote by Tony at 7:44 as an example--would indicate that those distinctions are appreciated by the people commenting here.

Still, there's a polemical point worth making here that it is literally the most distinguishing feature of alt-right rhetoric that it makes no careful distinctions between neoconservative intellectuals, run-of-the-mill conservative activists, traditionalists of the W4 type, crunchy con critics of Trumpism like Rod Dreher, "RINO establishment traitor Republican blah-blah" types like John McCain and Mitt Romney, Never Trump conservatives like the editors of National Review, etc., etc. For heaven's sake, they trashed Ted Cruz as a bought-and-paid-for tool of the Republican powers-that-be!

The alt-right itself is to a certain extent an amorphous phenomenon. Unfortunately that gives people an easy out to say that, whatever criticism might be offered, that it misses the mark because the alt-right is really something else. That was a defense that until lately I had most closely associated in my mind with feminism, but has now become the stock in trade of defenders of the alt-right, who insist on careful distinctions but proceed to attack whatever distinctions are made as insufficiently careful.

Meanwhile, every critic of the Trump administration is a globalist and a neocon and a paid tool of Goldman Sachs, etc., etc. And any attempt to get alt-right intellectuals to make those distinctions clear is attacked as an attempt to divide the movement, or as a smear that's beneath any serious response, etc., etc. Yawn. This shell game got old eighteen months ago.

What remains true, whatever distinctions we may care to make, is that we are free to enter into whatever coalitions and political alliances we choose, and there's a value judgment we each have to make about the concessions to political expediency we're willing to make from one case to the next. But in all cases we remain free, not bound by circumstance.

One other parting thought: While we're on the subject of distinctions, it's true that Trumpism and the alt-right are not identical. So what's the pressing need to sign on to alt-right ideology, such as it is, for the sake of effecting practical political objectives? There just isn't one.

You want to vote for populist candidates of a vaguely Buchananite bent or what have you? Go ahead. Many people I love and respect do just that and under discreet circumstances I would too. Doesn't mean you need to spend your time immersed in alt-right literature, getting schooled on the horrors of limp-wristed Christianity and the spiritual devastation it has inflicted on the virile Men of the North or whatever.

but has now become the stock in trade of defenders of the alt-right, who insist on careful distinctions but proceed to attack whatever distinctions are made as insufficiently careful.

It's even worse than that, Sage: they attack making distinction as a mindset.

It is agreed and promoted among the alt-right that one of the reasons for Trump's success is that he refuses to make distinctions, that he runs roughshod over careful thinking, attention to detail, nuances, and so on. That's for sissies and the technocratic meritocracy - which is (in their parlance) just another facet of where we (the West) went wrong. Distinctions? We don' need no stinkin' distinctions. Tough guys don't gotta do that crap.

So, conservatives who would disagree with the alt-right, and who would argue about the why's of that disagreement by making distinctions, fall into the "trapped mindset" of all that sissy distinction making. Of course, conservatives who would disagree with the alt-right but would not make distinctions fall into the opposite trap (as you pointed out) that they "miss the mark because the alt-right is really something else", or so they insist.