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New York Times | London Gallery LD50's Alt-Right Show Should Be Its Last, Critics Say New York Times As the British Parliament debated the proposed visit of President Trump to Britain, protesters gathered outside. A post-Trump election exhibition at the LD50 ... |
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London Gallery LD50's Alt-Right Show Should Be Its Last, Critics Say - New York Times
CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference, an annual prom of sorts for Americas right wing, kicked off Thursday in a conference center just south of Washington D.C. Hundreds have gathered tolisten to speakers like Ted Cruz, Kellyanne Conway, Mike Pence and the president himself, along with dozens of others.
One of the first wasDan Schneider, the executive director of the American Conservative Union, which hosts the event. Unlike the other speakers, Schneider wasnt there to talk about the future of conservatism, he was there to distance his movementfrom the alt-right, the anti-Semitic, anti-feminist, and racist arm of conservatism that slithered its way into the mainstream during the 2016 presidential election.
In an address Thursday morning titled The Alt Right Aint Right At All, Schneider attempted to claim that the alt-right isnt conservative at all rather, a ruse by liberals to hijack a wing of the right-wing movement under the guise of conservatism.
There is a sinister organ trying to worm its way into our ranks and we must not be duped,Schneider told the crowd, as many poured out of the ballroom as if to not pick a side in the growing rift between the oft-blended political movements. He described the alt-right as garden-varietyleft-wing fascists and went on to describe members of movement in a way that some of the more fringe alt-righters describe themselves.
They are anti-Semites, he said. They are racists. They are sexists. They hate the Constitution they despise everything we believe in. They are not an extension of conservatism.
Just outside, in the lobby of the conference center, a man with a different perspective waited. White supremacist Richard Spencer the punchable face of the alt-right movement milled about, talking to press. He called the speech a pathetic attempt to cast his budding movement as liberal in any way.
[Schneider] denounced me in totally stupid ways, Spencer said, adding that the alt-rightwas always about a right-wing that was against the conservative movement.
The split between traditional conservatives and the alt-right and even those who buy into the alt-rights rhetoric about nationalism and identity but dont necessarily want to admit it is clear at CPAC; as I was talking with Spencer, a man who appeared to be in his early 20s walked up to him and asked for a photo. He then thanked him and said praise Pepe, a nod to a cartoon frog that has become the symbol of the alt-right. Another similarly aged man was overheard saying, If [Spencer] can piss off antifa hes OK by me, a reference to the growing number of left-wing anti-fascist activists like those who rioted in D.C. on inauguration day.
On the other side of the split, other conservatives are echoing Schneiders insistence that the alt-right is not conservatism. Just feet away from Spencer stood a group of men and women who were outraged that Spencer was even in the same hemisphere as conservatives, let alone at the same conference.
Its bullshit that they try to categorize him as [conservative], said Laura Lightstone, a Maryland conservative who wants nothing to do with people like Spencer and his cartoon frog. [The media] isgonna categorize us as being accepting of him being here[his beliefs are] not conservative. Theyre not Republicanhe doesnt represent Trump votersthe conservatives I know and live around down here, nobody believes in that shit.
To try and say the alt-right isnt a wing of conservatism today is a tall tale to tell, particularly given President Trumps choice of Steve Bannon as his chief adviser. Bannon is the former head of Breitbart News, which he described as the platform for the alt-right.' Bannon is also pegged to speak at CPAC on Thursday. Not to mention, alt-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, a now-former editor at Brietbart who was slated to speak at CPAC until video surfaced of him advocating for pedophilia.
Despite Schneiders and many other conservatives hopes of distancing themselves from Spencers explicitly racist alt right, Spencer and his cohort see opportunity, believing that Trump and his teamare more aligned with his movement than traditional conservatism.
The way to think about it is Donald Trump is stumbling towards a sort of nationalism a nationalist ideology, and in that way he has a connection with the alt-right,' Spencer said. He has a deeper connection with us that he has with conservativesbecause we are about the nation, too.
Of his conservative critics, Spencer said an old adage applies.
First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win, he said. I think right now theyre fighting us. The fact is they werent talking about the alt-right a year ago, or two years ago. They now feel the need to talk about us so theyre objectively fighting us.
A little while later, Spencer was escorted out of the hall by conference security.
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War Between Conservatives And 'Alt Right' Dominates CPAC - Vocativ
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Newshub.
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Alt-right launches barbed personal attacks on Lily Allen - Newshub
But this really doesnt hold up. As the Swedish author Johan Norberg argued, Trumpites attacks on Sweden are for the most part fake news. Even despite the increase in gang turf wars, which are partly down to the arrival of migrants who do not find gainful employment, the homicide rate is almost exactly what it was a decade ago, says Norberg. The number of Swedes suffering physical assault fell by 0.7 per cent over the past decade. And general offences against the person are at approximately the same level as they were in 2005 almost a decade before the surge of refugees, as Norberg points out. And there arent more rapes in Sweden than in any other European nation: its just that Sweden does more to encourage women to report all sexual assaults.
So Sweden isnt hell. Rather, the alt-right-promoted image of Sweden as the oh-so-European country brought low by a mass influx of Muslims, the fairest, happiest Western nation now made horrible by Islam, speaks to their wrongheaded obsession with the foreign origins of the Wests moral and cultural malaise. From Trump to Le Pen and some others who pose as guardians of Western people and ideals, the idea seems to be that the modern rot in the West, the difficulties and self-doubt the West now faces, came from without. The threat to our republics and our political gains of sexual equality and cultural pluralism is an external one, apparently. Its the crimes and barbarism of Them that dilute and which might even destroy our enlightened values.
This is mental and moral displacement, a cowardly projection of the Wests own disarray on to outsiders. In truth it is thanks to the cult of relativism and the surge in identity politics and the political and intellectual elites turning their backs on the fundamental founding values of the modern West liberty, democracy and tolerance that our societies have become confused and tetchy and even conflictual.
Even to the extent that the arrival of migrants raises issues today as it undoubtedly does that is also in large part a result of this process, of the Wests long drawn-out loss of principle and even of the moral plot. It is the Wests refusal, or inability, to say what it is for today, to elevate its own values over anybody elses, that gives a green light to some migrant communities to indulge backward, reactionary thinking; to cling to values and attitudes that dont work over here, and which in fact crash up against the Western way of life. Western societies that are incapable of defining or defending their core values, and which then invite over millions of people from societies that have divergent values, are certainly asking for trouble, and unwittingly storing up tension.
But if fear is the driver of too many on the right, the supposedly leftish, liberal side in the Culture War is propelled by something worse: ignorance; a self-imposed, borderline Orwellian ignorance of reality and of the difficulties Western society now faces.
Their response to the #SwedenIncident controversy was in effect to say, Sweden is fine. In response to the rights narrow and ill-backed-up focus on crime, they could whip out official crime stats and say: Actually, it isnt a rape capital, or a murder capital, so stop lying. Lets all go on holiday to Malmo, commentators chirped. That their ridicule and snark was interrupted by a migrant riot in Stockholm, on Monday, was darkly ironic, and very telling about the chattering classs unwillingness to address cultural tensions.
There are problems in Sweden. Some very serious problems. Unemployment among Swedes is four per cent, but among migrants in Sweden it is 22 per cent no developed country has a higher differential, as Fraser Nelson points out. This creates tension, and crime, and even riots, as we saw this week.
And the problems arent only economic; theyre cultural, too. Take Malmo, defended to the hilt by commentators this week. I love Malmo, said New Statesman columnist Laurie Penny. She might, but many Jews do not. Anti-Semitic incidents have trebled in Malmo in recent years. A chapel that serves Jews has been repeatedly desecrated. A local rabbi says he is regularly spat on and abused. The Jewish community centre was bombed. A few years ago, the Telegraph reported that more than 30 Jewish families had left the city; more have fled since then. Some of this is down to far-right elements, but much of it is a result of the intolerance towards Jews of the vast numbers of new Muslim migrants in Malmo. Should we not talk about this? Perhaps it is Islamophobic to talk about anti-Semitism? When Western observers and politicians say everything in Sweden is cool, do they know what this sounds like to Jews in Malmo or working-class Stockholmers who see riots outside their windows?
This Orwellian memory-holing of facts, this airbrushing of inconvenient reality, is possibly the most dangerous trend in the Culture Wars today. It reveals the extent to which Europes welcoming of millions of Middle Eastern migrants, done above the heads of the demos, was largely an act of elite virtue-signalling; an ill-considered, little-discussed initiative designed more to boost the moral standing of Angela Merkel and other EU and Western European leaders than to alleviate the suffering of Syrians and Afghanis or to address economic and political needs in Western nations themselves. So Sweden, with its thousands and thousands of unemployed Muslim arrivals, has in essence become a refugee camp, a holding place for people from faraway warzones. Is this wise? Should it have been more thoroughly and democratically discussed first? Can we discuss it now? Not if you dont want to be called racist, it seems.
The most important thing for the Western political and media class is the rush of virtue that saving Syrians and others provides them with, and reality cannot be allowed to dilute that rush. Their virtue trumps truth; their moral and emotional needs take precedence over rational discussion of the social and cultural issues raised by such an unprecedented influx of migrants. They end up in the perversely Big Brother situation of saying Everything is okay even as cars are being burnt outside and Jews lock their doors against abuse. And they wonder why some people are drawn to the likes of Trump and Le Pen. The more the so-called progressive side in the Culture War evades reality, hides in the memory hole, and substitutes mawkish displays of virtue for serious debate about the state of Western society and its values, the more people will turn to brash politicians who claim to speak the truth on such issues.
Brendan ONeill is editor of spiked.
For permission to republish spiked articles, please contact Viv Regan.
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The Culture War over Sweden - Spiked
By Pat Buchanan Creators Syndicate
As the culture war is about irreconcilable beliefs about God and man, right and wrong, good and evil, and is at root a religious war, it will be with us so long as men are free to act on their beliefs.
Yet, given the divisions among us, deeper and wider than ever, it is an open question as to how, and how long, we will endure as one people.
After World War II, our judicial dictatorship began a purge of public manifestations of the "Christian nation" that Harry Truman said we were.
In 2009, Barack Obama retorted, "We do not consider ourselves to be a Christian nation." Secularism had been enthroned as our established religion, with only the most feeble of protests.
One can only imagine how Iranians or Afghans would deal with unelected judges moving to de-Islamicize their nations. Heads would roll, literally.
Which bring us to the first culture war skirmish of the Trump era.
Taking sides with Attorney General Jeff Sessions against Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, the president rescinded the Obama directive that gave transgender students the right to use the bathroom of their choice in public schools. President Donald Trump sent the issue back to the states and locales to decide.
While treated by the media and left as the civil rights cause of our era, the "bathroom debate" calls to mind Marx's observation, "History repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce."
Can anyone seriously contend that whether a 14-year-old boy, who thinks he is a girl, gets to use the girls' bathroom is a civil rights issue comparable to whether African-Americans get the right to vote?
Remarkably, there was vigorous dissent, from DeVos, to returning this issue to where it belongs, with state and local officials.
After yielding on the bathroom question, she put out a statement declaring that every school in America has a "moral obligation" to protect children from bullying, and directed her Office of Civil Rights to investigate all claims of bullying or harassment "against those who are most vulnerable in our schools."
Now, bullying is bad behavior, and it may be horrible behavior.
But when did a Republican Party that believes in states rights decide this was a responsibility of a bureaucracy Ronald Reagan promised but failed to shut down? When did the GOP become nanny-staters?
Bullying is something every kid in public, parochial or private school has witnessed by graduation. While unfortunate, it is part of growing up.
But what kind of society, what kind of people have we become when we start to rely on federal bureaucrats to stop big kids from harassing and beating up smaller or weaker kids?
While the bathroom debate is a skirmish in the culture war, Trump's solution send the issue back to the states and the people there to work it out may point the way to a truce assuming Americans still want a truce.
For Trump's solution is rooted in the principle of subsidiarity, first advanced in the 1891 encyclical Rerum Novarum by Pope Leo XIII that social problems are best resolved by the smallest unit of society with the ability to resolve them.
In brief, bullying is a problem for parents, teachers, principals to deal with, and local cops and the school district if it becomes widespread.
This idea is consistent with the Republican idea of federalism that the national government should undertake those duties securing the borders, fighting the nation's wars, creating a continental road and rail system that states alone cannot do.
Indeed, the nationalization of decision-making, the imposition of one-size-fits-all solutions to social problems, the court orders emanating from the ideology of judges to which there is no appeal that is behind the culture wars that may yet bring an end to this experiment in democratic rule.
Those factors are also among the primary causes of the fever of secessionism that is spreading all across Europe, and is now visible here.
Consider California. Democrats hold every state office, both Senate seats, two-thirds of both houses of the state legislature, 3 in 4 of the congressional seats. Hillary Clinton beat Trump 2-to-1 in California, with her margin in excess of 4 million votes.
Suddenly, California knows exactly how Marine Le Pen feels.
And as she wants to "Let France Be France," and leave the EU, as Brits did with Brexit, a movement is afoot in California to secede from the United States and form a separate nation.
California seceding sounds like a cause that could bring San Francisco Democrats into a grand alliance with Breitbart.
A new federalism a devolution of power and resources away from Washington and back to states, cities, towns and citizens, to let them resolve their problems their own way and according to their own principles may be the price of retention of the American Union.
Let California be California; let red state America be red state America.
Pat Buchanan (contact: LindaMuller@Buchanan.org) is an author, cable news political analyst and former presidential adviser and candidate. He writes for Creators Syndicate.
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Buchanan: Is secession a solution to cultural war? - Opinion - The ... - The Ledger