NY Times: Why the Far Right Wants to Be the New ‘Alternative’ Culture

As I alluded to in my League of the South speech when I talked about the effects of liberal democracy on organic cultures, this is essentially where I am at these days:

“An ‘‘alternative’’ culture, of course, can’t just consist of a cluster of media outlets. It must evoke a comprehensive way of being, a system of shared habits and sensibilities. There are plenty of right-wing media personalities who see this possibility in their movement and are fond of referring to their various brands of conservatism — whether simply Trump-supporting or far more extreme — as ‘‘the new punk rock’’ or the defining ‘‘counterculture’’ of the moment. These claims are both galling and true enough for their speakers’ purposes. Expressing racist ideas in offensive language, for example, or provoking audiences with winking fascist imagery, is, on some level, transgressive. (Both behaviors do have some precedent in the history of actual punk music.) And portraying yourself as the rebellious ‘‘alternative’’ to the people and systems that have rejected you is at least a precursor to familiar American expressions of cool.

To that end, there are now explicitly ideological online platforms vying to create a whole alternative — and ‘‘alternative’’ — infrastructure for practicing politics and culture online. Fringe-right media is extremely active on Twitter, but when its most offensive pundits and participants are banned there, they can simply regroup on Gab, the platform Breitbart recently described as a ‘‘free speech Twitter alternative.’’ Reddit, a semireluctant but significant host to right-wing activists, has a harder-right alternative in Voat, where users are free to post things that might get them banned elsewhere. Or there’s the politics community on 4chan, which has long been the de facto ‘‘alternative’’ to other online communities, serving as a lawless exile, a base for war with the rest of the web and, in recent years, a shockingly influential source of political memes — the closest thing the new right has to a native culture. …”

I’ve written at length here in the past about how discourse shapes thought. We are the ideas and values we consume and the social environment with which we interact.

I’m not interested in being “mainstream” anymore. It seems like every year the “mainstream” becomes further removed from my values. I don’t believe the laundry list of -isms and -phobias that have been created since the 20th century and propagated by the media have anything to do with morality. I’m not interested in “mainstream” news and entertainment these days. The television in our home is broadcasting the Russia Narrative on CNN, but it is only turned on for terrorist attacks.

I’m tuned into social media where I interact with all my disillusioned peers on Facebook and Twitter. I have no idea who anchors NBC, CBS and ABC. I seem to know less and less about what is going on in sports and popular culture. I quit watching Hollywood movies. I lost interest in virtually all television shows, but I do watch videos that interest me on YouTube. I don’t need to conform to the “mainstream” because I already have lots of real world friends, a family and thousands of online followers.

The SPLC is desperately trying to shutdown our ability to raise money by “no-platforming” us on PayPal, GoFundMe, Patreon, Disqus, etc. In the long run, we will just adapt and become more virtuous in the process by creating our own crowdfunding platforms like WeSearchr and Counter.fund. If we are “no-platformed” from social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter, where we increasingly dominate political discourse, we can always create our own platforms.

Eventually, I think our online counter-culture will grow to a critical mass and it will start spilling out into the real world. As we are already seeing, the ability of Antifas to engage in “no-platforming” through violent confrontations is rapidly being neutralized. Once the threat of physical force is eliminated, we will be able to “platform” and start organizing our disaffected supporters in any region we want, even in bastions of the Left like Berkeley, CA and Washington, DC. The inherent weaknesses of online culture will be washed away by more natural bonds as this scene shifts into the real world.

The “mainstream” political system is unresponsive to our needs. It doesn’t matter who we vote for these days. We seem to get the same policies. That doesn’t mean it is completely useless. Every troll has the power to vote and can wreck “mainstream” primaries and general elections. We can vote for outlandish candidates in order to disrupt “mainstream” culture and weaken the dominant taboos. This is what we did with Trump who in spite of all his failings still managed to inflict great damage on our enemies.

I think the most enjoyable activity is creating families through this alternative culture – matching men with women who share the same ideas, watching them get married and have children. I’ve seen it happen many times now. I’m already watching our children get older. I enjoy building our network across the South and connecting people who share our values and ideas in their local area. In doing so, I am consciously weakening their ties the “mainstream” and reorienting their lives toward our culture.

We will triumph over the “mainstream” by rejecting it and reorienting our lives toward each other. This means creating our own narratives, spreading our own discourse, cultivating and practicing our own values, building networks, becoming more organized, asserting our identity and values. We should build our own culture and make it attractive to people who are alienated from the dying “mainstream.” We grow stronger by finding those people, integrating them into our culture and articulating what we want to become, not by conforming to the latest fads of the “mainstream.”

The “mainstream” established its grip over our culture in the mid-20th century when mass media was in its infancy and there were no alternatives. Conservatives developed the habit of deferring to the dominant “mainstream.” There is no reason to submit to the “mainstream” anymore though or to remain oriented toward it. Few people who are rightwing these days trust the hostile “mainstream” media. It still cracks the whip but ordinary people are only still terrified by it out of habit.

Trump wouldn’t have been possible if the “mainstream” is still as strong as some people believe it to be. It isn’t nearly as strong as it was ten years ago.

About Hunter Wallace 12378 Articles
Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Occidental Dissent

13 Comments

  1. Hunter, here’s what I think about all of this. In 1860, the gap between what WE believe and what SOCIETY believed was almost non-existent. The basic problem between the North and the South was cognitive dissonance. In other words Yankees didn’t for the most part want Negro equality much less a Negro living near them, but would for economic reasons vote for the Red Republicans, as the promise of a tariff meant a strong Yankee economy. Even Fitzhugh would have recognized that the average Yankee didn’t oppose the South’s viewpoint, however by voting for Radicals because of the promise of economic gain, he was as worthless as any abolitionist. Cognitive dissonance. Southerners as a whole never had this problem of cognitive dissonance, except possibly on the issue of Jews.

    Even as late as 1914 Hunter we would look at the values of society and our values and see that they were fairly close, although not the same. Most people recognized basic Christian ethos, Negroes were to be made to be subordinate, etc. However after the Great War ended in 1918, things began to spiral slowly out of control. The Jazz Age was really the first time since the French Revolution Era that the church in America and traditional values were viciously attacked at all levels. Of course this petered out during the Depression, but with the rise of Hitler and the coming of the Frankfurt School to Columbia, everything switched into high gear first in academia but it took until FDR captured the courts by 1940 for the slow march through the institutions to begin, even then it took until the Beatles came to the USA in 1964 for our type of people to thoroughly LOSE. Even in the South THE PASSION WAS DEAD. The men of the so-called Greatest Generation were NOT their Daddies. Had a MLK style movement rose up in 1914 or 1930 even, they would have been shot down like dogs and the bodies stacked up.The fathers of the Greatest Generation didnt shy from violence. The Greatest Generation as a whole shied from mass violence. This is why outside of Alabama and Mississippi the entire era from 1948-1970 passed with basically a whimper. Sure there was Virginia closing her Public Schools and Little Rock 9 but aside from that NOTHING. Even the State of Tennessee integrated a school at gunpoint in 1956 no Yankees let that, just Scalawags. Well the Volunteer State was always a bit wierd, they tolerated a Communist training school in the state and before the Voting Rights Act about 60% of all Negroes in Tenn could vote.

    I would love you to writ eon this Hunter

  2. The jews regard all White goyim who are opposed to them as being “far right” and “Christian”, even though I am neither. So to all those Christian conservatives who don’t have a problem with the jews, they still have a problem with YOU.

  3. Spahnranch is 100% White. The Jews look at all Whites as Christians therefore they must be destroyed. The Jews believe the elimination of the White Race is necessary to bring into existence PLANET ISRAEL where they and their robots alone hold the planet

  4. Meeting women in this movement seems like an impossible dream for me, stuck here in ohio. Can’t even get any nationalist to meet in real life they are so terrified of the jews.

  5. ‘Eventually, I think our online counter-culture will grow to a critical mass and it will start spilling out into the real world. ‘

    ///////////////////////////////////////////////////

    Yes, we are the only alternative, and we are growing.

    It may take another 5 or 10 years, but, it is coming.

  6. @Bannon Dale…

    ‘Meeting women in this movement seems like an impossible dream for me, stuck here in ohio. Can’t even get any nationalist to meet in real life they are so terrified of the jews.’

    //////////////////////////////////////////////////

    My daughter is a Nationalist, and she met someone very much like yourself, online, at social media.

    He turned out to be a great guy and they are now happily married.

    Do the same.

  7. Good points Hunter, although I think we still need to keep our fingers on the left/msm pulse in order to gauge our enemies’ thought. I read the Guardian and Intercept, for instance, and avoid mainstream, “rightwing” media (Fox, Telegraph, etc.).

  8. I am also on email lists of leftwing poltroonicians and organizations like Obama’s OFA – see what garbage they are pumping at their supporters. Mostly lies of Mordor that fool only the simple-minded.

  9. Very well said. IMO it’s a liberation movement to liberate “our people” from the psycho babble of Ists, Isms and phobias from there we will figure it out

  10. Leftard ideas becoming ‘mainstream’ sort of coincided with the introduction of TV and the onslaught of pop music in the 50’s and especially the 60’s- when their messages came nicely packaged in a catchy dance tune and opinions on TV masquerading as ‘news’. Around this time, schools, churches and Universities also began pushing the Jew/Left agenda. Thats what we’ve been up against ever since. Online activity finally gives us a chance to reach out with an alternative narrative.
    I gave up on TV months ago. Tired of seeing my race and culture trashed like its worth less than nothing.

  11. “We can vote for outlandish candidates in order to disrupt “mainstream” culture and weaken the dominant taboos. This is what we did with Trump who in spite of all his failings still managed to inflict great damage on our enemies.”

    Trump is a wrench thrown into the gears of the machinery of state. He also kept the Clinton’s out of the Whitehouse. Both of em. He energised the Alt-Right. That’s where his value begins and ends.

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