The last few weeks I have been following what has turned out to be a bit of a storm in a tea cup amongst the alternative right. This post in particular prompted this but it isn’t the first time it has come up.
I’ve been following the alternative right for years and have been more or less sympathetic to it most of that time. I’ve been reading Vox Day’s blog since roughly 2008 and I was reading Richard Spencer’s now defunct site (which now links to Radix) from 2010 until it was closed and regularly listened to the podcasts. I was also a regular at Taki Mag, Steve Sailer, John Derbyshire and other sites as well as the more mainstream conservative websites and personalities which I gradually lost interest in at the same time. I was only partially familiar with /pol/ and what might be called the more extreme side of the Alternative Right until just a few years ago.
I’ve gone through what many instinctively right-wing men have over the same time frame – on an ideological trip through mainstream conservatism to libertarianism, paleo-conservatism and I’ve gradually come to a more right-wing nationalism which I wrote about quite recently. Along with this I’ve also come to be more supportive of a more tribal outlook on humanity if only because it is reality. Politics is downstream of culture, race is real, institutions and dirt aren’t magic etc.
What does this have to do with Hitler?
Well, when I first came across /pol/ and there use of Nazi imagery, I found it hilarious. I still do. I love the creativity with which they use it and the way they fuse it with anime to make it look cute. I love the happy merchant and Pepe too. I’ve been in stitches laughing at mainstream figures taking this seriously and the way trolls on Twitter and elsewhere photoshop prominent figures in gas chambers and other horrible situations.To most people in society and certainly most people I know, this may be quite shocking. I don’t laugh because I approve though.
As Milo (not AltRight I know) has rightly said, when you make something beyond discussion in polite society then it will naturally become the funniest thing in the world to mock. As is well known, most people have an irritating habit of comparing anything they find politically or socially unpalatable to national socialism and Hitler. Hitler, Hitler and the Hitler guy. It’s just like Hitler and white supreeeemists. Hitler was elected democratically just like [politician I don’t like]. It’s almost nauseating and if I still watched TV, I would groan or change the channel as soon as one of these simplistic and ridiculous comparisons was brought up.
So like many political dissidents I do find the use of Nazi imagery and the general idea of embracing the label not only fun, but also a very clever and effective way to weaken the opposition. Many of the trolls are delighted by comparisons and enjoy any media coverage and attention even if it is negative. I think at some level the media must understand this and I want to credit the ADL with enough intelligent people amongst them to know that making Pepe an official hate symbol was a hilarious own-goal. I’m not sure though.
With all that said (and feel free to take it out of context), I don’t like Hitler or Nazis. I can say that while accepting that the official history is often overblown, exaggerated and that through both omission and obfuscation the mainstream narrative of World War 2 has major problems. I think most people who make heavy use of Nazi imagery feel the same way. They don’t really want to try that again except maybe the uniforms. But some do and while I won’t attack to my right, I will express disbelief that people can actually think of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis as anything but a disaster for Western Civilisation. I can state that while maintaining that there were good things about National Socialism but I could never embrace its core. And if I could, I still don’t see how anyone could see Hitler as anything but a lunatic in the end, however well he may have started.
With regard to the Jews or the (((Jews))), I am rather ambivalent. I do notice a disproportionate number in finance and at the head of cultural institutions. I also notice their general enthusiasm for globalism and multiculturalism. I am bothered that questioning this or noticing this gets people into career-ending trouble. I also don’t understand why the Holocaust, which I’m told is as established a fact of history as can possibly be, is not legally allowed to be questioned in many countries. If the former is the case, why is the latter necessary? I’ve never been given an adequate answer. None of this is enough to push me in the direction many on the alt right have gone and are going though.
So I’d rather be associated with sites like The Daily Stormer than anything on the globalist left. I’ll also read and link to their work without hesitation. I imagine the differences I have will come to a head one day but that should be a long way off. I think everyone on the AltRight needs to have this attitude and be accepting of everyone who more or less share some common goals. Even the people who aren’t attacking us should be treated as allies.