Criticisms of the Alt-Right
"The 4CHAN Presidency: A Media Critique of the Alt-Right" – Andie Stewart (2017) [Left-Anarchist]
>> ''The alt-right is sensationalist trash that uses 4chan-style trolling to scare and divide the working class. It serves elite interests by channeling legitimate anger into racism and reaction instead of class struggle. It’s the perfect distraction: loud, ugly, and ultimately harmless to power.'
"The New American Right" – First Things (2017) – Sohrab Ahmari [Right-Postliberal Conservative]
>>'The alt-right offers a false solution to the failures of liberalism: instead of defending Western civilization through faith, family, and ordered liberty, it descends into pagan racialism and nihilism. It is not a defense of the West; it is a surrender to its enemies.' Almost in the same breath, they contend that taming Big Tech, imposing even the slightest financial burdens on supersized endowments, re-legislating a day of rest and worship, or mandating paid leave and other pro-family, pro-worker policies would violate limited-government commitments and flout hallowed market principles. Fighting the sexualization of children or reasserting decency in law, meanwhile, is said to erode free speech, personal and parental autonomy, and local control over public schools and libraries, and otherwise trample on fundamental rights.
"The Alt-Right Is Not Conservative" – The Atlantic (2016) – David Frum [Center-Right / Conservative]
>>'The alt-right is not conservatism. It is a rejection of the American constitutional tradition, a turn toward ethnic identity politics, and a flirtation with authoritarianism. True conservatism defends liberty, limited government, and individual rights — not white identity, anti-Semitism, or cult-like loyalty to a strongman.'
"Don’t Blame Social Media. Blame Capitalism." – Jacobin (2020) [Marxist]
>> 'Reducing growing social problems to new technologies is simply not accurate. The platforms are responding to the economic incentives of the capitalist system... 4chan and other chans are interwoven with the chaotic history of the internet, but their toxicity is a product of capitalist alienation, not just algorithms. The shift to far-right dominance is a symptom of the left's retreat from class politics.'
>>'Accelerationism is the latest symptom of the defeatist strategy of the post-’68 conjuncture: “Deleuzian Thatcherism.” It dresses up free-market zeal in radical theoretical language, celebrating capitalism’s destructiveness while offering no real resistance. The negation of negation is replaced by affirmation of the worst, leaving us fully exposed to capitalist tendencies without the means for intervention or resistance.'