So there's a stampede of people trying to disavow and disassociate from the alt-right because Richard Spencer has gone full-Nazi. The speech is out there. It's pretty lame. Not a fan myself. But hey, works for him. I'm sure he's having the time of his life. Getting laid like a champ, if he's into ladies. I'm happy he's having fun, instead of blue-haired fat Hillary supporters having fun.
Jim has done an eloquent argument for having no enemies to the right. I have little to add to it. What I will do is talk what I know about, language. See, the alt-right isn't a thing. "Alt-right" is a word. A word with no clear owners, no set definition. I actually recall it starting with Spencer himself; then it got a big bigger, then Hillary made it famous in her speech, with even Bannon putting it to good use. I myself too jumped into the bandwagon, if only to make a linguistic point.
But the thing with words is that you don't get to control what their usage. People are getting out because they're afraid that "alt-right" will be used as a buzzword for Sieg-Heil-ing Nazis, and they don't want to be associated with that. That's a reasonable point. Leftists in the USA call themselves "liberal", because the word "socialist" became associated with bad things. That never happened in Europe where there are proud Socialist Parties in almost every country. Perception matters, language usage is mostly a function of habit, if the mainstream press succeeds in associating the word "alt-right" with Spencer's LARPers through sheer repetition, the thing will stick.
So people may need a new name. But don't forget that you won't get to control the new name. Neoreaction was a cool name until Eternal September happened and it soon enough became associated with depressed medicated millennial monarchists. Nick Land has had more success using his fame and charisma to basically own the "NRx" brand. He gets to define it; good for him. Ownership is good. There's a reason why intellectual trends always happened on a personal master-apprentice basis. The extreme left is always splintering into different parties, all named by some variant of Revolutionary Trotskist Democratic Action Communism or whatever.
We all need a name. "Alt-right" was a good name, and it was useful as a marker for the non-cucked right during this election. But of course a name without an owner is always going to cause the same problem: somebody stupid and vain is going to use it to do something that you'd rather they didn't do. There's millions of people in this earth; you just can't stop this. Somebody will do something stupid sooner or later.
You have two options: you can not care; ignore the criticisms of your enemy, be overtly accepting of everybody to your right. Or if you do care; then you need to get a new name and own it. You need authority; a school, a school master, and a chain of command so that you can ensure that nobody does anything stupid.
And by the way some people are saying that Nazis aren't "to our right". But of course there are. You see, humans are pretty smart. There's hidden wisdom in the categorization of "extreme left" and "extreme right". Sure, the actual policy proposals of communists and Nazis (national socialists!) are fairly similar. But that's not the point. Politics isn't about policy. If you've learned anything in this blog is that people's overt statements are just signaling positions in a personal game of status struggle.
What "extreme" means is willing to use extreme means to gain status. The extreme left is batshit communist, feminist lesbians who argue for the extermination of men, people who are willing to use violence to get on top. The extreme right is batshit Nazi, people claiming the white race is genetically superior to all, that white men are all by birth natural conquerors and crusaders, willing to argue for the extermination of other races, people who are willing to use violence to get on top.
Character is inborn; your politics are just an avatar of that. Some people want status very very badly. Some don't care that much. Your politics generally is a function of that and your particular identity, which drives to the camp which you find more likely to bring you status. As of me; I wouldn't mind that Richard Spencer and his folk gained some status; I sure prefer it to blue haired lesbians and black gay men gaining status. So I won't have enemies to my right. Just don't ask me if I agree on what they say. I don't think the question even makes sense.
By the way, you can find me on Gab:
