The Rise of the Alt-Center

Slate ^ | DEC. 16 2016 3:39 PM | Sam Kriss

[pluvmantelo]

Why did establishment liberals fall in love with a deranged Twitter thread? It’s time for some game theory.

[pluvmantelo]

Article attacks a series of tweets that the author maintains birthed the 'russia stole the election' narrative. I'd not heard of this, but it's a good read (as long as you overlook the obligatory Trump bashing).

[pepsionice]

Once you admit that the alt-right exists, then it’s just a minor step to analyze this and say that the alt-left and alt-center exists. Then you realize....it’s the same group of guys....same games....same agendas...just different packing and labeling. New Coke, old Coke.

[Vendome]

Shove it up your “Alt-nether” region sideways and howl at the moon.

Now, they are creating surrogate organizations to support this phoney “Alt-Right” racist, misogynistic, neocon contrived invention.

There is no such thing as “Alt-...” except as a new and stupid meme to undercut their opposition synthetic crap.

[Nateman]

It wasn’t the Russians who decided to run a presidential campaign that offered people nothing but blackmail—“vote for us or Dangerous Donald wins.” The Russians didn’t come up with awful tin-eared catchphrases like “I’m with her” or “America is already great.” The Russians never ordered the DNC to run one of the most widely despised people in the country, simply because she thought it was her turn. The Democrats did that all by themselves.

That is the only part I found worth reading.

[PGalt]

Thanks for posting, Nateman. I’ll skip the rest.

Hillaryous Rotten Criminal

L

[a fool in paradise]

Once you admit that the alt-right exists, then it’s just a minor step to analyze this and say that the alt-left and alt-center exists.

I'm reminded of something that Ken Nordine said in a spoken word/poem thing he wrote originally for a housepaint company ad...

If there is an absolute white, and there is...
And if there is an absolute black, and there is...
Then there must also be an absolute grey...

[a fool in paradise]

Also, liberals try to brand anything "restrictive" of thought or action as "conservative". Thus Islamic theocratic fundamentalist societies are "conservative". Um, they are Islamist, that is the ideology, that is the political system. It is an all encompassing worldview that just happens to have a religious component.

Would the Left be so daring as to call the Soviet system of Communism "conservative" since it restricted the press, frowned on sexual liberty, and opposed rock and roll?

Totalitarian is not a synonym of conservative.

Also, if liberals are so "liberal" in their tolerance for things, why do they oppose gun ownership so much?

[a fool in paradise]

They don’t want to call people “Trump Democrats” (people still remember the plantation leaving Reagan Democrats).

I don’t find the so-called “alt-right” to be on the “right” at all, spectrum-wise. Some allegedly have called for a return to monarchy. Others I see as Libertarian (or Reform Party). Others are lone-wolf/isolationists who don’t want to be associated with any political party/ideology. But I don’t find strong voices for “Conservatism” among them.

I don’t find FR to be an ‘alt-right’ site unless that is meant as a concession that McCain-Bush-Rockefeller et al “own” the title to “the recognized Right”. Would the same people using the term “alt-right” in the MSM cast Rush Limbaugh as “alt-right” in effort to marginalize him (and others who’ve been on talk radio for decades)?

Trump’s victory came from a number of supporters with different ideologies, many on “the right” but also some who think the Democrat Party has abandoned Americanism and the principles of the country. It has, “New Democrats” took over their party in 1968 and control the desks of the media and academia these days. It has taken a hard left turn. And for some it still has not gone Left enough...

I wouldn’t put those supporters “on the right” anymore than I’d call CNN a moderate news network for the simple reason that CNN International is more Leftist in coverage...

[motor_racer]

The entire “Alt-” meme seems to refer to those who get their news from sources other than the MSM. In other words, people who have rejected the same pabulum fed us by those so-called “news outlets”, and have decided to seek the truth for themselves. To the MSM, people who refuse to have their thinking and opinions dictated to them represent a subversive force to be feared, Right, Center, or Left.