Are the Kids Al(t) Right?

Claremont Review of Books ^ | 08/14/2019 | Michael Anton

[TexasKamaAina]

The reason this book is important is because it speaks directly to a youthful dissatisfaction (especially among white males) with equality as propagandized and imposed in our day: a hectoring, vindictive, resentful, levelling, hypocritical equality that punishes excellence and publicly denies all difference while at the same time elevating and enriching a decadent, incompetent, and corrupt elite...

And I have more bad news for my fellow conservatives: the talented kids who’ve found this book aren’t listening to us. It doesn’t matter whether they aren’t listening because they found the book, or they found the book because they aren’t listening. The fact remains that all our earnest explanations of the true meaning of equality, how it comports with nature, how it can answer their dissatisfactions, and how it’s been corrupted—none of that has made a dent.

[TexasKamaAina]

This is a review of the book Bronze Age Mindset, a quirky self-published manuscript full of philosophical references that has managed to make Amazon's top 150 based on its appeal to young men.

[Publius]

Ping. Fascinating article.

[fishtank]

Antifa is the Ctrl-Left

[Mrs. Don-o]

for later

[Deaf Smith]

The strange book review gives the impression that it is a Coffee Table book, to be displayed for visitors to see that the home owners are Hip.

[OrangeHoof]

The opposite of “Alt-Right” is alt-wrong.

[colorado tanker]

Never heard of this. Fascinating insight into what’s going on with young men.

[Billthedrill]

Many thanks for the ping. Fascinating article. Nietzsche, Machiavelli, Aristotle - sounds like those long discussions you and I had whilst writing a Certain Book a decade ago, doesn't it?

I have the usual complaint about this particular interpretation of "equality" and the approach of the Founders to expressing it - clearly the latter were referring to equality before God and with respect to political rights that they were endowed with at birth: "among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness" to be precise. It wasn't an exhaustive list, indeed, it was intended not to be, nor did it imply that "all men" could run a four minute mile or construct a bridge. The modern Left appears to have taken this to its reductio - that all men must be created alike, and not by any Creator, but by the State. This, at least it the ideological claim - in practice they have behaved precisely the opposite, with a Party aristocracy that the Athenians would have found perfectly recognizable.

It is that latter point toward which that the amorphous movement inadequately termed the Alt-Right is reacting, not so much "I shall not be ruled" as "I shall not be ruled by you". To which the Left replies, "oh, yes, you will," and we're off again into Machiavellian territory. That is not really the stuff of any philosophical revolution but a physical one.

Nietzsche, Aristotle, Machiavelli - and Rand. Those were her philosophical foundations, after all: Man and Superman being the first book young Alysa Rosenbaum purchased upon her arrival in New York, the three books and at least two chapters within Atlas Shrugged directly quoting Aristotle, the corpus peppered with considerations of morality in an amoral world. Time, I think, for a reread.

I'm really not certain, though, that any serious discussion of the Alt-Right can proceed in the absence of what appears to be an unattainable definition. It seems to me to be essentially reactionary in one sense: it is a rekindling of the fierce desire for freedom of thought in an age captured by a grotesque desire for institutional conformity in the interest of totalitarian control. The latter isn't healthy either for society or for the individuals within it. Just my $0.02.

[Farcesensitive]

Ping