The International Alt-Right

Fascism for the 21st Century?

Patrik Hermansson, David Lawrence, Joe Mulhall, Simon Murdoch

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9780429627095
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Fascism & Totalitarianism
• Index: Politics & International Relations

The alt-right has been the most important new far-right grouping to appear in decades. Written by researchers from the anti-racist advocacy group HOPE not hate, this book provides a thorough, ground-breaking, and accessible overview of this dangerous new phenomenon. It explains where the alt-right came from, its history so far, what it believes, how it organises and operates, and its future trajectory.

The alt-right is a genuinely transnational movement and this book is unique in offering a truly international perspective, outlining the influence of European ideas and movements as well as the alt-right's development in, and attitude towards, countries as diverse as Japan, India, and Russia. It examines the ideological tributaries that coagulated to form the alt-right, such as white supremacy, the neo-reactionary blogosphere, the European New Right, the anti-feminist manosphere, the libertarian movement, and digital hate culture exemplified by offensive memes and trolling. The authors explore the alt-right's views on gender, sexuality and masculinity, antisemitism and the Holocaust, race and IQ, globalisation and culture as well as its use of violence. The alt-right is a thoroughly modern far-right movement that uses cutting edge technology and this book reveals how they use cryptocurrencies, encryption, hacking, "meme warfare", social media, and the dark web.

This will be essential reading for scholars and activists alike with an interest in race relations, fascism, extremism, and social movements.

PART I

Ideas and beliefs

1

The European roots of alt-right ideology

A watershed moment in the evolution of the alt-right came in Stockholm, in February 2017, at the Identitarian Ideas IX conference, when a new organisation simply called the AltRight Corporation was announced. This new venture saw the amalgamation of three of the movement’s leading organisations: publisher Arktos Media Ltd led by Daniel Friberg, the web media group Red Ice Creations founded by Henrik Palmgren and the National Policy Institute (NPI) think tank led by Richard Spencer. The new group had a single board and an office in central Washington DC. For a period this became the hub and face of the movement, but in the seismic fallout of the Charlottesville Unite the Right Rally it has become dormant.

However, at the event, uncovered at the time by HOPE not hate and EXPO magazine,¹ Jason Jorjani, a co-founder of the AltRight Corporation, argued that the new organisation:

represents nothing less than the integration of all of the […] European right-wing schools of thought [the New Right (Nouvelle Droite), Archeofuturism, Identitarianism, and Aleksandr Dugin’s Fourth Political Theory] with the North American vanguard movement most responsible for the electoral victory of President Trump.²

Despite the grossly exaggerated claims of their impact on Trump’s victory, Jorjani’s comments illustrated the extent of the convergence between the American far right and the European New Right (as well as its noted philosophical tributaries). Indeed, in recent years numerous European New Right (ENR) groups began to adopt the term “alt-right.” At the same time, notable figures in this world, for instance, John Morgan, formerly of Arktos Media and now of US alt-right publisher Counter-Currents Publishing, have argued that these strands are “different in a number of fundamental ways” and that they are better understood as “two distinct, if interrelated, phenomena.”³ What is certain is that the international movement known as the alt-right – generally viewed by many as an American movement – in fact owes a huge debt to European far-right thought.

The long view: from Evola to the New Right

As the alt-right is a conglomeration of a number of pre-existing movements, it is no surprise that aspects of its ideology are rooted in longstanding far-right notions with origins outside of the US. The broad Alternative Right’s rejection of liberal values, especially, can be traced back at least as far as the work of the Italian fascist philosopher Julius Evola who advocated anti-democratic, anti-egalitarian, anti-liberal, and radical Traditionalist ideas.⁴ Traditionalism is a worldview that in essence believes equality and progress are illusions, and it has long been popular with the post-war far right. To the amazement of many, the now-sacked Trump aide and former Breitbart News Network executive Steve Bannon mentioned Evola in his now famous speech to a Vatican conference in 2014.⁵ Speaking to The New York Times, Mark Sedgwick, a leading scholar of Traditionalism, rightly stated that “The fact that Bannon even knows [of] Evola is significant.”⁶ Another fan of Evola is the above-mentioned leading American alt-right figure, Richard Spencer. Spencer has remarked that “it means a tremendous amount” that Bannon knows of Evola and Traditionalist thinkers, adding: “He at least recognizes that they are there. That is a stark difference to the American conservative movement that either was ignorant of them or attempted to suppress them.”⁷

Bannon’s knowledge of Evola and Traditionalism is emblematic of the influence similar ideas have gained in recent years on both sides of the Atlantic. They are, especially in terms of their critique of modern society, the philosophical underpinning of the current offensive against liberal democracy. In addition to Evola and Traditionalism, European pessimistic philosophers have also influenced sections of the alt-right. As an article published on the site of the Russian think tank Katehon, later republished on Altright.com, put it: “Of particular interest [is the] Spenglerian theory of civilizational decline, Nietzschean emphasis on aesthetics and temporal cycles of eternal return, and [the] Schmittian concept of the Political.”⁸ Oswald Spengler’s 1918 magnum opus Der Untergang des Abendlandes [The Decline of the West] has long influenced far-right and fascist thought. Spengler rejected unilinear theories of historical development as ahistorical and Eurocentric, favouring instead a cyclical understanding of history with the rise and fall of civilisations.⁹ The great cultures were to be seen as organic and progressing through prescribed stages, accomplishing “majestic wave-cycles.” They would “appear suddenly, swell in splendid lines, flatten again and vanish, and the face of the waters [would be] once more a sleeping waste.”¹⁰ In another metaphor, Spengler claimed each civilisation “passes through the age-phases of the individual man. Each has its childhood, youth, manhood and old age.”¹¹ It was Spengler’s analysis that Europe was well past its prime, and like Evola’s Traditionalism, his ideas found advocates in the alt-right. As far back as 2012, Richard Spencer produced a podcast with the late British fascist, Jonathan Bowden, to discuss Spengler’s relevance to the contemporary far right.¹²

As noted above, another important influence on alt-right ideology is the work of the German philosopher, political theorist and Nazi Party member Carl Schmitt. Schmitt’s Friend-Enemy Thesis, as explained in his 1927 work Der Begriff des Politischen [The Concept of the Political], declared that, “The specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is the distinction between Freund und Feind [friend and enemy].”¹³ For Schmitt, even in the abstract, the political is not immutable, but rather is “the most intense and extreme antagonism.” Hence, “every concrete antagonism becomes that much more political the closer it approaches the most extreme point, that of the friend-enemy grouping.”¹⁴ The state’s role then is the defence of friends against enemies. Thus, the identification of the enemy is critical as it dictates the actions to be taken by the state. Tellingly, Richard Spencer’s entrance essay for the prestigious private Duke University was on Carl Schmitt. An article on the alt-right website Dissident Right places great significance on the role of Schmitt’s ideas for the movement, when it explains how they are “considerably instructive in understanding the weakness of the Conservative mindset, as well as in coming to important conclusions that should be used to ground the ethnonationalist Alt-Right.” It concludes, “When we begin to see politics the way Schmitt saw it, we understand both who we are as members of the Alt-Right (specifically, why we exist as a political unity) and why conservatism will perish.”¹⁵ What becomes clear when exploring the philosophical roots of the alt-right is that its ideas are born from the same ideological seedbed as countless far-right and fascist movements before them. The thinkers venerated by the movement, be it Evola, Nietzsche, Schmitt, Spengler or Heidegger, have long been important for fascists, both pre- and post-World War II, adding credence to the notion that when it comes to its ideas, the alt-right is a rebranding rather than a fundamentally new phenomenon with views distinct from other fascistic movements.

The New Right

While the ideas of the alt-right can be traced back to Traditionalists and older fascists like Evola, it is the philosophies of the comparatively more recent European New Right (ENR) that have been most influential in the ideological formation of the alt-right.

The ENR is, broadly speaking, a current of thought derived from the ideas of the French far-right philosopher Alain de Benoist and his GRECE organisation (Groupement de recherche et d’études pour la civilisation européenne) [Research and Study Group for European Civilisation] founded in France in 1968, along with subsequent affiliated strains of thought/activism such as Guillaume Faye’s Archeofuturism, Alexander Dugin’s Eurasianism and the European Identitarian movement. Its leading figure is de Benoist who set out to create a right-wing movement that would be both modern and intellectual, operating via articulate publications and discussion groups.¹⁶

The ENR claims it is an alternative to social democracy and conservative liberalism, a “laboratory of ideas,” a “school of thought,” a “community of spirit,” and a “space of resistance against the system,” that has transcended the existing political left–right schema.¹⁷ Such claims can be dismissed as scholars have shown clearly the movement’s direct ideological parallels with classical fascism and the historical continuity from then, through post-war fascism, until the emergence of the Nouvelle Droite in 1968.¹⁸ In reality, the ENR sits comfortably within the far right, and its ideas are best understood as a quest for the recovery of a mythical “European Identity.” It fundamentally rejects the ideals of the 18th century Enlightenment and of Christianity and fights back against “materialist” ideologies from liberalism to socialism. In their place, the ENR advocates a pan-European nationalism and a wider world of ethnically homogeneous communities.

GRECE came to be known as the French New Right (Nouvelle Droite) and, in 1999, de Benoist and Charles Champetier published a synthesis of their first 30 years of thought as a Manifesto for a European Renaissance. In it the duo talk of the “Crisis of Modernity” and examine “the main enemy,” liberalism. In essence, de Benoist and Champetier argue that globalisation, liberalism, and hypermodernism have led to the “eradication of collective identities and traditional cultures”¹⁹ and bemoan the “unprecedented menace of homogenisation”²⁰ wrought by immigration, which – in blanket fashion – is held to be an “undeniably negative phenomenon.”²¹ In place of liberal multiculturalism, they call for ethnopluralism: the idea that different ethnic groups are equal but ought to live in separation from one another. This is coupled with the “right to difference”: “The right of every people, ethnos, culture, nation, group, or community to live according to its own norms and traditions, irrespective of ideology or globalist homogenization.”²² Furthermore, this right carries ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• PART I: Ideas and beliefs
• PART II: Culture and activism
• PART III: Gender and sexuality
• PART IV: International
• Conclusion
• Index