I’d like to share some of what I learned in my bout with the alt right last night. I would like to avoid glamourizing it with too much screenshot evidence. I may also use direct quotes so if strongly offensive, foul, and vulgar language is bad for you, please do not read this.
I have insisted and will continue to insist that the issue at hand is better discussed as white supremacy, not racism. More specifically, anti-Black white supremacy. Some object saying that this language is too strong. I disagree in principle and also in practice because...
...along with the various white supremacist organizations we know of like the KKK, there are many others who dwell in the alt-right internet zone of lost boys with anonymous accounts, speaking in their own jargon and attacking anti racists.
Those people found me acct last night, specifically my tweet denouncing the priest who referred to BLM as maggots. They began praising this priest and when I rebuked them, they came out and told me a number of vile things like (again, do not read if you are sensitive)...
...“suck my dick” “my white dick,” cuck, fag, and more vile things. One of them continued into this morning moving into overt antisemitism even though I am not Jewish, but seems worth revealing nonetheless: 
There was also a great deal of joking about “Viva Franco” and other fascist signals. Then there were a number of pepe memes and other memes I do not understand and tons of their jargon mixed with anime avatars and anonymous accounts.
One thing that got under their skin right away was any mention of the cowardice of using anonymous accounts and they accused me of trying to dox them and even went on to lecture me on the merits of anonymity, joining themselves to all sorts of intellectual credibility.
They were very aware of the range of opinion in Catholic online media. This was alarming but something I already knew from my previous bout with them when I negatively reviewed Jordan Peterson and they at first cheered for me and then attacked me for being Mexican.
These are lost boys on the internet with papal flag emojis who see themselves to the right of normies (to them) like Coffin, Gordon, Fradd, and Horn (all named), loving on Catholic fascism; this is the far fringe but real extreme edge of the right wing US Catholic Church.
It is on the one hand unfair to lump them in too quickly with the mainstream conservative US Catholic Church, but it is also wildly irresponsible to not see their presence as a shadow that is cast over the mainstream US conservatives.
This is where things get a bit interesting. Their fringe swings out into a form of political literacy able to distinguish a tankie commie from a more moderate socialist. They are opposed to both and even to capitalism, favouring fascism, but they do *read* through a wide lens.
In this way, with all their vile yet garden variety D&D-sounding jargon (the most active was named Knight Errant), they are not passively drinking from US Catholic conservative outlets so much as curating it into their own bitter white supremacy and ethnonationalism.
What this means is that US Catholic conservative media and culture has its active influence of a gently whitewashed faith that disenfranchises people of colour *AND* it also is a source of the raw material from which active white supremacy is fostering amongst the alt right.
For example, when I tweeted this about Rod Dreher in addition to critically reviewing his book he went ballistic, but last night shows I was quite on the mark:
When we push the needle from mainstream US Catholic conservative into extreme US Catholic conservatives like Marshall, Voris, Gordon bros, and others, the Austin Ruses of the world and their ilk wee see the bridge from the mainstream to the extreme with the alt right standing by.
This is the full ideological spectrum of US Catholic conservatism and I know there are many critical of it who, like me in years past, thought there was a place for them on the other side of it. More and more, I think there is no place for anyone with a sound conscience there.
From full blown, loud and proud fascism and white supremacy to quiet loud Trumpism to quiet and gentle and devotional civility politics, here see the metabolism of US Catholic conservative media which preys on people of colour and especially Black and Jewish people.
Here is the thing, we must still be careful to not paint this as a monolithic picture. And, at the same time, where does a reasonable account of moral proportion enter? Where does remote cooperation begin? If one thinks they can simply rest assured of an easy moral calculus...
...my sense is that one is being naive. Is there still room for reformist efforts within? Absolutely. But those reforms will need a laser focus on this issue of white supremacy, both of the passive sort I named yesterday and this more aggressive kind I am naming today.
The history of this spectrum is, I think, relatively recent and enabled by digital anonymity. So I do not think it is some grand force; I am not a Manichaean. Even these lost boys deserve to have someone who can reach them and help them grow up and repent.
But this is a part of what it means to rethink and examine one’s conscience regarding race and white supremacy. We have to not only think about being the people and the person, we also need to think of the *structures* that contain us and that we use and shape in turn.
That structural approach will certainly change the way I work and interact in the church. I think that change will, someday, create the conditions where the Guadalupe Radio Network would never be able to do what they did to Gloria Purvis and so much more.
The rise of anitsemitism, for instance, is something we were likewise warned about and, to my own shame, many of us were affected but did not respond they we could have. There is much to be remorseful about here and recall and repent of.
I do not think individual actors often think of how their words or deed, especially online, contribute to a wider metabolism and spectrum, and of course we do not want to wash out human agency with a mere mechanical idea of a leviathan. But we will need to adjust our concept...
...of media and what we do here to be able to responsibility consider the “range of affects” it produces. As an example take my very liberal non-blocking policy. I thought this was the most honest and transparent way to be online. I was wrong. Let me explain.
I was only thinking about myself: my reputation and ability to handle trolls and what have you. I wasn’t thinking of who has to read this and be here. I wasn’t thinking of who may not want to have the alt-right one click away from jumping into their screen. I was irresponsible.
I will need to change this manner of acting and the change will in some ways be a credit to what the alt-right taught about this wide range of affects and where I belong in it. Because let’s be honest and clear: I am very much a part of US Catholic conservative culture.
Sure, I may be a critic, but this is wheat Arendt calls my “unwilled inheritance.” I was born and raised into this. it has changed a great deal, but I can only track and understand it because I am a part of it. Does that make me a white supremacist? No, I hope not.
But it does make me prone to acting just a bit too fresh and just a bit to cavalier about certain issues, it forms many of my defensive reactions, and also gives me many things I think are great, like the education it gave me to become an academic. It is a mixed bag, to be sure.
I wish I could say that we just have to pack our bags and leave but as all Catholics know, we are in a bit of Hotel California situation, we can check out but we can never leave, so what do we do? First, I think the “get out” impulse is healthy. Second, I don’t think we should.
We can work to open up the range of affects and especially reach out to the Catholics outside of it to help stretch it out. But we will also need to directly, fiercely, and unequivocally attack the moral disgraces and be less cavalier about moral neutrality or apolitical stances.
As you can see here, I am conflicted. I am struggling between at least two impulses: run and stay. Allowing the therapy of language (yes, even on twitter dot com) to work on me, the latter seems the clear winner, but ONLY with the moral intuition of the first to chasten it.
So, please, do not take this as me saying “everything is fine here, just ran into same virulent xenophobia last night” nor as saying that everything their shadow touches turns to stone. Obviously they knew more about me, beyond my tweet of interest than I was comfortable with.
But there are some clear take always, I hope. First, white supremacy in the US Catholic Church is NOT only a passive injury through inverted axioms and historical harms, it is also an active community on the fringe but also clearly invested and literate in this religious culture.
Second, we all need to change based on the truth of the first and especially what I have called its range of affects within this spectrum and metabolism of communication. I need to be more willing to think of the flourishing of others without, I hope, becoming an autocrat.
This second point adds the to meaning of Black Lives Matter, especially its more poignant expression since the temporary suspension of Gloria Purvis. Yes, we need the direct voices and activism. Sure. But we also need to UNDERSTAND better what we are doing and adapt accordingly.
Without the pause needed for this move to understanding, we may well win the political struggle but come out none the better for it in the long run. Freire called this praxis, a term Marx took from Hegel which Hegel, in turn, took from theology, Lutheran and Catholic theology.
The point that praxis makes is to pull us from both over and under determination. From too much and from too little. From the past through the present into the future and back again. Ever ancient, ever new. On time and late. Yes, I am an Augustinian, can’t you tell?
So, please, take this as less of a call to political action as a call to intellectual contemplation. My encounter with the alt-right jolted me out of my dogmatic slumber and reminded me of the need to understand and I am what i have shared itself requires more thought and prayer.
On that note, I will end. After all, perhaps the most radical form of praxis is prayer. Pray for me, pray for the Church, pray for everyone. We will need to act, too, but not ONLY. God bless.
