1/I found a blog post that encapsulates the alt-right/Trumpist worldview more perfectly than anything else I've ever read, and I'd like to write a thread about it:
freenortherner.com/2016/03/18/the…
Warning: The post contains plenty of racism and sexism, etc.
freenortherner.com/2016/03/18/the…
Warning: The post contains plenty of racism and sexism, etc.
2/The post, by an alt-right blogger calling himself "Free Northerner", is a response to a Kevin Williamson NRO piece excoriating the moral turpitude of the white working class: nationalreview.com/2016/03/donald…
3/Free Northerner's response combines economics, IQ, race, sexual mores, urbanism, and cultural change into a seemingly coherent story about the United States over the past 40 years.
An integrated framework for the Trumpist worldview.
An integrated framework for the Trumpist worldview.
4/The basic idea here is that U.S. economic policy created an economy where only smart people - which the blogger identifies with WASPS and Jews - can succeed, and everyone with a low or middle IQ is left to languish. 
5/He calls the modern economic system "soulless" and "inhuman". The smart people who succeed in it, he calls "sociopaths".
He denigrates smart urbanites and valorizes average people who stay in their hometowns.
He denigrates smart urbanites and valorizes average people who stay in their hometowns.
6/But he isn't just talking economics - he's also talking about culture.
He believes that smart people can be healthy without cultural institutions to tell them how to live, but that less-smart people need someone to guide them.
He believes that smart people can be healthy without cultural institutions to tell them how to live, but that less-smart people need someone to guide them.
7/"Free Northerner" sees the sexual revolution and feminism as attacks on the traditional morality that (he thinks) was necessary for lower-IQ people to thrive.
He also sees black people and immigrants as weapons used by white elites to destroy traditionalist white communities.
He also sees black people and immigrants as weapons used by white elites to destroy traditionalist white communities.
8/At every step, he valorizes "rootedness", "blue-collar" people, the "working class", and "family-men".
There is the distinct sense that he's describing negative outcomes that he has seen happen to his working-class white relatives back home.
There is the distinct sense that he's describing negative outcomes that he has seen happen to his working-class white relatives back home.
9/What can we learn from this post? What's between the lines here?
One thing to note is that Free Northerner's anger is directed not at all elites, but at specifically WHITE groups that he perceives as being elite - WASPS and Jews. Why?
One thing to note is that Free Northerner's anger is directed not at all elites, but at specifically WHITE groups that he perceives as being elite - WASPS and Jews. Why?
10/It seems to me that Free Northerner is saying to white elites: "You abandoned us. You left my family to rot. You're white, and my family is white too, so you should have done everything you could to help them."
It's a sense of racial solidarity betrayed.
It's a sense of racial solidarity betrayed.
11/He thinks the volk back home are too dumb to take care of themselves. They needed an elite (white) hand to guide them, in exchange for respect and fealty.
It's an inherently racial-feudal worldview. Wise white masters should rule over dutiful white peasants, etc.
It's an inherently racial-feudal worldview. Wise white masters should rule over dutiful white peasants, etc.
12/He yearns for a (semi-mythical) past where wise aristocrats ruled over dutiful peasants, women were homemakers and men breadwinners, and religious institutions wisely guided less-intelligent people for their own good.
It sounds very old-European to me.
It sounds very old-European to me.
13/What's also interesting - if perhaps not surprising - is that he places all the blame on elites and their policy choices.
He doesn't even consider technology - cars, TVs, the internet - as causes of cultural liberalization and changing sexual mores and gender roles.
He doesn't even consider technology - cars, TVs, the internet - as causes of cultural liberalization and changing sexual mores and gender roles.
14/The whole rant, and the whole worldview, is, of course, magical thinking.
No developed country in the world has avoided sexual liberalization, changing gender roles, etc. Or, for that matter, pretax inequality (some countries just redistribute a lot).
No developed country in the world has avoided sexual liberalization, changing gender roles, etc. Or, for that matter, pretax inequality (some countries just redistribute a lot).
15/Many other aspects of the rant are, objectively, pretty silly.
The focus on ethnicity as being synonymous with talent (WASPS and Jews) is just a right-wing tic.
Plenty of working-class people live great lives in big cities. Cities are not hell for the working class.
etc.
The focus on ethnicity as being synonymous with talent (WASPS and Jews) is just a right-wing tic.
Plenty of working-class people live great lives in big cities. Cities are not hell for the working class.
etc.
16/And of course, the guy's morals fucking disgust me.
He doesn't even consider that women might be happier not being housewives.
He treats nonwhite people as alien invaders whose lives and happiness don't matter.
At one point he praises slavery.
So yeah, he's a bad guy.
He doesn't even consider that women might be happier not being housewives.
He treats nonwhite people as alien invaders whose lives and happiness don't matter.
At one point he praises slavery.
So yeah, he's a bad guy.
17/But his rant shows how *cohesive* a worldview alt-right-ism (and, I'd argue, Trumpism itself) is. It combines:
A) racism,
B) cultural traditionalism, and
C) working-class anger at inequality and loss of opportunity.
That is a potent, powerful brew.
A) racism,
B) cultural traditionalism, and
C) working-class anger at inequality and loss of opportunity.
That is a potent, powerful brew.
18/I don't know if this worldview can be effectively countered by the left, to win some of these people back over.
I don't even know if it *should* be, or if people who think this way should just be left behind until they make their own peace with modernity.
I don't even know if it *should* be, or if people who think this way should just be left behind until they make their own peace with modernity.
19/But in case you want to know your enemy: Well, this is it.
Not just racism, pure and simple. But a melding of racism, sexism, cultural traditionalism, working-class despair/resentment, misplaced nostalgia, and magical thinking.
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Not just racism, pure and simple. But a melding of racism, sexism, cultural traditionalism, working-class despair/resentment, misplaced nostalgia, and magical thinking.
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