That is not clarifying

Hunter Wallace doesn’t so much clear things up as add to the confusion by making similar mistakes about the Alt-Lite that many in the mainstream make about the the Alt-Right.

First and foremost, the Alt-Lite are marketers who are driven by the economics of viral clickbait media. The brands aren’t particularly philosophical about what they do. We’re the ones who think in terms of ideas. Case in point, we’re the ones who coined the term “Alt-Lite” in order to distinguish them from other conservatives. We’re the ones who call them “civic nationalists.” They still don’t even know what they believe.

If the Alt-Lite brands are civic nationalists, why is their hallmark the business of trafficking in polarizing racial clickbait on social media? What are they even doing in our neighborhood of the internet? Blacks and Muslims should be our fellow Americans because the country doesn’t have any ethnic, cultural, racial or religious foundation. Cernovich is a brand, Gorilla Mindset, so he casually dispenses with *tolerance* (whether of women, different religions, different races) in order to create engagement.

It’s funny to watch the Alt-Lite throw around terms like “Western civilization” or “populism” which quite obviously mean completely different things to them. When they say “Western civilization,” they mean liberalism like other mainstream conservatives. When they say “populism,” they think that means “supporting Trump” or like Bill Mitchell being vaguely against the Republican establishment.

These people are not great thinkers. What kind of populist demands $10,000 as a “prize” to debate someone? What kind of populist talks about purging gammas? What kind of populist talks about losers who are “too poor for my time?” What kind of populist talks about himself as a brand? The #Deploraball controversy, which has devolved into the question of who’s in and who’s out, has already exposed the faux populism of the Alt-Lite.

This is why the Alt-West is the future of the Alt-Right and not the Alt-White. The latter not only insists upon a one-size-fits-all tactical approach, but it refuses to be honest with itself about the observable realities of its potential adherents. It’s a bit ironic for Hunter Wallace to denigrate the thinking ability of the Alt-Lite opinion leaders considering how many obvious errors he commits here.

The Alt-Lite are not mere clickbait chasers. That’s a category error; the Alt-Lite isn’t just the PJWs, Mike Cernovichs, and MILOs, it’s the entire pool of their conservative and libertarian supporters who are inclined to sympathize to some extent with the Alt-Right. The Alt-Lite consists of those who agree with some of the 16 Points, but not enough to be genuinely characterized as Alt Right. There is no hard line, the distinction is a gradient. And it’s foolish to dismiss smart, popular, effective individuals such as PJW, Mike, and Milo as clickbait chasers anyhow, even if one disagrees with them.

Some Alt-Lite leaders are civic nationalists. Others are genuine nationalists. The same is true of those who follow them, but the contradiction Wallace sees is the result of everyone in the Alt-Lite being in transition from civic nationalism to nationalism as a result of current events. The Alt-West is absolutely NOT civic nationalist; I don’t know if anyone has done more to tear down the precepts of civic nationalism in the last 18 months than the brilliant and unquestionably handsome authors of Cuckservative. This ongoing transition is why the growth of the Alt-Right is inevitable, and the fact that the Alt-West welcomes newcomers while the Alt-White openly scorns them is another reason why the latter is likely to fade into irrelevance over time.

(It’s also rather funny to see the Alt-White ready to go to war with all and sundry to protect “their” brand while also denouncing an Alt-Liter who is considerably better at marketing for talking about himself as a brand. Of course, if marketing acument, or consistency, or even coherency, was in their wheelhouse, they wouldn’t call themselves white nationalist neo-Nazis in the first place.)

Nobody of whom I am aware conflates Western civilization with liberalism or even Western democracy. That’s not possible, as Western civilization obviously predates both. And populism is synonymous with the Trump campaign; Trump is himself a civic nationalist. And in answer to his questions:

  1. Mike is both popular and a populist. He has offered $10k to debate others on several occasions to demonstrate his seriousness, and the fact that the Alt-White can’t, or won’t, come up with such a relatively small sum to debate him about whatever it is they want to debate him about simply shows either a) how small their numbers are, or, b) that the challenge is not a serious one.
  2. I’m not Alt-Lite. And I’m not a populist. I am, and have always been, an elitist. That’s natural, of course, since I am, statistically speaking, more intelligent than something like 7.49 billion of the people on the planet. What sort of populist lives by the mantra MPAI? As for purging gammas, I was only referring to my blog; I don’t question the right of gammas to live as self-deluded secret kings in the privacy of their own homes, I just don’t want to listen to them.
  3. A populist who knows how to prioritize, presumably.
  4. I didn’t care about prom and I still don’t care about balls, so I can’t even begin to address this statement.
One should never describe things as one wishes them to be, but rather, as they are. To do otherwise is magical thinking, which tends to achieve results akin to those achieved by the famous cargo cults of yore. The Alt-Lite is not going away, as it, too, is growing, as whites in the mainstream continue to be driven rightward by the identity politics of the non-whites to their Left. This is all a good thing, and if the Alt-White were smart, it would be attempting to appeal to the Alt-West and the Alt-Lite alike, not alternating between denying their existence and attacking them.