Make no mistake about it: the alt-right is a cult, and this is how its members lure people in

[Amica Nostra 4,803]

http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/alt-right-neo-nazi-donald-trump-hitler-memes-pepe-the-frog-ubermensch-based-stickman-a7938911.html

 

Make no mistake about it: the alt-right is a cult, and this is how its members lure people in

They have created an esoteric private language with terms like cuck, red pill, deus vault. People are seduced by a combination of humour (everything is 'ironic' so it has plausible deniability) and a secret language

• Nicholas O'Shaughnessy 
• 5 hours ago
• 7 comments

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Independent Voices

How have protesters like these suddenly seen their views rocket in popularity? Nicholas O'Shaughnessy deconstructs the reasons Chip Somodevilla/Getty

The social media thrust of the “alt-right” is characterised by two approaches. One is the mobilisation of humour – sometimes laconic, sometimes sociopathic. The other is the resurrection and re-engineering of original imagery from the Third Reich.

As a result, the alt-right is a moving target, able to tease, and able to deny the authenticity of their content because of its comedic packaging; in the words of Jason Wilson, “the alt-right have stormed mainstream consciousness by weaponising irony, and by using humour and ambiguity as tactics to wrongfoot their opponents” . It is rare that they advance a straight argument, or in fact any argument at all.

But they are indeed a cult. Their power comes from a series of social media sites such as Elders of the Black Sun; Stop Degeneracy; Nazi Tinder; Art of the True Right; Strictly Ubermensch; Men Among the Ruins; Trumpenreich. The subcultural and cultist elements effectively disarm potential critics via their very oddity.

There is a rhetoric and a ritual script. They have created an esoteric private language with terms like cuck, red pill, deus vault; and famously their brand logo of Pepe the Frog; not to mention their local hero, the assailant of Anti-fa protesters, “Based Stickman”, as well as their bizarre country, Kekistan.

Left-wing and Anti-fa demonstrators are their special objects of loathing, and pictures of Nazis are always the balm after some image of liberal transgression. Vistas of a granite-faced Hitler abound. He is the constant point of reference and, over 70 years after his death, of hope (“How about a Fuhrer appreciation post?”).

 

 

 

 

'Alt-right' movement founder urges Trump to freeze immigration for 50 years

They feature Hitler in a baseball cap saying Make America Great Again, while the famous Hoffmann images of Hitler practicing oratorical gestures are turned into a brilliant laser-lit disco performance. Their memes are typically juvenile: “What women think men want – bikinis. What men really want – fascist salutes.”

The sites of those who define themselves as “alt-right” are rabidly anti-Semitic and for them the Holocaust is a fiction. The first citizen of anti-Semite agitation is the “news” magazine Stormer, for whom Jews are “a true threat to all living things”. Grotesque caricatures of Jews are in effect its brand logo, and there is no question as to the source of its inspiration. Thus its headline of 20 April 2017 “Why free speech and free internet advocates must love Hitler”, accompanied by an image of Hitler with “banned” written over him (paralleling an NSDAP posteThey Had No Clue This

 

 

 

 

Cramp

Islam is another enemy, of course, and a frequent image is of a frowning, bearded mullah scolding: “That’s haram!” The alt-right places supreme value on the European race or what Adolf Hitler himself called the Prometheus of mankind. The notion is of cultural displacement, that there is an existential threat to "white culture”. This occurs precisely at the point in American history where the nation is poised to lose its white majority, a critical juncture.

African Americans are a particular target. One crime of a black person is the crime of all black people everywhere, a familiar Goebbels-style rhetorical trick. The alleged mannerisms and culture of African Americans are caricatured in parodies which are beyond crude. They also mock the aspirations of African Americans to their own heritage: “we wuz kangz (kings) and sh*t”.

There is no kind of rhetorical uplift or vision for the alt-right cause, just sick jokes and depravity. Artfully contrived images of overweight, weepy leftist demonstrators – “fat f**k who cried”, “autistic screech” – contrast with grim- visaged Third Reich warriors

K

 

 

 

 

 

Edited September 10, 2017 by Il Mango Dulce

[ready4ONE 5,400]

And yet some simply refuse to see that they are aping the alt-right messaging while arguing that they don't belong to any alt-right group. Scary stuff and a slippery slope indeed.

[jg121783 3,915]

49 minutes ago, ready4ONE said:

And yet some simply refuse to see that they are aping the alt-right messaging while arguing that they don't belong to any alt-right group. Scary stuff and a slippery slope indeed.

The same could be said about the alt left.

[Amica Nostra 4,803]

Never believe that anti‐Semites are completely unaware of the absurdity of their replies. They know that their remarks are frivolous, open to challenge. But they are amusing themselves, for it is their adversary who is obliged to use words responsibly, since he believes in words. The anti‐Semites have the right to play. They even like to play with discourse for, by giving ridiculous reasons, they discredit the seriousness of their interlocutors. They delight in acting in bad faith, since they seek not to persuade by sound argument but to intimidate and disconcert.

John Paul Sarte

[Amica Nostra 4,803]

3 minutes ago, jg121783 said:

The same could be said about the alt left.

Did you click on the link and read the entire article?

[jg121783 3,915]

3 minutes ago, Il Mango Dulce said:

Did you click on the link and read the entire article?

No need to waste my time reading that garbage. I was replying to this:

 

1 hour ago, ready4ONE said:

And yet some simply refuse to see that they are aping the alt-right messaging while arguing that they don't belong to any alt-right group. Scary stuff and a slippery slope indeed.

 

[Amica Nostra 4,803]

Just now, jg121783 said:

No need to waste my time reading that garbage. I was replying to this:

 

 

How did you come to the conclusion that it was garbage?

[Dashinka 24,493]

16 minutes ago, Il Mango Dulce said:

How did you come to the conclusion that it was garbage?

It is an opinion piece by someone with a particular political ideology.  The same could be said of the alt-left and their devotion to Karl Marx, or any other socialist leader.  

 

Regardless, it is just political commentary the likes of which can come from either side.

[Amica Nostra 4,803]

16 minutes ago, Bill & Katya said:

It is an opinion piece by someone with a particular political ideology.  The same could be said of the alt-left and their devotion to Karl Marx, or any other socialist leader.  

 

Regardless, it is just political commentary the likes of which can come from either side.

So you did not read the article?

[Amica Nostra 4,803]

6 minutes ago, Il Mango Dulce said:

So you did not read the article?

 

"It is an opinion piece by someone with a particular political ideology"

Evidently a conservative

 

In the 1983 general election, he stood as the Conservative candidate in Swansea East, coming in third place, behind the Liberals and Labour incumbent Donald Anderson. In 1995 he wrote five reports on political communication, commissioned by the then Prime Minister, John Major.

O'Shaughnessy is the author of a number of books. With his father John O'Shaughnessy, he has written "The Marketing Power Of Emotion" (Oxford University Press 2003), about the role of emotion in marketing, and "Persuasion In Advertising" (Routledge 2003), about why advertising persuades.^[1]

[Dashinka 24,493]

25 minutes ago, Il Mango Dulce said:

So you did not read the article?

I did. It was an OpEd.  Every OpEd can be taken with a grain of salt.

[Amica Nostra 4,803]

1 hour ago, jg121783 said:

The same could be said about the alt left.

The analogy to the cult of the alt right  is not "alt-left" but how young people are radicalized by Islamic terrorist s.

 

 

"They can apply whether we're talking about white supremacist far right racism, and radicalisation such as the case of Thomas Mair who killed MP Jo Cox, or they apply in this instance with Jihadist terrorism. But if we understand that these are the four factors that can cause radicalisation, we know how to solve it

Edited September 10, 2017 by Il Mango Dulce

[Dashinka 24,493]

1 minute ago, Il Mango Dulce said:

The analogy to the cult of the alt right  is not "alt-left" but how young people are radicalized by Islamic terrorist s.

 

 

"They can apply whether we're talking about white supremacist far right racism, and radicalisation such as the case of Thomas Mair who killed MP Jo Cox, or they apply in this instance with Jihadist terrorism. But if we understand that these are the four factors that can cause radicalisation, we know how to solve it

What about James Hodgkinson and his cult like devotion to Bernie Sanders?

[jg121783 3,915]

There is an alt left just like there is an alt right. The only difference is the main line right disavows the alt right but the main line left tends to defend the alt left until it's politically expedient to distance themselves from them. Take antifa for example. The main line left for the most part defended them until it became widely known they are a violent hate group.

 

[Steeleballz 7,550]

1 hour ago, jg121783 said:

There is an alt left just like there is an alt right. The only difference is the main line right disavows the alt right but the main line left tends to defend the alt left until it's politically expedient to distance themselves from them. Take antifa for example. The main line left for the most part defended them until it became widely known they are a violent hate group.

 

 

   No, alt-right was a term coined by the far right to make themselves more appealing than the previous label, white nationalists. They named themselves. They are a clearly identifiable movement with a defined ideology.

 

   Alt-left is a term also coined by the same group to imply that a parallel group with similar ideology exists on the opposite side. You will not find an alt-left group anywhere, ever. It is a term applied loosely to various liberal groups who do not share a single unifying ideology, and primarily exists in social media and right wing alt-news sites. The alt-left is a construct.