2,134 words
Czech version here
Part 3 of 4, Part 1 here, Part 2 here
Author’s Note:
This is the third installment of the opening essay of a forthcoming anthology called The Alternative Right.
Centralization, Purges, & Breakdown
It was quite natural for Richard Spencer to regret dropping a brand that had been adopted by a potent political force and an international media sensation. So he attempted to reassert ownership. But there was a problem: the new movement that emerged in 2014 to 2015 owed little to Spencer except the name that it eventually adopted. Spencer acknowledged this in an October 12, 2016 interview he gave to political scientist George Hawley who was doing research for his book Understanding the Alt-Right, where Spencer says, “The Alt-Right is what it is today not because of me; it is what it is today because I let it go.”[1] This is correct.
But from the point of view of 2018, it is also true to say that the Alt-Right is the mess it is today—largely but certainly not entirely—because Spencer tried to take it back.
On September 9, 2016, NPI held a “What is the Alt Right?” press conference in Washington D.C. The speakers were Richard Spencer, Jared Taylor, and Peter Brimelow. At the conference, Spencer unveiled his “Alt-Right logo,” which never really caught on.[2] Clearly Spencer wanted to get out ahead of the new Alt Right, redefine it in his terms, and put his stamp on it.
After Hailgate, Richard Spencer and Persian-American academic Jason Reza Jorjani, who also spoke at NPI 2016, began a series of meetings to create what became the Altright Corporation. The main shareholders were Richard Spencer, Jason Jorjani, Daniel Friberg of Arktos Media, and Red Ice TV.[3]
The Altright Corporation launched the AltRight.com webzine on January 16, 2017. Spencer’s plan was to elevate himself to movement leadership by looking like the leader. He was going to “fake it till you make it”[4] by coaxing as many important voices as possible onto his platform; by coopting organizations like Identity Evropa; by schmoozing with the players who were too big to be coopted (TRS, Jared Taylor, Kevin MacDonald, Peter Brimelow); by maligning and purging those who were immune to his charms (Milo, Mike Cernovich, me); and, above all, by giving interviews to the mainstream media on the cynical but unfortunately correct assumption that many people in our movement will accept whomever the enemy media anoints as their leader.
The new webzine followed the same pattern as Spencer’s other webzines: a strong start and then a slump. Only in this case, the start was much weaker and the slump came much sooner. AltRight.com also differed from Spencer’s earlier webzines in the gutter vulgarity of its writing, which was clearly an attempt to curry favor with chan kids and Daily Stormer readers. For instance, this is how Vincent Law concludes his article “Daniel Borden Did Literally Nothing Wrong”:
. . . in the case of Daniel, inside sources say that he is holding up well. He has already received hundreds of nude photos and marriage proposals from girls solidly in 7–8 HB range. There is even a smattering of 9s as well.
Daniel is worried though.
He says he doesn’t know how to swim and has no idea how he won’t drown once he gets out [of jail] from swimming in all that pussy. Don’t worry, Daniel. We’ll be waiting with some water wings once you get out.[5]
Serious writers were not exactly clamoring to share the same platform.
Spencer’s efforts at polarization and purges were no more successful. It is a classic White Nationalist rookie move for a new, would-be leader to set up his PO Box and webzine and then to try to recruit followers and donors by launching attacks on his rivals. The underlying assumption of the polarization strategy is that a certain percentage of followers will come over to the attacker’s camp, while the rest will remain with the target. But the movement as a whole will not suffer. The deck will simply be reshuffled.
In fact, such tactics are profoundly damaging to the movement as a whole. To use arbitrary numbers, the attacker might gain 15% of the target audience, the target might retain 40 to 50%, depending on his response, and the rest become disgusted and demoralized and refuse to have anything to do with either party. Some simply quit entirely. Polarization, therefore, brings some benefits to the aggressor but harms the movement as a whole, which is why we should shun anyone who uses this strategy as a selfish self-promoter.
One can argue that subjecting a movement like the Alt Right to any kind of centralized leadership is a bad idea. The Alt Right—and White Nationalism as a whole—is a decentralized, non-hierarchical network. The nodes of this network are individuals, most of them anonymous, and small hierarchical organizations. These nodes are largely linked by the internet, especially social media platforms. The drivers of the movement are creative individuals who produce memes in the form of articles, podcasts, videos, and images. When a particularly potent meme is created, the network propagates and augments it until the meme is exhausted and something new comes along. When it works well, the movement is endlessly stimulating and fun, and it has genuine transformative effects on the public mind.
Because the network makes possible the creative collaboration of countless anonymous individuals, one can argue that the network itself is actually smarter, more creative, and more powerful than any of the nodes. There are differences between the nodes. Some create memes; others merely propagate them. Some individuals and organizations have larger audiences, greater impact, and more moral and intellectual credibility than others. I would like to see many large, well-funded, and highly influential companies, think tanks, and political parties emerge from this network. But even the biggest nodes are smaller than the network as a whole.
What would happen to the overall effectiveness of the network if a would-be leader tried to subject it to his control? Even a small networked movement like the Alt Right is more complex and creative than any individual node. Thus if an individual were to try to assume leadership of the movement, he would inevitably have to simplify its structure, which would inevitably dampen its creativity and power. This is why centralization is always accompanied by polarization and purges. The size and complexity of the movement has to be reduced to what can be comprehended and controlled by an individual mind. The smaller the mind, the greater the damage. Those who are unimpressed with the would-be leader must, furthermore, be driven out.
The quest for centralization might promise immense ego gratification for a would-be leader. But the net result is a smaller, dumber, less creative movement. It is also less active, because formerly independent agents must now wait around for orders from above. Or they have to wrangle to gain the agreement of others, whereas formerly they could just act on their own judgment. Thus centralization inevitably makes the movement weaker. This would be true even if the centralizer were the kind of organizational genius capable of founding a large corporation or a government. It is especially the case when the would-be leader can’t even run a successful webzine.
Spencer’s attempts to purge rivals from the movement were also unsuccessful but created a great deal of lasting collateral damage. In the fall of 2016, Spencer’s polarization and purge tactics consisted largely of whispering campaigns. After Hailgate, he unleashed a barrage of transparently envious and embittered tweets against Milo, Cernovich, and other Alt Lite figures.
But on June 1, 2017, Spencer tried something much bolder. Spencer launched an attack against me and Counter-Currents with a lame and dishonest article co-authored by Daniel Friberg, “Greg Johnson’s Attacks and How to Deal with Them.”[6] He did not, however, reckon any blowback into his plans. Counter-Currents is still here, but the Altright Corporation began to unravel at that point, first losing Jason Jorjani then Red Ice. Eventually even Friberg quietly severed ties.
But nobody really wins such battles. In this case, many relationships of friendship, comradeship, and collegiality were replaced by enmity, bitterness, and distrust that persist to this day. Connections that allowed productive collaborations were severed, leaving the movement less effective and more dysfunctional.
Spencer’s use of the media to elevate him to leadership status was ultimately unsuccessful as well. The media attention Spencer received came at a price. All Spencer had to do was help the media advance its anti-white agenda by conforming to one of its negative stereotypes, in Spencer’s case the smug, snobbish, amoral WASP plutocrat.[7] The media loved Spencer, because he helped them make White Nationalism look bad. Spencer loved the media, because he hoped it would elevate him over his rivals in the movement. Neither party to this cynical transaction had any interest in representing White Nationalism in a way that might actually connect with the white majority.
As I have already argued, there is no way to be the leader of this movement as a whole. But one can still aspire to be a leader within the movement. There are basically two ways to do this: the grassroots way and the AstroTurf way. The grassroots way is to build a solid platform from the ground up, based on a record of achievements, whether they be in political activism or propaganda work. But the grassroots way is also the hard way, requiring many years of sustained and patient labor.
Thus it is tempting to take the easy way, the AstroTurf way: give an interview, or pull a publicity stunt, in the hope that the enemy media will anoint you leader. But even if you pull it off, you can’t remain a virtual leader forever. You have to start delivering actual results, positive results. Spencer has done things of value over the years: NPI conferences, Radix, and Washington Summit Publishers. But these were all sidelined for rallies and a college speaking tour that turned out to be net negatives.
At this point, most of Spencer’s followers have abandoned him, even his inner circle, and he has gone silent except for an occasional Tweet or YouTube livestream. The establishment, then, got the better deal. Whether Spencer ultimately fades away or makes a comeback, the media will be trotting out footage of Hailgate and other cringe-inducing gaffes to stigmatize Trump and White Nationalism for decades to come.
Those of us who are trying to present a morally coherent and historically accurate case for white self-determination will be forever dogged with clips of Spencer defending imperialism and white supremacism, attacking freedom of speech, calling for the genocide of Turks, dismissing the relevance of morality, and playing “agree and amplify” with outrageous anti-white canards like “Part of your greatness is the exploitation of other people.”[8] It would be one thing if these were sincere but mistaken convictions. But with Spencer they are simply postures and provocations.
One cannot, however, entirely blame Richard Spencer for the declining fortunes of the Alt Right. Again, the movement that emerged in 2014 and 2015 owed little to Spencer except its name. And even though Spencer damaged the Alt Right by trying to assert control over it, the movement—including its problems—was always bigger than him. Which means that he cannot bear sole blame for its downfall. In particular, it is unjust to blame Spencer for the disastrous Unite the Right Rally of August 11–12, 2017, since he played little role in planning it. There were broader forces at work, in which Spencer himself was caught up, and which can be summed up as the return of White Nationalism 1.0.
Notes
[1] George Hawley, Making Sense of the Alt-Right (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017), p. 68.
[2] See Margot Metroland, “The NPI Presser: ‘What is the Alt Right?,’” Counter-Currents, September 12, 2016, https://counter-currents.com/2016/09/the-npi-presser/
[3] On some of the shady, deep-state connected operators who encouraged the formation of the Altright Corporation, see Greg Johnson, “The Alt Right Corporation and the American Deep State,” Counter-Currents, October 18, 2017, https://counter-currents.com/2017/10/the-altright-corporation-and-the-american-deep-state/
[4] In Josh Harkinson’s “Meet the White Nationalist Who Wants to Ride the Trump Train to Lasting Power,” Mother Jones, October 27, 2016, Spencer is quoted as follows: “‘I still feel like we are faking it until we make it,’ he confesses. ‘I mean, in some ways, you’ve got to fucking fake it. You have to project success and project power and kind of make it a self-fulfilling prophecy . . .’” https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/10/richard-spencer-trump-alt-right-white-nationalist/ Spencer has never disputed the accuracy of this quote, and it coheres with his pickup artist schtick that the model for political persuasion is “seduction.”
[5] Vincent Law, “Daniel Borden Did Literally Nothing Wrong,” AltRight.com, https://altright.com/2017/09/07/daniel-borden-did-literally-nothing-wrong/
[6] See Greg Johnson, “Reply to Daniel Friberg,” Counter-Currents, June 18, 2017, https://counter-currents.com/2017/06/reply-to-daniel-friberg/; Omar Filmersson, “Greg Johnson Told the Truth,” Counter-Currents, June 22, 2017, https://counter-currents.com/2017/06/greg-johnson-told-the-truth/; Alan Smithee, “Friberg Falls Back,” Counter-Currents, June 25, 2017; https://counter-currents.com/2017/06/friberg-falls-back/; John Morgan, “The Truth About Daniel Friberg,” Counter-Currents, June 27, 2017, https://counter-currents.com/2017/06/the-truth-about-daniel-friberg/
[7] For more on the press engagement strategy of Spencer and Matt Heimbach/Matt Parrott, see Greg Johnson, “In Bed with the Press,” Counter-Currents, March 6, 2018, https://counter-currents.com/2018/03/in-bed-with-the-press/
26 Comments
It is remarkable that Spencer was able to “enchant” so many intelligent, well-informed people – exactly the sort of people I have a hard time imagining as seeking association with him to begin with. I’d be questioning just how different a person he might be in private, in comparison to his public presentation that the rest of us based our image of him on, but then I’ve read a fair number of claims that he is exactly what you’d expect him to be.
This text is spot on true.
Any normie that sees Spencer will come no closer to white nationalism. I am always sadden to se him perform. If I was an enemy of White nationalism I would be purely delighted.
I would rather have any stupid illiterate racist redneck without teeth represent us om CNN then Spencer. The redneck at least would be speaking from the heart and give himself a chance to be liked by normies.
Really enjoyable series.
While the feuds have been most depressing, and while I’d just as soon forget about them and move on (as many of us surely do), I suppose this series has/had to be written, both for the history books and as a prudent warning against future incarnations of The Leader.
“Thus if an individual were to try to assume leadership of the movement, he would inevitably have to simplify its structure, which would inevitably dampen its creativity and power. This is why centralization is always accompanied by polarization and purges… [C]entralization inevitably makes the movement weaker.”
I am glad to see a firm stand taken here against centralization.
It is a big reason I support this site.
Altright.com was incredibly pathetic. At one point it was just this dude Vincent Law publishing five pieces each day and trying hard to be edgy, while merely copying Daily Stormer and Return of Kings.
There will be one more installment.
I think a lot of people who attack other people on the Right do so out of financial motives. But I think they are probably disappointed with the results. I think it is naive to hold that there is a fixed donor base for which we have to compete in a zero sum contest. And when people act on that assumption, I think that more people abandon the movement than actually switch sides. Instead, we have to think in terms of making the movement as a whole grow, on the assumption that the rising tide will float all boats.
I can’t fathom the mind of Daniel Friberg, but for my part I never regarded Arktos as a financial rival. In fact, I did quite a lot to help Arktos. Counter-Currents is primarily a webzine, not a publisher. That is not the original intent, but that is how it worked out. I made it a point to review as many Arktos titles as possible. Beyond that, there are far more books that need to be published than I could ever do myself. Indeed, there is room for a number of other Right-wing metapolitical publishers.
My enmity for Friberg arose out of a disgusting act of betrayal on his part. He was accused by his shareholders of embezzling large amounts of money from Arktos. When word of this began to circulate, he started claiming that these rumors were being spread by me. I think he also blamed MI6, but I am not sure if he claimed I worked for them. There were other events before the final explosion. It is all outlined in the articles on CC tagged Friberggate: https://counter-currents.com/tag/friberggate/
The part about heilgate smacks of ill-will. One can place some blame on Richard Spencer for the seig heiling debacle at NPI, but to not even mention who actually did the heiling when that person is known personally to Greg Johnson is absurd. You can blame Spencer for inviting that individual, but Spencer didn’t know that Enoch was going to organize heiling at the NPI event.
Who am I talking about? Mike Enoch of course. Greg knows that Mike Enoch did the heiling, and still supported Enoch long after the event. How can you have a problem with Spencer and not with Enoch for the exact same incident?The answer is that you can’t and the incident at NPI is being used battering ram against Spencer. The amnesnia in the rank and file about Mike Enoch’s role in the NPI heiling incident is one of the queerer things about the alt-right. Proof that Greg Johnson supported Mike Enoch after heilgate below.
https://counter-currents.com/2017/01/why-i-sup…
Of course you can go around saying “don’t purge” and then write polemics that if successful will have the exact effect of purging.
1. Spencer is responsible because he ended with “Hail Trump, Hail Our People, Hail Victory.” If he ended with “Shave and a Haircut,” he could have reasonably expected someone to call out “Two Bits.” If you say “Seig Heil” and raise your hand with a bunch of Nazis in the room, you know what is going to happen. He also knew there were cameras there to convey it to the world. He is entirely responsible for this PR disaster.
2. Even if people had not saluted, or if they had not been captured on film, what Spencer said was disaster enough. The salutes just made the meaning of what he said obvious, sparing people the necessity of spelling out the fact that he purposely linked Trump and Hitler together at the end of his speech.
3. I don’t see Enoch in the footage. On what basis do you claim, then, that he “organized it”?
4. If you read beyond the title of the article on “Why I Support Mike Enoch,” you will see that it had nothing to do with Hailgate. It was about his doxxing and his wife.
5. Yes, if people recognize that polarizers and purgers are bad because they harm the movement as a whole for their personal aggrandizement and advantage, then they are going to want nothing to do with them, which is a completely healthy instinct. Do you have a problem with that?
Enoch has owned up that it was him and another guy who did the Nazi salutes. One or two other guys joined in. For that reason, I lean towards “Hailgate was planned”. It wasn’t two random spergs that started saluting but two of Spencer’s homeboys.
Enoch might have thought it up on his own because he thought it would be funny. Or maybe him and Spencer cooked it up together. But I don’t think Hailgate was spontaneous.
I recall hearing that Enoch was actually on the stage before Spencer’s infamous speech, and it was Enoch who did the first salutes, directed at a certain jew in the audience. No doubt Spencer felt the need to one-up Enoch after this incident. His written speech was posted after the event and it didn’t contain the edgy bits about heiling.
Thus far, this is the quintessential history of the Alt Right. I suppose a longer more detailed account could be written but this is the standard to surpass. I look forward to the final segment.
I think you make some strong points about centralization and nodes and so on.
But I will just be candid about the thrust of this, as I doubt anyone else will be. I think this theme has become conspicuous on Counter-Currents. There has been – what seems like a lot of essays on CC this year, reflecting on what we had in 2016 and HG and Richard Spencer. It’s difficult to see how this story needs retelling yet again. It’s almost as if there’s something the writers of these articles want to get out of their system but can’t.
Greg, you mentioned in passing a very real issue here, when you said, “nobody really wins such battles”.
For that person on the outside, or someone coming along reading this stuff for the first time on the internet there is no way of telling who’s in the right and who’s in the wrong. There’s no way of telling who is the troll and who is the victim. Instead everyone comes across in an unfavorable light.
You often say Spencer launched an attack on you, but didn’t you make a bunch of allegations about Friberg first on that forum? Even if they are totally true and were made with the best of intentions for the good of the movement, wasn’t Spencer working with Friberg by that point…. so why would they just sit there and take it ? It seems likely they will lash back, even if they are in the wrong.
Our history, the history of the right has been plagued by infighting. You frame it as if someone could have a strategy to ‘appear’ and then divide and conquer a part of the movement by attacking others. But after a while it doesn’t matter who started what. Nobody we want to recruit cares. It just makes us look like nuts caught in meaningless feuds. And I’ve seen it all before on the Right over this stuff on the internet.
We could argue that Spencer’s influence as a major figure in the movement didn’t take us exactly where we wanted to go, fine and I guess that’s part of what these essays are trying to do. OK, but that same history probably won’t judge Spencer on allegations about his personality. Even if he is shocking in real life, arrogant, vain, difficult to work with, guilty of whispering campaigns, there’s no way for the average person to really know that. They can judge him on what’s he’s delivered or stood for politically and that’s about it. (And for someone in a leadership role those traits aren’t necessarily a crime. Look at Trump.)
And the question is, if people didn’t like what Spencer was doing in his rather prominent role, why didn’t others step in and create a similarly prominent role ?
The main specific charge against Spencer seems to be HG. You even consider the idea, as others have on this site, that HG could even have been a deliberate ploy to make the movement about Spencer. This is typical right wing thinking, and no one is immune it seems.
We just need some reality on this topic. I could have made the same mistake as Spencer if I was in his position at the time. My natural instincts could have been to do something similar. Does that make me a monster trying to steal or damage the movement?
It was a completely legitimate idea to give the finger to the taboos of our enemy. It had worked well for us on the internet. But the way this works is, sure I get the joke, our trolls, our people get the joke, but our enemies don’t get the joke, they can only process ‘Hail Trump’ in one way. In hindsight I think it was a mistake, overwhelmingly because Spencer at the time carried the trust of others in the movement with him who may not have been comfortable with the joke either, but it was a completely legitimate mistake, made with not unreasonable intentions.
I’m not convinced it’s fair or genuine for Spencer, whatever his faults are, to be simply subsumed into the media-created failure about HG.
“….he unleashed a barrage of transparently envious and embittered tweets against Milo, Cernovich, and other Alt Lite figures.”
Did he ? I thought everything he said about Cernovich was about right. The embittered tweets were coming from Cernovich.
I appreciate your comments.
1. I don’t know what you mean by “a lot.” Besides this three parter and my review of Vegas Tenold’s book, I can’t think of any others.
2. Yes, nobody really wins these battles. But you have to fight them if you are attacked. And once they are over, we can learn some lessons by looking back at them, which is what I am trying to do here.
3. Friberg started it. But Spencer was involved with the op from the start, trying to get Friberg in to the Scandza Forum and get me disinvited, telling the organizer that he needs to be friends with “important people” like him, Richard Spencer, and going on about how “Machiavellian” he is; how he can get Andrew Joyce to come with a mere phone call, etc. I responded publicly only after the event, and only after a Friberg proxy/autistic shit-stirrer brought it back up at the TRS Forum. Spencer did not go gallantly to Friberg’s aid. Instead, he regarded it as an opportunity to launch a purge against me. All of this has been confirmed by people who were in the know at the time, most of whom have left Spencer’s orbit now.
4. We’ll never know what was going through Spencer’s mind at Hailgate, but if you had the same instincts, I would certainly not want you in a position of public leadership.
5. Heartiste made a very good point about Hailgate: what is cute online often does not translate well into the real world. Spencer should have known better. The sensible people there immediately saw the problem. Even Spencer saw the problem, immediately after the fact. There was a little pow wow of Spencer’s inner circle after the event to discuss it. But in the end, he decided to make matters worse by doubling down on his error.
6. It is pure delusion on your part to say that Hailgate was created by the media not Spencer. In truth, the media was only there because Spencer invited them in. All of Spencer’s behavior has to be seen through the lens of his symbiotic relationship with the enemy media. He did not hesitate to make a devil’s bargain with them, to play the WASP villain to get coverage. It helped his rise in the movement. But he could not maintain it with his spotty work record and bad judgment. The media, however, has all the clips and will be playing them for decades to come. Just ask David Duke, who has been dogged for close to half a century by pictures of him in various costumes. It is not fair, but it was definitely effective in harming him and the movement, or they would not be used over and over again. Spencer made a devil’s bargain, and the enemy got the better of him — and we all lose.
But everyone in this movement has amnesia. Spencer never really went away. And already Parrott and Heimbach are back.
Thanks for responding Greg.
I’d like to make one comment on this, and that is about Spencer playing the WASP villain. I do agree that hasn’t been useful or necessary.
I don’t know stuff that goes on behind the scenes, but I’m not yet prepared to accept it came from sinister intent. To me, it looks more like a mistake a newby actor makes when they first get on stage. They have a limited palette at first and they make choices about their character which are easy to reach for, and which they think are powerful but are actually working against what the character needs to communicate.
That’s immediately what I felt when I saw that.
Spencer would have benefited from some management, some advice and that either didn’t happen or it was the wrong advice. Or he wasn’t prepared to listen to it.
It’s completely appropriate for someone in public life to take advice about image, about what to say, about how to present oneself and so on. And we need to get with that game. I guess if we had a system for that advice properly then HG could have been avoided.
I think Spencer has demonstrated tremendous guts and spirit, and I give him real credit for that, but there were times when I felt frustrated that he seemed trapped in this WASP villain character, which is going to have a very limited ability to reach out to others.
If someone needs “handlers,” he is not a “leader,” he is a figurehead.
Well handlers is a strong word, it implies someone pulling the strings on a puppet that has no real values or agency of its own. I meant like PR, image coach, speech writer, presentation advice that kind of thing. Someone to clean up the rough edges.
But honestly I would also accept figureheads it if works for us. Perhaps those people are not the best people to write policy, or to be custodians, but they are important visible connections for the public. I guess that’s a good description of what Spencer’s role became. But however his role is considered, there have been some specifics which did not help his ability to communicate effectively and reach out, as well as maintain trust with others in the movement. And that’s what I’m judging him on here, not whether he’s good or bad person.
I see the stormer/4chan crowd as analogous to the metal heads and skin heads of the 80s. It’s a sloppy but effective recruitment tool, and some 10% will graduate to mature wns. Most will lose interest
See, I have the opposite perception. Metal heads and skins necessitate physical presence and travel to physical venues, thus they appeal to youth with expendable time, energy and reputations, thereby limited by these, in addition to faddish cultural interests, lifestyles and fashion. The chans are accessible anytime, any place, any age. This was absolutely revolutionary for young white men, especially in America, and for media and politics. Nothing brings together men like humor and independence.
And I disagree that only 10% “graduate” while most “lose interest.” A graduation is a public affair officiated by hierarchy. The radical idea the chans instill(ed) is that pro-white interests is an internal evolution, that can be watered at anytime. This is not to demean or minimize anyone’s sizable contributions; certainly CC itself is a massive gamechanger for legitimacy and respectability. I’d wager only 10% of channers drop pro-white mindsets, the effect will be lasting for the majority, and how that can be measured we’ll see in 2020 and beyond. 4chan cracked the code by ditching the follower/leader, watcher/doer, inspired partly by cypherpunk ethos. As this great third installment concludes: we’re nodes, pieces of a decentralized torrent. But if we lose anonymity online in the next several years, all may be lost.
Woody Allen said: I don’t want to belong to any club that’d have me as a member. 4chan isn’t so much a club, it’s a massive hub where the takeaway is “being white is THE club,” and that can’t be taken away. It needed to be pointed out, explored, celebrated. No one needs Spencer or any “leader” to approve them as a member of the white club. We needed certainty, reassurance.
IMO, Mike Enoch’s support of Spencer was critical to his rise. Many who were having doubts about Spencer deferred to Mike and said “Well, Enoch says he’s OK.”
Spencer is a slick player because he doesn’t make the usual rookie mistakes. He’s not a larper, “bad optics”, a purity spiraler and not too cucky either. He wasn’t anyone’s favorite but he was just barely acceptable to everyone. It’s his ruthless in-it-for-himself ambition, his narcissism, and the fact that he treats the movement like his personal playground.
The Daily Stormer, whatever their sins in the past, their post-Charlottesville censorship saga affected them deeply. They have recently been at the forefront of pushing out toxic elements from the movement.
Agreed. I think TRS has had Spencer on life-support for quite some time.
Agreed RE the Stormer as well.
I can’t see Spencer “maligning or purging” Cernovich and Milo as being wrong or unjustified. The 2016 Trump campaign honeymoon was already over at this point. If I remember correctly, Cern attacked Spencer immediately after Hailgate as being a controlled opposition/ deep state provocateur, and Milo did already countersignal hard against the altright or ethnonationalism. Both are no losses to the movement, Cernovich is a cooky hardcore-Zionist shill and con-man, while Milo’s shtick got tiresome, self-centered and downright disgusting soon.
True enuff. But what of the idea that the likes of Cernovich were forced to draw hard boundaries because of this devastatingly ill-advised larping by Spencer & co + Charlottesville. Cernovich if we dig back a bit in his intellectual history was red-pilled by Steve Sailer & is close friends with Vox Day. Milo was open to good faith exchange w. the dissident right. Gavin McGinnis interviewed Jared Taylor. So did Sargon. Making matters worse the alt-lites necessary distancing from the alt-right was met with an avalanche of insidious trolls abusing their inboxes sealing the border more or less completely. (Also many of these trolls are of course antifa Soros etc plants who were able to exponentially magnify the ugliness thanks to the cover provided by so many homegrown gutter level miscreants)
All this is correct. Beyond that, the Milo emails that were leaked show him working amicably with movement insiders to craft his Breitbart piece on the Alt Right. It is clear that he was trying to help by giving the movement good publicity to normiecons. His attempts to help were rebuffed by Anglin etc. I did take offense, though, when he started trying to basically define race realists out of the movement, or claim we were marginal.
Greg, you give me hope in a dark time in the movement. Keep doing what you are doing I am 100% behind you.
For me, the top four leaders of the movement in the US are, in order, (1) Greg Johnson, (2) Richard Spencer, (3) Kevin MacDonald, (4) Jared Taylor.
I always find Spencer’s interviews and live streams engrossing. He is flawed but talented. And, frankly, I find him very likeable. I don’t get the whole “WASP villain” rancor against him.
A quarter century ago, I was a social outcast at a very preppy, small liberal arts college. I know what it is to resent the godforsaken heirs of WASP elite. I feel no such animosity for Spencer. Until more compelling figures emerge, he is among the best we’ve got.
I also find the intellectual tension between Johnson the ethnonationalist Heideggerian versus Spencer the hard euro-imperialist Nietzschean worth preserving, at least at this early stage.
I was a normie, relatively speaking, during Hail-Gate and I remember realizing how utterly idiotic it was just in terms of PR.
In terms of these fights, I would be interested in knowing more about Andrew Joyce, and why he is so adamant about supporting Friberg and Spencer and viciously attacking Counter Currents. I used to think he was a very intelligent or at least competent researcher, at least, when it comes to his own field, thought now I wonder if he’s even a real scholar as he claims to be.
I don’t know much about Andrew Joyce or his motives. He was closely involved with Spencer and Friberg in their plotting against the Scandza Forum in May of 2017, before they launched their campaign against me and Counter-Currents. As with everyone who associates with Spencer and Friberg, you can chalk the early phases of their relationship up to gullibility. I think Joyce was hoping to get a full time movement job out of Spencer, but there’s no money in Washington Summit Publishers and NPI anymore. If the relationship goes on too long, however, you have to conclude that they are either poor judges of character or bad characters themselves, or a combination of the two. In the case of Joyce, I think he’s intellectually dishonest, which of course means that everything that he writes has to be taken with a grain of salt.