Counter-Currents
Charlottesville’s Silver Lining:
The Decline & Fall of the Alt Lite
Nicholas R. Jeelvy
2,002 words
Stefan Molyneux has not had a good year. In fact, he says it’s been a brutal year. The world’s most popular philosophy show is in dire straits. He’s losing subscribers, he’s losing views. He’s got a bone to pick with YouTube and its bosses, and he needs more money to make more unprofitable documentaries into which he inserts his own experiences. Now, I’m not against inserting onself into reporting; indeed, I’ve been known to engage in wacky gonzo myself, but really, Molymemes, if you’re reporting on Polish nationalism, report on Polish nationalism, not your feelings qua Polish nationalism.
I’m too harsh on the guy, I guess. He’s a bit full of himself, but useful to us, though timid and not willing to engage in bold philosophy on the bleeding edge. He also resorts to moralism to browbeat any objectors to his ancapistani utopia’s feasibility. He ignores the gigantic Humean naught at the center of his philosophy – which is really at the center of all libertarian and libertarian-aligned philosophies. Yet, guys do move on from Molyneux to the good stuff. Some get stuck in the Molyneux cul-de-sac; some retain some of his wrongheaded ideas even after they move on. He’s a mixed bag in terms of utility.
Not just Molyneux, though. The entire Alt Lite seems to be on the precipice of collapse. Sure, we can blame teh ebul algorthitmz for cutting off their subscribers and kicking them off of their platforms, but there’s no shortage of foot meet bullet type incidents, from Mike Cernovich covering up for Allen Dershowitz’s involvement with Jeffrey Epstein’s underage sex slavery ring, to Theodore ”Teddy Spaghetti” Beale (you may know him as Vox Day) protecting his lisping friend rather than face the music, to the disaster dominoes surrounding Turning Point USA – really, most of us in the know have a hard time discerning between the Alt Lite and a dumpster fire. A multi-million-dollar dumpster fire. (Hey, did you hear the news? Ashley St. Clair (yes, that Ashley St. Clair) has been fired from Toilet Paper USA for appearing in a picture with TEH EBUL NADZEE! It would appear that a big Afro-Latino named Nick destroyed her career.
That’s the Alt Lite. Do we even want to look at what the rest of the cuckservative dog-and-pony show is doing? Friends, I looked so you don’t have to. Or more precisely, the Z Man of the Z blog looked so I don’t have to. It’s boomerfeed all the way down.
Oh, sure, they’re ridiculous, dishonest, money-grubbing, and, as the kids say, blue-pilled and cringe – or at least purple-pilled. But that’s not what’s killing them. It is unfortunate, but the basic human condition is that of fearful reluctance to change old habits and beliefs. The well-adjusted and functioning normie conservative will cling to the Reaganite dream to the bitter end, because to let go is to allow himself to be swept up into a new and uncertain paradigm. It is to cease being Rambo (since II, the epitome of muscular and confident America) and to start being that guy in the original Death Wish whose wife is murdered and whose daughter is raped, a starkly lesser man than Rambo who can only hope for revenge, not bullet-dodging glory or the good life. It’s pain beyond the human capacity for pain. It’s status loss. Reality is a harsh mistress. And for this reason, there will always be a market for purple and blue pills, straight up or dipped in red dye, which will dwarf the market for real red pills. The paypigs of the grifter right will never dry up. However, you gotta convince them to pay up.
How do you convince people to pay up? Well, here at Counter-Currents, we raise funds by giving you good reasons to do so, which is to say by recounting our accomplishments, by stating our ambitions, and by building the case for Counter-Currents as a part of your well-being and political future. In short, we anchor ourselves to the truth and trust our readers to honor that truth, no matter what adversity we face. Seeking the truth has consequences, though, and so we find ourselves prosecuted and censored, while the blue- and purple-pilled masses avoid us like a racis’, huwite supremist, anti-semetic plague. And yet here we are, still standing – and slowly but steadily, our influence grows.
The grifter right has to rely on numbers and the illusion of continuing victories being snatched from the jaws of defeat in order to motivate its turgid fanbase to pay up. Witness any Molyneux video where he stretches out his digital hat, and you’ll see a very hammy and overplayed performance of a man who wants us to believe that he is under siege. Really, Moly, this is disappointing. I hired all sorts of inexperienced people back when I was a penniless hipster filmmaker, and I would have booted you off my negative-budget set in a heartbeat. Further, witness Mike Cernovich’s incessant dramatic appeals to his own reportedly massive following. I’m tempted to insert some witticism about lions and donkeys, but I shall refrain out of respect for the latter which, unlike Cernovich and his doubtlessly minuscule cadre of lickspits, perform a useful function as beasts of burden and mounts of jolly, if overweight squires to knights errant.
The Alt Lite depends on ginning up this fervor of a city under siege with the slightest chance of a narrow victory. In a sense, they are somewhat antifragile to opposition, but only to a certain point. They have to deliver a victory every now and then, and they have to have a certain mass appeal – hence Cernovich’s obsession with his number of Twitter impressions. This makes them very vulnerable to censorship.
Nuking Counter-Currents’ YouTube channel was a blow, but not one that will kill us. As I’ve said before, we depend on our commitment to the truth, not mass appeal. Nuking Molyneux’s YouTube channel would leave him close to powerless. Without his numerical clout, he’s just another vacillating anarcho-capitalist (though more open-minded than the average member of that tribe). Without his Twitter account, Cernovich is just some lisping, race-mixing lawyer with unsavory connections to the swamp creature Allen Dershowitz. Censorship deals us a smaller injury – one that is liable to further prove the truth of our message. Censorship is only a crippling injury to those who’ve not anchored themselves to the truth. People will run over fifty miles of Internet thorns to read a Counter-Currents movie review. People will not deal with BitChute’s negligible inadequacies in order to watch Molyneux make a fool of himself by bobbing his bald dome enthusiastically every time an inanity from Diamond provokes a “das rite” from Silk.
Absent the Alt Lite, the only options remaining for the Right are the mainstream cuckservatives – who are busy constructing “conservative” cases for racial replacement, sodomy with children, and proskynesis before Israel – and us. And the censors will soon come for the cuckservatives, who are even more dependent on mass appeal than we are. The entire political Right will be enveloped in this gigantic cloud of censorious toxic gas. And we’re the only ones wearing masks.
What led to this pogrom by the Left against us – we, who are imagined to plot pogroms and mass shootings – was Charlottesville. Some say that it was Trump’s election – and indeed it was, to a certain extent, what with the proverbial porn star being elected proverbial pope. But it was also Charlottesville.
I could possibly be saying the stupidest thing in my entire life, but here goes nothing: Charlottesville was a long-term victory.
First, the theory. Teddy Spaghetti (you may know him as Vox Day) is not an exceptionally smart man, but he somehow managed to write a very smart book: SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police. One of the ways in which he suggests one could take down a troubled institution is to sic its Left wing on its center – that is to say, to stick one’s hand in the piranha tank, whirl it around really fast, and retract it with as few fingers lost as possible. What will happen next is that the piranhas will devour each other under their own steam – or in the case of an institution, the Left wing will deplatform the center and cleave the whole enterprise in half, denying it all legitimacy and, ultimately, power (since only the center-Right type of people know how to get anything done in a given organization).
In practice, that’s sort of what happened in Charlottesville. The Alt Right went in, whirled its arm in the piranha tank, and then bungled the extraction something fierce.
In the short term, the Alt Right – as it was known back then – got its ass handed to it. Not for lack of asskicking prowess on our part, but because some heroic fat woman had a heart attack or something, and some schizotypal young man was driving nearby, and thus it was clear that America had experienced a huwite supremist terr’rist attack. Also, some violent libertarian from New Hampshire got into the mix, got a face full of pepper spray, and was forced to plead guilty to some crime or other. The Rise Above Movement was furiously prosecuted by Trump’s Justice Department. The Alt Right was irreparably fractured, and the antifa decisively won the battle for the streets of America, which had been hitherto fought as a result of Trump’s presidency. Even Based Stickman (remember Based Stickman?) retreated into obscurity. It all sounded very banal from where I’m standing. Terrorism? What terrorism? To someone who saw mortar shells fall from the sky at age 10, some light vehicular mayhem doesn’t sound all that terrifying, but I always forget that men are few and far between outside the Balkan peninsula.
However, the story was in, and TEH EBUL HUWHITE SUPREMATERRISM NADZEESEMITES had to be cracked down upon. And since the Alt Right of yore was a broad, six-lane highway which allowed everyone from Chris Cantwell to Dave Rubin to drive together towards a common – if at the time undefined – goal, the Charlottesville shitstorm ended up splattering everyone with hearty helpings of the brown stuff.
The Alt Lite is fond of saying “first they came for Alex Jones” because he was the first one of them to get nuked from the Internet. But no, no, a thousand times no. First they came for Jared Taylor, and then a wave of deplatformings followed. We are now hunted and censored at every juncture. However, I noticed a trend in early 2018 – the parts of the Alt Lite that were furthest to the Right started catching flak.
I privately predicted that eventually, the Alt Lite would be completely obliterated by a wave of censorship, whereas the Dissident Right would survive, for the reasons I l gave earlier. I kept it to myself because there was no evidence to prove it at the time. But now we see that Molyneux is feeling the heat. Milo Yiannopoulos was removed early on. Alex Jones is already gone.
The tech oligarchy is determined to prevent another Trump election. To that end, they will deplatform the entire Right wing of the political spectrum which does not deal in safe and toothless ideas. Pretty soon, even Jack Posobiec and Ann Coulter will be too spicy for Twitter, and conservative commentary will be all Shapiro and D’Souza, all the time (muh based market-dominant minorities). In this barren wasteland, we’ll be the only ones left standing, since for some strange reason – and unlike the grifter right – we do not depend on the Left or the tech oligarchy’s mercy to keep on trucking. Maybe it’s that anchor to the truth. Maybe it’s the fact that we attract a better kind of man – a friend to truth and beauty rather than a bandwagon jumper. Maybe the wages of honesty and integrity are victory and eminence, whereas the wages of dishonesty and cuckery are failure and irrelevance.
I don’t think you can blame your mama for this one, Molymemes.
31 comments
I think Charlottesville, if it damaged us was simply due. Things had reached a critical mass, and much like a financial crisis, there was going to be some sort of precipitating pretext and crack down around that time. Had it not been Charlottesville, it would have been something else. There’s too much divisive finger pointing and “I told you so” on our side. Good article.
Arguing that repression is inevitable is just an attempt to evade responsibility for stupid and predictably counter-productive behavior. I think divisiveness is a good thing if it separates wheat from chaff, wise people from fools, etc.
If you keep separating and sifting you eventually end up with a wonderfully refined product so small in quantity that you starve yourself. I think it is time to find the commonality and build strength in numbers. I am certainly not advocating the Republican/conservative big tent, but we can quit attacking some of our lesser partners they do bring in some good people.
It was through Vox and Ann Coulter that I eventually realized Christian Zionism was not on the side of Western man. Ann Coulter led to Whitaker Chambers leading to the exposure of the Jewish influence in communism ultimately leading me to see all the Jewish negative influences.
We can’t build a winning movement out of doxers, police informants, drunkards and druggies who make catastrophic lapses of judgment under the influence, and narcissistic prima donnas who can’t learn from their mistakes.
I agree with this. There should be lines that are simply not allowed to be crossed without shame and shun. My point is the Right is constantly strangling it’s own even those who would mostly agree with us. I consider myself far right traditionalist. I don’t agree with or follow any one person completely, but I would gladly associate with many. The only thing I care about is saving Western civilization, so my grandchildren can live in peace.
Here is an example of choking ourselves. Ramzpaul just did a video where he said he considered himself to be a Zionist. He explained his point that by definition he does also want his own homeland like the Jews. I agree with this. I don’t give a damn about the Jews having their own homeland. I wish them well. I just want them out of my country or at a minimum out of the politics and culture which they destroy. People in the comments were practically calling him a Jew for this.
Where is the line we will except and where can we agree? What points can we build a coalition around? I feel that should be our focus, not the constant bickering.
No disrespect intended. I do appreciate your hard work.
I can’t be too hard on Ramz. I have made the precise argument myself. I am a Zionist because I want Jews to go to Israel and leave us in peace.
Zionism per se is not the issue, but rather the suborned use of our miltary, tax money, and diplomatic complicity in their battles/crimes that is the issue. If it were Chinese vs uighers the matter would be irrelevant.
Interesting article.
When Stefan asked for help/advice during his discussion of his brutal year, I gave similar criticisms in a more concise manner. I simply pointed out that he cucks on these major issues and always ignores, retracts and avoids the implications of his previous red pill moments mere weeks after realizing them.
Its readily observed time again.
Strangely, it seems my comment was deleted (censored??) both times I bothered to comment.
I’m left wondering what the hell is going on. Molyneux is strangely consistently inconsistent on these issues.
Really good article.
The money for the center is drying up. Go right or get left behind.
Btw: My journey to this side went via Stefan, so thank him for that.
Great analysis…and funny.
“unlike the grifter right – we (Counter-Currents) do not depend on the Left or the tech oligarchy’s mercy to keep on trucking”
The Alt-Lite (like Molyneux) is playing in a rigged game. The reality of that game is that the conservatives do not conserve anything, while the business liberals and socialists are in a cold war against each other. (The socialists are clearly winning and will continue to do so as the Clinton and Biden Boomers die and, if God is just, rot in a special Boomer hell). So, the “democrats” are becoming majority socialist. Multi-cultural colored coalition of socialists and white guilters. Guess what! That is the mainstream culture!
With that very apparent truth in mind, what exactly are the Alt-Lite fighting to preserve? What are the Trump Train fans fighting to preserve? They are playing the losing game. They only want to preserve their $ and walk softly around the irrationally angry youths, which hate them because they are race-based socialists. Conservatism has devolved into “lower taxes and cut spending.” Zero social issues, and when they did it was not about the only social issue that mattered: white replacement and disenfranchisement.
Conservatives and Alt-Liters ultimately lead to a muddy world, literally, where they die off surrounded by principles of “my money and freedom.” It is a selfish philosophy.
Now, when you say that, they reply with “well nationalists are collectivists like leftists.” No, no fat boomer or middle aged white who likes rap music. We are their very opposite. And as the conservatives and alt-liter and establishment get pushed out from the false game, there will be only one opponent to the mudwave of socialist death coming our country’s way.
True conservatism, i.e. race realism and the philosophy of a society we all know is the truth. Futurist traditionalism.
The whole “collectivism vs. individualism” schtick is a false dichotomy. They’re not necessarily mutually exclusive, nor is one naturally of the right or of the left, but rather, aspects of the contemporary right and left both contain a measure of collectivism and individualism. At some point in the future, I might expound on my entirely selfish, self-interested and individualistic reasons for being a nationalist and a national populist at that.
Great insights ! Love this site. Love Greg Johnson. Will send money when I have some ! Raising five white children is expensive!
Charlottesville was awesome!
What disappoints me is just how few individuals who were prominent in the AltRight circa 2017 learned from the experience.
Two years later and just about everyone slated to speak that day is now trying to normalize unironic Communism and retarded costume people. In other words, they are actively working to repel any well-adjusted White person with a triple digit IQ.
In life, you screw up. What matters is what you learn from those mistakes. It seems most of our “leaders” have learned zero.
You forgot to mention the worst of the bad actors being exposed in recent months, namely Andrew Anglin and his semitic side kick Weev. Both have sowed discontent that has even touched this website. The wignat denigrations and optic disagreements filtered through and have been mentioned in articles on Counter-Currents. Fortunately in a diminished amount.
I always thought of “Charlottesville as akin to the beer hall putz that occurred in Germany low those many years ago. But this time around it brought even more of the lefts fangs to bare which in the end is positively ravaging the grifters, consemitives, to good effect.
“Beer-hall putz” — I’ll have to remember that one.
Anglin and weev are not bad actors. They have been the movement’s most valuable players since Charlottesville. They are actually the only prominent people who supported that fiasco and managed to learn from it. Most of the rest have such brittle egos that they are still in denial and thus have learned nothing.
Dunno about Andrew Anglin, but I know weev from back in 2007. That guy is bad news even if he’s acting in good faith (which I doubt). Definitely unstable and prone to criminal and antisocial behavior just for the heck of it. As a general rule of thumb, I believe nothing he says and I strongly doubt whatever people associated with him say.
Weev and Anglin have said plenty of things I disagree with. But Weev has been uniformly helpful in our dealings. So I have to judge him by his works. They have also taken the right positions about Charlottesville and its principal actors and the right course since then, even if it has meant retconning the Stormer’s history.
I think Weev’s most valuable contribution was keeping Daily Stormer online post-C’ville when the SJWs were moving heaven and earth to ban that site from the web.
I’ve always believed if they’d succeeded they would’ve went down the line banning every dissident website one by one.
Of course that could still happen but give Weev his props for outmaneuvering (((them))).
“To someone who saw mortar shells fall from the sky at age 10, some light vehicular mayhem doesn’t sound all that terrifying, but I always forget that men are few and far between outside the Balkan peninsula.”
Fucking based! Good one.
It’s funny this comes out now. I was just thinking about Cville(yet again) and how today’s censorship is ultimately a result of it — as you’ve said. Yet the establishment is (and was) always looking for a pretext to do it.
I’m a little afraid, however, that the reason we will survive this is that we were relatively small to begin with. But then again, we have people with real conviction and dedication — people who are anchors, people who understand this is a long distance run, not a sprint.
The Alt Lite thought leaders and their base? I don’t think they have the same quality — this is because they are not fundementally grounded in the truth as we are and they have very limited aims. Being truthful, and therefore closer to the good, produces more commitment among the right people.
I was listening to Douglas Murray talk about his new book. His scope is too limited and he offers no solutions — just like the rest of them. He is also holding back his true beliefs(look at what he says about race and IQ, for instance). He is too afraid to come out swinging, he’s not a leader.
The only reason Murray is considered edgy at all isn’t because he is some radical, it’s because the left has become so extreme (and this new far-left has been framing establishment discourse for so long), he’s moved right by simply standing still.
I have to agree with Jeelvy on the ultimate outcome of Cville in relation to the alt lite. Yet, I think we’d all have to agree we wish it had never happened. For a lot of reasons.
I don’t understand what is supposed to be good about Moly going down. He still does good and unique content, and is certainly one of the better guys in the alt-lite realm. Plus, judging from his Twitter account, he has become quite red-pilled and gutsy by now.
Moly is a half-measure. Half-measures are the bane of any movement. If he won’t reform, it’s better he goes down.
I disagree, half-measures are necessary.
The reason why in the last year the Alt-Lite was censored more is, in my opinion, because they know that people start following conservatives and skeptic liberals like Sargon or the IDW and then many of them will pass on other rightist content, up to the alt-right.
They tracked users who commented on Sam Harris, Sargon, Shapiro videos in 2016 and saw that they commented on Molyneux, Rebel Media in 2017 and then TRS, MW, AmRen, etc in 2018…they want to stop it at a point nearer to the source to stop the flow.
I find this very likely. We should go easy on Stef.
Walls of text trying to justify snark, lying and shortsighted antagonism. Diagnosis: gamma.
The alt lite simply got boring. Yes, we know the frogs are gay and feminism is cancer, but nothing is ever done about it.
A little bit in poor taste. I think Stefan is at least partially being optical in his dealings with us, as he goes for almost all of our ideas whilst disavowing idpol. Certainly an asset, and he does God’s work on his radio therapy sessions.
Don’t trust anyone that won’t show up on the streets. Anglin is a ghost, weev is a ghost, retreaters in the wake of Charlottesville are ghosts, sideline “I told you so’ers” are worse than ghosts they weren’t ever alive-sis pusses. This includes the Greg johnson’s and Jared taylor irrelevants in the world.
Proud Boys are on every normies lips now because they are in the streets. Its bad for all parties of the truth movement who calls out the real enemies of the white race.
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