The Left needs ideological shock troops to propagate its ideas, and none have been more useful to them than impressionable young people, who eagerly take up left-wing causes out of their natural inclination to make an impact on the world, before the realities of raising children and paying a mortgage set in.
The Left convinces young people that they’re going to be heroes. In reality, they’re like foot soldiers in the intellectual equivalent of the Somme; running at machine guns armed with bayonets.
Bored American youth are indoctrinated into wacky, flimsy ideas that never stand up to the real world, leaving them disappointed, disillusioned, and angry.
Their grip on the minds of young people is weakening, and I am happy to be a leading cause. My efforts to support millennial gamers, and then my “Dangerous Faggot” tour, rapidly mobilized a new breed of dissident student. And now I’ve written the textbook on how to fight back against cultural lunacy.
To quote esteemed author Michael Walsh, “The only weapon they have is our own weakness… It is our wish to be seen as reasonable, as proportional, as judicious, as measured [all leftist terms] that hinders us from taking decisive action against them.”
For too long, conservatives have relied on pundits whose audience is primarily over 60. In the case of FOX News, it’s over 70. Do you really think anyone who isn’t two score into senior citizen discounts wants to have Charles Krauthammer, Stephen Hayes, Frank Luntz, Rich Lowry or Karl Rove on their television screen?
Young people have always been instinctively anti-establishment, and that’s where I come in. There is no other libertarian or conservative pop culture figure who comes close to the purchase I have with Generation Next, who are sick of being lectured to by the increasingly nannying Left. America’s young conservatives and libertarians are looking for heroes. I’m happy to oblige.
Without an endless supply of eager young activists, the Left is nothing. And I am hoovering up those young people and spitting them out as mischievous, dissident free speech warriors who don’t give a damn about your feelings. For hundreds of thousands of students, simply reading this book has become the ultimate statement of rebellion. To them I say: Milo Merchandise is also available, while supplies last.
You’ve seen how liberals respond when their backs are against the wall: with hate, because they’ve forgotten how to argue, all the while trumpeting their own moral superiority. Well, here’s something I’ve learned during my time in America: aggressive public displays of virtue are where the morally deplorable hide.
2
WHY THE ALT-RIGHT
HATES ME
To the proud white supremacists at Daily Stormer, I am a “nigger-loving … kike faggot” and a “disease-ridden Jew.”19 But to NBC News and USA Today I am a “white nationalist leader.”20 Aside from the “disease-ridden” part, Daily Stormer is closer to the facts. What does that tell you about the mainstream media?
Anyone who calls me a white supremacist has no understanding of what white supremacy is. That’s sadly common in America today, where wearing a Trump hat is enough to get you called a Nazi and attacked in the street by black-masked “anti-fascists.” The media, in its hysterical, fact-free hunt for racists under the bed, has lost its authority in these matters.
For those of you still confused, I’m going to explain what white supremacy is, what the alt-right is, and why I have no love for either.
In late November 2016, Bloomberg Businessweek published their annual Jealousy List, a collection of “stories we wish we’d done this year—and don’t want you to miss.” The list was predictable: Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, as well as BuzzFeed and Deadspin.
And then, not so predictably, Breitbart.
Bloomberg chose “An Establishment Conservative’s Guide to the Alt-Right,” a 5,000-word explainer on the controversial movement written by yours truly along with my colleague Allum Bokhari. They were right to pick our story. It was the most influential piece of political journalism published that year.
When we published our exposition, there had been little commentary, and no trace of an authoritative definition of the emerging alt-right. The media stuck to their usual hysterics that accompany the rise of any popular new right-wing movement.
It’s profoundly anti-intellectual to substitute moral outrage for genuine understanding, but that was the approach taken by many commentators towards the alt-right when it first emerged. This was grossly unfair: in its early days, the alt-right included a member base as diverse as disaffected Tea Party supporters and eighteen-year old meme addicts curious about a movement that defied so many taboos. Even today, it’s not clear-cut. There are Jews who still identify with the alt-right.21
National Review portrayed alt-righters as embittered members of the white-working class, which was not correct. “Thuggish alt-right Trumpers” said Red State, another conservative outlet hand-wringing about online trolling. BuzzFeed described the alt-right as a “white nationalist movement” where “rare Pepes … are common.” (I’ll explain what a “Pepe” is later in this chapter.)
BuzzFeed also quoted lawyer Ken White, who lamented that it was “Really hard to tease out the genuine white nationalists from the trolls,” but added, “At a certain point the distinction isn’t meaningful.”22
Well, I think the distinction is very meaningful.
To deny the movement’s complexity in a frantic effort to advertise their own moral virtue, as so many columnists did on the Left and Right, was an act of supreme intellectual dishonesty. The distinguished Jewish political philosopher Leo Strauss insisted scholars should seek “to understand the author as he understood himself.”
There’s a world of difference between teenagers telling jokes on Twitter about forbidden subjects to wind up whiny SJWs, and someone like Richard Spencer, who wants a “peaceful ethnic cleansing” of the United States.
The definition of alt-right has evolved since we penned our guide. White nationalists and Neo-Nazis took over, and people who initially enjoyed the label were being accused of sins they did not commit. This suited the media just fine. It’s weird how obsessed the media is with calling everyone racist, isn’t it? It’s almost like they want everyone to be racist or something, for some reason. Whatever their reasoning, they were given many more cover story options as a result.