Paul Gottfried on the “Alt Right”

Here are some trenchant remarks on the Alternative Right from Paul Gottfried, the man who coined the name.

I have spent the evening with Professor Gottfried on a couple of occasions, and I can assure you that he is the farthest thing imaginable from the sort of neo-Nazi hothead that the mainstream media would have you believe the alt-right consists of. I’ve also recommended his books in these pages (see here and here). They are scholarly and rigorous, and very much worth your time.

14 Comments

  1. For an anti-Leftist, he has a striking resemblance to Lenin! Just sayin’ …

    Posted August 30, 2016 at 5:53 pm | Permalink
  2. JK says

    I for one found rather refreshing John Schindler’s take of yesterday:

    [W]hat actually is the Alt-Right?

    There is no defined ideology we can reference. What exactly falls under the rubric of the Alt-Right is an open question. Neither is it a movement in a political sense. Rather, it’s a reaction to changes in Movement Conservatism over the last half-century.

    http://observer.com/2016/08/clintons-alt-right-kill-shot-and-trumps-one-way-man-crush/

    Posted August 30, 2016 at 6:07 pm | Permalink
  3. Malcolm says

    “It’s a reaction…”

    Quite so. As such its “definition” is largely apophatic: it is a reaction against multiculturalism, against cultural Marxism, against the denial of human nature, against demographic replacement, against universalism, against the expansion and centralization of the State, against the relentless action of Conquest’s Second Law, against the sacralizing of equality as the highest possible good, against the “immanentization of the eschaton”, and so on.

    Perhaps it is best understood, in brief, as “anti-entropic”.

    Posted August 30, 2016 at 8:21 pm | Permalink
  4. “It’s a reaction…”

    I’m not sure how to describe it, but I know what it is when I see it.

    My only concern is whether there are a sufficient number of voters who also understand what’s confronting them. It’s a very serious concern.

    Posted August 30, 2016 at 9:04 pm | Permalink
  5. JK says

    Henry?

    “I’m not sure how to describe it, but I know what it is when I see it.”

    Come now my friend, just take an hour out of your busy schedule and watch this then, take another stab at a description.

    https://www.c-span.org/video/?414563-1/former-senator-bob-graham-addresses-release-911-reports-28-pages

    Posted August 31, 2016 at 11:36 am | Permalink
  6. JK,

    I watched Bob Graham’s presentation, which was laudable. I have personally not had any doubts about the Saudi’s complicity in the events of 9/11. And I am glad that the evidence is finally being released because I believe it is high time for the Federal Government to reassess its former reliance on any symbiotic relationship with Saudi Arabia.

    My remark above is unrelated to any of this, however. All I was saying was that, I personally, have digested what needs to be addressed by the American electorate in the upcoming election. I am, however, despairing that a significant portion of the electorate has been (and will continue to be) distracted by diddly shit issues.

    Posted August 31, 2016 at 1:25 pm | Permalink
  7. JK says

    Henry then, you might ought consider hiring a U-Haul.

    Around these parts “diddly squat/shit” satisfies for a description.

    Posted August 31, 2016 at 1:43 pm | Permalink
  8. Whitewall says

    This Alt Right is truly a reaction and seems to have some vigor. We have seen enough of the “tennis match” of back and forth between conservative inc writers who are talented, and progressive writers who are simply approved of by the powers that be. The “Cons” can produce the best writing and research, but it doesn’t matter. They have at least done their bit and delivered the tennis ball over the net for the on going volley. The Right is right but the Left advances. Enough.

    The Tea Party movement was grassroots decency but it was attacked from all quarters and destroyed as a systemic threat to The Left-GOPe cabal. Now we have Trump for those who didn’t listen. We have the felon Hillary for those who no longer have to care.

    Posted August 31, 2016 at 2:15 pm | Permalink
  9. JK,

    I am apparently not catching your drift. It feels like we are in violent agreement, but I don’t understand why you think I should hire a U-Haul.

    BTW, I have never hired a U-Haul. Whenever I make a move, which I have done many times, I always hire a big-ass moving company that not only packs everything up for me but also loads my car along with all my furniture and boxed-up possessions.

    Posted August 31, 2016 at 2:46 pm | Permalink
  10. JK says

    “Physicists are really smart people” I was told awhile ago.

    (Hmmm I thought then, why so many live in terrible zipcodes?)

    Posted August 31, 2016 at 2:55 pm | Permalink
  11. JK,

    Your question is a good one. My reason for living in a politically horrible zip code is that it wasn’t a politically motivated choice.

    We currently live near the campus where my wife, the lovely Trish is getting her Ph.D. Our prior zip codes were dictated by where Trish was working; where Trish was getting her Master’s degree; where my Dad was dying; and where I was working.

    I would like to have the option of living in a political zip code that was better aligned with my political views. But that is usually not our primary concern.

    If I was a retired bachelor, I would probably live in Austin, Texas.

    Posted August 31, 2016 at 5:16 pm | Permalink
  12. JK says

    Question.

    JK asked a question?

    That Sir was a parenthetical.

    Yeah I realize my Friend you’re, figuratively on me … here and there … but the fact is You Henry are a physicist and; JK is not a physicist.

    Posted August 31, 2016 at 9:11 pm | Permalink
  13. Whitewall says

    Lifted from Instapundit this morning:
    ROGER KIMBALL: The New Criterion At 35.
    It has become increasingly clear as the imperatives of political correctness make ever greater inroads against free speech and the perquisites of dispassionate inquiry that the battle against this provinciality of time is one of the central cultural tasks of our age. It is a battle from which the traditional trustees of civilization–schools and colleges, museums, many churches–have fled. Increasingly, it has seemed to us, the responsibility for defending those “intellectual and spiritual foundations of Western civilization” of which George Nash spoke has fallen to individuals and institutions that are largely distant from, when they are not indeed explicitly disenfranchised from, the dominant cultural establishment. Leading universities today command tax-exempt endowments in the tens of billions of dollars. But it is by no means clear, notwithstanding the prestige they confer upon their graduates, whether they do anything to challenge the temporal provinciality of their charges. No, let us emend that: it is blindingly clear that they do everything in their considerable power to reinforce that provinciality, not least by their slavish capitulation to the dictates of the enslaving presentism of political correctness.

    Forceful “reaction” has become necessary.

    Posted September 1, 2016 at 9:09 am | Permalink
  14. Malcolm says

    Robert,

    Hear! Hear!

    The “provinciality of time”. Exactly right.

    Forceful reaction has indeed become necessary, or we are doomed.

    Posted September 1, 2016 at 11:46 am | Permalink

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