Spencer may not be a wannabe American National Socialist but the ideas he represents. i.e. an atheistic ethnonationalism grounded on a syncretic formulation of materialistic determinism and romantic intuitism were also advocated by the man with a mustache. Hailgate and "nazi irony" make media attempts to portray Spencer and the movement he is associated with as Nazis v2.0 plausible.
The Left wants to reinforce this association and Spencer and his acolytes seem to want to oblige. He may or may not be controlled opposition but he is certainly behaving as if he is. I think it was a grave, grave mistake for the Dissident right not to clearly disassociate itself from Spencer early on. As a result, rightly or wrongly, the stench of Fascism now permeates the non-mainstream Right in the minds of those who are "normies".
On the other hand, those who aren't normies are fully aware that Spencer represents one segment of the non mainstream "Right" and that there are there are a wide variety of different positions on many social questions in the
Now the idea of the Alt-Right= Nazi is a welcome state of affairs to the Neocons and "Cuckservatives" who see the the existential danger to themselves by the existence of a Right that they do not control. They want to destroy any opposition and reinstate themselves, and associating their opponents with Fascism is a very effective mechanism to deny them any political legitimacy. I think Schneider's speech at CPAC was an example of this.
The first thing that struck me about Schneider's speech that is that he was very vague about who the Alt-Right was. Was it the media's version? Or the "in house" one. There was no distinction and I certainly got the impression that he being deliberately non precise and slurring the entire non-Mainstream Right.
Secondly, like all great disinformation operations, Schneider's speech was combination of Truth mixed in with calculated lie. It's true that Fascism is a sect of the Left, it's true that Spencer has co-opted the Label of Alt-Right, but is it true that conservatism can be reduced to an individual's rights? In my opinion Schneider was pushing for a re definition of Conservatism as some form of Libertarianism.
Libertarianism is the political ideology of social autism. The problem with it, is that the political system that it needs to bring its political ideology into real world practice would resemble the open borders, multinational corporation, zhe-sexual, nationless individualism that we have now. So any attempt to redefine conservatism along libertarian lines is really a Trojan horse operation to re-install the the worst elements of the NeoCon ideology.
Unlike Libertarianism, the traditional Right has always emphasised that men do not exist as social atoms but as members of a community, and just as men have rights so to does the community. Furthermore, communities had norms which individuals were meant to follow, and one of the problems in right wing thought was where to draw the line between individual liberty and community rights. Right wing thinkers recognised that part of what made a community's identity were the norms that it chose to uphold and any dilution of those norms represented a dilution of that sense of community. Right thinking is therefore libertarian to only unto a point, and afterwards is coercive. Libertarianism pushes that thought towards one pole: the individual, and argues against any community norms except the bare minimum.
What I found really interesting with Schneider's speech was the very lukewarm reception it got. It really does seem that the rank and file are beginning to see through the smoke and mirrors but that's not to say that the ideology of Spencer would have found much traction there as well. What I would have loved to see is Victor Orban give a speech at CPAC. It think his version of nationalism is the one we should emulate. National Conservatism is far better than National Socialism.
