There’s a video of an Alt-Right rally doing the rounds on the web. The Atlantic posted it on YouTube:
Most people who share this video are just looking to say “wow, how disgusting is that”. And that’s worth saying. But let’s also take this opportunity to pick apart how this horrifying view works and what we can do to prevent more people from adopting it.
Right nationalism seems to be having its moment in the sun. The right nationalists believe that the inequality and economic stagnation we see today across many rich democracies is caused by immigrants, minorities, and foreign states which take jobs, drain welfare states and public services, and push through expropriative trade deals. They want to put a stop to free trade and free movement in a bid to recreate the strong, ethnically and culturally homogeneous nation states that prevailed in the 1950s. They won a stunning victory in Britain’s EU referendum, and have now followed this up with a come-from-behind surprise win in the US presidential election. But there are many right nationalist movements scattered throughout the rich countries, and many of them will have a chance to gain power and influence in upcoming elections. Here are four biggest opportunities for right nationalists to upset the liberal world order in the next year.
Continue reading “The Right Nationalist World Tour’s Next Stops: Rome, Amsterdam, Paris, Berlin”
In the wake of the Trump victory, some pundits have written pieces arguing that Trump’s win was not down to economic distress, but instead due to hostility to immigration, diversity, and social change. In some cases these pundits explicitly call the election result a “whitelash” and accuse Trump supporters of racism and xenophobia. Unfortunately the dichotomy they are drawing between economic explanations and racial explanations is deeply misleading, and stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of the ways class and race intersect, both in America and throughout the western world.
Continue reading “The False Dichotomy Between Economics and Racism”
After Mitt Romney lost in 2012, the Republican Party establishment decided it needed to expand its base and wrote a report to this effect. The plan was for the party to triangulate to some degree on immigration and social issues to win more votes from Hispanics and women, moderating its positions and principles to make itself more attractive to these demographic groups. As Jeb Bush flamed out, Marco Rubio became the poster boy of this new style of conservative politics. But the Republican anti-establishment never bought into this strategy. Led by Ted Cruz, they firmly believed that Romney lost because he failed to excite the Republican base and that the answer was for the party to nominate a “true conservative”. The 2016 Republican primary was all set to be a showdown between “reform conservatism” and the Cruz counterrevolution, but then Donald Trump showed up and made the whole thing about him and about the public’s growing economic frustration. It now looks increasingly likely (but far from certain) that Trump will lose by a significant margin. What effect will that have on this debate and the party’s prospects in 2020?
Continue reading “Cruz vs Rubio: The Unfinished Business from the Republican Primary”
Benjamin Studebaker 