Alt-Left

Since the upset election victory of Donald Trump, the media has created a new phrase that encompasses its earlier concern with despicable right-wing fringe groups like the neo-Nazis, skin-heads, and the KKK, but goes far beyond those groups. Left-wing opinion leaders and their trained hamsters in the media realized, I think, that the majority of the public recognize all too well that neo-Nazis, skin-heads, and the KKK are low achievelment, generally low IQ groups that represent an tiny percentage of the Right, that those groups are roundly condemned by the Right, and that any support offered by those groups to right-wing politicians or parties is rejected out of hand.

So, it became necessary to create another all encompassing meme that somehow would work for the leftist base. The result was the phrase "alt-Right." The first victim of the alt-Right smear was Steve Bannon, an advisor to Donald Trump. Branded "alt-Right" by the media's hamsters, Bannon was accused on anti-Semitism (among many failings) with Trump guilty by association.

But try as they might, and they've tried very, very hard, the Democrats and their trained media hamsters have been unable to make the "alt-Right" charge stick. They've moved on to another specious accusation—Russian collusion—that is so ridiculous it's laughable. A complete lack of meaningful evidence and the growing evidence of surveillance directed against Trump by the preceding administration now have Dems scrambling to abandon the Russian meme for fear of what might surface.

During all this, the Democratic party has given new meaning to the phrase "sore loser." With the election of DNC leaders who are far-left (not to mention anti-Semitic in the case of Keith Ellison), the party is veering increasingly far to the left. So much so, in fact, that a small, but non-trivial percentage of Dems might now be characterized as "alt-Left."

I have extracted a few descriptive paragraphs from a lengthy article on the alt-Left by conservative historian, Victor Davis Hansen. Hansen claims that the alt-Left agenda now drives the broader Democratic party. I hope that isn't true, but there is growing evidence to support his position:

Its [the alt-Left] overarching ideology seems to be a filtered version of campus postmodernism. Therefore the “truth” is simply a pastiche of “stories” or “narratives.” They can gain credence if those with power and influence “privilege” them, in efforts to enhance their own status and clout. “My story” is just as viable as “the truth,” a construct that does not exist in the abstract.

For the Alt-Left, there are not really inanimate laws of human nature or language. Instead political mobilization can construct powerful narratives of change...

The Alt-Left largely dismisses the old liberal idea of 1960s Civil Rights. Liberals once promoted integration and the goal of an American melting pot empowered by the time-honored traditions of racially blind integration, assimilation, and intermarriage ...

The Alt-Left also believes that racial, ethnic, sexual, and religious identity is essential not incidental to character—as evidenced from the profound by the recent racialist statements of would-be candidates to head the DNC, to the ridiculous, as the careerist-driven and invented identities of a Sen. Elizabeth Warren or Ward Churchill or former white/black activists such as Rachel Dolezal and Shaun King attest ...

Another tenet is the age-old left wing idea that the noble ends of “fairness”—equality of result, and government mandated redistribution—justify almost any means in obtaining them. At Obama rallies in 2008 and 2016, no conservative goons stormed the assemblies and sprayed mace at the audience; at current Trump gatherings protesters in masks try to incite violence, in order to suggest that mayhem is innate to Trump’s appeal. There were no Inauguration Day obscenity-ridden protests on January 20, 2009. To have adopted such tactics to disrupt an Obama rally would have been “racist” ...

The Alt-Left also does not really believe in free speech, at least as it was calibrated by the New Left of the 1960s that mandated “free speech” zones on campus, wrote academic handbooks outlining the need for protected expression, such as the Yale University’s highly regarded Woodward Report ...

The purpose of safe spaces and trigger warnings is to deny free association and expression on grounds that purported victims deserve extra-constitutional protections. In French Revolution or Maoist style, speakers deemed antithetical to campus majority views or liable to influence students in the wrong directions are often barred from giving speeches, or have their lectures shouted down, violently so if need be.

The Alt-Left’s idea of the nullification of law is not limited to campuses. Over 300 sanctuary cities and jurisdictions have now adopted states’ rights arguments from the 1850s (which resurfaced under the Dixiecrat movements of the 1940s and 1950s, before ending with George Wallace defying federal law enforcement’s desegregation orders at the doorway to the University of Alabama). Local laws trump federal legislation, and thus entitle sanctuary cities to shield illegal aliens wanted on federal criminal warrants ...

A chief tenet of Alt-Left nullification is that the innate moral superiority of the Left allows it to render inert any law it finds reactionary or unhelpful to its agenda ... on the premise that such principles are not transferable to other groups who do not share its supposedly unique ethical agendas ...

Hansen concludes that the new Democrat leadership—Perez, Ellison, Sanders, Warren—are pushing hard to make the alt-Left worldview mainstream in the party. It's ironic that the real alternative left is now comprised of the few remaining moderate Democrats (once called 'blue dog' Dems). Sadly, that alternative is rapidly disappearing inside the Democrat party.