Alt-right

Wednesday

Cockburn

Azealia Banks flames Milo Yiannopoulos as they sever professional ties

Milo Yiannopoulos has fallen out with another Trump-supporting musical artist. The right-wing provocateur and one-time intern of Marjorie Taylor Greene had been teasing his intention to start managing Azealia Banks, a rapper and singer as talented as she is controversial best known for her songs "212" and "Anna Wintour." "At Yeezy, I discovered a gift for navigating, protecting and advising mercurial and demanding geniuses," he tweeted ten days ago. "I deliver and close ruthlessly, effectively and efficiently. So I’m moving into artist management full time. Signing my first client in a few days. You will, as they say, gag." Banks retweeted his post. Yet days later, on the eve of Banks's UK tour, the blossoming working relationship appears to have unraveled.

azealia banks

Tuesday

Jack Hunter

The alt-right are contrarian phonies

Why is an alt-right pundit all of a sudden best buds with the artist formerly known as Kanye West? Many have found themselves fascinated and revolted over Ye’s strange new career as a high-profile antisemite. Those familiar with the contours of the contemporary right, including the far-right, are not surprised to see white nationalist Nick Fuentes jumping onboard the Ye train. Those unfamiliar with the openly racist online host have been shocked to learn he exists, has some kind of audience, and has formed an alliance of sorts with arguably the most famous black man in America. This all makes sense when you understand how these people think.

Friday

Cockburn

Kanye’s Thanksgiving feast with Trump, Milo and Nick Fuentes

While you were carving the turkey with your family last night, Kanye West was on Twitter, unveiling his 2024 masterplan. On Thanksgiving night, the rapper posted a video titled “Mar-a-Lago debrief,” in which he said Donald Trump was “really impressed with Nick Fuentes.” That would be the same Nick Fuentes who heads up the far-right incel-adjacent "groyper" movement, attended both the Charlottesville and January 6 protests (he was on the steps of the Capitol) and has spoken critically about the notion that America is a "Judeo-Christian" nation. Also, like Milo Yiannopoulos, he's now working on the Kanye 2024 campaign. With friends like these... https://twitter.

fuentes

Friday

Cockburn

Does Nick Fuentes deserve to be on Twitter?

Nick Fuentes, the controversial far-right firebrand, was suspended from Twitter on Friday. Unsurprisingly, Media Matters chew toy Al Kaplan broke the news of the suspension. A Twitter spokesman, Trenton Kennedy, told the New York Times that Fuentes 'was permanently suspended for repeated violations of the Twitter Rules.’ Cockburn is annoyed by the terminology; suspension inherently means temporary. Twitter should classify it as a permanent ban. Put down the DMT and stop playing with the clockwork elves, Jack. Finish up grammar school. The spokesperson would not detail which specific rules he violated: 'This is all I can share right now — thanks for understanding.’ No problem buddy, take your time.

nick fuentes

Friday

Mark Scaife

Should we forgive Lauren Southern?

As a society, we have become exceptionally bad at forgiveness. How much does anyone really deserve? Are they remorseful? What if they’ve changed? We barely know where to start anymore.But now that social media has been around for long enough that people who rose to infamy early on have, in many cases, had enough time to ‘grow up’, it’s important to decide how we judge others. So, when Lauren Southern — a free-speech activist or an alt-right neo-fascist, depending on your source — returns to the public eye seeking to revive ‘meaningful, sane conversation,’ how should she be treated?

lauren southern

Wednesday

Ben Sixsmith

Who’s afraid of the boogaloo?

Joseph Miner, a 29-year-old resident of Queens, New York, fits into what you might imagine the ‘alt-right’ to be. A young man who posted photos of himself performing the Hitler salute alongside jokes about being an ‘incel’, he lived with his parents and posted racial abuse online under the handle ‘souljagoy’. (Get it? It's like Soulja Boy. But he’s not Jewish. Get it?)According to reports, Miner has been arrested for buying illegal weapons from an undercover agent with the aim of taking part in the ‘boogaloo’.Boogaloo? What the hell is that? Boogaloo, it turns out, is a euphemism for civil war, used ironically and unironically online.

boogaloo

Sunday

Ben Sixsmith

Ben Shapiro and the extreme nonsense of the horseshoe theory

I wrote last week that Catholic nationalist ‘groypers’ were beating the likes of Charlie Kirk and Ben Shapiro at their own debate nerd game. Shapiro tried to return fire on Thursday. His speech at Stanford University was aimed directly at the ‘alt-right.’ I agreed with much of what he said, about the immorality of equating skin color with moral worth and of jokes about the nature of the Holocaust. Shapiro made a good point in saying that ‘irony’ can be a weaselly rhetorical maneuver inasmuch as it allows people to express contentious opinions with the escape clause of insincerity. But Shapiro's speech had serious weaknesses in style and content. Firstly, he refused to name anyone that he was referring to.

ben shapiro

Friday

Cockburn

Cernovich, Watson and PewDiePie get to grips with No Nut November

Cockburn hears that the spunky youths of the alt-right are growing up and setting aside childish ways, or at least not masturbating themselves to pop-eyed apoplexy over online porn for a few weeks. As if the onset of winter isn’t depressing enough, it’s No Nut November once again.For the uninitiated, or for those who’ve moved out of their parents’ basement, No Nut November is perhaps the toughest challenge the modern manchild will ever face: an entire month without watching porn or bashing one out over the keyboard. It’s Lent for millennials: 11 months of meaty devotions at the shrine of Onan, one month of remorseful purging of the hard drive.

no nut november

Saturday

Matt McDonald

Gavin McInnes: ‘Personally I think the guy was looking to get beat up for optics’

Much has been made of the so-called ‘mob mentality’ of left-wing protesters in the last few weeks. The GOP has been eager to paint anti-Kavanaugh activists as the kind of hysterical torch-wielders that deeply concerned this country’s founders. It’s intriguing, therefore, to see how quickly many in the media seized the opportunity to show the violent ‘mob’ mindset in action on the right. Last night, VICE founder Gavin McInnes was the talk of Twitter after footage emerged showing a protester being beaten by a group of ‘Proud Boys’ (McInnes’s followers) on a Manhattan pavement. https://www.youtube.com/watch?

gavin mcinnes

Thursday

Lionel Shriver

Millennials aren’t taking offence. They’re hunting for victims

In a recent column, I vowed to return to a point made in passing. To refresh your memory, the American magazine the Nation printed a formal apology for running a harmless 14-line poem by a white writer about homelessness. The poet’s sins: using the word ‘cripple’ and adopting a voice lightly evoking what I gather we’re now to call ‘AAVE’: African-American Vernacular English. Facebookers were incensed, comments huffy. The poet apologised, too. I decried this ritual progressive self-abasement as cowardly and undignified. But it’s worth taking a second look at that story as a prime example of screaming emotional fraudulence in the public sphere.

antifa snowflakes millennials