Alternative Right
Encyclopedia
Alternative Right, or AlternativeRight.com, is a paleoconservative
website
which presents itself as "an online magazine of radical traditionalism," and "an attempt to forge a new, independent intellectual Right
." The website is often referred to as "AltRight." Alternative Right was founded by Richard B. Spencer, who was formerly an editor at The American Conservative
magazine and Taki's Magazine. In 2010, AltRight became a media project of the National Policy Institute
.
Alex Kurtagić and Richard Spencer.
Additional contributors include Peter Brimelow
, Jack Donovan, Drew Fraser
, Dr. Paul E. Gottfried
, Richard Hoste, James Kalb, Nina Kouprianova, Colin Liddell, Scott Locklin, Andy Nowicki, Keith Preston
, Steve Sailer
, Jared Taylor
, Srđa Trifković
, Derek Turner
, Elizabeth D. Wright, and various others.
. It is an interview program hosted by Richard Spencer. Prominent guests have included Patrick Buchanan, Paul Gottfried
, Stephen McNallen
, Bill Murphy
, Tomislav Sunic
, Thomas E. Woods Jr.
, and others.
Property and Freedom Society's annual conference at Bodrum
, Turkey
. There he discussed numerous intellectual currents within 20th century American conservatism
, and the status of the larger phenomenon increasingly referenced as "the alternative right."
and the right. Examples of the former include the Southern Poverty Law Center
, which has characterized the site as "yet another far-right magazine," as well as "loaded with contributors who...have long lamented the white man’s decline
." Conservative
critiques include E.D. Kain's contention at True/Slant
, that "the far-right-wingers at Alternative Right represent the ugly – and yes racist
– underbelly of ‘alt’ conservatism. This is white nationalism
, folks, dressed up in faux-intellectualism."
In March 2010, Spencer was interviewed by Tim Mak of FrumForum, the online magazine of George W. Bush
speechwriter
David Frum
. Mak concluded that AltRight's "ideas belong in some sort of padded room," and that its writers are "going to be white nationalists, but, by God
, they’re going to be a little fancy about it."
Greg Johnson of The Occidental Quarterly, extolls AltRight as a publication he "hope[s]...will attract the brightest young conservatives and libertarians
and expose them to far broader intellectual horizons, including race realism
, White Nationalism, the European New Right
, the Conservative Revolution, Traditionalism
, neo-paganism
, agrarianism
, Third Positionism
, anti-feminism
, and right-wing anti-capitalists
, ecologists
, bioregionalists
, and small-is-beautiful
types."
Journalist
Rich Johnston
wrote an article lampooning public comments left by readers of AltRight (in response to the publication's cinematic review
of 2011's
Thor
), characterizing the review itself as "relatively measured and muted."
Paleoconservatism
Paleoconservatism is a term for a conservative political philosophy found primarily in the United States stressing tradition, limited government, civil society, anti-colonialism, anti-corporatism and anti-federalism, along with religious, regional, national and Western identity. Chilton...
website
Website
A website, also written as Web site, web site, or simply site, is a collection of related web pages containing images, videos or other digital assets. A website is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via a network such as the Internet or a private local area network through an Internet...
which presents itself as "an online magazine of radical traditionalism," and "an attempt to forge a new, independent intellectual Right
Right-wing politics
In politics, Right, right-wing and rightist generally refer to support for a hierarchical society justified on the basis of an appeal to natural law or tradition. To varying degrees, the Right rejects the egalitarian objectives of left-wing politics, claiming that the imposition of equality is...
." The website is often referred to as "AltRight." Alternative Right was founded by Richard B. Spencer, who was formerly an editor at The American Conservative
The American Conservative
The American Conservative is a monthly U.S. opinion magazine published by Ron Unz. Its first editor was Scott McConnell, his successors being Kara Hopkins and the present incumbent, Daniel McCarthy....
magazine and Taki's Magazine. In 2010, AltRight became a media project of the National Policy Institute
National Policy Institute
The National Policy Institute is an American white nationalist think tank based in Whitefish, Montana. It describes itself as the right's answer to the Southern Poverty Law Center....
.
Contributors
The Editors-in-chief are authorAuthor
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
Alex Kurtagić and Richard Spencer.
Additional contributors include Peter Brimelow
Peter Brimelow
Peter Brimelow is a British American financial journalist, author, and founder of VDARE. Brimelow has been the editor of many publications, including Forbes, the Financial Post, and National Review...
, Jack Donovan, Drew Fraser
Drew Fraser
Andrew William Fraser is a Canadian-born academic and was latterly an Associate Professor in the Department of Public Law at Macquarie University in Sydney, New South Wales, Australia...
, Dr. Paul E. Gottfried
Paul Gottfried
Paul Edward Gottfried is Horace Raffensperger Professor of Humanities at Elizabethtown College in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, and a Guggenheim recipient...
, Richard Hoste, James Kalb, Nina Kouprianova, Colin Liddell, Scott Locklin, Andy Nowicki, Keith Preston
Keith Preston
Keith Preston is a Third Position anarchist and self-described "pan-secessionist" writer and activist...
, Steve Sailer
Steve Sailer
Steven Ernest Sailer is an American journalist and movie critic for The American Conservative, a blogger, a VDARE.com columnist, and a former correspondent for UPI. He writes about race relations, gender issues, politics, immigration, IQ, genetics, movies, and sports.-Personal life:Sailer grew up...
, Jared Taylor
Jared Taylor
Samuel Jared Taylor of Oakton, Virginia, is an American journalist and an advocate of what he describes as "racial realism", a philosophy that views race as a biological reality and advocates the separateness of racial groups as the key of a well functioning society...
, Srđa Trifković
Srđa Trifković
Srđa Trifković is a Serbian writer on international affairs and foreign affairs editor for the paleoconservative magazine Chronicles. He was director of the Center for International Affairs at the Rockford Institute until his...
, Derek Turner
Derek Turner (journalist)
Derek Turner is a freelance journalist. In the early 1980s he served in the Irish Navy and moved to England in 1988.Derek Turner was editor of Right Now! magazine from 1995 until its demise in December 2006...
, Elizabeth D. Wright, and various others.
AltRight Radio
AltRight Radio is Alternative Right's official podcastPodcast
A podcast is a series of digital media files that are released episodically and often downloaded through web syndication...
. It is an interview program hosted by Richard Spencer. Prominent guests have included Patrick Buchanan, Paul Gottfried
Paul Gottfried
Paul Edward Gottfried is Horace Raffensperger Professor of Humanities at Elizabethtown College in Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, and a Guggenheim recipient...
, Stephen McNallen
Stephen McNallen
Stephen A. McNallen is an influential Germanic Neopagan leader and writer. Born in Breckenridge, Texas, McNallen has been heavily involved in Ásatrú since the 1970s.-Life:...
, Bill Murphy
Bill Murphy (GATA chairman)
Bill Murphy is a former American professional football player, financial commentator, and the chairman and director of the Gold Anti-Trust Action Committee , which was founded as a result of Murphy's essays on collusion among large financial institutions to suppress the price of precious metals...
, Tomislav Sunic
Tomislav Sunic
Tomislav Sunić is a Croatian-American writer, translator, professor and a former diplomat. He is best known for his books and writings critical of egalitarianism, biblical monotheism, and liberal political discourse. He serves as one of the , a political party considered to be favorable to...
, Thomas E. Woods Jr.
Thomas Woods
Thomas E. "Tom" Woods, Jr. is an American historian, economist, political analyst, and New York Times-bestselling author. He has written extensively on the subjects of American history, contemporary politics, and economic theory...
, and others.
Ideological orientation
In the spring of 2010, AltRight founder Richard B. Spencer addressed Hans-Hermann Hoppe'sHans-Hermann Hoppe
Hans-Hermann Hoppe is an Austrian School economist of the anarcho-capitalist tradition, and a Professor Emeritus of economics at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.-Academic career:...
Property and Freedom Society's annual conference at Bodrum
Bodrum
Bodrum is a port city in Muğla Province, in the southwestern Aegean Region of Turkey. It is located on the southern coast of Bodrum Peninsula, at a point that checks the entry into the Gulf of Gökova. The site was called Halicarnassus of Caria in ancient times and was famous for housing the...
, Turkey
Turkey
Turkey , known officially as the Republic of Turkey , is a Eurasian country located in Western Asia and in East Thrace in Southeastern Europe...
. There he discussed numerous intellectual currents within 20th century American conservatism
American conservatism
Conservatism in the United States has played an important role in American politics since the 1950s. Historian Gregory Schneider identifies several constants in American conservatism: respect for tradition, support of republicanism, preservation of "the rule of law and the Christian religion", and...
, and the status of the larger phenomenon increasingly referenced as "the alternative right."
Controversy and criticism
AltRight has been subject to criticism from both the leftLeft-wing politics
In politics, Left, left-wing and leftist generally refer to support for social change to create a more egalitarian society...
and the right. Examples of the former include the Southern Poverty Law Center
Southern Poverty Law Center
The Southern Poverty Law Center is an American nonprofit civil rights organization noted for its legal victories against white supremacist groups; legal representation for victims of hate groups; monitoring of alleged hate groups, militias and extremist organizations; and educational programs that...
, which has characterized the site as "yet another far-right magazine," as well as "loaded with contributors who...have long lamented the white man’s decline
Genocide
Genocide is defined as "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group", though what constitutes enough of a "part" to qualify as genocide has been subject to much debate by legal scholars...
." Conservative
Conservatism
Conservatism is a political and social philosophy that promotes the maintenance of traditional institutions and supports, at the most, minimal and gradual change in society. Some conservatives seek to preserve things as they are, emphasizing stability and continuity, while others oppose modernism...
critiques include E.D. Kain's contention at True/Slant
True/Slant
True/Slant , a company based in a loft in SoHo in New York City funded with $3 million in capital by Forbes Media and Fuse Capital and sold to Forbes in May 2010, was an original content news network....
, that "the far-right-wingers at Alternative Right represent the ugly – and yes racist
Racism
Racism is the belief that inherent different traits in human racial groups justify discrimination. In the modern English language, the term "racism" is used predominantly as a pejorative epithet. It is applied especially to the practice or advocacy of racial discrimination of a pernicious nature...
– underbelly of ‘alt’ conservatism. This is white nationalism
White nationalism
White nationalism is a political ideology which advocates a racial definition of national identity for white people. White separatism and white supremacism are subgroups within white nationalism. The former seek a separate white nation state, while the latter add ideas from social Darwinism and...
, folks, dressed up in faux-intellectualism."
In March 2010, Spencer was interviewed by Tim Mak of FrumForum, the online magazine of George W. Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
speechwriter
Speechwriter
A speechwriter is a person who is hired to prepare and write speeches that will be delivered by another person. Speechwriters are used by many senior-level elected officials and executives in the government and private sectors.-Skills and training:...
David Frum
David Frum
David J. Frum is a Canadian American journalist active in both the United States and Canadian political arenas. A former economic speechwriter for President George W. Bush, he is also the author of the first "insider" book about the Bush presidency...
. Mak concluded that AltRight's "ideas belong in some sort of padded room," and that its writers are "going to be white nationalists, but, by God
God
God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism....
, they’re going to be a little fancy about it."
Greg Johnson of The Occidental Quarterly, extolls AltRight as a publication he "hope[s]...will attract the brightest young conservatives and libertarians
Libertarianism
Libertarianism, in the strictest sense, is the political philosophy that holds individual liberty as the basic moral principle of society. In the broadest sense, it is any political philosophy which approximates this view...
and expose them to far broader intellectual horizons, including race realism
Racial realism
Racial realism is a view held by some political groups and individuals which holds that racial divisions of humans are based in biological reality, and that racial distinctions are enduringly important because racial groups differ genetically with regard to such important behavioral tendencies as...
, White Nationalism, the European New Right
Nouvelle Droite
Nouvelle Droite is a school of political thought founded largely on the works of Alain de Benoist and GRECE .-Etymology and history:...
, the Conservative Revolution, Traditionalism
Traditionalist School
The term Traditionalist School is used by Mark Sedgwick and other authors to denote a school of thought, also known as Integral Traditionalism or Perennialism to denote an esoteric movement developed by authors such as French metaphysician René Guénon, German-Swiss...
, neo-paganism
Neopaganism
Neopaganism is an umbrella term used to identify a wide variety of modern religious movements, particularly those influenced by or claiming to be derived from the various pagan beliefs of pre-modern Europe...
, agrarianism
Agrarianism
Agrarianism has two common meanings. The first meaning refers to a social philosophy or political philosophy which values rural society as superior to urban society, the independent farmer as superior to the paid worker, and sees farming as a way of life that can shape the ideal social values...
, Third Positionism
Third Position
Third Position is a revolutionary nationalist political ideology that emphasizes its opposition to both communism and capitalism. Advocates of Third Position politics typically present themselves as "beyond left and right", instead claiming to syncretize radical ideas from both ends of the...
, anti-feminism
Antifeminism
Antifeminism is opposition to feminism in some or all of its forms. Modern antifeminists say that the feminist movement has achieved its aims and now seeks higher status for women than for men.-History:...
, and right-wing anti-capitalists
Anti-capitalism
Anti-capitalism describes a wide variety of movements, ideas, and attitudes which oppose capitalism. Anti-capitalists, in the strict sense of the word, are those who wish to completely replace capitalism with another system....
, ecologists
Ecology movement
The global ecology movement is based upon environmental protection, and is one of several new social movements that emerged at the end of the 1960s. As a values-driven social movement, it should be distinguished from the pre-existing science of ecology....
, bioregionalists
Bioregionalism
Bioregionalism is a political, cultural, and environmental system or set of views based on naturally defined areas called bioregions, similar to ecoregions. Bioregions are defined through physical and environmental features, including watershed boundaries and soil and terrain characteristics...
, and small-is-beautiful
Small Is Beautiful
Small Is Beautiful: Economics As If People Mattered is a collection of essays by British economist E. F. Schumacher. The phrase "Small Is Beautiful" came from a phrase by his teacher Leopold Kohr...
types."
Journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
Rich Johnston
Rich Johnston
Rich Johnston is a writer who writes about the comic book industry.-Early life:Johnston grew up in Pontefract, West Yorkshire, studied politics at University of Newcastle upon Tyne, and was an advertising copywriter until 2009; he currently lives in Kingston Vale, London, with his wife, Janice...
wrote an article lampooning public comments left by readers of AltRight (in response to the publication's cinematic review
Film criticism
Film criticism is the analysis and evaluation of films, individually and collectively. In general, this can be divided into journalistic criticism that appears regularly in newspapers, and other popular, mass-media outlets and academic criticism by film scholars that is informed by film theory and...
of 2011's
2011 in film
The year 2011 is notable for containing the release of the most film sequels in a single year, at 27 sequels. The following tables list films that are in production or have completed production and will be released in the United States and Canada at some point in 2011.- Highest-grossing films :...
Thor
Thor (film)
Thor is a 2011 American superhero film based on the comic book character of the same name published by Marvel Comics. It is the fourth film released as part of the Marvel Cinematic Universe...
), characterizing the review itself as "relatively measured and muted."