assured radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt<\/a>, the \u201calt-right\u201d is nothing more or less than but another manifestation of \u201cracism.\u201d<\/p>\nThe \u201calt-right\u201d consists of people who, in spite of whatever other differences they may have, \u201cagree\u2026that white culture is inherently superior\u201d and that there should be \u201cno race mixing with the lower brown people.\u201d<\/p>\n
Both Hewitt and Goldberg insist that the \u201calt-right\u201d\u2014people like \u201cleading racist\u201d Jared Taylor and those who write for Peter Brimelow\u2019s \u201csupremacist\u201d site, Vdare.com\u2014must be driven from \u201cthe conservative movement\u201d and \u201cthe Republican Party.\u201d<\/p>\n
Some comments:<\/p>\n
(1)The very notion that there is some definable entity that can be neatly packaged with the label \u201calt-right\u201d is itself suspect. There is more than one reason for this verdict:<\/p>\n
For starters, and most fundamentally, there can be an alternative <\/em>right only if <\/em>there is<\/em> a right to which it is an alternative. The conventional left\/right paradigm of American politics aside, the existence of the so-called \u201calt-right\u201d is made possible by the fact that, in the judgment of many, there is no genuine right.<\/em><\/p>\nOr, to put this point another way, from the perspective of those who reject it, the (GOP-based) \u201cright\u201d is actually an alt-left, <\/em>but a milder (and sometimes not so mild) variation of the internationalist, progressive left.<\/p>\nFurthermore, if anyone who rejects the GOP from its right <\/em>can be considered \u201calt-right,\u201d then the latter\u2014which would include certain sorts of libertarians and anarchists, Roman Catholic traditionalists, classical and \u201cpaleo\u201d conservatives, as well as \u201crace realists\u201d\u2014is much more intellectually and ideologically diverse, and much more difficult to define, than what the Goldbergs and Hewitts would have us think.<\/p>\n(2)For as much as they fantasize about it, the hard truth for the Goldbergs and Hewitts is that there can\u2019t<\/em> be a Buckleyesque \u201cpurging\u201d of the \u201calt-right\u201d from the \u201cconservative movement\u201d and Republican Party if, as is the case, adherents of the \u201calt-right\u201d do not belong<\/em> to either of these things. As was said above, many of those described, or self-described, as \u201calt-right\u201d regard the GOP and the \u201cconservative movement\u201d as constituting an alt-left and, as such, an object of contempt.<\/p>\n(3)Further proof that neoconservatism is indeed a species of leftism is the Pavlovian propensity of its proponents to appropriate the standard operating procedure of the left by smearing anyone to their right as \u201cracist.\u201d When, for example, as principled a defender of ordered, Constitutional liberty as Ron Paul indicated a threat to the political fortunes of their presidential candidates back in 2011, Goldberg was among those who spilled ink analyzing the \u201crelationship\u201d between Paul and \u201cthe racists, anti-Semites and neo-Nazis in his coalition [.]\u201d<\/p>\n
So, their strategy to brand those to their right with the \u201cR-word\u201d is revealing as to who and what the neocons really are. Yet it\u2019s also ironic.<\/p>\n
As anyone who has read my work knows, it is not my habit to level charges of \u201cracism.\u201d In fact, I put the very concept into question. Still, as long as Goldberg, Hewitt, and other neocons insist upon villainizing the Jared Taylors of the \u201calt-right\u201d by branding them as \u201cracist\u201d for their words, <\/em> they expose themselves that much more to the same charge: After all, it is neoconservatives, and Goldberg and Hewitt specifically, who pushed for the exportation of \u201cDemocracy\u201d to the Middle East (and beyond).<\/p>\nThus, it is neoconservatives who were the most stalwart advocates of the invasion of Iraq, an event that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people of color<\/em>. The Iraq Body Count Project found that anywhere between 112,000 and 123,000 of those killed between 2003 and 2013 were civilian noncombatants, many of whom were women and children.<\/p>\nTo this day, Iraq remains a bastion for ISIS. Ancient Christian communities in Iraq have been eradicated courtesy of this war, and the entire region has been radically destabilized. As long ago as 2006, the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees stated that over three million Iraqis had been displaced, with 1.8 million fleeing to other countries and 1.6 million being forced to relocate internally. By the following year, with nearly four million Iraqis homeless, Iraq produced a larger number of refugees than produced by any country on Earth.<\/p>\n
In 2012, UNICEF published a report in which it declared that between 800,000 and a million Iraqi children\u2014about five percent of all of the country\u2019s kids\u2014had lost one or both parents.<\/p>\n
The neocons who now sound outraged over an \u201calt-righter\u201d claiming to value \u201cwhite [European\/Western] culture\u201d still sleep comfortably in spite of having deployed the resources of this same culture\u2014including its men, many of whom themselves became cannon fodder\u2014to the end of decimating the homeland of just those \u201clower brown people\u201d who Goldberg criticizes the \u201calt-right\u201d for allegedly not wanting to \u201cmix with [.]\u201d<\/p>\n
Well, Jonah, if only <\/em>you and yours didn\u2019t want to mix with these same poor creatures\u2014if not for your <\/em>\u201cracism,\u201d your blood curdling, blood thirsty, homicidal \u201cracism\u201d\u2014a country and its families wouldn\u2019t be in ruins and littered with the corpses of people of color.<\/p>\nJesus summed up the moral of this story best: With their charges of \u201cracism,\u201d the neocons strain out the gnat while letting in the camel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Since Hillary Clinton made her speech regarding the so-called \u201calt-right,\u201d there has been much effort on the part of some media observers to define this enigmatic phenomenon. Some, however, like \u201cconservative\u201d pundit Jonah Goldberg, aren\u2019t so curious. At bottom, Goldberg recently assured radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt, the \u201calt-right\u201d is nothing more or less…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":399,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\n
Neocons, the "Alt-Right," and "Racism"<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/2016\/09\/neocons-alt-right-racism.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Neocons, the "Alt-Right," and "Racism"\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Since Hillary Clinton made her speech regarding the so-called \u201calt-right,\u201d there has been much effort on the part of some media observers to define this enigmatic phenomenon. Some, however, like \u201cconservative\u201d pundit Jonah Goldberg, aren\u2019t so curious. 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I teach philosophy at several colleges in the New Jersey and Pennsylvania areas.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.jackkerwick.com"],"url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/author\/jkerwick"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/399"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1563"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1563\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1564,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1563\/revisions\/1564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/attheintersectionoffaithandculture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}