The Alt Right and Antifa: The Misguided Question of White Youth Culture

Mundil Fury
The Right Stuff
December 30, 2016

The first track off doom-metal band Electric Wizard’s album Dopethrone is entitled “Vinum Sabbathi” or “Wine of the Sabbath.” It begins with a quote from Police Chief Dale Griffis, speaking in 1985 episode of ABC’s 20/20 titled “The Devil Worshippers.” He says:

“When you get into one of these groups, there’s only a couple of ways you can get out: one is death, the other is mental institutions…”

This quote, in reference to a supposed spike in occult-related murders and suicides, notes the inherent correspondence between group-formation and lifelong-devotion––a form of vows, a break of which results in death or institutionalization. Such groups, occult or otherwise, have disappeared from mainstream attention over the last three decades. The politics of the late 60s and 70s are long gone. Clandestine political groups have been dissolved for the most part, leaving little “radical” politics left for those interested in major change to the establishment. Now the Alt Right (if it can even be spoken of as a unified group, which it probably shouldn’t be) is far from an occult group, or anything even vaguely related to the radical nature of the pan-Serbian nationalist Black Hand group or the like. Nevertheless, the Alt Right is something outside of the mainstream, and as a gathering that occurs “outside” what is acceptable, it thus is extremely rare.

Martin Heidegger, who surprisingly is still taught on college campuses even though he openly supported the National Socialist movement, is the great thinker of the gathering, the “clearing,” and of Being. Heidegger writes in Logos: “It is proper to every gathering that the gatherers assemble to co-ordinate their efforts to the sheltering, only when they have gathered together with that end in view do they begin to gather.” Only when we focus on the shelter (the protection of our race) do we begin to gather (to organize). Only when liberal whites see that the goal of the Alt Right is to protect them, and that this is something they should care about, do we begin to do our work of gathering. This joining together is what drives the Alt Right. The feeling of brotherhood, of celebration and unity––the feeling evoked by Enoch when he recalled his speech at the NPI conference. This feeling, common to other ethnic groups in the United States, is largely alien to Whites, though of course it hasn’t always been. The Alt Right is a resurgence in this hope for our community and fraternity.

Like many, my journey began on the left––the far left. It took many years and countless dialectical shifts for me to digest a handful of red pills. For a long time I could feel them stuck in my throat. This is the case with many young White Americans––they know something is wrong, that the vector of democracy is headed towards a direction that prophesies their race’s demise, but they don’t yet possess the tools to gather, to organize. Everyone is waiting for such an organization, a recruitment, a gathering. The question is how to get from the left to the right.

The simplest entrance to the Alt Right or any New Right movement is an interest in fascist aesthetics. There is no denying that there exists a universal fascination with fascism––not necessarily its policies (I doubt many leftists could tell you what fascism is) but with its image and thematics––: uniforms (and uniformity), brotherhood, black boots, athletic young men, cosmic order, truth, value systems, etc.

One of the greatest contradictions in the dogmatic ideology of western liberalism is that of pride. It is an inherently human desire to be accepted and to belong to an in-group. This does, in turn, create an out-groups. This makes the ideology dangerous. Dangerous is then equated with violence, and then the ideology becomes “extremist” or “radical” (which etymologically simply means “rooted” in principle). This rootedness is what has been swept away from White identity. The project of Frankfurt School critical theory and Derridean post-structuralism is precisely to critique and deconstruct the propositions of Greek logos (reason, word, logic, God) that is the rootedness of Western Civilization. And it was easy, since we had already done away with God. It was not––as liberalism might have you believe––Nietzsche who killed God with his heretical enunciation, but modern liberalism’s mass renunciation of religion and its internal turn to worship the self that did away with God. Western Civilization was on the road to turn its back on Christianity long before Adorno and Horkheimer came around. The project of Critical Theory was then to deconstruct and dismantle any notion of Truth whatsoever. “This is not relativism!” they all claim, while preaching for a relativistic society––for a society of an undifferentiated mass of formless matter. These ideas emerged from 20th century French literary theory, which then traveled to Yale, which then overtook every liberal arts campus, which then took over college campuses in general, then the media, and now much of the general public.

Among intellectuals, Leftism is the only light that shines––it is the box that young people like me have lived in our entire lives. It is a logic we can literally not see beyond, since it is our entire world. To destroy the Leftist box would be a devastating blow to our self-image, our “communities” and our dreams. This is why Leftists always only critique the parts of liberal ideology that can be critiqued while maintaining the coherence of the system. They only critique leftism with more radical leftism. All other ideas that expose the dangerous trajectory of cultural Marxism are left shrouded in darkness, left as the Heideggerian “unthought.”

All new ideologies––or recycled old ideologies (of course nothing is new)––are “dangerous” for the left, since they believe they have deconstructed the hegemony of ideology once and for all. Their ideology (which they believe is a non-ideology, since it opposes the “patriarchy” of ideology) hopes to push alternative lifestyles on the mainstream, since “traditionalism” is inherently “oppressive” to them. Perhaps it is––Perhaps this is what makes them so blind to Truth. Traditionalism can be “oppressive” by their definition––it believes that things, that subjects and objects, have places within this universe, and everyone and everything belongs somewhere. A hierarchy of forms, if you will. This rigid structure frightens people who desire to live hedonistically without logic or law. They call it “fascism” because it tells them the universe has its rules. Our ideology tells the forgotten Truth––that “dreams” are such, and that reality is something else.

Liberalism has created a new in-group in its attempt to do away with group- and class-stratification. The group that they’ve created is fascistic in its own nature. This gets at Nietzsche’s quote that “there are no facts, only interpretations.” Those who quote him often choose to end it there. What he went on to say is that even his own position is an interpretation. This is where liberalism and deconstruction fall apart. They fail to self-reflect, self-critique, to move outside and beyond of their own ideology––to wonder if, perhaps, they took a wrong step at some point along the way to “enlightenment.” In the quest for non-truth liberals have created a new one, a new cultural hegemony, only this time it’s not the Gramsci’s Catholic Church.

This quest for truth has created the schism among youths in higher education today. The prospect of “coming out” as Alt Righjt or reactionary or any other variation to the norm means social suicide for those of us who haven’t already self-segregated or self-alienated. Even when I was identified with leftist ideologies, I would momentarily find myself agreeing with a right-wing perspective––only to be shunned away from it moments after I voiced such an opinion.

I remember being taught that Zero-Dark Thirty (2012) was American “propaganda” (meaning something to be dismissed as an attempt by Big Brother to manipulate the mind of youths) even though the acting and cinematography were significantly better, I thought, than most of Hollywood’s current output. Is it pro-American? Is it pro-White? Or perhaps it just isn’t explicitly anti-White? Is it pro-traditional-values (i.e., “oppressive”)? Then it must be hateful propaganda. This type of thinking has been ingrained in American youth at every level of education.

What is “brainwashing?” Is it a manipulation of the Kantian mental faculties? Or is it a Christian/moral cleansing of the filth that dismantles our mental configurations? A rebirth of simple cognition––a red pill. To brain-wash is to cleanse the mind, not to blindly and malignantly manipulate it into submission. This is something I learned from the Alt Right that I was unaware of before: That propaganda is not inherently bad or malicious. It is the act of giving the primacy and privilege to Truth over mere particulars, over the phenomenology of the world, over false-consciousness. It is Truth above all. The subtleties do no matter for propaganda to do its job. Propaganda is seen by many to be “fascistic” or anti-American because they have been taught there is no Truth to be communicated––They believe there exists nothing but experience and “becoming.” This is why reprogramming is, for some, almost impossible.

The Alt Right rises at increasing rates among young white men (and women––more and more of my leftist female friends are getting interest in the movement) because it allows whites to be a people again. It allows an American identity to emerge. Yes, we may come from other nations historically, but we are not a nation of immigrants. We are a nation of Americans. Why is this notion so foreign to America’s youth? Why do so many young people come to the Alt Right from the far-left? What I’d like to suggest––and perhaps this is already generally accepted––is that the entire notion of “radical politics” has been co-opted by the Left in academia, and now that the left is the establishment and their ideas are the only acceptable ones, right-wing reactionary movements attract all those interested in actual change to society, including those who claim to be “antifa.”

Why are fascist and “antifa” aesthetics so similar? Why do radical politics, on both the right and left, frame themselves in the same aesthetic garb? It is because both groups are searching for a cause, for an identity, for something to fight for, and for a place in the world to call home. The irreducible difference between the two is that “antifa” is a bottomless pit––it stands for nothing. It can only emerge when it has something to act out against. “Antifa” is not a movement––it is simply for bored youths who worry about social alienation. The Alt Right is inherently productive and generative in its threatening the status-quo. Antifa is inherently negative. Though both groups hold themselves, respectively, to be distinctly anti-conformity in their ideologies: Antifa simply fails to see that their ideals have become those of the establishment. Those SJWs who attend “DIY” punk and hardcore shows with anti-Nazi patches display the sheer vapidity of their movement. They have nothing to put forward, so in order to stay relevant and feel pertinent to contemporary culture, they stand up against an antiquated fascist symbol to create a false sense of unity. It’s simply the lowest hanging fruit, because chances are they will never have to defend why they have an anti-Nazi patch on their clothes. It allows them to never explain their views.

I was interested in antifa before I discovered the Alt Right. Boots on the ground, blacked-out outfits, a message, a system, a community––a truth. Both sides are two poles that extend out so far they almost unite (but don’t). Antifa, in my opinion, is one of the closest groups to our side. Though by nature, of course, it is memberless and baseless. It is largely comprised, as Enoch has said, of upper-crust “lanky” white males who crave a purpose and cause. They just don’t realize that what they’re preaching for a society that wants them dead and gone, unless they become someone who apologizes for their white-skin every minute of the day. The Alt Right and antifa are two sides of the same coin––the coin (or coil) of anti-mediocrity, of “change.”

Just about every white person with whom I’ve watched American History X (1998) has harbored a strong fascination with Danny Vinyard (played by Edward Furlong). Vinyard––for a portion of the movie––believes he has a purpose, a community, a cause to fight for. He has leadership, friends, and family who share his beliefs and he in turn becomes irredeemably valuable and appreciated by them. Vinyard gets to the core of so many (liberal-leaning) Whites because when he laces up his boots, he does it for himself and his people and not for someone who hates him.

Why can you always find SJWs wearing Doc Martens, the boots of skinheads? The boots–ironically created by a Nazi doctor–represented White British factory workers, police officers, postmen, and the general working class of the UK in the 1960s. But now they represeent the desire to become militant, to get your boots on the ground and stomp around at a rally or whatever––this desire for a fascistic gathering is inherent to White “youth culture.” This is inherently Anglo-European. Young white men and women, with varying backgrounds and from all over the US and Europe, are looking for community and a purpose to gather. They have been taught to hate themselves, to hate their skills, talents, histories, families, because every day they exist, they carry out a form of “symbolic violence” to someone who is non-White.

White youths purporting to belong to “antifa” or SJW groups will have to spend their entire lives apologizing for the color of their skin. They will have to continually make excuses for themselves. They will have to prove that they do in fact hold hyper-liberal values, to prove to these minority groups that they are self-hating allies. What White “antifa” kids needs to realize and what we need to teach them, is that the Right values them exponentially more than the Left. They want to feel useful, and the only place they can serve their nation, their race, and themselves, is with the Alt Right.