Rising fascism in the US

You said you label people based on what they say they want to do, not what group they associate with or people's opinions of them.

Here's an example of someone saying what they want to do. That seems to be specifically what you were asking for. Now it appears as if you're adding more qualifiers before you can give any kind of description at all about a statement like the one above.

Why this reluctance?

I've completely lost track of your question or "argument," whatever it is.

Are you asking if it's appropriate to call Spencer's group racist, that it?

I'm asking you, specifically, whether or not Milo Yiannopoulos listed Richard Spencer as an intellectual of the alt-right, and identified him as a founder of a center of alt-right thought.

How so?

Bannon has called the alt-right a smarter version of old-school racist skinheads.

We're the platform for the alt-right.

Milo has called the alt-right a smarter version of old-school racist skinheads.

There are many things that separate the alternative right from old-school racist skinheads (to whom they are often idiotically compared), but one thing stands out above all else: intelligence.

It was Milo who said that what separates the alternative right from old-school racist skinheads is, above all else, intelligence.

No, I'm trying to push this one:

Milo Yiannopoulos wrote:

There are MANY things that separate the alternative right from old-school racist skinheads (to whom they are often idiotically compared), but ONE thing stands out above all else: intelligence.

they’ll [referring to Spencer and his ilk] say, “Bannon isn’t one of us. Breitbart isn’t us. Trump isn’t one of us. But they’re the most useful tool we’ve ever found.”

I don’t think that they sit around thinking Donald Trump reads Jared Taylor....they think that Donald Trump has positions. Those positions are sufficiently warm toward their positions. I’ve been as critical of Steve Bannon as anybody in the media. And yet, I was forced last week to defend Steve Bannon...The left had to accuse him personally of racism and anti-Semitism, and they had to overstep. This is the big mistake.

I think that the left is making a huge mistake by labeling everybody on the right “alt-right.” Because what they’re doing is they’re pushing people into the arms of the alt-right. You call people racist enough, and they begin to think OK, well, who’s not calling me a racist—I’ll side with that guy.

So the worst thing the left can do is continue to suggest that everyone who backed Trump was a racist, sexist, bigot homophobe; everyone’s evil, everyone’s terrible.

I think the alt-right is a very, very small movement that has gained outsize credibility because they’re extraordinarily loud online...they’ve tried to broaden the definition so they can suck people into believing they’re alt-right, and then make themselves seem indispensable...they're waiting for the left to overplay its hand. And that’s what the left needs to not do.

georgeob1 wrote:

maporsche wrote:

Let me see if I can understand.

We are supposed to treat each and every member of the alt-right as a unique snowflake but it's OK (even fun!!) to condemn liberals, the NAACP, the Democratic Party, the Black Lives Matter movement, millennials, feminists, and welfare recipients as entire groups whose worst members represent them?

Is that right?

No it isn't right. There are many individual variations in all these groups. There are also central tendencies and general attributes in each of them. The fault here is in treating a small localized individual attribute as characteristic of the whole. I thinbk you are trying too hard to hide behind vague generalities.

Im honestly curious if George is able to provide examples how each of the groups I mentioned have been mischaracteried by actions of the few

But conservatives have their own, nationalist version of PC, their own set of rules regulating speech, behavior and acceptable opinions. I call it “patriotic correctness.” It’s a full-throated, un-nuanced, uncompromising defense of American nationalism, history and cherry-picked ideals. Central to its thesis is the belief that nothing in America can’t be fixed by more patriotism enforced by public shaming, boycotts and policies to cut out foreign and non-American influences.

Insufficient displays of patriotism among the patriotically correct can result in exclusion from public life and ruined careers. It also restricts honest criticism of failed public policies, diverting blame for things like the war in Iraq to those Americans who didn’t support the war effort enough.

For example, in the aftermath of 9/11 and the run-up to the Iraq War, David Frum labeled dissenters as anti-American. Jonah Goldberg wrote that opponents of the war “can only get passionate about the perfidy of our own president.” Conservative gadfly Robert “Buzz” Patterson went further, calling much of the Democratic Party, Hollywood, big media, college campuses and many other organizations “traitors.” The French government’s opposition to the invasion of Iraq prompted Congress to rename French fries as “freedom fries” in congressional cafeterias, a 21st-century liberty cabbage. When the Dixie Chicks opposed the Iraq War, many stations pulled the group’s music from the air so as not to “trigger” listeners. Fans destroyed Dixie Chicks albums in grotesque public demonstrations. The radio became a safe space.

More recently, 49er quarterback Colin Kaepernick sat and then knelt for the national to protest police brutality. Tomi Lahren, host of “Final Thoughts,” gave an incoherent rant about soldiers dying for Kaepernick’s right to speak so, therefore, he should shut up and stand for the national anthem. Some fans even burned their Kaepernick jerseys in protest. Others said Kaepernick should “get the hell out” if he doesn’t love America. Myths of an NFL rule mandating standing for the anthem, even though no such rule actually exists, were spread to justify the outrage and point to a double standard of enforcement whereby the NFL condones protests against America but players get fined if they wear different-color shoelaces. In such a narrative, patriots are the victims of an elite liberal power structure.

Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-N.Y.) tweeted that “Kaepernick should think about the service members risking their lives to protect his freedom to be both rich and unpatriotic.” Kaepernick’s microaggression even offended liberal Supreme Court Associate Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, who said the protest was “dumb and disrespectful,” words she later retracted.

Believing in American exceptionalism means that anything less than chest-thumping jingoism is capitulation. Unionized public employees who can’t be fired are bad at their jobs and are more interested in increasing their own power than fulfilling their public duties — except if they are police or Border Patrol officers, who are unselfishly devoted to their jobs. The crime rate is high and rising, so when facts show that criminality has declined substantially over the decades, the patriotically correct respond with appeals to the bubbled feelings of the common man.

One of the biggest critics of patriotic correctness is National Review writer Jim Geraghty. He responded to outrage over Jeb Bush and his wife, Columba, speaking Spanish at home by writing, “What business is it of yours?” and said there is “something bafflingly insecure about our culture if we genuinely feel threatened by foreign languages spoken in the private sphere of the family home.”

Complaining about political correctness is patriotically correct. The patriotically correct must use the non-word “illegals,” or “illegal immigrant” or “illegal alien” to describe foreigners who broke our immigration laws. Dissenters support “open borders” or “shamnesty” for 30 million illegal alien invaders. The punishment is deportation because “we’re a nation of laws” and they didn’t “get in line,” even though no such line actually exists. Just remember that they are never anti-immigration, only anti-illegal immigration, even when they want to cut legal immigration.

Black Lives Matter is racist because it implies that black lives are more important than other lives, but Blue Lives Matter doesn’t imply that cops’ lives are more important than the rest of ours. Banning Islam or Muslim immigration is a necessary security measure, but homosexuals should not be allowed to get married because it infringes on religious iberty. Transgender people could access women’s restrooms for perverted purposes, but Donald Trump walking in on nude underage girls in dressing rooms before a beauty pageant is just “media bias.”

Terrorism is an “existential threat,” even though the chance of being killed in a terrorist attack is about 1 in 3.2 million a year. Saying the words “radical Islam” when describing terrorism is an important incantation necessary to defeat that threat. When Chobani yogurt founder Hamdi Ulukaya decides to employ refugees in his factories, it’s because of his ties to “globalist corporate figures.” Waving a Mexican flag on U.S. soil means you hate America, but waving a Confederate flag just means you’re proud of your heritage. The phrase “Happy Holidays” instead of “Merry Christmas” needs a trigger warning.

Blaming the liberal or mainstream media and “media bias” is the patriotically correct version of blaming the corporations or capitalism. The patriotically correct notion that they “would rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the Boston telephone directory than by the 2,000 people on the faculty of Harvard University” because the former have “common sense” and the “intellectual elites” don’t know anything, despite all the evidence to the contrary, can be sustained only in a total bubble. Poor white Americans are the victims of economic dislocation and globalization beyond their control, while poor blacks and Hispanics are poor because of their failed cultures. The patriotically correct are triggered when they hear strangers speaking in a language other than English. Does that remind you of the PC duty to publicly shame those who use unacceptable language to describe race, gender or whatever other identity is the victim du jour?

The patriotically correct rightly ridicule PC “safe spaces” but promptly retreat to Breitbart or talk radio, where they can have mutually reinforcing homogeneous temper tantrums while complaining about the lack of intellectual diversity on the left. There is no such thing as too much national security, but it’s liberals who want to coddle Americans with a “nanny state.” Those who disagree with the patriotically correct are animated by anti-Americanism, are post-American, or deserve any other of a long list of clunky and vague labels that signal virtue to other members of the patriotic in-group.

Every group has implicit rules against certain opinions, actions and language as well as enforcement mechanisms — and the patriotically correct are no exception. But they are different because they are near-uniformly unaware of how they are hewing to a code of speech and conduct similar to the PC lefties they claim to oppose. The modern form of political correctness on college campuses and the media is social tyranny with manners, while patriotic correctness is tyranny without the manners, and its adherents do not hesitate to use the law to advance their goals. If we have a term to describe this new phenomenon — I nominate patriotic correctness

• liberals
  
• the NAACP
  
• the Democratic Party
  
• the Black Lives Matter movement
  
• millennials
  
• feminists
  
• welfare recipients