The Campus Left and the Alt-Right Are Natural Allies

[Valin]

The American Interest:

It’s unlikely that either movement has the cultural power or breadth of appeal to take down liberalism on its own. But taken together, they make a fearsome foe.

Jason Willick

Sept 1 2016

 

As the Obama era comes to a close, two political movements that were once confined to the margins of public discourse are elbowing their way further and further into the mainstream.

 

The first, a type of aggressive identity politics on the left that can be loosely described as political correctness, had been incubated in academic gender and ethnic studies departments for decades, but burst into the public consciousness like never before in 2015 as college students started shouting down speakers, demanding protection from disagreeable ideas, and otherwise engaging in illiberal antics that earned widespread coverage in the mainstream press.

 

(Snip)

Many commentators have observed that the radicalisms of the right and left feed on one another, teaming up to suck the liberal center dry. On the one hand, excessive left-wing speech policing and cultural brinksmanship on issues of race and gender was bound to make Milo-style ideological transgression more appealing. On the other hand, the alt-right’s newfound cultural power seems to vindicate some of the assumptions of the PC left: that racism and misogyny are deeply embedded in America’s cultural fabric, just below the surface, ready to erupt unless controls on thought and language are continuously tightened.

 

But what if instead of thinking of the campus left and the alt-right as mortal enemies, each bringing out perpetually heavier firepower in a long-running war of attrition, we thought of them as allies in a battle for the fate of liberalism? Because despite what they might say about each other, the radicalisms of 2016 actually align with one another more than they align with the Anglo-American Enlightenment tradition that has always occupied the American political center.

 

(Snip)

 

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It Appears To Me That Both Alt-Left & Alt-Right Appeal to the worst angels of our nature instead of the "Better Angels Of Our Nature".

 

Both want to smash and remake society in their own view.