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RE: If you are calling yourself Alt-Right you might want to be careful... I debated and then was given some info
Sure it matters. Because "what most of the world believes" will be subjective based upon where you are getting your news. The Alt-Right label is being both used as something good, and something bad depending upon your source. The truth of the matter is that Majority doesn't prove truth or false.
The truth is still the truth even if no one believes it.
A Lie is still a lie even if everyone believes it.
So minority, majority, etc... doesn't mean shit in the scope of the truth.
A label is unimportant in the scope of the truth and you are fighting a losing battle trying to define this one. If you are getting your news from any mainstream media source (including Fox News), and most people do hence the term "mainstream", then you are seeing only a negative portrayal of alt-right. Calling yourself 'alt-right' doesn't help your cause and it's just a stupid label. The truth is that there are a lot of people who are espousing racist and otherwise bigoted views that are calling themselves alt-right. Yes, they may be co-opting that term but good luck explaining that nuance to others. The whole point of a label like this is to let others know your viewpoints in a shorthand way. If most people take it to mean a racist bigot what good does it do you? You can call yourself whatever you want and I really don't care. Just offering up some free advice. Take it or leave it.
If wikipedia is to be believed then the term has racist origins anyway (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alt-right). I wasn't familiar with the term myself until this election cycle and I pay attention. But then I don't tend to pay too much attention to white nationalists so there is that.
That meeting hosted near the whitehouse after Trump's victory by the guy who has been given credit for coining (or at the very least popularizing) that term (Richard Spencer) in which nazi propaganda was quoted and nazi salutes were given pretty much doomed the term as anything anyone would look at in a positive light. That is the truth. Say what you want about news sources but I saw the video.
Read... read read...
I did not try to define it. The article clearly states that. I described the reaction and attempts by others. I acknowledged there are many different people.
I explained what a generalization was... etc. It's all right there in the original post...
Also I am not frustrated with you... was just having a big SLAVERY related debate in slack, and my opponent decided to "fuck off for a bit" and take a work call. :)
Also I don't pay attention to white nationalists EITHER.
This article was inspired by someone in slack using a generalization that said something along "I'll not riot shame, all alt-right people are white supremacist, racist, assholes anyway"
I knew some people that claim to be alt-right and I knew that was not true.
In addition, it was clearly what is known as a haste generalization and those are almost always false.
So I debated him...
When I was done I learned about this faction that does fit his description that the opposition is attempting to use to label all people who identify as Alt-Right that.
The mainstream media of course is largely backing them up and repeating it.
It is often their justification for their protests that might turn into riots.
So I wrote this post as a public service announcment so that those that do identify as Alt-Right would know this is being done, where the garbage being used to stereotype and generalize is coming from, and hopefully inform them so they could either stop using the label, or at least be informed about where the ammunition being used is coming from.
That's it... that is all. No effort to DEFINE anything. I've seen several different definitions of Alt-Right at this point.
Also there is only one person for whom you can decide what is important or not. Yourself. ;)
I'm sure there were good Nazis too but so what? Words matter. The origin of the term and what MOST people believe it to mean does matter. Words are how we communicate with one another and it's generally good to have a reasonably common definition of them. The term 'alt-right' by all accounts was coined by a white nationalist who had a meeting after Trumps victory where Nazi propaganda was repeated and Nazi salutes were given (the term was coined some years ago but it's the same guy). I'm not sure why anybody who does not support those actions would use that term to define themselves. It would be like me calling myself a Nazi and arguing that all Nazi's don't support taking over Europe and Jewish genocide. It may technically be true but that is what the group is known for. There may well be "good" alt-right people but then they must not know the origin of the word and what the philosophy was of those who originated it.
I guess I'm just not understanding why it is a term people would want to use for themselves.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alt-right
And words are hijacked frequently so they no longer mean what they originally meant. It kind of drives me crazy. What MOST people do or do not believe may matter to you. I could care less. I do care about the origins of the word and what it was intended to mean.
Though MOST people can be swayed with effort that a word means something else, and then the old meaning seems to vanish. I am not a fan of that and have actually written a series of blog posts on it before. You might like them. They are from months ago.
I agree! But in the case of 'alt-right', I don't think the word was hijacked by White Nationalists. They are the ones credited with coming up with it and they are the ones I can first recall using it.