Alt-Right is defined here by you and those you cite in terms much narrower than those used generally. Generally, outlets like Breitbart are described as Alt-Right, and as you casually indicate, the usage of the term can be quite loose. Your purpose here is to upbraid those who sloppily use the term: David Brock, and those who consciously and unconsciously echo him and his DCCC cohorts. You accuse them of consciously misusing the term to tar as racist any opposition to Hillary and her brand.

Aside from the coercieon inherent in monopolistic media practices and the subterranean effect of PAC money on public discourse, it may be a cultural pattern common to both America and Australia that, for those with whom we disagree, an excess of zeal in our disparagement may be seen as no vice, since we deplore them anyway. This is hyperbolizing, stating that the other party has views more extreme than they hold, so that making them seem worse is a kind of virtue. This tarring with a broad brush seems to be easier to do in the virtual world than in the real one.

Because its so ineffective, though, and has the potential to backfire, one has to wonder why they keep doing it. Way back in the early days of the 016 primary season, Thomas Frank identified how ineffective it was to tar Trump supporters as racist simpletons. Their reasons for supporting Trump were diverse, he explained. Not all were racists. Some were sincerely concerned about the economy, specifically the TPP. Others saw in Trump a way of challenging the establishment, whether that establishment was characterized as neoliberal, or as the object of Tea Party venom. (It is suitable now to note that the Tea Party lens has probably prevailed. The ascension of Pompeo is the jewel in the crown of the Koch Bros., and the Koch Bros. are the patrons of the Tea Party.) If the mischaracterization, the hyperbolizing, the hysterics, aren’t effective at beating Trump; perhaps they are effective at beating down the progressive alternatives; alternatives not only to Trump, but to the McResistance as well.

The McResistance is always quick to condemn the alt-right, as well as to use the label generally. Caitlan has called for an attempt to listen to the concerns of some of those so labeled (even if in this essay she argues the label to be misbegotten.) I want to second her call, and expand it a bit. Listening is good.

For example, some of the arguments for ethnocentrism, even if it is white, may surprise the reader as somewhat less deplorable than is commonly assumed. One of the primary fallacies, or contestable premises, of the neoliberal world view is that of universalism. That all homo economicus can live under a — for lack of a better word — capitalist system, “free” of the constraints of race, creed, color, religion, or national affiliation. Rationally, we can allocate resources, rise meritocratically. Americans and some others in the developed world are so steeped in universalist assumptions that we have become inured to the exclusivist claims inherent in societies and civilizations from time immemorial, claims that persist to this day. Their narrow view, we aver, is wrong. Universalists and multiculturalists implicitly assume these wayward particularists will come to see the light in the full flowering of multiculturalism. But how do you fight neoliberalism except with a particularism?

While multicultralism started as a critique of the dominant culture, it has evolved to become a standard bearer for globalist culture, which has a corresponding — almost social Darwinian, or Calvinist — elitism for the intensely affluent. Less developed cultures do not share the universalist premise. Rather, their viewpoint might be characterized as particularist. In East Asia, Japan, for example, sees the world in terms of Japan; ethnically homogeneous, and culturally unique. Korea sees itself from a similar -centric view. China is perhaps the most virulent of all, in that its government policies and apparatus of state are hitched to Han centrism (You can’t be a citizen in China unless you are deemed to have a significant enough percentage of “Chinese blood”.).

Because they are particularist, these nation- culture- or ethnic-centered viewpoints are a bit dicey to generalize about. But you can go, region by region, and find them. Bemjamin Barber characterized them all as “Jihad” and set them against the emerging neoliberal world order, which he characterized as “McWorld” (See
[Jihad vs. McWorld] (https://pdfs.semanticscholar.org/6224/5b9457fc9a0d41078ced104a76123d7fb465.pdf).). However one characterizes particularist vs. universalist, you end up with an identifiable tension. That tension is what is being managed, coped with, compensated for, or exacerbated with centrist movements. They are very nascent in the United States, as the proper accounting of alt-right adherents that Caitlan advocates, indicates. Still, though small in number, apologists for McWorld, like those who employ David Brock, can use their presence to advance their universalist arguments. By casting particularists as deplorables, they hope to recruit participants in political discourse to the globalist cause.

Where the rubber hits the road on this one is Israel. Israel defines itself as a non-secular state. It’s claims are unabashadly particularist. Those who would deal with it from a universalist perspective, like the United Nations (which you can view as either universalist or an amalgamation of particularist that sufficies for universalism in the absence of “true” universalism), be damned. The agenda of Israel, their right to exist, is sectarian and has exclusivist overtones. Non-Jews will always be a minority in a Zionist Israel; in a sense, second class citizens.

This becomes complicated when you compare one universalist claim with another particularist condemnation. How can you praise Israel but deplore Richard Spencer, who simply wants to give whites in America a homeland, in terms similar to the one granted the Zionists? If Richard Spencer’s advocacy is deplorable, why isn’t Israel’s? Or, to put it another way, if Israel has a “right to exist,” why doesn’t Richard Spencer’s white ethnocentrist utopia have a right to exist? I would suggest that we need Richard Spencer in the dialogue precisely so that argument can have an airing. His views, upon closer examination, are surprisingly respectable. Or, to put it another way, the views of Media Matters, ShareBlue, Correct the Record; the views of the rump of Mrs. Clinton’s coterie, are surprisingly deplorable.