In the words of Jason Wilson, “the alt-right have stormed mainstream consciousness by weaponising irony, and by using humour and ambiguity as tactics to wrongfoot their opponents” . It is rare that they advance a straight argument, or in fact any argument at all.
The common denominator is a hatred of American and European liberalism: the alt-right movement gathered momentum during the period of the Trump campaign and his presidency, which has emboldened such views. The movement has discovered a persuasive formula of great power, one that eschews direct confrontation. It seeks neither to harangue with argument nor beguile with rhetoric, but to ridicule, and to elude the scrutiny of conscience by virtue of its levity and lack of seriousness.
Trump's behavior is so easy to understand I'm surprised more people don't get this.
Most people value others based on a number of complex factors about their other's behavior, morals, actions, etc. Trump has a much simpler worldview: If you have ever done anything to harm Trump's ego, you are bad. Otherwise, you are good. I'll grant Trump that at least he gives people the benefit of the doubt.Because Trump's ego is both huge and fragile, it takes very little for a person to fall into the first case. Make a remark critical of something he has ever said, you're bad. Make a joke at his expense — bad. This is exactly why he is constantly talking about loyalty. Loyalty to himself (and loyalty is expliclty one-directional with "You're Fired!" Trump, as his revolving door administration has shown) forms his entire moral sense.If you are bad in Trump's eyes, everything you do is bad, everything about you is bad, and you can never be agreed with. If you're good, you're fine — at least for now until you slip up and end up on his bad side. Note that your actual actions and values in the larger world have no bearing on Trump's assessment of you. The alt-right and white surpremacists are fine in Trump's book because they've never done anything harmful to Trump. Likewise, reality and truth have no bearing on his behavior. He is constantly in 100% ego repair mode. The actual world beyond the boundary of his ego simply does not exist for Trump. The way that press conference shitshow went down is pretty simple:
- Most journalists are already in Trump's "bad" bucket because they have said things critical of his administration.A journalist asks a leading question, "Why did you wait so long..." Of course, he must disagree with that, so he said he didn't wait long and then manufactured some story about how we wanted to make sure he had all the facts with of course everyone knows is a lie and out of character for him. He just pulled it out of his ass to justify his knee-jerk "I didn't wait too long" disagreement. A journalist asks a question about McCain saying the Charlottesville attacks were the result of the alt-right.McCain has obviously been in Trump's bad bucket for quite some time, so Trump must disagree with this. He does literally the simplest linguistic way of negating the claim and makes up the word "alt-left".
Then it goes from there. You could write a chatbot that did a convincing emulation of Trump's speech pattern. It's basically:
- Is the author of the previous statement good or bad? If good, say something nice about them. This is where you get it being an "honor" to meet with Putin, etc. If bad, negate what they said and say that. "Why did you wait so long?" -> "I didn't wait long.". "McCain said the alt-right is behind these attacks." -> "The alt-left is guilty." Then make up a line of reasoning — with no relation to factual reality — that supports that claim. "I needed to wait until the facts were in..." "There were people on both sides with clubs..." Seriously, watch him speak. This little algorithm is how he talks all the time.
No one can hide his true nature. Never has this been more accurate for an American president than in the case of Donald Trump. Events in the aftermath of the violence in Charlottesville have made this abundantly clear. For the first time in our history, a Nazi sympathizer occupies the Oval Office.
“ No, Mr. President. This is a provocative effort by Neo-Nazis to foment racism and hatred and create violence. Call it out for what it is. “
