Summary: The Left has reached new peaks of power as it pushes the Right and alt-Right out of public spaces. This battle of extremists damages America and sows the seeds of the Left’s destruction.

The Left, empowered by its supporters in the news and social media corporations, has a new tactic that is bringing it to a new peak of influence. Opponents are branded (in the marketing sense) as extremists, racists, or white nationalists – just like Nazis! – and ejected from the public spaces. It began at colleges, with their events at universities suppressed by force or drowned out by hecklers. Then speech codes, formal or informal, worked like Newspeak in Orwell’s 1984 to forbid Right-wing thoughts (even for professors, sparking the creation of FIRE to defend what remains of open debate).

Now the Left has gone big-time. The Left casts its net widely, seeking dominance not just in the general media but also in the sciences and arts – and n all speaces where people work and play. Those on the Right are “deplatformed” in the electronic media and blocked by electronic payment systems. They are marginalized or fired at work for violations of PC in speech or outside work. It is an effective tactic, but with unseen risks and the danger of decisive blowback.

First, the emotional power of these labels becomes diluted when they are too broadly applied. Labels become blasée when applied to beliefs held by a quarter or third of the population. “You’re a racist!” Isn’t everybody? “You’re a Nazi!” Isn’t everybody? This is mocked by the 4Chan meme “#TheEmpireDidNothingWrong” (Star Wars reference).

Second, the process of exiling conservatives engages the Darwinian Ratchet. It’s an old concept in biology, first developed by Herman Muller (“Muller’s Rachet“, see the articles below). In 2003 I said this would make victory impossible for us in Iraq and Afghanistan. Briefly, a Darwinian Ratchet results when a powerful group culls the pack of insurgents, eliminating the slow and stupid – allowing more fit insurgents to rise in authority. This creates a rising sine wave of revolutionary activity: success by the establishment, a pause in opposition, followed by another wave of insurgent activity – but larger and more effective. Which the establishment oppresses, again leaving only the fittest. Repeat.

A similar process of misusing antibiotics creates “superbugs.” For more detail, see this explanation of the Ratchet and its effects.

Third, the Left’s tactics push opposition underground where they invisibly mutate and spread. The alt-right does not disintegrate when kicked off Twitter and Facebook. Or when WordPress deplatforms Chateau Heartiste, Reddit quarantines “The Red Pill.“, Instagram deplatforms Roosh, and payment processors kick off a wide range of right-wing (but few Left-wing) activists. Pushing conservatives “beyond the pale” tends to radicalize people. There are no moderates among outcasts. What more can be done to them after banning and excommunication? Pushing them underground means we no longer can gauge their appeal or reach.

Conclusions

Our elites chortle as they suppress the alt-Right and mock its many absurdities. But extremist movements always look irrational to outsiders, and are easily suppressed at first. The Brits thought the Boston Tea Party was an act of madmen: dressing up as Indians to destroy a shipment of tea because it was inexpensive! They then showed who was boss by closing the port of Boston and passing the “Intolerable Acts.” But, in Emperor Hirohito’s immortal words on 15 August 1945, the war situation developed not necessarily to Britain’s advantage.

Trump’s election should warn our elites that much of the American public no longer trusts them. History shows that the penalty for arrogant folly can be high. The elites of France’s ancien regime were triumphant at 9 am on 20 June 1789, when the delegates of the National Assembly discovered that they had been deplatformed. In response, the delegates swore the Tennis Court Oath – the pivotal moment sparking the French Revolution.

This triumph of Leftist extremists and radicalization of the Right is another step by which America becomes Weimerica.

See part two: The Left crushes the alt-Right, but Darwin might bring them to power.

A note about the Right

This refers to the Right as a broad social movement in America (these labels have different meanings in each society, and change over time). This is best described as the “alt-Right.” It does not refer to the Corporate Right, interested only increasing the extractive power of the 1%: breaking unions, ending Obamacare, cutting taxes for the rich, encouraging monopolies, supporting Wall Street’s plundering, lavish spending on the military (fueled by foreign wars), deregulation, etc. These policies have little broad appeal and succeed only because of the almost limitless power of money in America.

About the FM website

The articles here look at things on the edge of the known. A series of posts begins with speculation (aka guessing), then shifts to analysis as more information available. If the theme is pay dirt, eventually it appears in the major news media and front pages of opinion journals. As it becomes respectable and experts forge a cutting edge for exploration of this issue, we move on to new subjects.

That has been the pattern followed since my first posts in 2003, when I said that the US military was wrong: we were not winning in Iraq and Afghanistan (see here, here, and here). As with most of my most prescient themes, the reaction to these obvious facts was screams of outrage. That emotional reaction has proven to be the most reliable indicator that a new theme is pay dirt.

America is sliding down a slippery slope, ever faster, to an unknowable future. All we know is that it will be different than the America-that-once-was. This post is one of a series of sketches that speculate about these events. Other posts marshal data to guide us (these are the ones that spark the most rage). Together they attempt to illuminate what lies on the edge of the known.

“The Second Coming” by Yeats.

Turning and turning in the widening gyre

The falcon cannot hear the falconer;

Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,

The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere

The ceremony of innocence is drowned;

The best lack all conviction, while the worst

Are full of passionate intensity. …

For More Information

Ideas! For shopping ideas, see my recommended books and films at Amazon.

See Herman Mueller’s seminal articles about the ratchet: “Some genetic aspects of sex” (1932, open copy) and – more explicitly – “The relation of recombination to mutational advance” (1964, open copy).

If you liked this post, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter. See all posts about the right-wing, the alt-right, and especially these about the revolution…

Learning about the alt-Right

The Left’s sexism and racism are respectable, featured in the major news media. The Left works to suppress the expression of the Right’s equivalent (my fav: running an interview with Vox Day sparked regime change plus abject apology at a comics website). It is futile.

Theodore Robert Beale (born 1968, Wikipedia), AKA Vox Day, is an American writer, editor, video game designer, blogger, and alt-right activist. Here is a summary of his views: “The #MilRight is inevitable.”

“The answer isn’t white supremacy because white supremacy simply isn’t true. Whites are not superior, but whites are the only tribe willing and able to maintain Western civilization because they are the only tribe that truly values it. The answer for those who support Western civilization, regardless of sex, color, or religion, is to embrace white tribalism, white separatism, and especially white Christian masculine rule.”

SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police .

SJWs Always Double Down: Anticipating the Thought Police – about “The Laws of Social Justice.”