{"id":4095,"date":"2018-11-10T17:26:15","date_gmt":"2018-11-10T22:26:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/?p=4095"},"modified":"2018-11-10T18:03:26","modified_gmt":"2018-11-10T23:03:26","slug":"bernard-e-harcourt-introduction-to-critique-the-alt-right","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/bernard-e-harcourt-introduction-to-critique-the-alt-right\/","title":{"rendered":"Bernard E. Harcourt | Introduction to “Critique & the Alt-Right”"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Bernard E. Harcourt\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

The relationship between the Alt-Right and Left critical theory is puzzling, to say the least. For many in the European Alt-Right, Gramsci and the Frankfurt School are the very source of what they believe is the decline of European civilization. So you will read, for instance, on the very second page of the Swedish New Right thinker Daniel Friberg\u2019s new book, The Real Right Returns: A Handbook for the True Opposition\u00a0<\/em>(2015), that the origin of all social and cultural problems today\u2014e.g. of the decline of the nuclear family and end of ethnically homogenous Europe\u2014is \u201cthe Frankfurt School and its concept of Critical Theory,\u201d and the \u201cMarxist sociologists and philosophers at the Frankfurt Institut fur Socialforschung<\/em>.\u201d (Friberg, 2)<\/p>\n

As Andreas Huyssen writes over at Public Seminar<\/a>, there is a baffling \u201cobsession with the Frankfurt School as\u00a0b\u00eate noire<\/em>\u00a0not just in Breitbart himself, but in the wider circles of American white supremacists and their publications.\u201d The connections run deep\u2014both intellectual and biographical. Richard Spencer, one of the leading American Alt-Right actors and founder of the website Alternative Right<\/em>, for instance, wrote his master\u2019s thesis<\/a> at the University of Chicago on Theodor Adorno and his relationship to the music of Wagner. Julia Hahn, a Steve Bannon prot\u00e9g\u00e9 who was formerly an editor at Breitbart and is now a special assistant to President Trump at the White House, wrote her senior thesis<\/a> at the University of Chicago on Leo Bersani and \u201cissues at the intersection of psychoanalysis and post-Foucauldian\u00a0philosophical inquiry.\u201d (You can watch her present her research on Bersani here<\/a>).<\/p>\n

This obsession with critical theory is not just a matter of curiosity, it actually motivates the entire praxis of the Alt-Right, insofar as the movement believes that the central political struggle is at the cultural and ideological level\u2014and that ideologie kritik\u00a0<\/em>needs to be appropriated by the Alt-Right. The core concept of \u201cmetapolitics,\u201d central to European Alt-Right thought, is intended to redeploy the Frankfurt School\u2019s notion of ideology: to undo what the Alt-Right sees as all the deconstructive cultural work that has been accomplished by the Left since the mid-twentieth century. American Alt-Right actors also embrace \u201cthe metapolitical dimension,\u201d in Colin Liddell\u2019s words (Shaw, 15), and its key influence on politics, emphasizing that still today, \u201cthe left entirely dominates the metapolitical realm in America, through its control of Hollywood, the media, and academia.\u201d (Shaw, 16)<\/p>\n

If Friberg identifies critical theory as the greatest weapon of the Left (1945 to 1989), he also identifies it as the most important tool to deploy on the Right: the key strategy is to \u201cunderstand\u201d metapolitics and \u201cturn[] it to serve our own ends.\u201d (4) In the same way in which counter-insurgency theory in the 1950s would strive to, first, understand Maoism so as to, second, do it better<\/em>, Friberg here calls for, first, understanding metapolitics in order to, second, do it better \u201cto serve our own ends.\u201d The ambition is to appropriate Gramsci\u2019s insights (21-22): \u201cMetapolitics, simply put, is about affecting and shaping people\u2019s thoughts, worldviews, and the very concepts which they use to make sense of and define the world around them.\u201d (25) Gramsci it is at the heart of Alt-Right praxis.<\/p>\n

In terms of the Alt-Right\u2019s cultural and ideological struggle, it is important to emphasize, first, that the model of politics is warfare. The European Alt-Right explicitly adopts a warfare paradigm of political conflict. For Guillaume Faye, a leading thinker of the French New Right, his vision of power and politics resembles the Foucault of the early 1970s, for whom power relations had to be modeled on the matrix of civil war. \u201cThe history of the world,\u201d Faye writes, \u201cis a history of the struggle between peoples and civilisations for survival and domination.\u201d It is, he emphasizes, \u201ca battle-ground of wills to power.\u201d (37) This Nietzschian theme of the will to power\u2014which importantly infuses Friberg\u2019s work as well (see e.g. 67, 109)\u2014is central. In fact, Friberg expressly draws on Faye\u2019s earlier work, Archeofuturism<\/em>, for the reference to a \u201chistorical and political will to power.\u201d (Friberg, 67)<\/p>\n

There is a strong Schmittian dimension in Faye\u2014of friends and enemies, and of politics as warfare. Faye references \u201cthe common enemy, who everyone well knows\u201d in a context in which it clearly denotes Jews and Muslims. (263; see also 270) Faye talks explicitly about \u201cwar.\u201d (270). He writes about \u201cattacking, like a cobra, quickly and decisively, once the moment of opportunity strikes.\u201d (270). In the end, the history of the world, Faye elaborates, is \u201can uninterrupted succession of prolific tragedies resolved solely through the creative powers of the determinant forces.\u201d (37) Struggle and will to power are key to survival: \u201cA people or civilisation that abandons its will to power inevitably perishes, for what doesn\u2019t advance, retreats\u2014what doesn\u2019t accept life as struggle hasn\u2019t long to live.\u201d (261)<\/p>\n

Second, it is important to recognize that, for the Alt-Right, political warfare is over race, religion, and sexuality. The American Alt-Right readings are centered on race\u2014specifically on the threat of the Left to whites<\/em>. The editor of A Fair Hearing<\/em>, George T. Shaw, emphasizes in the very first sentence of the book, that \u201cIf alt-right ideology can be distilled to one statement, it is that white people, like all other distinct human populations, have legitimate group interests.\u201d (Shaw, ix) \u201cWhite genocide is underway,\u201d Shaw warns, and those responsible are the Jews and non-whites (xii), as well as sexual minorities.<\/p>\n

Third, the Alt-Right texts clearly advocate counterrevolution. The entire Part V of Shaw\u2019s volume A Fair Hearing<\/em>, called \u201cCounterrevolution,\u201d addresses the more radical effort to rout the Left. It includes an entire chapter on how to \u201cphysically remove\u201d Leftists, discussing everything from Pinochet\u2019s methods of throwing opponents out of helicopters (not efficient enough) to Japanese internment camps (a preferred solution). \u201cCivil war is already upon us,\u201d Augustus Invictus writes. (Shaw, 214) And what war calls for are counter-insurgency strategies. \u201cPhysical removal and the restoration of order is possible within the bounds of the Constitution,\u201d Invictus adds. \u201cTo delay the ultimate showdown is simply to postpone the inevitable, and to surrender the initiative.\u201d (Shaw, 214)<\/p>\n

These and other dimensions of the Alt-Right texts raise a number of questions about the exact forms of praxis that the movement advocates, as well as their relationship to Left critical praxis. \u00a0In order to help us think critically about \u201cCritique & the Alt-Right,\u201d we are delighted to welcome\u00a0Karl Ekeman from\u00a0Uppsala University, Sweden<\/a>,\u00a0Zeynep Gambetti from\u00a0Bogazici University<\/a>,\u00a0Renata Salecl from Birkbeck, University of London<\/a>,\u00a0Jason Stanley from Yale University<\/a>, and\u00a0Michael Taussig of \u00a0Columbia University<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Welcome to Praxis 4\/13!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Bernard E. Harcourt\u00a0 The relationship between the Alt-Right and Left critical theory is puzzling, to say the least. For many in the European Alt-Right, Gramsci and the Frankfurt School are the very source of what they believe is the… Continue Reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1641,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[52291],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4095","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-posts-4-13"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4095","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1641"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4095"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4095\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4095"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4095"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4095"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}