A Wall of Cynicism

Donald Trump’s first week as President has been, mostly, what we expected. This is not to say good or that you should not be outraged, just that he’s not really gone off the script I would have written for him.

I was mildly surprised by the decision to use an executive order to build the border wall as that is probably unconstitutional. To be clear, I’m not a lawyer and my training is political science. I know the broad strokes of how these things work, and that includes knowing that there may be something lurking in some bill Congress passed that gives Trump the authority to just up and build a wall. Executive orders are just the President announcing how to use Congressional Authority in more detail; they can’t create new authority. It is possible that Congress at some point authorized some kind of border fence that can be stretched to this monstrosity of a wall—if they can find the money.

Speaking of finding the money, look what’s appeared on Breitbart’s website:

To be fair, this has been up since last July. If you click on the link, which remember gives them ad revenue so maybe don’t, you can see everyone’s favorite Nazi Alt-Right apologist, Milo Yiannopoulos bragging about how he is the model for it. If I did not think irony was dead, I would call it self-parody. This shirt comes to my attention because it was being pushed on a pop-up when I was verifying something else on Breitbart. The shirt is old news, but they were trying to generate new interest.

Am I suggesting that one of Trump’s officers is using his power to sell T-shirts through his old employer? Not definitively. This can be explained as a cynical cash in by Breitbart’s new editorial team. But guys! You can’t rule out that this isn’t a cynical cash grab by Breitbarts new and old editorial team.

Perhaps we should offer our cynicism as a building material.

Alt-Right and Nazi Mean Different Things

And That Matters for Everyone

As the reality that Donald Trump is going to be President and Breitbart will be steering the ship sets in, there is a debate about what to call Bannon’s basket of deplorables. People are calling for us to avoid using the term Alt-Right and instead favor Nazi. I think this misses the important development that comes from “Alt-Right”.

Alt-Right is the actual basket that Clinton referred to—and it includes a lot of people who are not actually Nazis. In the past few years, White Nationalists, White Supremacists, and virulent anti-feminists have started forming a loose alliance. They are different things—and not even that homogeneous within their corners. Make no mistake: the anti-feminists are broadly racist and the White Nationalists continue to prefer “traditional” gender roles. But their reasons and goals are sometimes disparate. This should feel familiar to the left, who have long engaged in coalition politics.

The differences between White Supremacists and White Nationalists are pretty large—the difference between the extermination camps of Nazi Germany and the still onerous restrictions of Jim Crow. The anti-feminists too have their own set of policies; I doubt the KKK is hot on legalizing rape.

Use Alt-Right when referring to the alliance of these groups and platforms that facilitate it. Breitbart is Alt-Right because it gives voice to the whole basket of deplorables. The KKK is, depending on the chapter, White Supremacist or White Nationalist because they believe that the government should actively favor whites. West’s fear that Alt-Right will be used to neuter the violent racism of these various groups is well-founded. But it is also important to recognize that the KKK and Nazis, long opposed, are putting aside their differences and building a minority coalition that is being invited into our government.

I will commit to saying what I mean and meaning what I say—which means Alt-Right has a time and a place.

Argument of the Week: He Went to Business School

From time to time—ideally weekly—I will highlight an especially bad argument I saw made by the press or political class. Recipients need not collect their award in person, but rather take a sabbatical from public life in general.

All my posts this week have been dedicated to The Donald and his ascent to high office. I’ve hardly mentioned Steve Bannon because, well, the rest of the internet is covering him quite thoroughly. And well they should! The former editor in chief of Brietbart represents everything going wrong on the right and will soon by the chief strategist for the White House. He is the architect of the “Alt-Right” movement, having seen that it would be profitable to run articles from both neo-Nazis an the KKK on his website and presided over the unholy matrimony of many white supremacist groups into one cesspool. For some reason, there is doubt as to whether or not that counts as being a white supremacist yourself. Or as Reince Priebus said:

The guy I know is a guy sitting in an office all day yesterday talking about hiring, talking about people,” Priebus said on the Today Show. “Here’s a guy who is Harvard Business School, he was a ten-year naval officer, London School of Economics, I believe. He is a guy who is very, very smart, very temperate.

Wat.

This is, depending on your tastes, some parts false dichotomy and some parts non-sequitor. (Informal fallacies are, well, informal, after all.) You can go to Harvard and be a white supremacist—a cynical part of me thinks it might be an asset in the business world. You can be in our military and be a white supremacist, though the US Armed Forces have done a reasonable job tamping down on that for a long time. The London School of Economics does not throw you out for being a White Supremacist. Indeed, all three of these institutions used to keep black people out.

This is a dreadful argument. Not because it is wrong—though, yes, he is a white supremacist—but because it does not hold up. If you said that Obama was not a white supremacist because he too went to Harvard, your argument would be invalid. These things have nothing to do with one’s beliefs about white people.

So come on down, Mr. Priebus, and collect your award!