The Alt-Right Pipeline – joshsulkin.com

“Well lads, it’s time to stop shitposting and time to make a real life effort post.”

That’s a direct quote from the Christchurch Mosque[1] shooter. For the uninitiated, it means that it’s time to stop posting online and time to do something in real life. That real life effort happened to be the mass murder of 51 people. The shooting was the ultimate conclusion of his journey down the Alt-Right pipeline. It was the culmination of everything I am going to discuss in this essay.

The Alt-Right is an internet movement for the internet age. Amorphous in nature, its followers are mostly anonymous. Essentially, it is the manifestation of frustrated white men who are terrified about their declining social power[2]. They are more than a right-wing fringe movement though; they are a dangerous group of white nationalists who are infiltrating a growing portion of the political debate online; and it’s leaking offline with disastrous consequences. They have utilised the internet to create inescapable echo chambers[3] made up of isolated networks that push and pull people further down the pipeline. This makes their spaces hard to find and even harder to shut down. It also muddies the water, leading some to dismiss the Alt-Right as nothing more than an obscure chapter of Internet culture.

The Alt-Right must not be dismissed; they are a continuation of the white supremacist movements that stain our history, except now they are helped by the devastatingly efficient technology of our time. By taking advantage of political and racial polarisation, the Alt-Right is able to trigger deep shifts within individuals who may at first completely dismiss the notion of white nationalism. When the individual starts their descent down the rabbit hole, they become part of the wider loosely connected group where they then have the opportunity to develop and evolve their complex mix of views, often drawing in more members along the way whilst securing their positions.

They are sexist, racist, and engage in extremist discourse. Through the use of deceptive irony often masked in memes[4], they confuse people into labelling them as internet trolls. Trolls they may be, but they are a serious threat to the democratic values we believe in, and we are now having to witness young white men becoming radicalised through the medium of frog memes[5]. The Alt-Right has access to some of the most popular podcasts in the world[6], and has a major presence across a multitude of social media pages, so much so that when someone goes seeking genuine political discussions, they will likely stumble upon these channels as the default first option without even knowing the bias nor agenda of what they are watching.

Incels: Or How I Learned to Be Racist and Hate Women

The prevailing view is that the Alt-Right pipeline is primed for frustrated white men, and there is no one more frustrated than a man who cannot get laid. Involuntary celibates[7] (incels) are a subculture of men who are unable to find a romantic partner; i.e., to convince a woman to have sex with them. It isn’t just frustration over not having sex though, many of them may be depressed or lonely or unfulfilled in other ways. Though inceldom inherently suggests a lack of sex (celibacy) it would be wrong to tar them all with the same brush, and it would also be wrong to label all of them as a threat to society, but regardless the movement is insidious.

Rather than looking inwards, they blame women for favouring only attractiveness or what they perceive as ‘masculinity’ – of course leaving them at a disadvantage. They attribute their lack of sexual activity to biological determinism, suggesting that they are genetically predetermined to never find a partner. They turn themselves into victims of a social system of their own creation that is geared against them[8]. Their narrow world view morphs as instead of supporting one another in a healthy way, they allow their vitriolic hatred to grow and spread. This would be a good time to mention that being an incel is almost always a prerequisite for white nationalist indoctrination[9].

In most incel forums, they come across as misogynistic racists who believe they are entitled to sex. They don’t necessarily have political ambitions beyond this core belief, though they certainly do lean more towards one end of the spectrum than the other, but it is their far-reaching aims to change the fabric of society that aligns them so well with the Alt-Right. There is a strong symbiosis between misogyny and white supremacy, with a deep-seated hatred of women running through many white supremacists[10]. The intertwining and overlapping of Alt-Right hate groups and incels has resulted in an increasing number of incel related killings[11], almost as if the Alt-Right has utilised the frustration of the incel community[12] to carry out their bidding. It does bring into question whether we should start branding them as terrorists. I see them as more of a decentralised cult, but I’ll touch on this again later in my essay.

Not all men who can’t get a date want to kill a bunch of strangers, but they are susceptible to being brainwashed by the kind of people who do. Incels are already aligned with the Alt-Right way of mind as they espouse supremacist views in the sense that they are ‘above’ women, and that only they can see the truth about the world. They haven’t got that far to go to apply this kind of supremacist thinking to other groups, or races. Anti-female rhetoric is a flammable prologue to anti-Semitic or other forms of hate speech.

There’s a fantastic Twitter thread[13] that outlines the subtle process by which people are radicalized into the Alt-Right way of thinking. Essentially, you take a young white man at his most vulnerable and tell him that it is not his fault. You blame liberals, telling him that they are destroying his god given right to have a girlfriend. Then he begins to oppose feminism, women’s rights, and if you’re lucky he’ll hark back to a time that never existed[14] – where women were easy to find, married without a struggle, and stuck to their household duties. Then all you need is a political candidate who represents a return to ‘men being real men’ and you’ve got yourself a president[15]!

That Twitter thread isn’t far from the truth. Aimless young men who go looking for something that provides direction do end up stumbling upon right-wing communities instead. Imagine a 19-year-old boy. He wants a girlfriend, nothing wrong with that. For some reason, he just isn’t able to find one. It really might not be his fault. Regardless, he goes online looking for tips and in doing so he finds a pick-up artist guru[16] who can mentor him. Now he’s got a ‘real’ man to look up to, and he’s big on self-esteem and confidence, but little on respecting women. This doesn’t look so good on paper, but it isn’t yet evil – at least not the kind of evil that compels you to murder. However, our 19-year-old boy now has access to a community of likeminded young men also struggling to find a girlfriend. Together, they share the same anxieties and become a large group who feel wholly rejected and threatened by women. Together, they promote a sense of entitlement that is easily morphed into something far more dangerous[17].

Beware the Manosphere

Incels are not an isolated group; they are connected to a broader online ecosystem. The Manosphere is the name given to this system, a network of online male only communities. They concern themselves with men’s rights issues and are anti-feminist and deeply misogynistic. They believe that there is a masculine identity crisis, fuelled by multiculturalist feminism, and they also believe that they have the antidote.

There are four broad groups that make up the network, starting with the aforementioned incels. There are also men’s rights activists, men going their own way, and pick up artists. They each use sexist rhetoric, predatory tactics, and they believe feminism is leading to the destruction of Western civilisation. These groups feel a need to control women, and to them, women become not only sexual targets but also political ones. These men are suddenly liberators, fighting against their own emasculation and sexual repression at the hands of the nasty feminists. They believe that they were owed something, but feminists have stolen it from them. For a more detailed discussion on this topic, please read this fantastic paper: Are Anti-Feminist Communities Gateways to the Far Right?[18]

By the way, the answer to that question is yes.

The narratives seen within the Manosphere and the Alt-Right tend to overlap, and they both use statistical data to support their warped conclusions. For example, over the last 70 years worldwide birth-rates have declined by 50%[19] as more women are in education and work, as well as having better access to contraception. With women’s economic freedom came the loosening of their dependence on men. This also extends to women’s social freedom as they can choose their partners, rather than relying on family arrangements or societal expectations. To the commentators and followers within the Manosphere, this proves that feminism is ruining their chances to sleep with women. The data is undeniable, and now they have a scapegoat for it.

To illustrate how the two groups overlap, we can look at the findings from Hope not Hate[20], a UK based anti-right wing extremism charity. They suggested that anti-feminist ideas are the perfect recruitment tool as they can be voiced with minimal pushback whilst still being attractively nonconformist. It is easier for these groups to argue that women are less intelligent than men than it is for them to suggest racially based differences. The conspiracy of feminist women dictating government policy is strikingly similar to the common conspiracy of Jewish people dominating the world. Whatever happened to fun conspiracies, like aliens?

The Red Pill

It’s 1999. You’ve just walked out of seeing The Matrix and it’s blown your mind. The scene where Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne) offers Neo (Keanu Reeves) the choice stays with you:

“You take the blue pill – the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. You take the red pill – you stay in Wonderland and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.”

Neo can choose the blue pill and forget the reality he has been shown, and he will be able to continue his life plugged into the machine. However, the red pill will wake him up and show him more of this new reality, opening his eyes to the truth.

To the Alt-Right, the red pill became a metaphor for waking up to our current world’s reality of conspiracy, lies, agendas, and for the incel – a feminist dictatorship. In my experience, the red pill rabbit hole is full of sad young boys. They seem to be desperate for attention, anything that can give them even a drop of confidence. They are angry and ignorant, fantasizing about strange realities and creating absurd narratives for themselves. What makes it worse is that there is no single red pill, it is a never-ending course of addictive drugs that leaves you wanting more. The user becomes dependent on the conspiracy laden environment they exist in, seeking out the hidden knowledge that the rest of us aren’t privy to, or can’t handle. Over time regular news sources don’t give them the correct feelings associated with their usual red-pills so they go seeking things that are further and further removed from reality.

In the future, I would like to write a piece on modern dating because I do believe it has a role to play. Contemporary masculinity is confusing and the red pill represents clarity to those lost in the fog. They are as lost in the pursuit of love as the generations of men that came before them but instead of writing love songs or poetic ballads, they have decided to head straight towards hating women in the vilest way. It is their hatred of women and detachment from truth that leads them down into the Alt-Right pipeline. Users in the Manosphere systematically go on to consume Alt-Right content; the link is direct and quantifiable. Now that we know it is demonstrably true and happening, we need to understand why this transition occurs.

The Pipeline Beckons

The Manosphere takes disaffected young men and gives them a code to live by. It helps them feel strong in the chaotic mess of the world today. As I discussed in the previous section, lonely and depressed men without a support network will inevitably go online to seek help. The more they browse, the more the algorithm that determines everything we see on the internet learns. It gets to work, suggesting content that goes further and further down the rabbit hole. Names of right-wing commentators will pop up repeatedly as the user develops connections to the individuals now mentoring them, and because these people are loud, obnoxious, and arrogant, viewers deem them intelligent. The right-wing alternative media is full of these characters, and some of the names to be wary of in no particular order are: Stefan Molyneux, Ben Shapiro, Steven Crowder, Jordan Peterson (more on him later) Lauren Southern, Gavin McInnes, Jared Taylor, and Alex Jones.

Rebecca Lewis referred to this as the “Alternative Influence Network” in her 2018 report[21]. It is the mix of Internet personalities who, despite having slightly different opinions, share a general hatred of progressivism. Lewis even labels it as a “fully functional media system”. The Alt-Right has adopted every online tool available to connect likeminded users together, radicalising them and intimidating the rest of us with the objective of recruiting new members.

The sharing of guests between various podcasts exposes users to the spectrum of channels available in the Alt-Right sphere of influence. Having watched several of these videos, platforms such as YouTube know it is pointless suggesting something from a different type of channel and as their aim is to keep you on the site watching as many videos as possible it will send you more of the content that you enjoy watching, and so you fall. The podcasts you watch will become more and more right-wing. Videos that might have started off as satirical will descend into shockingly racist sermons. The algorithm knows where you are in the process too. If you put on someone like Jared Taylor (a white supremacist) but find it too much, it’ll keep you in the previous zone until you are ready to take on more radical views.

Three Steps to Radicalization

Radicalisation occurs when someone is encouraged to develop extreme views. Someone who has been radicalised is typically obsessively angry about a perceived injustice, and they express their frustration towards a specific group through sharing their hatred and acting upon it, often violently. The world today is unpredictable, and the confusion of modern times has left people vulnerable to those who want to exploit fear to promote their agenda.

Humour has become a key weapon for the Alt-Right as it allows them to subvert the rules and regulations that keep hate speech at bay – it is also more digestible to an unprepared audience. Irony helps to blur the lines between what is poking fun and what are extremist views. Through the three basic steps below, the Alt-Right has been able to recruit new followers and incite waves of far-right terrorist attacks[22].

It begins with normalising the core themes. Based mostly around humour, it enables a gentle entry into the pipeline. Memes that are endlessly reposted, circulated to enforce familiarity. Your shock at some of the more overtly racist ones lessens with each time you view it, until eventually even the holocaust denial jokes become inseparable from reality[23].
Then comes acclimation. Like a plane slowly descending from a high altitude, you don’t jump straight to right wing nationalist videos. You watch someone who gets a little further away from liberal values each time, and step by step you get more comfortable on your journey. This becomes habitual, working through you at a subconscious level. You might fact check some of the things you come across, but the sheer volume and quantity of material coming your way makes it impossible to work through it all. You will become overwhelmed; you will become desensitised. What you used to think was wrong soon becomes acceptable.
Dehumanisation. This is the Alt-Right conclusion. Just as with the depiction of Jewish people as rats, or Tutsis as cockroaches during the Rwandan genocide, the goal is to strip people of their humanity[24]. By reducing their enemies to sub-humans, it protects them from feeling guilty when attacking a fellow human, allowing them to continue with their hate filled activities without any internal dilemma as they retain the self-perceived moral high ground.

Radicalisation is rife online. The system works as designed. It is seamless, effortless, cohesive. Lubes you up to slide from video to video, autoplaying > autosuggesting > autoshowing. The content has to be familiar to you, but new so that you check it out. It’s only a matter of time until the path diverges and you branch off into a previously feared or hidden area, but it will always be further down the pipeline.

Slaves to the Algorithm

The dreaded algorithm. It is responsible for everything we see across all our social media platforms from YouTube to Facebook. Lines of code that determine which piece of content appears next. The algorithm that tells you which video will appear has a major role to play in the radicalisation process, with its mind-boggling mix of political, social, emotional, economic, philosophical, and downright mystical content.

The role of the algorithm in the rise of the Alt-Right is indisputable. It is by design that these toxic techno-cultures[25] have been allowed to thrive, and it can be attributed solely to profit motive. The goal is to make money, and the method is engagement. It’s literally the business model; reward provocative content that gets exposure and advertising revenue. The money doesn’t care, it just wants you to participate. It was the same with the advent of the 24-hour news cycle; sensationalism pulls people in, it’s just that social media does this to a level that we were not ready for.

The algorithm is not an omnipotent comic book villain though, it’s actually quite straightforward in principle. It collects the behaviour of its users, feeds them more of the content they like, and this repeats ad infinitum.

“It started out pretty benign. You’re watching something about teen fashion and the next thing you know, the algorithm would push you to a Ben Shapiro video.”

This comment was from Reid Brown, who is explaining how he fell into online radicalisation[26]. The videos he was being suggested started to warp his perception of reality, particularly how he interacted with fellow pupils at school. Fortunately, he had the self-awareness to recognise it.

If you’re tech savvy, you can easily test this like I did by downloading a VPN and opening YouTube as though it is a fresh install. The entire first page is taken up with rage baiting videos and misinformation clickbait with millions upon millions of views – and that is before actually entering the rabbit hole. As I mentioned earlier, the user will slowly become comfortable seeing things further and further away from where they started as the algorithm evolves.

The goal of the Alt-Right is to make you feel threatened when there is no threat, and attacked when no one is attacking, and the algorithm is one of their greatest tools. For men with little emotional support, the Manosphere’s Alternative Influence Network provides something for them to lean on, and it gives them a community so that they can form tight bonds. Much like a cult, these groups look for vulnerable and lonely people and provide them with a purpose. In addition to this, right-wing personalities use their pseudointellectualism and charisma (if you can call it that) to draw people in by making them feel as though they belong.

It’s got a name, this weird psychological mechanism; parasocial empathy[27]. Our lizard brain, the primal and emotional part, cannot distinguish between real life interactions and images we see in media. Like a fan who thinks a musician is writing songs directly for them, parasocial empathy in terms of the Alt-Right pipeline leads people to believe that right-wing commentators represent an acknowledgement of their own experiences and feelings. The more you relate to them, the further you get pushed, and perpetually this continues. An attack on someone like Jordan Peterson becomes an attack on themselves personally as their identity is merged to his. This is what makes them fanatical, and also impossible to talk to objectively.

Remember our 19-year-old from before? The kid with no girlfriend? Well, now he’s had enough and has decided to do something about it. Self-improvement isn’t a red flag for fascism, but the fetishization of genetic superiority does play a key role[28]. There’s also an inordinate amount of self-help misinformation online mixed in with the facts. Some of the threads might suggest working out more and eating vegetables, but then they will steer into paranoid conspiracies about avoiding porn because it is a Jewish plot to weaken men[29]. There is a conservative slant to a lot of the lifestyle advice that can be found online too, as it calls back for an authentic way of living that avoids the degenerate hostile modern consumerist world.

With our 19-year-old placed in an adversarial world, his self-improvement becomes a rebellion against all those who have led to his dissatisfaction. With every weight he lifts, he has won a cultural victory; the Alt-Right has successfully turned his body into a battleground allowing him to advance further down the pipeline without actually partaking in any form of violence or radical behaviour. His dedication to the cause will deepen regardless of whether the outcomes of self-improvement help. It is therefore under the guise of self-improvement that far right views are allowed to slip through undetected, and that leads us into one of my least favourite people on earth.

The Peterson Problem

Back in 2017, a Canadian psychology professor spoke out vehemently in opposition to Bill C-16[30]. At the time, in Canada, people were protected legally against various forms of discrimination based on their protected characteristics; things like ethnicity, religion, disabilities, etc. You could not fire someone because of their sexual orientation for example. Bill C-16 would apply these legal protections to gender identity, extending these protections to transgender people. To Jordan Peterson, he felt this meant that if he didn’t use a student’s preferred pronoun then he would be accused of hate speech. He argued that asking him to use “made up words” was paramount to “compelled speech”. During his rise to fame, he would go on to criticize many leftist points of view.

Through his outspoken criticism of the modern world and, he gained a major following online. He compares the attempt for equality to a communist dictatorship, and many people seemed to agree with him, or at least they were intrigued, as his videos garnered tens of millions of views. Before I get into my Peterson bashing, I will admit that his books and content have helped people. His heavy-handed style speaks to people who are struggling, and it does give them the confidence they need. However, this is precisely what makes him so dangerous. His compelling arguments on bettering ourselves are intertwined with his arguments that diversity will send us back to the dark ages. I believe him to be more dangerous than the out-and-out far-right commentators specifically because he balances on the fence and is much harder to pin down. The credibility given to him for his views on self-improvement is stretched to his other more right leaning teachings.

Peterson scares me because he is not your usual right-wing grifter. The charlatans are exposed eventually, but he is unmasked already. Whilst people like Milo Yiannopoulos[31] crave attention and are destined to flame out and burn into obscurity, Peterson will march on. He remains calm in the face of adversity, perched atop his supposedly intellectual high ground, and it’s from there that he will continue to brainwash his impressionable audiences.

We’re nearly at the bashing bit, just give me one more paragraph.

In the wake of the Toronto van attack of 2018[32], Peterson claimed that the driver of the van that killed 11 people was “angry at God because women were rejecting him (…) the cure for that is enforced monogamy”. Seems as if Peterson is offering support for a core incel belief, like we discussed earlier. I strongly implore you to read this fantastic article for more about this statement, and why his words are so dangerous; The Context of Jordan Peterson’s Thoughts on Enforced Monogamy[33]. Okay, now we can begin.

Peterson has recently gone through a publicised life-threatening battle with drug addiction. There are many ways to critique the man, and I do not wish to target his addiction, but his experience and management of it is fair game in terms of his hypocrisy and the wider issues with self-help that he promotes. One of his most repeated solutions for all that ails mankind is to clean our room before dealing with the political issues that face society, i.e., to focus on the individual instead of the collective. It would be wrong for me to not point out the insane levels of hypocrisy that, when faced with his own individual battle, he ignored his own rules. Further to this, after he tells us to get our house in order, he went into a 30-day medical coma[34] because his daughter with no clinical background who promotes an all-meat diet plan[35] with her pick up artist boyfriend who has claimed multiple times he is possessed by a demon[36] told him to. In case you’re wondering why I’m bring that last bit up, it’s pretty compelling evidence that Peterson holds many pseudoscientific beliefs close to his heart.

Again, I am in no way criticising anyone suffering from addiction. It is Peterson’s unwillingness to accept his addiction (calling it a dependency) and his blaming it on his doctor and the drugs themselves that bothers me (considering he believes we must take responsibility for our own lives). As well as this, his disregard for wider societal and political issues is at odds with what he went through, as the drugs he was addicted to were prescribed benzodiazepines rather than unknown mixes of street drugs, and he had access to treatments that most addicts are unable to access or afford. It reveals the inequities at the heart of his delusions, and should put into doubt everything he says. I’d mention his tweets about ‘alcoholics’ and ‘drug addicts’ and that anyone with even minimal training would understand the stigmatizing nature of those terms but I’ll leave that for now.

In his writings he touches vaguely on a variety of subjects, subjects which are usually explored in depth by academics including political scientists, economists, sociologists, psychologists, neuroscientists, legal scholars, and so on. One thing I found was that when the core of his argument was anthropological for example, he will use thinkers such as Dostoevsky to support himself (Dostoevsky was a novelist, not an Anthropologist). Even at his most rigorous, he is barely rigorous at all. His bad scholarship means a lot of energy is needed to salvage his points, and having read much of his work, I can say with certainty that he writes in a way that takes an obscene amount of effort to refute. The difficulty comes from the convoluted and vague manner in which he writes, not from the strength of his arguments. I am also aware that he has a high number of citations on his papers, but that does not mean they are correct nor of a high quality; it likely means the opposite.

You don’t need to read an essay of his though to realise he cannot grasp the full complexity of any subject he happens to be talking about, and instead relies on superficial knowledge, buzzwords, or absolute misconceptions (otherwise known as lies). He fails as a therapist too, making no attempts to remain neutral as he forgets that boundaries are essential for therapists to maintain[37].

12 Rules for Life, that’s his first book. It’s full of abstract musings about traditions and there are a lot of baseless claims within it. He writes in a narcissistic and provocative way, and even for someone who has read countless books, it’s difficult to understand his obscure style. I wonder if this was by design? Anyway, let’s look at this direct quote from p79 of his book 12 Rules for Life:

“Strengthen the individual. Start with yourself. Take care of yourself. Define who you are. Refine your personality. Choose your destination and articulate your Being. As the great 19th century German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche noted, ‘He whose life has a why can bear almost any how.”

This reads fine. I like the first couple of phrases, and I don’t disagree with the importance of the individual, although he does rely heavily on the promotion of personal rights and puts far more historical importance on the concept than there actually was – it may be impossible to accurately explain individualism and personhood throughout history but that doesn’t stop Peterson. I don’t mind his first-year philosophy student description of Nietzsche either. What I mind is that his quote is actually from Viktor Frankl who is himself rewriting a Nietzsche quote. I also mind that he is preaching master morality ideals and using slave morality to support it. This is an error that most won’t recognise, but for an ‘expert’ who preaches this stuff, he should not make mistakes like that. I don’t want to pick out all the tiny criticisms though so let’s get to something a little more substantial.

He is no fool, but he often chooses to veer away from a question and instead lecture us with his dominating sternness that to many comes off as powerful or intelligent.

To illustrate what he does so well, take a look at this exchange about women in the workplace[38]:

JP (Jordan Peterson): “We don’t know if men and women can work together successfully in the workplace.”

I (Interviewer): “40 years ago…I could have done whatever I wanted, and there would have been almost no recourse that a woman working under me would have – now they have some recourse.”

JP: “There was recourse back then too – they could go to the police.“

I: “So you feel like right now the atmosphere in corporate workplaces is the same as it was 40 years ago?”

JP: “No, but I’m not sure…not saying that it’s any better.“

What he’s done here is clever, and it’s something he does a lot. He makes a vague observational statement, attaches a question, and stops short of making an actual claim. He relies on what if and what about, rarely giving a concrete direct answer. During the entire Vice interview[39], which isn’t especially great from either side, he hides his actual provocative view behind these weird statements and ramblings. He instead leaves it to his followers to take it the rest of the way, allowing him to plead ignorance when they take it to mean men and women cannot work together (because of women). He won’t talk about empathising with women, or men learning about consequences, but he will ask us why women wear revealing clothing.

This is why he is so popular with the Alt-Right, without having actually publicly preached Neo Nazi rhetoric. Remember the 50% fall in birth-rate statistic from earlier? Well, Peterson hasn’t outright said that we need to safeguard the future of white children, but he did say that the birth-rate is plummeting and that we need to consider whether this is good for society. Unfortunately, he also had a stellar performance on a widely viewed Channel 4 interview where Cathy Newman was ill-prepared to take him on. Thus, the image of a cool rational man of science facing down the hysteria of female driven woke political correctness was solidified; I’d say he was just tilting at windmills[40].

The Motte and Bailey fallacy is a form of argument whereby two positions that share similarities are conflated; it is a fancy term for the bait and switch tactics Peterson adores using. The motte is the easy to defend statement, and the bailey is the controversial bit. To illustrate, let’s take a look at what he says concerning gay marriage[41]:

“I would be against it too if it’s backed by cultural Marxists because it isn’t clear to me it will satisfy the ever-increasing demand for an assault on traditional modes of being. Now, with regards to gay marriage specifically that’s a really tough one for me because I can imagine…I don’t think I can do anything other than spat platitudes about it unfortunately really. You know, if, if the marital vows are taken seriously it seems to me that it’s a means where by gay people can be integrated more thoroughly into standard society and that’s probably a good thing.”

First of all, what is he even saying? I needed to read it twice just to understand it. The motte is that he believes gay marriage allows gay people to integrate with ‘standard society’, and that is ‘probably a good thing’. Okay so he isn’t against gay marriage! Well, the bailey is that he suggests the vote on gay marriage is backed by cultural Marxists. This sneaky tactic allows him to profess the controversial claim by shielding himself with the progressive attitude, calling it progressive is a stretch though. As well as showing us perfectly how he answers a question, it also highlights how his sexist conservative worldview inspires the right-wing theocratic fans that hang on to his every word.

A brief digression now.

Cultural Marxism

Cultural Marxism. It used to be a favourite catchphrase of the conservative founder of far-right news network Breitbart, Andrew Breitbart. It is the conspiracy that underpins the Alt-Right’s worldview, which claims that Jewish elites are using modern culture to weaken the Western world, making it vulnerable to their takeover. It was originally a Nazi conspiracy that Jews, Leftists, Bolsheviks (and so on) have taken over media, education, and politics. Historian Joseph Bendersky noted in A History of Nazi Germany: 1919-45 that Hitler increasingly used the term “Cultural Bolshevism” in the lead up to the Holocaust. For the Alt-Right, it is the perfect excuse to justify their antisemitism.

It does go by different names; Peterson likes calling it “Postmodern Neo-Marxism” sometimes. It’s dog whistling to white supremacists plain and simple. You can find Hitler himself discussing it in a book you may have heard of called Mein Kampf. Oh, and if you still doubt me, white nationalists suggest using[42] “Cultural Marxism” instead of “The Jewish Question” when trying to radicalise others:

“‘I have found that most normies can’t handle hearing the word Jew more than a few times before they get uncomfortable and want it to stop.’ One recommended that the ‘simplest path to pro-white views [was] Cultural Marxism’.”

The Peterson Problem Continued: Featuring Self Help Gurus

Even with charitable interpretations, there are countless ways to critique Jordan Peterson; be it his overreliance on now discredited unscientific Jungian theory, his provable misunderstanding of a myriad of different topics, or his edgy pessimistic nihilism and maddening debating style. Instead of getting to the root of the problems we as individuals face, he places all the blame on modern liberalism. He distracts us from the real conversation, making us talk about blue haired transgender people instead of climate change or seemingly unstoppable inequality.

Having encountered a few of his fans, I know what talking to them is like. When you get into ‘debates’ with them, they do nothing more than attempt to overwhelm you by providing an excessive number of arguments with no regard to their strength or accuracy. Basically, you just throw whatever you can at your opponent as quickly as possible so that they don’t have a chance to refute. I guess the bullshit asymmetry principle is true, it really does take more effort to debunk bullshit than it does to create it in the first place.

Fans of Peterson and the like feed off of the arrogant confidence they emit. These guys are not the irrefutable academic thought-provoking philosophers and gurus their fans think they are though. They suffer from messiah complexes comparable to many politicians or entertainers, almost as if they’re a hybrid of the two. They all have interpersonal difficulties within the real legitimate academic environment, so it’s been easier for them to reject the entire system and become underappreciated contrarians rather than to admit their own failures. They strive for money and power the same as anyone, and the more outspoken they are the more they receive. They are as self-serving and irrational as any of us, except they are embedded in an echo chamber where they can push naïve, innocent, curious people down the funnel of the Alt-Right, profiting along the way.

People aren’t turned into fascists overnight. They are lured in gradually, oftentimes not even noticing it happening nor where it leads. It starts out innocent and sometimes positive, and once you’ve invested yourself you won’t be able to cut your losses and take the ego hit (that’s how cults operate). Further and further, you fall down the rabbit hole, losing yourself. The gurus have an important role to play. They lure people in with their big words and persuasive tactics, guiding them with self-help nonsense, reinforcing archaic views and telling their fans that they don’t need to change because they’re perfect how they are and the fault lies with liberal society.

Maybe you’re a 75-year-old white man who misses the old days when you could hit your wife, or you don’t like that a black family has moved in next door, or maybe you’re just a conservative (little ‘c’ not big ‘C’). You like the Western World that you grew up in, and you love the natural order and preordained hierarchy of it all. Judeo-Christian[43] values are all you need! Here comes Peterson with his bullshit, telling you that we don’t need to change the world, we only need to focus on ourselves. Who needs to solve poverty? We can do that after we’ve solved ourselves (but what that means I don’t know, neither does he). He brings a calming message that lets you know everything you know about the world is right, you don’t need to feel bad about having your extreme views, people who argue with you are leftist liberal stupid evil cucks who we can humiliate on YouTube without even considering what they’re saying. Some worthwhile further reading: https://firstmonday.org/article/view/10108/7920

The Prager Predicament

Dennis Prager is an American conservative, and he loves to promote his political ideology, piling dirt onto the left and the Democrats. He has leveraged YouTube astonishingly well to disseminate his ridiculous propaganda. Through Prager University[44], he is able to oversimplify complex issues to the point of absurdity. Much like Peterson, he has also received billions of views across all the social media platforms, and he’s helping to push people into the Alt-Right pipeline.

Shortly after the Alt-Right’s poster boy Donald Trump was elected president, millions of Americans flocked to the internet to research the Electoral College, and how it managed to go against the will of the majority (seems undemocratic huh?). By far the most popular source of information was a previously disregarded video hosted by PragerU that erupted to receive over 50 million views in a matter of days. The quality of this video, which can be found online, is laughable. It avoids discussing the Electoral College’s racist origins[45], how it was designed to empower southern white voters, as well as any negatives about the archaic system such as how it wildly distorts votes by favouring sparsely populated areas. It’s almost like it was created to strengthen wealthy landowners but that’s another discussion.

Since then, PragerU has published hundreds of similar videos on a range of topics with a focus on conservative doctrines. They debate whether climate change exists, and whether it is our fault. They don’t like the minimum wage, animals, and in the wake of the George Floyd protests they created a video titled ‘Who Was Robert E. Lee?’ which was soon made private after its negative response. That video specifically is just a complete fabrication, there’s a great review of it here[46]. The video goes into his connections to George Washington, yet avoids how Lee married into the family of a wealthy plantation owner. They do however mention that he crushed a slave revolt, but I don’t think that’s a reason to leave his statue up.

Furthermore, Prager believes universities have demonized non-left ideas, and that it is his God given duty to deliver conservative opinions on the things that matter. He stands firmly in the pipeline, beyond a liberal audience but behind the Neo-Nazis. In the same manner as Peterson, fact checking isn’t high on the list of priorities and neither is it for the fans. They have perfected the bite sized conservative[47] info dump, targeting teenagers to indoctrinate them when they are young. PragerU allows young viewers to bypass the classroom, where they learn liberal values, and presents them with the alternative and attractively iconoclastic view of things[48].

PragerU gives you permission to disagree with the world today, and validates any feelings you may have that go against the tolerant permissive left. It shows you a video by a black woman who tells you that the ‘Democratic Party defended slavery’, thus allowing you to hate the Democrats even more whilst swinging you to the Republican side (as they must be the good guys). They preach decency, and good Christian values, but is that really what their message is?

The Tolerance Paradox

Ethics, morals, limitations. Does freedom of speech mean we tolerate the Nazi shouting across the street at us? Does it mean we tolerate someone who doesn’t support same-sex marriage? Does it mean we remove anyone we don’t agree with from the conversation? When Cloudfare banned[49] the racist website The Daily Stormer from their services, did they do the right thing? Did they do the right thing when they blocked[50] an anti-trans website? Is it compelled speech to force a company to write ‘support gay marriage’ on a cake[51]? When Twitter started putting notices that posts on various conspiracy theories were factually wrong, they called it an attack on free speech. When a racist account is banned, they call it an attack on free speech. How much should we put up with?

According to Karl Popper in The Open Society and Its Enemies, unlimited tolerance must lead to the disappearance of tolerance. If we extend tolerance to those who are intolerant, then we are not defending society against intolerance, leading to the destruction of tolerance. Read it again slowly if you find it confusing. Popper wrote within the context of Nazism and WWII, but we can apply it to the same fervent white nationalism and religious extremism on the rise today.

John Rawls expands upon this idea in A Theory of Justice, stating that society has a right of self-preservation that supersedes tolerance:

“Its [intolerance] freedom should be restricted only when the tolerant sincerely and with reason believe that their own security and that of the institutions of liberty are in danger”

People are understandably cautious when the topic of tolerance comes up, particularly in the US where freedom of speech is plays a key role in the foundation of their country (see: the First Amendment). This also leads to grave misunderstandings about the concept, and you will often hear something along the lines of the famous Evelyn Beatrice Hall quote: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it”. I don’t want to tread on anyone’s rights, but this attitude is not the correct way to look at tolerance. Tolerance is not the moral high ground, it is a peace treaty[52]. Boiled down, tolerance is how we live day to day without absolute chaos. It can basically be reduced to being a nice person. It is not the accepting of antisocial behaviour. It is not the comparison of prejudice against Nazis to prejudice against Jewish people. The right to bear arms does not give you the right to kill. Do you see the difference here?

A little scenario for you to think through:

There’s another World War, this time it’s really bad. The enemy is coming to bomb your town, and you must all turn out your lights and stay inside. The lady opposite you read online that the World War is a hoax, so she leaves her lights on extra bright to prove a point. “Freedom of speech!” she shouts at you. A few houses in your street throw a party, some have fireworks. They are expressing their personal belief, you cannot stop them because that would be harassment and the suppression of their rights! So you sit in your pitch black house, lit only by the lady opposite you and the occasional blast of light from the fireworks. Then, the ground rumbles and your house begins to shake. Explosions shatter your windows, and the entire town is reduced to rubble.

After World War II, democratic institutions learned that completely-free-free speech would lead to the rise of evil forces like the Nazis, resulting in the dehumanisation of entire races and their eventual extermination. In order to protect society from this occurring again, they set up boundaries to forbid what we refer to as ‘hate speech’. Following the immediate aftermath of WWII, this makes sense. In practice, and in the modern day, it is much harder to defend. Who decides what counts as hate speech? On Twitter or Facebook, it is a team of corporate managers. If they have political leanings then that will surely alter their decisions, and at what point does it become unfair? These are complicated issues, but the intolerant folk have no place in the conversation – it is for those who exist in the tolerant society that decide.

It reminds me of Sartre’s radical freedom[53]. We may receive external pressure, but only we have the free will to make our choices. We as humans have the freedom to do whatever we are capable of doing, but there are always consequences for our actions. I am free to punch a stranger walking down the street, but they are free to hit me back or call the police. They might even be ‘freer’ because society supports them calling the police more than it does me randomly punching them. If the benefits to consequence ratio is so skewed then am I really free to punch a stranger? Freedom doesn’t mean we’re free from the consequences of our actions; can you imagine a society where we all exercised our own radical freedom?

Free speech absolutism is a flawed concept. There are always going to be expressions of speech that the wider society does not want to tolerate, and the Alt-Right should be one of those expressions. As Stanley Fish wrote in There’s No Such Thing as Free Speech, “free speech is what’s left over when you have determined which forms of speech cannot be permitted”. As with our actions, we are free until it infringes upon the rights of others. Like punching someone randomly, or crashing into cars on the road, most of society agrees that a punishment should be delivered when the treaty is broken.

Well, That’s Just Your Opinion

In my introduction, I mentioned that the Alt-Right has created ‘inescapable echo chambers’. These chambers spew misinformation and fear-based propaganda, and they are confirmation bias hotspots. The line between fact and fiction becomes blurred, and there is no vetting process or authority that requires anyone to disclose whether their content is opinion or not; leading to even the wildest of views[54] slipping into mainstream discussions. The chambers are fuelled by those pesky algorithms, creating filter bubbles that curate the user’s online journey, isolating them from information or content that they haven’t expressed an interest in. If you research anti-vax conspiracies, those are the videos or pages you will see and there is no chance of you escaping easily. We have covered how the algorithm is encouraging users to view sensationalist and inflammatory content; and so now we can see how the feedback loop is created. It draws you in, keeps you spinning, and pushes you down the pipeline, radicalising you on the way.

The Alt-Right has made reactionary regressive rhetoric trendy again. Their adversarial way of communicating is an efficient means to traverse the post truth world we live in today. Right wing content creators and media personalities have taken advantage of our lack of ability to detect what is opinion and what isn’t. The names that have been discussed in this essay are all guilty of mixing facts with their own perspective to increase their credibility at the expense of lying to their unknowing audience. Fake news that uses provocative headlines designed to cause outrage results in readers sharing the content without questioning it; and so the misinformation spreads.

As content is easily separated from its creator, and due to the speed with which information travels online, a far-fetched conspiracy can become infallible gospel overnight. People are bombarded with never-ending streams of propaganda, and they are not equipped to wade through it all. An Alt-Right meme makes its way through the murky websites of the dark end of the Internet (not the dark web, that’s a different thing) before being deployed to mainstream conventional social media where it can be shared by millions of unsuspecting users.

And how does the Alt-Right create such juicy misinformation? Fear – the most powerful enemy of reason. Fear is embedded deep in our subconscious, and it removes a person’s ability to think rationally. When we are afraid, the limbic system initiates survival mode, fight or flight, and all higher-level processes are turned off as logic is put to the side to focus on surviving. Someone who is afraid is easy to persuade, and easy to control. It is nigh impossible to counter the demagoguery of the Alt-Right, as fear is hardwired into our brains. Reason is a much newer development, and that is what makes us so susceptible to their or anyone’s fear-based propaganda.

The American media has done this exceptionally well, as Richard Hofstadter wrote in his 1964 essay The Paranoid Style in American Politics. He said that if the enemy is thought of as being totally evil and totally unappeasable, then ‘he must be totally eliminated’. The Alt-Right know this, so they sow the seeds of fear and doubt, and as recent waves of right-wing terrorism are proving, it is leaking into the real world. Each act of violence typically involves a manifesto[55], published with the utmost urgency, by someone who believes they are a brave soldier killing and dying for a higher calling. They become martyrs for a false cause, and they don’t just want to wreak havoc, they want everyone to know why.

What Can Be Done?

Education and awareness are effective countermeasures to the growth of the parasitic Alt-Right. With regards to inceldom specifically (as it has been identified as one of the key paths to Alt-Right indoctrination) some people look at the movement through a terrorism lens, others see it as a mental health crisis. One could say that it starts as a mental health issue (or a societal failure) but then it does progress into violence often with the intention to create fear which does move into the definition of terrorism. However, our current counter-terrorism framework is setup to address traditional threats such as Islamist organisations or similar groups with hierarchical structures. It is rendered utterly useless in the face of contemporary threats such as incel related violence.

Police and law enforcement need to learn how misogynistic views lead to extremist ideologies and violent outcomes, so that they can better understand the cause. Protections against gender-based violence and education about equality could work at the individual or more localised level, as long as it does not shift the blame onto men (which pushes men further into misogyny, as I will write about in my next piece).

Let’s see what the 2014 Isla Vista shooter[56] had to say[57] on the matter:

“I don’t know why you girls aren’t attracted to me, but I will punish you all for it.”

There isn’t better proof that incels use their perceived subordination to justify their actions against women[58]. I must make it clear; I have zero sympathy for these people, but we cannot shrug and say that this kind of Alt-Right radicalisation is inevitable, we must address the root of the problem. If we treat it as a mental health issue then we can focus on countering the problems that these men are facing. Can we setup support groups or places where frustrated men can go to talk out their grievances, instead of these Alt-Right clubhouses where they get shoved mercilessly into the pipeline[59]?

Though I do not hold them in high regard, I want to avoid labelling incels as ignorant and I am hesitant to completely condemn them all. One arrives at inceldom through the same means as any radicalised movement, and new forms of digital segregation commanded by algorithms push people to group into pockets of strange beliefs in a scarily efficient manner. Views that were once unpalatable have only to find the right community for them to settle in with.

The media, tech companies, and their algorithms all have a part to play in pushing users further down the pipeline. The press was supposed to protect citizens from false narratives and expand knowledge, but now the public forum has been closed to the exchange of ideas. Misinformation is no longer corrected, and what was once fact is now cast into doubt. As I highlighted earlier, extreme discourse lends itself nicely to the profit motive of companies like Google or Meta. They desire engagement no matter what side of the argument the user is on; participation is where the money lies.

Algorithms may indeed not be comic book villains, but they are magical black boxes. We understand the input (user behaviour) and the output (content tailored for the user) but the process is opaque partially by necessity to keep their methods protected. Algorithmic awareness is needed to teach users how they work so that they may avoid being trapped in a filter bubble; i.e. such as mistaking their curated Facebook feed for factual news. However, calling search algorithms magic also removes the culpability of all those who try to abuse the system or those who control the system in the first place.

Internet education could play an important role in reducing the effectiveness of propaganda or misinformation, especially when it comes to online indoctrination. Critical reading skills are vital too, and by teaching people to check multiple verified news sources, to interact with different perspectives, and to understand that their opinion should not be confused with facts, we can maybe start to cripple one of the most effective tools at the Alt-Right’s disposal.

The Alt-Right is appealing because it is an attractive contrarian movement. Dismissing it as a fringe group or poking fun at it will only serve to drive more confused young men down into the rabbit hole. The links between anti-feminism and the Alt-Right are becoming clearer, and with this increased awareness, hopefully we can solve this issue at its core.

Why am I writing about this?

Back in June of this year, I was captivated by the story of 31 men who were arrested sitting in the back of a truck waiting to attack a pride event[60]. I could not understand why men with families, jobs, and lives would do something like this. They had to arrange clandestine meetings, prepare some sort of battle plan, and gather everyone together to disrupt the LGBTQ+ event – for a warped purpose derived from a weird sense of false white Christian responsibility. I even wrote a blog piece about it. The so-called Patriot Front mini-militia bothered me, and since then I’ve been researching the Alt-Right to get a better understanding of how people can be led down such alien paths.

One of the concepts that I found interesting was how the internet has helped the expansion and growth of a variety of different fringe groups. The thing is, bad ideas existed way before the internet, it’s just that now they are better connected. Here’s an example;

When I was in school, if you couldn’t get a date or girls weren’t interested in you that was just how it was. Sure you might be annoyed, but over time you figure it out or move past it. With the internet comes a way for a dateless young boy to find his people – other boys who cannot get a date. They talk about their lack of romantic success and over time it blossoms into a community who despise women (impacted through the various means I discussed earlier). Out of the blue though, he gets a match on Tinder and goes on his first date, but he forgets that now he is in the real world. He tells his date that he hates women and all that jazz, and she runs out of the restaurant. The rest of the diners are disgusted by what they overheard but he cannot work out why because for him, this behaviour is normalised. For years he has been making fun of women, demeaning them, as part of a large group with the same mindset. The mutation of a single unmet need thus becomes an ostensibly unfixable attitude towards an entire sex that makes up about half of the planet.

I am writing because I hoped it would lead me to find answers to my questions. I hoped I would be able to come up with solutions. Instead, it has left me feeling defeated. I feel powerless in the face of such mindless hatred, and I feel ignorant for not being able to truly comprehend the nature of my ideological counterparts because maybe if I did, I’d be able to pull them into the light.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christchurch_mosque_shootings

[2] https://www.adl.org/resources/reports/when-women-are-the-enemy-the-intersection-of-misogyny-and-white-supremacy

[3] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2016/dec/18/gab-the-social-network-for-the-alt-right

[4] https://slate.com/human-interest/2018/07/incel-memes-like-millimeters-of-bone-and-virgin-vs-chad-mask-a-dangerous-and-toxic-culture.html

[5] https://qz.com/1056319/what-is-the-alt-right-a-linguistic-data-analysis-of-3-billion-reddit-comments-shows-a-disparate-group-that-is-quickly-uniting/

[6] https://www.vox.com/culture/22945864/joe-rogan-politics-spotify-controversy

[7] https://www.vox.com/the-highlight/2019/4/16/18287446/incel-definition-reddit

[8] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0191886922003658

[9] https://www.vox.com/world/2018/4/25/17277496/incel-toronto-attack-alek-minassian

[10] https://www.adl.org/resources/reports/when-women-are-the-enemy-the-intersection-of-misogyny-and-white-supremacy

[11] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incel#Mass_murders_and_violence

[12] https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/alt-right-fueled-toxic-masculinity-vice-versa-ncna989031

[13] https://twitter.com/SiyandaWrites/status/796286719058382848

[14] https://medium.com/perceive-more/the-myth-of-the-good-old-days-how-nostalgia-blindly-rewrites-history-beafb8fab313

[15] https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/978-1-83982-254-420211008/full/html

[16] https://www.spectator.co.uk/article/the-pick-up-artists-who-seduced-a-country

[17] https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/individual/daryush-roosh-valizadeh

[18] https://arxiv.org/abs/2102.12837

[19] https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/06/global-decline-of-fertility-rates-visualised/#:~:text=For%20the%20last%2070%20years,increased%20cost%20of%20raising%20children

[20] https://hopenothate.org.uk/2019/02/18/state-of-hate-2019-manosphere-explained/

[21] https://datasociety.net/library/alternative-influence/

[22] https://home-affairs.ec.europa.eu/networks/radicalisation-awareness-network-ran/publications/far-right-extremists-use-humour-2021_en

[23] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1527476420982234

[24] https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/3/7/14456154/dehumanization-psychology-explained

[25] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1461444815608807

[26] https://www.cbc.ca/news/young-men-online-radicalization-1.6585999

[27] https://www.theguardian.com/media/2022/feb/13/too-close-for-comfort-the-pitfalls-of-parasocial-relationships

[28] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-021-00732-x

[29] https://scholarlypublishingcollective.org/psup/sajl/article-abstract/39/1/117/211210/Oppression-by-Orgasm-Pornography-and-Antisemitism?redirectedFrom=fulltext

[30] https://www.cbc.ca/cbcdocspov/features/canadas-gender-identity-rights-bill-c-16-explained

[31] Milo Yiannopoulos is an Alt-Right commentator, troll, and general provocateur. Having been banned from both Twitter and Facebook, he frequently solicits white nationalists for discussions and ideas. He was accused of advocating paedophilia when he said 13-year-old boys can have ‘consensual’ relationships with adult men and women.

[32] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toronto_van_attack

[33] https://www.macleans.ca/opinion/the-context-of-jordan-petersons-thoughts-on-enforced-monogamy/

[34] https://www.vice.com/en/article/epgb37/what-drug-experts-say-about-jordan-petersons-benzo-dependence

[35] https://www.theguardian.com/food/2018/sep/10/my-carnivore-diet-jordan-peterson-beef

[36] https://i.redd.it/uv613tz603g51.jpg

[37] https://slate.com/technology/2018/05/jordan-peterson-seems-like-a-terrible-therapist.html

[38] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9dZSlUjVls

[39] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oIn9U7LXYuQ

[40] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don_Quixote#Tilting_at_windmills

[41] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BibxrE99G-w

[42] https://www.splcenter.org/20180419/mcinnes-molyneux-and-4chan-investigating-pathways-alt-right

[43] This is dog-whistling evangelical supremacy designed to basically put down everyone who isn’t a straight white Christian