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Two generations ago, William F. Buckley Jr. drummed a group of xenophobic, ultra-nationalist, John Bircher types out of the modern conservative movement. Buckley took them to task for being what they were: crackpots who viewed a Jewish conspiracy in just about every economic and geopolitical decision undertaken by the US government.
Jonathan Tobin, writing in the Jewish World Review argues that “as much as any other person, Bill Buckley cleared the way not only for a conservative movement where Jews would be welcomed” and “it was his leadership that set the stage for an American politics in which anti-Semitism was confined to the fever swamps of the far right and far left.”
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It should be patently obvious that the fringe elements involved in the shameful “Unite the Right” rally have nothing in common with the Constitutionalist/libertarian message that Ron and Rand Paul have been advocating, or the mainstream Republicanism of the post-Cold War era, or the social and political conservatism of today’s religious right. The oddball hodgepodge of ragtag idealogues represented at the “Unite the Right” rally appear to enjoy one common theme with regard to their frightening worldview: anti-semitism.
One might say though…well wait a minute. This was a rally about southern heritage, the Confederate flag, and the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue from a Charlottesville park. Aren’t the pressing issues here really race relations and the historical legacy of slavery and segregation? It’s a reasonable point. However, if you begin to examine the bizarre and twisted worldview of today’s so-called “white nationalist” movement…which, depending upon who you ask, has some degree of overlap with the “Alt-Right” and “Alt-Light”…you find that their perspective on Judaism is, perhaps more than anything, the unifying force behind their worldview.
They view Jews as the source of Communism and race wars, manipulators of the mass media, oppressors of the common man through their control of the global banking system, masters of the universe who lord over gentiles through the Bilderberg group and the Trilateral Commission and the Council on Foreign Relations. Some of their views are often espoused in the libertarian conspiracy blogosphere, or on the Far Left.
It is fundamentally troubling, to say the least, that even after the shameful brutality that 13 years of German national socialism (the official name of the Nazi movement) was able to inflict upon the Jewish people, that in today’s America, we even need to have this discussion. 1932-1945 ushered in an era in which the massive power of government to crush individuals reached its apex. The Nazis did away with limited government, property rights, civil liberties, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and rule of law.
For anyone to claim the mantle of “Unite the Right” and then share the bill with Neo-Nazis…is shameful. The Nazis, like the Soviet and Maoist Communists, did everything in their power to use a totalitarian government to abolish all of the freedoms and protections that the conservative movement has been fighting for for centuries.
I perused the “speaker’s list” for this event…it is composed of shameful nobodies and attention seekers who seek to disguise a truly frightening neo-fascist ideology in vague terms such as “identitarianism.” These people should be avoided like the plague. Not hated…but confronted intellectually and exposed for the charlatans that they are. When you drum up conspiracies about Jews controlling/ruining the world…you set yourself up for ridicule.
There’s self-described white nationalist Richard Spencer, who heads the innocuous-sounding “National Policy Institute” and is fond of the “heil Hitler” salute.
There’s Mathew Heimbach who is affiliated with the neo-fascist “Traditional Workers’ Party” which cheerfully denies the Holocaust and plays up onerous Jewish stereotypes while marching under the banner of “Faith, Folk, and Family.”
There’s Tim “Baked Alaska” Gionet, who once worked both for BuzzFeed, and helped organize right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopolous‘ college tour. “Baked” has a history of anti-semitic remarks and statements, but of late has tried to shed that image, noting in article with Business Insider that his message “didn’t come out how it was supposed to come out…I have nothing but respect and love for people of all faiths, including people of the Jewish faith. And I would never want them to think that I think otherwise. And it does break my heart. It’s not my belief at all. I have no problem with Jewish people.”
Baked Alaska’s rhetoric about the Jews was enough to get him banned by Milo and others from the Deploraball. Baked is at least one of a few amongst the “Unite the Right” head honchos who does not openly espouse anti-semitic views.
The same can not be said, however, for the event’s proposed musical entertainment: traditional folk artist Paddy Tarleton, who offers up such classics as “Join the BLM”…accusing the Blacks Lives Matters crowd of being hapless pawns in control of the global Jewish Communist movement, or the ever-popular “Shut Your Lyin’ Jew Mouths” which suggests Jews are seeking to “outbreed” the white race, and accuses them of being “a dirty den of vipers and a demon breed.”
Ultimately none of the speakers or musicians ever actually took the stage, as the event was cancelled due to a violent melee, before it was even started.
Needless to say, any conservative or libertarian with an ounce of credibility or respectability should avoid such gatherings and such figures like the plague.
What is truly sad in today’s post-Trump world is that there are, actually, some conservatives or libertarians who have been seduced by the sick message of white nationalism or alt-right or neo-fascism. We should not hate these people…but hate many of the things that they stand for. We should vigorously confront them ideologically and intellectually.
No…Jews do not manipulate the media, control the global financial and banking systems, or make all geopolitical decisions through the auspices of shadowy international organizations. It is a shame that in 2017 this article even needs to be written, but that is the sad reality we must confront in the wake of this weekend’s Charlottesville debacle.
I am not a Republican. I am a Constitutionalist first, a libertarian second, and a pragmatist third. But…the Republican Party needs a broad coalition to defeat a Democratic Party that appears ever-more enchanted with the socialist concepts that many of these misguided alt-righters decry. Thus: we need the votes of Jews, and Muslims, and gay people, and transgenders, and immigrant communities.
And a concluding message to the “alt-right”: Hate, bigotry, and prejudice are never going to be a winning formula for political or economic change. It is people like you who are discrediting the libertarian movement, and giving ammunition to the big government socialists like Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren to paint everyone who doesn’t agree with them with a broad brush.
