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Understanding the alt right and democracy
SCOTT PIEPHO
Cases and Controversies
Published: September 2, 2016
Thanks to Hillary Clinton’s speech last week, the so-called alt-right community has now been placed on display before the general political consciousness. Secretary Clinton’s purpose was to illuminate the indistinct but real relationship between Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy and various racist and conspiracy-mongering elements including the alt right community. As such, the speech concentrated on the racism and anti-Semitism of alt right.
Some alt righters like 4channers and Gamergaters (ask your kid) are vulgar pranksters, more interested in claiming online harassment as a birthright than any political program.
But another segment of the community is a real intellectual movement, with a radical political agenda beyond white nationalism. Now that we are talking about them, we should shine some sunlight on a particular facet of alt right thought— their contempt for democracy
The most influential alt right writers such as Curtis Yarvin, writing under his earlier pseudonym Mencius Moldbug, decry democracy both as a fundamentally inefficient method of governing and because, he argues, it inevitably results in a larger, left leaning state. He also dubiously lumps democracy with both Soviet communism and mid-century fascism as examples of self government gone wrong.
In place of a democratic republic, Yarvin dreams of a corporate state with a competent CEO at the helm. Such a leader, he maintains, would govern effectively while maintaining a minimalist state. Followers of Moldburg’s ideas have acquired and embraced the label neoreactionaries.
Neoreactionary ideas seem so fringe and anti-American as to be unlikely to grow into a significant movement. Plus the alternatives they offer fall apart with a little prodding. For example, they frequently cite the reign of Elizabeth I as an example of hypercompetent, freedom-enabling governing by an unelected monarch. They ignore the fact that the reign of Queen Elizabeth’s predecessor Queen Mary was marked by violent religious persecution or that within four decades of Elizabeth’s death, the English Civil War broke out. They can take a snapshot of legitimate, peaceful and effective non-democratic government, but over time those systems tend either toward instability or despotism.
While the prescriptions of neoreactionaries have little support, their critique of democracy has broader purchase than in a handful of techie social media trolls. For example, Billionaire PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel has stated that he finds democracy and freedom to be incompatible.
This election cycle has not represented a high-water mark for American democracy. One is tempted to acknowledge that in picking a demagogic huckster, at least one party proved the alt right case against government by popular will and that by selecting an uninspiring technocrat who is willing to play loose with the rules, Democrats did only marginally better. Defending democracy as an idea has simultaneously become both more important and more daunting.
The Neoreactionaries’ first indictment of democracy—that it tends toward a larger state—amounts to “more people vote for things we are against.” It’s not an argument against democracy so much as a complaint that they aren’t winning in it.
With regard to the second indictment, neoreactionaries are correct that democratic systems can result in bad decisions, from incompetent leaders to wretched policies. But they are wrong to conclude that the possibility of a despot gaining power through democracy negates any advantages of democracy.
Among its other advantages, democratic election offers a failsafe against despotism. For as long as a people can remove leaders from power, the ability of anyone to oppress the people generally is thwarted, both because an oppressive leader can be removed and because at least some leaders will moderate authoritarian impulses to remain in office.
Neoreactionaries would select a competent CEO—how is not made clear—but offer in their vision no a means of removing him. Monarchy, corporate autocracy and democracy each can yield terrible leaders; only one offers a means for removing them. And of course, democracy offers a means for preventing a would-be despot from gaining power in the first place.
One reason that Trump is popular with some (but by no means all) alt rightists is that his authoritarian rhetoric appeals to the anti-democratic streak that runs through their ideology. Across the political spectrum, people are wrestling publicly and privately with how to vote, given a range of troublesome choices. The question comes down to what a vote is for: is it an expression of the voter’s grand political philosophy or is it an means to prevent a terrible outcome? This election may offer an example of democracy stumbling, but it also offers an opportunity to demonstrate one of its virtues.
As has been said before of this election, vote your conscience.