Introduction
This time, we will be doing something just a bit different—a book recommendation.
As the world gets into bigger and bigger trouble, I find myself searching for, reading, and recommending books I feel can help us all understand exactly what the issues are, why things are the way they are, how they got there, and what can be done to undo some of the damage.
I feel there’s no denying that the world is in a bad state because of politicians who ignore what science and reason have to say about the issues. By ignoring issues like climate change, politicians are complicit in the disappearance of many animal species, longer drought seasons, an increase in the number of hurricanes and ironically, in that which most of them have built their platforms fighting – an increase in global migration trends as people will hope to escape the drought and hurricane-stricken areas.
NOTE: The list of effects of climate change and other things politicians are complicit in, as well as evidence for climate change, is all too complex a subject to explain in this one blog post.
This post presumes that you recognise the challenges of climate change, the rise of AI-generated deepfakes, etc., are real and are wondering, like me, how we got here.
How did we end up with politicians willing to ignore the most significant issues of our time? How did we end up with politicians who do not care only about science but also about healthcare, or even at times, basic human decency? Well, of course, we elected them. But why did we elect them? Is the so-called alt-right really the reason populists are in power? And what is alt-right anyway?
The answers to these questions are extraordinarily complex. We can point the finger at the “fake news”. But the fake news is more of a “means to an end” —a way to get what you want. The groups using them are those who wish to elect candidates who share their “values”. So, who are these people, and how do they support their candidates while throwing mud at others? What is going on in their minds?
One of these groups is the so-called “alt-right”. Alt-right might be known to you as a group hanging out on 4chan, 8chan and various other corners of the internet, producing trolling memes and posting them on major social networks en masse. But this “movement” is much more than a few 20-somethings hanging out in their parents’ basements, never seeing the light of day. Considering that they brag that they elected Trump by posting an insane number of memes and thinking that these days you almost cannot come to any bigger Facebook page that supports feminism or Atheism without encountering alt-right trolls there, we should all take some time and learn about this group.
That is where this book comes in. It examines the alt-right, explains what it stands for and how it came to be, offers a profile analysis of its members, and discusses its arguments.
Review
The book is written for a general audience, and you do not have to be a tech journalist or part of the IT crowd to understand what the Author, Mike Wendling, a journalist for the BBC, is talking about. The book explains all the internet lingo and culture, so even non-tech readers will understand. There is even a section on the alt-right language where he describes in detail the origins and meanings of popular alt-right phrases, like “kek”, “cry bully”, “cuck”, “triggered”, etc., which I found immensely helpful and insightful.
It starts at the very beginning of the “movement” by explaining its seeds —the so-called paleo-conservatism, another “movement” with a strict adherence to tradition on issues of gender and marriage. He then describes the state of conservative politics and the extreme right after George Bush and the election of Barack Obama, and how it inspired and energised paleo-conservatives to offer an alternative to traditional conservatism.
Wendling then moves to pinpoint major groups which have all enabled the alt-right to grow, like anti-feminists, race-realists, internet trolls or regular old neo-Nazis, their influence on the movement, and what they gain from it.
I especially enjoyed the part about the “Gamergate” as it explained it very well. The book is not confined to discussing groups of people; it also discusses prominent intellectual figures of the alt-right, teaching us about their history, the media they founded, and how it worked out for them.
The Author doesn’t stop at analysing only the various online groups or events. He looks at the real world as well and documents instances when the alt-right left the comfort of sitting before computer screens and got out into the real world and got violent.
But the best part of this book is the Author’s firsthand experiences. As a journalist, he not only spent a great deal of time at online gatherings of the alt-right but also went out to meet some of them in person and hear their thoughts live. That is truly a fantastic part of this book, and I enjoyed it the most because, through brilliant writing, he was able to describe how it felt to meet them in the real world.
If I had to pinpoint a weakness in this book, I would say it doesn’t go deep enough. For example, when discussing speech, the Author could have gone more deeply into studies of whether speech has a substantial influence on actions. Or when talking about racism, he could have written a bit about what it would mean if it were true.
But that is a minor weak spot because, as already mentioned, the book is written to be accessible to the public, and going too deep into philosophy or science would make it a bit drier reading. However, if you are interested in deeper arguments that aim to disprove the basic ideas of the right, you will not find them in this book.
There is no objection, as that would mean the book would be going off-topic. Still, I just wanted to warn you that this book is not so much about the arguments themselves as about understanding the alt-right – what they are, the groups and philosophies the movement encompasses, what makes them tick, where they hang out, and what their strategies are.
Truly, the book is simple, fun at times, exciting, and full of helpful information for anyone looking to learn more about the notorious “alt-right” – and these days, that should be everyone who cares about liberal values.
Highly recommended.
