Hillary, the Normies, the Alt Right and Groucho Marx

Trump knows that, when in doubt, pillory Hillary:

"A lot of bad things happened on the other side, not on this side, but on the other side. And somebody should look into it, because what they did is really fraudulent and somebody should be looking into that and by somebody, I'm talking about you know who," Trump told Fox News host Jeanine Pirro, a reference widely interpreted to mean Attorney General Jeff Sessions.

Trump's Russian pals hacked all sorts of Democratic emails. The FBI recovered most of the 30,000 emails which Trump still says went missing. So where was the evidence of these evil deeds?

Everyone knows that if any member of the 2016 Democratic campaign were to come forward with some tale of malfeasance on Hillary's part, the right-wing media would toss millions of dollars at that person. Everyone knows that the Justice Department and the intel community are headed by Trump appointees. Everyone knows that the right has been playing the "pillory Hillary" game since 1992. Everyone (except, it appears, Benjamin Wittes) knows that Ken Starr headed a lavishly-funded witch hunt which tossed the innocent into prison on bullshit charges to force them to tell lies about the Clintons.

And yet there is no evidence that Hillary has ever done anything wrong.

If Hillary Clinton did not exist, the right would have to invent her. She is Emmanuel Goldstein. When she dies, many on the right will probably believe that she still lives, just as First Century Christians spread the rumor of Nero's survival.

Kill All Normies. I have somewhat mixed feelings about Angela Nagle, since she seems uncomfortably close to the despicable Bernie-ites. I refuse to hide my contempt for anyone who doesn't yet understand that Bernie Sanders was a witting (and probably blackmailed) party to the conspiracy to elect Trump.

Nevertheless, her work is important. At first, I was going to direct you to one of her many podcast interviews, but something about Nagle encourages her hosts to develop "interruptitis." Nagle is a brilliant speaker who unintentionally challenges her interviewers to try to outshine her. I wish that more podcasters would simply allow the woman to speak.

One of her primary insights is that annoying progressives bear much blame for creating the right. This dynamic has been visible since the late 1970s, when holier-than-thou progressives did their level best to transform working class voters -- people who had benefited from the New Deal -- into Reagan voters. Since that time, the left has obstinately continued its crusade to alienate as many as possible.

Time to face a simple truth: Identity politics is repellent. Identity politics is a loser. Identity politics always insures the victory of the right.

If you go to a white male worker who has lost has job, who feels depressed and angry because he's poor and can't get laid, whose life is in every measure worse than his grandfather's life, you are not going to win him over by telling him that his white skin means that he was born evil. You will not appeal to him by telling him to bend the knee before his gay black female handicapped moral superiors.

That is not the way to keep rural Wisconsinites from voting Trump.

Neither will you win them over by banding behind someone like Bernie Sanders, who is on video at a rally with people shouting anti-American slogans, and whose ties to outright Marxism will be exposed the moment he wins the Democratic nomination in 2020.

(Which he will. That outcome will be the greatest triumph of Roger Stone and Vladimir Putin. Watch it happen.)

Unfortunately, most progressives are so wedded to their resentments -- so wedded to their blind hatred of white males (or perhaps hatred of all males) -- that they would rather live under fascism than give up on identity politics.

I predicted a Trump victory in 2016, even when everyone thought that Hillary had the thing locked up. I now predict that the Republicans will not lose either House of Congress in 2018; they may even gain seats. I also predict a Trump victory over Bernie Sanders in 2020.

Libertarianism, socialism and fascism. When you watch the documentary based on Nagle's book, pay special attention to the brief segment in which a fascist libertarian discusses the need to reach out to the Sanders voters. The libertarian even admits that the movement will have to include some elements of socialism. This contradiction may become a source of tension within modern fascism, although I'm quite sure that the Ayn Randroids will lose that fight.

Many have noted that we would have had Medicare For All in this country a long time ago if we lived in a racially homogeneous culture like Sweden's. In America, most white working people -- even the ones with black friends, even the ones who voted for Obama -- would literally rather die than see their tax dollars go toward paying for a black person's health care. They won't admit (even to themselves) that they feel this way, but that's how they feel. The followers of Richard Spencer instinctively understand that an ethnically-cleansed America will suddenly become safe for various measures which the libertarians would denounce as socialism. Until that time, libertarianism serves as the "go to" economic ideology of the right.

The politics of transgression. In her interviews, Nagle has noted that the Alt Right's appeal is founded, in large measure, on transgression. I understand this appeal. Though my beard has many gray hairs, I can recall my teens and twenties quite vividly. Young males test boundaries and explore the extremes. Always have done; always will do. If the internet had been around back then, I'd probably have felt far more attracted to 4chan (cesspool that it is) than to wherever-it-is that the SJWs call home.

Once again, we see how the failure of the left created the neo-Nazi right. Young men need to go through a transgressive phase, an outlaw period, a time of pretending to be Billy the Kid. They need this every bit as much as they need to get laid.

The left said: No. You may not act in any way we consider un-virtuous. And no sex for you, either. You want to fuck a young woman with a pretty face and large breasts? You're EVIL!

Lefties keep saying these these things in part because they are "on a power trip" (as we used to say back in the '70s), and in part because they are as psychologically screwed up as anyone else.

Then they wonder why this message isn't attractive. And they wonder how someone like Trump could possibly get elected. They probably wonder why anyone would say that the crusade to ban porn will hurt the left politically.

Paradoxically, the left helped give birth to the Alt Right by deifying the very concept of transgression. The left embraced transgression when 19th century Parisian rebels erected the first street barricade.

This isn't the place to talk about art, which lefties arrogantly consider "their" realm. I'll simply say this: Art died when transgression replaced transcendence as the ultimate virtue. 

The rise of the Third Reich should have taught us that the right are the supreme masters of transgression. What can be more transgressive than advocating the abolition of democracy? What can be more transgressive than ramming your car into a crowd of people? What can be more transgressive than calling someone "Nigger"? What can be more transgressive than adopting the motto Viva la muerte? What can be more transgressive than thumbing one's nose at science? What can be more transgressive than bending reality itself to fit the dictates of one's Will?

The young will always feel the lure of transgression. Such is their right. Yet the love of transgression-for-its-own-sake leads to catastrophe. We need to comprehend this paradox.

For more than thirty years, I've felt that the last scene of the Marx Brothers film Duck Soup offers a useful metaphor for the relationship between politics and transgression. If you haven't seen it, here's the gist (which I hope I correctly recall): Freedonia wins the war. The Marx Brothers celebrate by tossing pastry in the general direction of the enemy. Margaret Dumont -- the personification of capital-T Tradition -- begins to sing the national anthem. Immediately, the Marxes start tossing pastry at her. Fade out.

Young males will always want to be Groucho. Even after Groucho himself has completely faded from cultural memory (he's largely forgotten now, alas), young people will always side with the forces of gleeful anarchy, which Groucho represented.

In the 1960s and early '70s, anti-war activists like Paul Krassner idolized Groucho. The early films of the Marx brothers were probably more popular at that time than they were on first release.

But in the decades since, progressives turned into Margaret Dumont. I need not cite examples to prove the point; the Dumontization of the left should be apparent to all. Dumontization inevitably leads to demonization.

Trump won because Trump is Groucho -- a big, stupid, vulgar, reactionary, narcissistic, hate-filled version of Groucho.

Folks, we're not going to win unless we find some way to step out of the Margaret Dumont position. Grab a cigar, don a greasepaint mustache, and start tossing pastry.