In my first post about the alt-right, I wondered how Richard Spencer was accepted as the spokesman for the masculinity-obsessed alt-right, since Spencer is, for lack of a better word, effete. The answer is strangely academic, being enmeshed with art history and philosophy in addition to– you guessed it– racism and Nazism. The more I consider what to call the philosophical history of the alt-right, I don’t think ideology is even the right word, because that suggests some sort of cohesion. I think it’s more of a perspective or a world view. Frankly, I don’t think the alt-right even understands its “ideological” or aesthetic lineage, since they are merely mimicking their Nazi predecessors, but I want to trace it here because it proves both the hypocrisy of the alt-right and makes solid parallels between the alt-right and the Nazis of 1930s Germany. This latter argument is especially important since the alt-right has outright denied being Nazis, despite overwhelming similarities.  Continue reading “The Alt-Right’s Philosophical and Aesthetic Underpinnings Prove They’re a Bunch of Racist Dilettantes” →