The Alt.White Veers Left

We used to think of these racist, fascist bastards as rightwing and, in fairness, so did they. Now, however, they seem to think their future lies in bringing in the anti-capitalist left.

The alt-right is looking to expand its ranks, and prominent leaders of the notorious white supremacist movement apparently believe that leftists are an ideal target for their recruiting efforts. This is according to a recent article in the Nation by Donna Minkowitz, who last month attended a white supremacist conference in Maryland organized by Richard Spencer’s National Policy Institute. Minkowitz reports that leading members of the alt-right are currently strategizing how to appeal to leftists — white male leftists, that is — and their plan is fairly straightforward.

“We need to be explicitly anti-capitalist. There’s no other way forward for our movement,” declared Eli Mosley, one of the panelists at the event and former head of the white supremacist group Identity Evropa. “Twenty-eighteen is going to be the year of leftists joining the white-nationalist movement!” Echoing this sentiment were Mosley's co-panelists, including white supremacist blogger Mike Enoch, whose real surname is Peinovich. "We have to push a right-wing workers’ movement,” he opined, while blasting the culture of capitalism, where “everything” runs the risk of getting “corporatized and capitalized” and “everything is empty and fake.”

“One of the great struggles that everyone has in this corporate neoliberal world is for meaning in their life,” he continued. “Our struggle provides that for us. Everything else is empty … but our movement.”

When it came to identifying the enemy behind this culture of capitalism and corporate neoliberalism, the neo-Nazi panelists revealed their true colors, blaming “Jewish interests” like the fascists of old. “The left will not … name the people behind this … but we can!” proclaimed Enoch. “We can … speak for white Americans who don’t want to sacrifice any more of their children for Jewish wars!”

The alt-right’s “anti-capitalism,” then, is really just anti-Semitism wrapped up in an economic veil, devoid of any real critique of capitalism. Their economic turn is simply a means to further their movement and spread their racist ideology.