> No, Steve Bannon said in an interview that he led Breitbart in giving a spearhead to the alt-right in large media.
This both true and irrelevant to my point. Quick history lesson of the term:
It was originally coined by white nationalists. Later, when the new right came about, they billed themselves as an alternative to the neocons. Some of them began referring to themselves as alt-right in that sense, as did some outsiders. When made clear that the term originally referred to white nationalism, most of the new "alt-right" distanced themselves from the term, because they were not white nationalists. Some do still use the term in the sense of "alternative to the mainstream right". But, as said before, the vast majority have distanced themselves from it.
Bannon himself denounced the ethno-nationalists using the term "alt-right" multiple times. Furthermore, Bannon and Breitbart are not the new right. Many of us don't read or particularly like Breitbard. What one media outlet decides to call itself has nothing to do with a movement as a whole. Nobody that I know personally, as an active member of the new right, refers to themself as alt-right.
> There are really three problems here.
I'll address those one by one:
> The "center" and "center-left" are already, by historic standards, quite right-wing on economic policy. This really skews the claim that we're talking about a spectrum between a "center-left" and a "right", insofar as we're really just talking about different degrees of permissiveness or authoritarianism on social issues, plus the "center-left" maintaining the barest rudiments of a vestigial welfare-state.
You're muddying the waters here. Given that ardent National Socialists, while economically liberal, are considered far-right, we're obviously not talking about economics. Given that authoritarian communist regimes are considered far-left, we're obviously not talking about authoritarianism and libertarianism.
The new right is, for the most part, ardently anti-authoritarian.
And, in the sense of social conservatism, the current center is extreme left historically.
> * Within the Right, the factions that we could have called "center-right" got tossed out as RINOs long ago. Ronald Reagan advocated employee ownership of firms as the way of the future; today Republicans would treat that as socialist heresy.
Many, sure. And yet there are many of us who are being lumped into the "alt-right" for our social views, myself included, who would not react that way.
> Bush's "compassionate conservatism" is now unheard-of, as are Republican appeals to conservative people of color or immigrants.
Simply false. We have no issue with people of color or immigrants. We simply disagree with poisonous Cultural Marxist policies on such issues becoming law.
> * The alt-right has deliberately worked to blur the boundaries between the libertarian right and the authoritarian-nationalist right, usually by invoking anti-democratic, nationalistic libertarian thinkers such as Hans-Hermann Hoppe. You know, the guy who wrote that, "in a covenant founded for the purpose of protecting family and kin, there can be no tolerance toward those habitually promoting lifestyles incompatible with this goal. … [violators] will have to be physically removed from society."[1]
This is not a view shared by most of the new right, only certain more authoritariam elements. It certainly isn't any more extreme than the leftist craze for punching "Nazis".
> When your party has come to have a political spectrum stretching from Ayn Rand on its left to Augusto Pinochet on its right, yes, you are "these guys". Stop now, turn around, purge the alt-right, purge the Tea Party, and reestablish some common-sense and humanity, or else history will remember you as the bumbling enablers of American fascism.
> Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, or "physical removal" by death squads: which side are you on?
This actually made me laugh.