What was the 'alt-right'? 'Whitepill' clears up the media hysteria

I remember back in the early Trump days, I would cruise by the Politics section of my local bookstore to see which celebrity leftist pundit they were promoting this week.

One day, I noticed a small subsection within Politics called the Alt-Right.

The alt-right was like the early punk movement. If you were actually there, it was crazy fun. If you weren’t, everything you heard about it was negative.

I was amazed that a bookstore in my blue city would admit that the “alt-right” existed. But then I saw that all these books were about the evils of the alt-right.

Without exception, these books described a dark and dangerous world of neo-Nazis, white supremacists, fascists, racists, homophobes, and misogynists ... most of whom apparently lived in caves in the darkest reaches of Idaho.

The authors of these books often struck a self-congratulatory tone. How brave they were to explore these nefarious netherworlds!

Eggheads unlimited

The truth was that all of these books were incredibly dry and boring. Most were published by university presses and featured dubious statistics, out-of-context quotes, and obvious misrepresentations.

The writers were brain-dead academics. They had no understanding of trends, or vibes, or zeitgeists. They barely knew what a meme was.

And of course, they lacked any sense of humor at all. This made it impossible for them to understand the sarcasm and irony of the quick-witted young bloggers and commentators they were supposedly writing about.

An untold story

I remember wondering if anyone would ever write an honest account of the alt-right. Probably not. It’s fairly common that most vanguard youth cultures are dismissed or misinterpreted.

The alt-right was like the early punk movement. If you were actually there, it was crazy fun. If you weren’t, everything you heard about it was negative.

So you can imagine my surprise when I heard about Scott Greer’s latest book, "Whitepill: The Online Right and the Making of Trump’s America."

Though the official title was relatively innocuous, the word on the street was this is it, this is the first serious history of the alt-right, by a writer who understood it, participated in it, and was very nearly destroyed by its fallout.

Needless to say, I was eager to read it.

How far we’ve come

Greer named his book "Whitepill" because it describes the many advances conservatives have made during the Trump era and celebrates their many victories.

For those of us over 50: To be “white-pilled” about something means to be excited or happy about it.

In the first sections of the book, Greer reminds us of the state of conservatism during the Clinton, Bush, and Obama administrations.

It was “cuckservatism” basically, to borrow an alt-right-ism. The Republicans were so eager to please and so afraid of offending that they came up with catchphrases like “compassionate conservatism” to market themselves.

They promoted same-sex marriage, amnesty for illegal immigrants, affirmative action, and a host of other leftist projects.

We think of our current Republicans as being hypocritical, if not traitorous, for not protecting Americans from voter fraud, violent crime, and open borders.

But they were even worse 20 years ago! Greer gives a good, succinct accounting of this.

A new defiant energy

In response to the extreme wimpiness of 2000s establishment Republicans, a new defiant energy began to appear among young conservatives.

Greer describes an obscure 2008 article by historian Paul Gottfried, who predicted the end of that era’s gutless conservatism:

Beneath that crumbling establishment, [Gottfried] saw the stirrings of a “younger, less inhibited” generation of rightists willing to defy taboos and confront head-on what he described as an “intolerable political situation.” He called this nascent rebellion the Alternative Right.

Most people who read "Whitepill" will have a rough idea of what Gottfried’s alternative right became, but Greer simplifies it for the normies: "[The alt-right] was an online phenomenon, an ideological and aesthetic counter-culture that broke hard from the philosophical premises underpinning the modern [liberal] 'idea' of America."

And more specifically:

Many young white men in particular came to feel alienated by a new liberalism that pathologized their "whiteness" and demanded that they "check their privilege." The Alt-Right explained to them in explicit terms why and how they could reject this new social paradigm."

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L-R: The author in East Berlin, 1984. Blake Nelson; Cuba, 2007. Matt Cardy/Getty Images

Youth must be served

From there, Greer takes us through the initial flourishing of alt-right culture. The kids were going to have their say!

But he also points out its obvious limitations, mainly that it was completely online and mostly anonymous. Its growth was therefore random and chaotic. There was no accountability; there were no boundaries.

If it sometimes felt like a “movement” or even a “political party,” in reality, it was a free-floating, spontaneous, cultural phenomenon created in the cartoon world of the internet.

Still, an entire generation came to know its symbols, its humor, its language, its youthful goofiness. It was hopeful and fun, and it pointed toward a way out of the mess we were in.

The end of the beginning

Of course, we all know where the alt-right story ended: in Charlottesville, in the summer of 2017.

The Charlottesville “Unite the Right Rally” was doomed from the beginning. Though I had only just become aware of the alt-right myself, even I could sense the danger inherent in its real-world manifestation.

I remember one blogger I followed begging people to stay away. “IT’S A TRAP!” he kept saying. And he was right. And a lot of people got caught in it.

Life in the swamp

Greer occasionally inserts his own experiences as a writer, editor, and journalist into this narrative. And it’s good that he does. As he describes his early career in Washington, D.C., you get a sense of what a treacherous time it was to work in politics.

Imagine trying to hold down a real-world job as a young conservative in the midst of peak wokeness! At different points, Greer was doxxed, fired, and blacklisted. But he managed to soldier on.

Which is good news for the rest of us. Because he has written an exceptional book about a very important subject.

Perhaps the most notable thing about "Whitepill" is that despite Greer’s obvious right-wing bias, he actually succeeds in producing a balanced and objective account of what happened and why. He is — as best he can — attempting to tell the truth.

Imagine that. An honest person in politics. That is indeed a white pill.