A comment from Ryan England who has set up his own Alt Left page.
He is pretty much coming from the same place I am, except his wing or tendency wants nothing to do with race realism, racialism, HBD or any of that. He wants to stay out of the race question altogether and says the Alt Left should be neutral on race, which is probably a good idea.
I believe he thinks that race is indeed real, but he does not see the point in talking about it, as all it will do is increase racism against NAM’s and empower the Right. I guess his attitude is that this type of theory can lead to no good, so why should we even talk about it? Let’s not talk about that, he seems to be saying.
He also says that if we are race realists we will be completely destroyed in public opinion, which may well be true.
I believe Ryan said that racialism is a risk of any Alt Left but that it is a trap that the Alt Left should not fall into. That is probably true also.
I think he has good points, but I still want an Alt Left tendency that is race realist but still nonracist and against White nationalism.
Ryan’s Alternative Left Facebook page.
Cool list. An alternative left has been needed for quite some time now. I started a Facebook page to promote the idea.
I’ll submit as a defining characteristic of the alternative left vs. the more mainstream progressives is that the alt-left is much more skeptical of the transcendentalist underpinnings of a lot of leftist thought, especially post 1960s. We are, at heart, a push to bring enlightenment rationalism back to the center of leftist thought and activism.
Transcendentalism – the kind originating back in 19th century New England, had its roots in European Romanticism, and is marked by a kind of idealistic utopianism. Religion and scientific alike were distrusted, in favor of subjective personal intuition and creativity. Nature and people considered “closer to the earth” (indigenous peoples and women) tended to be idealized. Emotion and intuition were extolled as being a kind of liberation from the bonds of strict empiricism. People were thought of as naturally good but corrupted by overly rationalized institutions and belief systems, against which struggle was seen in idealized terms.
I suspect that the alt left’s appeal is to people with liberal sensibilities but who are off-put by romanticist elements in mainstream progressivism. This is marked by the progressive’s tendency to go beyond mere equal rights for “marginalized” peoples and into flagrant idealization of them.
Women, immigrants, people of color, indigenous people, Muslims, Buddhists, LGBT people and so on are not necessarily viewed as superior to white Christian (or atheist) males (although they can be) but as being less corrupted by the soul destroying rationalism of capitalism, objectivism and/or Christian theology, which is thought to instill in the white male an oppressive, dominating mentality. I find this kind of thinking to absolutely pervade post modern progressive thought.
It is anathema to me, and I think the rise of the as yet embryonic alt-left is kind of rationalist and realist reaction to the romanticist conquest of materialism on the left.