The Far Right Is in Decline. If Only the Same Were True of the Far Left

Good news is a scarce commodity these days, but here’s a heartening headline from the Wall Street Journal: “A Year After Charlottesville, the Alt-Right Movement Frays.”

Alt-Right rallies around the country are fizzling as white supremacist groups are hampered by lawsuits, infighting and a social media crackdown. “It’s been a total fracturing of the right,” the Journal quotes Jason Kessler, organizer of last year’s Unite the Right rally, as saying.

Hopefully, white supremacists will continue their downward spiral into total irrelevance. The answer to identity politics on the left is not identity politics on the right. Let progressives claim the banner of resentment and grievance. Conservatives and Libertarians need to preach a gospel of aspiration, prosperity, opportunity and uplift for all Americans.

According to a spreading progressive doctrine, racism by definition can exist only on the right, not the left. The expression of resentment, antagonism and hatred of ethnic/racial minorities, born of powerlessness, cannot be racism. Only those in power can be guilty of racism. From everything I’ve seen, those who hew to the white supremacist movement are, from a socioeconomic perspective, a bunch of sad, pathetic losers. Plumbers, truck drivers and gun-store clerks living in their parents’ basement have no power. But in places like Charlottesville and Portland, leftists control the levers of government. How’s that for irony?

Hypocrisy aside, if the left wants to make the argument that hatred is legitimate as  long as the haters are leftists, let them make that argument. That makes the choices all the more stark.

Speaking of which… Don’t miss Reed Fawell’s series of posts on “Charlottesville’s Path to Polarization,” which are based upon the meticulous and scrupulously even-handed, “Independent Review of the 2017 Protest Event in Charlottesville,” We published Part 1 a couple of days ago, and Part 2 will be forthcoming in a day or two, with the rest to come (hopefully) within a few days after that. The posts are long but immensely informative. Make sure you read them.