On Thursday, Daily Wire Editor-in-Chief Ben Shapiro gave a speech at Stanford University, covering both the radical Left and the “alt-Right.” Shapiro explained that both of these movements feed off of each other, because each movement relies on a hierarchy for its existence. But while the radical Left’s intersectional philosophy puts white, Christian males at the bottom as the “least oppressed group,” the “alt-Right” flips that hierarchy on its head and white people become the desired, most important group of all.
Needless to say, what both of these groups stand for is anathema to Americanism — much less mainstream conservatism. The conservative believes that we are all, in the words of the Declaration of Independence, “[C]reated equal” and that all people “are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.” To be on the Right means to see no significance whatsoever in race, class, or sexual orientation. We conservatives believe in meritocracy and equality of opportunity for everyone.
However, the question remains, why does anyone in our society consider the “alt-Right” to actually be on the political Right?
These racists share nothing in common with conservatives. Indeed, as Shapiro noted in his speech, the Left and “alt-Right” are inherently intertwined, as both groups focus almost exclusively on the collective and on superficial external features. They focus on groups competing for hierarchical supremacy and winning awards for being the the most privileged and the most victimized.
This should come as no surprise. The Democratic Party, throughout much of its history, has focused on race, class and the collective, at-large. The Democratic Party was the political party of slavery and Jim Crow in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Until the 1960s, the Democratic Party largely defended school segregation in the South. The party of segregationists, such as Alabama Governor George Wallace and father of American leftism President Woodrow Wilson, is the same party that now endlessly promotes intersectionality and its champions, such as Linda Sarsour and Ilhan Omar.
As a perfect modern encapsulation of this, Massachusetts Senator and 2020 Democratic Party presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren tweeted the following last week:
Thank you, @BlackWomxnFor! Black trans and cis women, gender-nonconforming, and nonbinary people are the backbone of our democracy and I don’t take this endorsement lightly. I'm committed to fighting alongside you for the big, structural change our country needs. https://t.co/KqWsVoRYMb
— Elizabeth Warren (@ewarren) November 7, 2019
There are countless examples of the Left pushing this ideology. Warren’s obvious pander is just the latest example of the Left promoting a group over an individual.
And the “alt-Right” agrees with this approach, even if it utilizes it in a different way.
Should we then really call these people “alt-Right?”
The answer is no. By even accepting the tacit premise that these people have something in common with conservatives, we are using the Left’s branding and helping them spread this egregious lie — with the tragic result of allowing unvarnished racists to be lumped together with us. The Left’s goal is to confuse the public, brand us as bigots, and expand their own power.
The “alt-Right” and the radical Left are two sides of the same coin. We should stop calling them “Right,” no matter what the qualifier is. They are, in reality, an intellectual alternative to the Left.