The Alt-Right and the Election of Trump: the End of the Dominant Ideology?

The following is a translation of an interview given to the French daily Présent. Présent,  a magazine dealing with culture, politics and art, is popular among traditional Catholics and identitarians, and is also sympathetic to France’s National Front.           

On January 18, Libération  lashed out at the American Alt-Right, of which you are considered to be one of its leading intellectuals, along with your book Homo americanus; rejeton de l’ère postmoderne  (published in France by the publishing house  Akribeia, 2010 and soon to be reissued in the USA). Could you tell us more about this movement, launched a few years ago by Richard Spencer, who is viewed by the far left as very dangerous, and who on January 20, during a television interview, was violently assaulted, without there being any voice of outrage? 

The term “Alt-Right” is a bit vague, lending itself perfectly to various usages by various opposition movements within the Euro-American right-wing, including those that have nothing in common with Spencer’s version of the Alt-Right. The System-friendly media, in this case Libération in France, the FAZ in Germany, or The New York Times across the Atlantic, are currently in the process of forging demonological guilt-by-association memes to portray Spencer and his version of the Alt-Right. 

Who is Spencer and what is the relationship between the Alt-Right and the New French Right? 

I know Richard Spencer well. He is the editor of the Washington Summit Publishers where the renowned evolutionists such as Richard Lynn and Kevin MacDonald, as well as the Russian nationalist writer Alexander Dugin, are being published. He also heads the National Policy Institute, a small think tank whose objective is the preservation of the biological and cultural heritage of the European peoples. Of course, one is tempted to draw a parallel with the European New Right whose work Spencer knows well. Although being influenced by the writings of the French New Right, particularly those of the philosopher Alain de Benoist, he prefers to use the term “Alt-Right” because he advocates explicitly White racial consciousness and identity which is not characteristic of the French New Right. The title “New Right” continues to cause misunderstandings in the intellectual and political landscape in America and Europe. Long ago it was used by the French media to refer to intellectuals who dissented from the System, more in an effort to discredit them than to designate a serious school of thought. Short of a better term, one is obliged today to use the lingo of the System and accept its political denominations, including its linguistic manipulations. 

In this indictment, which, by the way, is riddled with errors, given that you are described as a Serb. Libération mostly blames the Alt-Right for its vigor of expression and its propensity for humor and even derision, as if they were the sole prerogatives of the classy New York Chic. Is this your opinion also? 

Spencer is a cultivated man, not one of those “Hollywood Nazis” that the System likes to put on display and use as a scapegoat when the need arises. He knows well that the eternal mea culpas and self-denial typical of Whites these days are likely to have negative effects in the mainstream media. Hence it is better sometimes to make fun by doubling down on the insults — something along the lines of the comedian Dieudonné, but in a more measured, more academic and more viral way in order to better skewer political correctness. In my opinion what we are witnessing today is the last stage of the System and its liberal gospel. The media atmosphere around Trump reminds me of the political climate in the communist East just before the Berlin Wall came down. In the former Yugoslavia, before it broke up, everyone had grown accustomed to lying while pretending that the Other was the liar. The terms ‘fascist’, ‘chauvinist’, ‘chetnicks’, ‘Ustashi’, ‘racist’, etc., had been overused by the existing communist system to the point of being proudly used by non-conformists. Moreover, those defamatory terms were never taken seriously, not even by their Communist architects. Here we are today at the summit of System simulacrum and System simulation as described in the past by Jean Baudrillard or Régis Debray. Spencer understands this. 

On 28 January, Donald Trump granted a permanent seat on the National Security Council to his councilor Stephen Bannon, “the most dangerous man in the United States,” scandalizing the media and provoking protests on California campuses. Is there a convergence between the Alt Right and the very influential Breitbart News website created by Bannon?

Not officially. The Breitbart website, headed by Stephen Bannon, who was also the head of Trump’s presidential campaign, must engage in a bit of self-censorship and, of course,  it must distance itself officially from the Alt Right. Nonetheless, Bannon and president Trump have been accused by the mainstream media of fascist sympathies, of being accomplices of Spencer’s Alt-Right, and even of normalizing terms like “white supremacists” to describe them and other vile White beasts. Such state of mind in Europe is widespread. In France, in the mainstream media and in higher education, not only does a thought police thrive, but it is also a “forethought police” that imputes ulterior motives! Although lacking academic veneer and despite his criticisms of the System’s doubletalk, Trump so far has not fallen into this trap.

Trump has just been sworn into the White House. As a European, very concerned by the “Grand Replacement” (your interview in our special issue of November 8,  2015 on “Immigration:  l’Europe qui résiste,” what are your expectations.?

While using a down-to-earth language, well understood by the America’s heartland, Trump has also mastered a coded language. There is no reference on his part to “race” or ethnicity, although one can guess whom he targets when attacking “the power of the corporations,” or when he denounces the “profiteers of illegal migrants,” or the “dishonest media.” As a businessman, he knows well the fauna of the liberal-capitalist system and those who pull the strings. Hence this unprecedented campaign of insults against him by the mainstream media. As a wealthy man who has realized the American dream, he has no need to apologize to anyone or to bend over backwards before special interest groups. Hence this great fear of do-gooders.

You are a citizen of a country where the Marxist apparatus and influence are still dominant. Do you consider the interventionism of Vladimir Putin’s Russia in the military and diplomatic field to be a danger for Europe?

Putin is a realistic statesman who is not fooled by infantile speeches about the end of history and the prospect of glorious multicultural tomorrows. History is open. With Trump, Putin can establish a security system that the European peoples can all benefit from. The previous US administrations, with their armed NATO wing and their irresponsible policies aimed at the containment of Russia, were close to causing new rifts between the European peoples. Western countries, such as Estonia or Poland, or the Catholic Croatia, have been drawn up against the so-called Russian Orthodox threat by playing on the ancestral fears of one another. Deadly nationalist phobias, such as those between Poles and Germans, Serbs and Croats, or even Russians and Ukrainians are still there. The main enemy today for all peoples of the European origin, whether they are Bretons, Corsicans, Croatians, or Moldavians, regardless whether they live in Europe or America, is capitalist globalism and the invasion of non-European migrants. One can make jokes about the Americans and their Old Testament spirit and their lachrymal hyper-moralism. At present, though, White Americans, although in a concealed, implicit manner, are more conscious of their White and European roots than all of us here.