<nettime> Has the right gone full Alt

Hi all,

In the earlier days of the digital revolution there was a lot of emphasis on and hope placed in disruption, subversion, and dissolution of institutional power structures. Much good was accomplished with this.

However, as with most contestations, all adversarial parties evolved tactically. The right, formerly wedded to tradition and institutions which favored their goals, had realized as early as the Civil Rights Era that they were losing that advantage. Institutions were evolving to protect rights which conservatives viewed as threats. Hence a decision was made to define government itself as the problem.

Because every conservative minority needs mass appeal in addition to superior resources, the problem of motivation became acute. How can a large percentage of a society become convinced that the type of government they live under is either not relevant or an active danger, or somehow both? Such thinking resembles an auto-immune disorder in which the political process in which one seeks to involve supporters is defined as hostile. In US politics, conservatives for all practical purposes by 2016 had lost their base.

What was their strategy to regain a base and hence viability? The solution was nationalist populism, but with a special aesthetic and rhetoric which are still evolving rapidly. All media, from AM talk radio to the social web are leveraged and heavily resourced.

The new aesthetic for the conservative base can be reasonably well-understood as a cooptation of the alt_ or insurgent aesthetic. It offers something like the liberating euphoria which progressives felt about 20 years ago. Conservatives can like, tweet, dox, spam, hack, and everything else which formerly were chiefly the playground of the other side. The surge of dopamine delivered by these aesthetic behaviors can be understood as a delayed version of the 1996 internet, specially branded and targeted at those who were not part of the earlier phase and resent both its participants and their value system.

As every youngster learns in competitive activities, "turnabout is fair play." One should expect one's opponent to learn your moves and use them against you. We should not be surprised that this has occurred in digital-age politics.

What does this mean for progressive strategy and tactics? Well, for one it would help for progressives to realize that they are in the majority now. They did not use to be, but now they are. This calls for a reset. How do majorities prevail politically? What are the strengths and weaknesses of being in the majority? What tactics become available, and which no longer work or do not work as well as they formerly did? When does purity of principle advance one's goals and when does it set them back?

In any complex system that evolves over time, a given process will yield diminishing returns relative to the investment of work-energy as the environment adapts in response. The call to tradition, obedience, and stoicism failed to motivate a sufficient number of conservative base voters in 2016, so inflammatory populism took power aesthetically. (The role of rhetoric and aesthetic experience in primate politics should never be underestimated.) An ethos of vandalism and of relishing offenses became the norm. As of 2020, and even 2018, a backlash ensued. One cannot predict with certainty when the pendulum will swing back.

When an opponent who previously held a defensive posture shifts to offense, one must perforce respond with defense. This can be unaccustomed to progressives, but needs to become part of the repertoire bred of success.

In other words, diversify, diversify, diversify! 🙂

All best wishes and regards,

Max