Kill All Normies

Nagle posits the alt-right's misogynist, transphobic, and racist worldview is just a toxic, in it for the lulz, ironic reaction to overzealous social justice warriors with their fervent “Tumblr liberalism”. The left's ascendency during the Obama years defined by its “culture of fragility and victimhood mixed with a vicious culture of group attacks, group shaming, and attempts to destroy the reputations and lives of others within their political milieu” escalated into hysteria. Increasingly the rhetoric at the edges became anti-male, anti-white, anti-straight, and anti-cis and it has been performatively adopted by the mainstream as it capes for Pride, #BLM and #MeToo.

In that sense Nagle takes alt-light figurehead Milo Yiannopoulos at his word, that the right has become the counterculture; modern day punks focused on transgression against the dominant morality, a big middle finger to the progressive status quo. The right has learned from the left, has better weaponized online aggression, and created more compelling myths that speak to those that can't keep up with the new woke language of gatekeeping, gender fluidity, cultural appropriation, white feminism et al. “America, Fuck Yeah” is just easier to grasp.

These swings come fast and it will be interesting to see how the alt right evolves given their many pronged attack on journalism, constantly moving the Overton window and a pandemic that has backed people into corners looking for easy to grasp narratives that reassuringly tell them who to blame. The left seems to just resort to cultural politics, shaking their head at how dumb the right is and patting themselves on the back for how not-racist they are. That doesn't seem to be working and the rise of the dirtbag left seems like an interesting reaction to watch. I'd love for Nagle to tackle this again now that it's 5 years later.

This book has already not aged well. On the bright side, Nagle does survey a wide swath of Alt-Right origin stories. But there are two principle problems with the book:

1. It's more prose than research. There isn't really a lot of depth here. If you're already familiar with Cernovich, Jones et al, there's not much more here than what you already know. Moreover, most of Nagle's points about each sub-group contributing to the Alt-Right really doesn't go much further than noting a trend in being transgressive and provocative in same vein as earlier left-wing counterculture. It's a good point and you can see the commonality but there's a void in analysis here that becomes even more problematic later.

2. Nagle's focus on transgressive rhetoric misses much of what's the single most notable characteristic about the Alt-Right, they like to punch down. There's actually a fairly bizarre conclusion to the book where she seems to conclude that Tumblr identity politics has led to a left that's fundamentally unprepared for Alt-Right tactics and argument. It makes no sense. It's like comparing the irritation of a pedant to the gun carrier who just used happily took advantage of the “stand your ground” law. It's actually a really troubling aspect of Nagle's narrative when you consider in defining the Alt-Right as using the Left's old punk skills for attention, she's actually lost the plot in terms of where the power is. A safe spacer, SJW caricature is still not the one advocating for [misogyny, racism, homophobia, etc.] as their cassus belli for actual harm. While she points out the double standard in the Alt-Right generally amounting to whining about how their station in life should be greater, Nagle really doesn't spend any time on how these tactics are not just difficult for the Left but have actually moved the needle on institutional responses to their causes.

To put it plainly, the Alt-Right's mainstreaming is not something this book provides any research or commentary about beyond comparing it to the flaccid rhetoric of the Left.