Celine Hagbard
Jul 28, 2017 · 2 min read

Something I’ve noticed in most of the rather lengthy responses to your original article, both on CP and Progressive Army, are two fundamental misunderstandings about your view:

  1. They take as a given that you’re talking about the Alt-Right. The thinking goes: Johnstone is talking about Cernovich, Cernovich is considered Alt-Right in our circles, therefore Johnstone is talking about the Alt-Right movement as a whole and everything that goes along with it.
  2. That you’re talking about an alliance with these people. I searched the original article, and nowhere did the words “alliance” or “ally” show up. You talked about “working with” and “collaborating” with some on the “anti-establishment right,” but stressed that it should be up to the individual to draw the line where even collaboration is impossible.

Once your view is framed in the light these two strawmans, the rest of the smear is easy. They now hold you accountable for everything that the Alt-Right stands for. This intellectual dishonesty may sway a few people in the short term, but if it remains consistent, it’s only going to turn more fence-sitters away from progressive positions.

Americans are rejecting the Old Media in droves for precisely this type of propagandistic mis-framing, and thinking people will not tolerate it in the New Media for long. There’s an argument to made against your position, and a dialogue to be had, but it has to be against what your position actually is, and not just what they think it is. The sad thing is, there could have been a productive discussion here, but that takes both sides willing to try to understand each other.

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