…notoriously fact-challenged Ben Norton…
You linked to an article connecting Ben Norton and other good journalists to George Soros and a pro-NATO agenda simply because they criticized Assad and his absolute supporters. That’s how you undermine your credibility even more than you already have.
I just showed you a bunch of tweets featuring Mike Cernovich saying unequivocally that he is not alt-right.
Okay? Richard Spencer is, without a doubt, a neo-Nazi and white supremacist but feels “most comfortable” with and identifies as an “identitarian”. Lauren Southern ran as a Libertarian Party candidate in Canada but also supports fascist tendencies. What these people describe themselves does not matter if their description does not match reality. Mike Cernovich’s views correlate perfectly with the core of the alt-right.

And despite later dismissals of the term “alt-right”, he called himself that in 2015.
…Mike Cernovich is secretly a white nationalist…
Are you kidding? He identifies as a nationalist. He’s a racist; he believes in white genocide. You’re defending a white nationalist.
…we are both part of a secret white nationalist conspiracy to dupe the left into consenting to the creation of a white ethnostate.
No, we don’t. We think you’re foolishly siding with people like Mike Cernovich because of your unhinged view on how to defeat the neoliberal status quo. Your attempts of defeating the oligarchy are so misguided, confused, and warped that you’re willing to support people who will just reshape it in an even worse image.
I despise the elite, as does Ben Norton, but our perception is clear enough to realize that we shouldn’t help people who will simply retool the state for their interests.
The only people who say he’s alt-right are people with an agenda and people who are confused about the developments on that end of the political spectrum over the last few years.
With an agenda? So, you’re know accusing the conspiracy theorists of conspiracy? Nice. And by your definition, Cernovich is alt-right. Do you not believe that “slut-shaming” women of color and IQ-testing immigrants would lead to the development of a fascist ethno-state?
…collaborating with in some ways in the media war.
You’re going to collaborate with a conspiracy theory-touting faux-journalist in the war for a free, legitimate, expressive, and effective press? That’s insane.
…anti-establishment right means any right-leaning opposition to the neoliberal neoconservative Dempublican one-party system…
Non-existent. The American right vehemently supports capitalism, and most support it without any proper protections for the people. Capitalism will inevitably develop into the “cronyism” these “anti-establishment” right-wingers love to blame all the faults of the market on. As long as these people defend a system that is designed to disenfranchise people and concentrate wealth and power in a select few, they are not “anti-establishment”.
It doesn’t matter if libertarians are opposed to interventionism if the profit incentive and capital still exist. If those still exist, the businessman will find one way or another to push for war to fill his own pockets.
It doesn’t matter if marijuana is legalized. It can always be criminalized to benefit the prison industrial complex and pharmaceutical industry. Either that or corporate bosses can find some way to retool marijuana legalization to help benefit them.
In essence, the right supports capital and the private-ownership of the means of production. As long as they support this, there will always be a financial establishment, a Deep State, and so on. Capitalism is designed to morph into what us Americans already have.
Yes, we might be opposed to some war or another right now, and some on the left might find themselves working with certain people on the right to protest and oppose that war right now, but war will always be a factor of the capitalist system.
Libertarians, ancaps, paleocons, right-leaning independents, any of the various factions of Trump’s base that fall outside both the Fox News demographic and the alt-right; any of these could be labeled “alt-right” by someone determined to conflate them with white supremacists, but this would be deceitful and wrong.
Have you met any of these people? Many of the current “libertarian” and “independent” media personalities and figures (such as Stefan Molyneux) have openly embraced “alt-right” and fascist rhetoric. Scratch an anarcho-capitalist and you have a fascist.
Is Cernovich a conspiracy theorist? Sure, but I’ve been called that too. Is Cernovich unusually racist? Not if you’re familiar with the rest of his output and with the racism lurking just beneath the surface of all American culture.
You can’t just dismiss the acknowledged fact that he’s a conspiracy theorist by saying that you’ve been called one too. And Cernovich is racist, as has been established. You can’t just say he’s not “unusually racist” because there are worse examples of racism. That makes no sense.
…some respected journalists on the left whose work I cite frequently have said and done far worse…
That means absolutely nothing. Condemn all terrible things said by anyone on any side of the aisle. You’re not excused for saying bullshit because someone else said bullshit.
But it’s important that we begin forming coalitions along issues of convergence…
You know he’s a disgusting rape apologist, you should know he’s a disgusting white nationalist, and you’re calling for “forming coalitions”. You are calling for an alliance with white nationalists. You proved your headline wrong.
I simply described where my own were.
Your limits don’t go very far.
“Caitlin,” they tell me. “You’ve given ammunition to the centrists! Now they’re saying everyone to the left of Rachel Maddow is a white nationalist!”
Except you are. Because you said it was okay to work with a rape apologist and a white nationalist, centrists are now attacking your social democratic and democratic socialist base. You’re hurting yourself, your insistence on this is only hurting us more. Thankfully, much of the mainstream left has rejected you or else it would drive a major rift between them and the anti-capitalist and anti-racist far-left of which I am apart of.
And Ben Norton? Fuck you. Dick.
#TeamNorton
Overall, you’ve said we should work with a racist rape apologist and now you’re defending it. You fail to realize how badly the credibility of the left is hurt when you ally with the far-right on anything. It’s really as simple as that. If left-progressives want to get serious on this, they’ve got to denounce any ties to the far-right and, frankly, you as well.
Your unhinged support for Assad, willingness to ally with racists, spread of conspiracy theories like Pizzagate is outrageous and does not represent the left. If left-progressives want to find an important, legitimate, and long-lasting ally, they’ll find one in the radical left.
Libertarian socialists, syndicalists, and collectivists are your allies when it comes to combating the elite, racism, sexism, homophobia, imperialism, poverty, and so on. We are your allies in fighting for liberation of people of all kinds and legitimate fair and participatory democracy and economy.
