Experts agree: There is no such thing as the “alt-Left”

With the rise of the proto-fascist, ethno-obsessed conservative fringe that calls itself the “alt-Right”, some have taken to dubbing the opposite side of the ideological spectrum the “alt-Left”, trying to dismiss populist progressives as virtually indistinguishable from White supremacists and neo-Nazis. It’s a craven and dishonest tactic that only exposes the unwillingness of its users to seriously confront issues of civic, economic and legal inequity.

But don’t just take it from me. The New York Times has a glossary of some of the alt-Right’s favorite labels and epithets, in which it asks an actual expert about this “alt-Left”. In short: It isn’t a thing.

Researchers who study extremist groups in the United States say there is no such thing as the “alt-left.” Mark Pitcavage, an analyst at the Anti-Defamation League, said the word had been made up to create a false equivalence between the far right and “anything vaguely left-seeming that they didn’t like.”

[…]

“It did not arise organically, and it refers to no actual group or movement or network,” Mr. Pitcavage said in an email. “It’s just a made-up epithet, similar to certain people calling any news they don’t like ‘fake news.’”

If you look at Nazis and the KKK and “race war”-obsessives and you try to draw a comparison to the people who oppose those things, you’re part of the problem.

It also legitimizes the Right’s attempts to distract from the festering bigotry in their midst by pointing to those darned liberals instead. Sarah Jones at New Republic exposes the Right-wing roots of the label, and how it’s been adopted by establishment Democrats and other lukewarm liberals.

But we should be at least partly surprised by the origins of this misleading and corrosive term. It is beloved by the likes of Sean Hannity and former White House Communications Director Anthony Scaramucci, who have used it to denigrate Trump’s opponents. And it has also been popularized—and legitimized—by red-baiting liberals who fear the rise of a progressive populist movement.

Unlike the term “alt-right,” which was coined by white supremacists to give their age-old movement a modern edge, the “alt-left” is an insult. As my colleague Clio Chang wrote in March of liberals who choose to use the term: “A graver sin is the adoption of a term that was created by conservatives to smear the left and discredit criticisms of the growing clout of the racist right.”

It should go without saying, but the left does not promote hate crimes or commit them. It does not strive for an ethno-state. It is explicitly anti-racist and feminist. It demands the redistribution of wealth. You may find that terrifying, but it’s not actually terrorism. And when a horde of white supremacists overran Charlottesville with their tiki torches and Confederate flags, the left was at the front lines, defending everyone else’s right to freedom.

She goes on to name names – Democratic officials and TV representatives, people who post two dozen tweets tagged #RESIST per day but who react to any criticism of their preferred candidates, however mild and well-sourced, with accusations of “purity politics” and “Bernie bros” and racism and sexism and anything else they can think of – whatever it takes to avoid discussing why they keep losing elections, even in the age of Trump, with candidates that have all the likeability of room-temperature milk.

There’s a reason Bernie Sanders’s ideas resonated so widely during the campaign. Unlike the fake, cynical populism that permeates the Right (the kind that tells voters to ignore the experts with their book-smarts and instead go with their gut and/or faith), the populism championed by Sanders and others like him hit on real issues of social inequality and economic injustice, shining light onto real-life hardships faced by large chunks of the population (rather than the other camp’s bullshit about invading immigrants and their job-stealing, Sharia-law-imposing ways). This is why he polled better against Trump than Hillary ever did, especially late in his campaign.

But Sanders threatened the corporatocracy that’s enriched Democrats as well as Republicans, so naturally they couldn’t wait to stab him in the back, instead doubling down on running the liberal equivalent of Mitt “Look, I can human!” Romney against the most dangerous Republican candidate in recent memory. And those same Democrats have been bashing Sanders, his ideas and his supporters ever since, happy to have found a scapegoat that absolves them of the need to reflect on what about their policies and strategies actually cost them the election. (Yes, Clinton took the popular vote, but a better-liked candidate would’ve done so by a wide enough margin, and in enough key states, to secure the Electoral College as well.)

The center-Left’s tactic of smearing and dismissing their liberal critics as the “alt-Left” is just another symptom of their disinterest with genuine self-examination. They’d rather sell their soul to try and entice fence-sitters and moderate Republicans than shore up their support base on the Left.

And I’m sure they’ll still act surprised, and blame the voters they nominally represent, when they continue to lose.

(via @TheWayWithAnoa & @ggreenwald)