There Is No Alt-Right Pipeline: A Short Critique

**note: this is not endorsing the alt-right**

Conspiratorial thinking has infected the left recently.

The Alt-Right Playbook, a video series by Innuendo Studios, has gained traction in some leftist circles. In it, Innuendo Studios talks about the ways this supposed cabal of evil nazis radicalize young men into distrusting the state, and the modern world. A big element is shown throughout the series: conspiratorial thinking that aims to oversimplify complex issues surrounding internet subcultures. I’ve seen this prop up in neoliberal news outlets like The Wire, and it’s reminiscent of the Communist Scare in the 1950s to early 1960s. 

Capitalism perpetuates mass hysteria through changing subjects in order to trap those disenchanted with it in a bubble of hiding their belief system. Mccarthyism is a big part of this because it feeds off this paranoia, and therefore it’s a pioneer of this tactic to keep people in place. A subtactic that this tactic utilizes is a threat of radicalization from what someone could consider the Other in political relationships, and therefore feeding off this hatred of the Other. 

The dissident-right are a group of young men that feel disenchanted with modern society, and want to escape from it and create a new society based on traditionalism and neo-reactionary thought. The modern institutions will not work for them, because to them, they have been proven time and time again, that they cannot work for the sake of good. Demonizing this group and calling the complex way views develop, a pipeline constructed by a cabal of nazis trying to destroy the world, is not a good way to analyze the dissident-right, and we are feeding into the desire that capitalism has to deconstruct movements that can be used to destroy it.