James
Kirchick’s latest article at The Daily Beast—“The
Jews Begging to Join the Alt-Right”—is a ramshackle assemblage of nonsequiturs,
ad hominem attacks, and straw man fallacies that Kirchick, himself a Jew, tries
to pass off as a reasoned argument.
The first thing of which to take note is
that at the core of Kirchick’s propagandist piece is an intractable
contradiction. The “alt-right,” he tells us, is a “nebulous” phenomenon. The Oxford
Dictionary informs us that the nebulous is that which is “indistinct,”
“unclear,” “ill-defined.” Thus, if he was intellectually honest, Kirchick
would, at the very least, proceed with caution and humility while treating his
subject matter.
This, though, is decidedly not the course
that Kirchick takes. Rather, he purports to know all that there is to know
about the nebulous object of his contempt.
Kirchick identifies “leaders” and assures
us that “alt-righters” must consent to be “contemptuous of mainstream
conservatism.” They must agree to “politicize whiteness.” Those wishing to
become members of the “alt-right” must oppose those “hordes of Muslims, Black
Lives Matter activists, and campus totalitarians” that are resolved to “destroy”
“Western civilization.”
Oh yeah, and anyone who wants to be in the
“alt-right” must subscribe to “anti-Semitism.”
Despite this, though, Kirchick informs us
that there are “self-hating” Jews who “are lining up” to join the “alt-right”
and “shout ‘Seig Heil’ and ‘Hail, Donald’” (Kirchick’s use of the argument ad
Hitlerium, though all too predictable, should not go unnoticed here).
The “alt-right” is nebulous and not
nebulous, to hear Kirchick tell it.
Second, Kirchick speculates that those
legions of Jews aching to ally themselves with “an explicitly racist” movement
that “explicitly embraces an exclusionary white identity” and “that frankly
doesn’t want them” may be inclined to do so because of Paul
Gottfried, “one of the alt-right’s founders [.]”
Gottfried, you see, is Jewish.
He is also a Jew whose family had to flee
the Nazis.
Beyond this, Gottfried is hardly the “the
crank” that Kirchick would have us think. He is a scholar of European and
American intellectual history and retired professor who has authored numerous
highly acclaimed books and articles over his illustrious career. He was an
adviser in the Reagan administration and became friendly with a retired Richard
Nixon after the former President publicly expressed his affection for one of
Gottfried’s more philosophical works. Professor Gottfried was also friends with
William F. Buckley and, in fact, wrote for the latter’s National Review—a
publication for which Kirchick now writes.
In 2008, when Gottfried first used the term
“alternative right” at a conference over which he was presiding, he did so in
order to distinguish himself and the attendees from those who had, quite
wrongly, become associated with “the right” in popular media.
Gottfried, in other words, presented the
movement of sorts that was coalescing around him as an alternative to the
movement of GOP-friendly apparatchiks, the scribblers and talking heads whose
names and faces had become synonymous with “conservatism” and “the right.”
Gottfried’s alternative right, however, had
nothing to do with “exclusionary white identity,” “racism,” and whatever other
“isms” and “phobias” Kirchick wants to pull from his Politically Correct arsenal
in his quest to demonize his opponents.
Rather, Gottfried is a conservative
liberal, a classical conservative with libertarian impulses who is much more at
home in the tradition of Edmund Burke than in the communist and socialist
milieus from which Kirchick’s ilk hail.
This brings us to our third point.
“Alternative right” is a misleading moniker
insofar as it implies that there is a right to which it is an
alternative. Yet as Gottfried (and others) have insisted, the so-called “right”
in America today is no right at all. Politically, ideologically, and
culturally, the official “right” in contemporary America is predominately a neoconservative
“right,” another version of the left.
This is why I refer to it as the “alt-left.”
A final word: Even when he is making his
case that “Jews need not apply” to the “alt-right,” Kirchick can’t cite anyone
except for anonymous commenters who have made genuinely disparaging, deplorable
remarks about Jews. And as for those who send memes of Jews being gassed in
ovens, a meme that Kirchick claims to have received, the decent have no use.
This being said, it is telling that neither
Kirchick nor anyone else can identify a single rally or article, much
less a video, featuring any instances of “alt-righters” visiting
violence, or even calling for violence, against anyone.
Take as a prime example those “hordes of
Muslims” that Kirchick derides the “alt-right” for (allegedly) detesting. With
missionary zeal, the neocon alt-left led the charge for the democratization of
the Islamic world in the Middle East, wars of aggression that left hordes of
Muslims—well over a million—including women and children, dead. Many, much more
have been displaced and maimed, and hundreds of thousands of children have been
orphaned. Ancient Christian communities and those of other religious minorities
have been decimated.
In glaring contrast, Paul Gottfried and
some others with whom the Kirchicks of the world would associate the
“alt-right” stringently opposed the alt-left’s neo-imperialist wars of
aggression. For this, they were vilified by such alt-leftists as David Frum for being “unpatriotic.”
The alt-left strains out the gnat while
letting in the camel.
I am neither a member of the “alt-right”
nor a Jew. I am simply an independent-minded, conservative-leaning, Roman
Catholic Christian who despises injustice in all of its forms.
And it is unjust indeed for alt-leftist
neoconservatives like James Kirchick to spoil the well of discourse by taking
cheap shots at folks, particularly fellow Jews like Paul Gottfried while
remaining as blind as a bat to their own glaring vices.
Originally published by Townhall.com.
Jack Kerwick [send him mail] received his doctoral degree in
philosophy from Temple University. His area of specialization is ethics and
political philosophy. He is a professor of philosophy at several colleges and
universities in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Jack blogs at Beliefnet.com:
At the Intersection of Faith & Culture.