Donald Trumps challenge on August 15 what about the alt-left has stirred silly arguments. Claiming there is no alt-left because no one calls themselves alt-left, ignores the long, colorful history of political nicknaming. And claiming there is no alt-left because all leftists hate Neo-Nazis mistakenly defines the alt- modifier as being about racism not fanaticism. With 100 goons from the Left having attacked peaceful demonstrators from the Right as recently as this Sunday afternoon in Berkeley, we must stop viewing the growing epidemic of political brutality through myopic, partisan lenses. The real question remains: Is alt-left a useful term?

You can repudiate racism unequivocally, yet still recognize an alt-left in America today. The term emphasizes a new breed of extremist virtual, vitriolic and violent without getting tangled in the rights or wrongs of being anti-Trump, against police violence or bigoted. Similarly, in the 1930s and 1940s, when Americans condemned Communism and Nazism for being totalitarian, they werent accusing Communists of murdering Jews like the Nazis did.

Moreover, believing that in order to exist, the alt-left must call itself alt-left neuters the power of political nicknaming. In the 1950s, the liberal Washington Post cartoonist, Herblock Herbert Block coined the term McCarthyism to demean right-wing anti-Communists. More recently, Politically Correct, RINO (Republican in Name Only), Snowflake, Libtard, and Cuckservative, were imposed by opponents.

Two centuries ago, the British essayist Isaac DIsraeli called political nicknaming one of the arts practiced by all political parties. DIsraeli noticed that sometimes, politicos hijacked a contemptuous name, making it their own: The first revolutionists of Holland known as Les Gueux or the Beggars accepted the name as much in defiance as with indignation, and acted up to it.

Although the label alt-right originated with alt-rightists, Hillary Clinton mainstreamed use of the term. In a sweeping attack a year ago, Clinton condemned Trump as representing the paranoid fringe in our politics, steeped in racial resentment. Introducing an unfamiliar term, she explained: Alt-right is short for alternative right. She failed to connect the growing familiarity with the word alt to the computer keyboard. She quoted the Wall Street Journals description of this loosely organized movement, mostly online, that rejects mainstream conservatism, promotes nationalism and views immigration and multiculturalism as threats to white identity.

Clintons analysis proves why alt-left is a useful term. The alt-left is also a paranoid fringe steeped in resentment, and some of the resentment is racial, although moral, in that it is resisting racism. It too is loosely organized, mostly online, wallowing as the alt-right does in Internet-fueled hysteria and harshness. It too rejects mainstream ideology, in this case, liberalism. And it is broader than Antifa, the violent anti-Fascist fringe that combats neo-Nazis and the KKK.

The alt-left designation helps explain the Democrats emerging civil war, with extremists assailing centrist liberals, and turning the word neoliberal into one of their overused epithets. It exposes the postmodern fanatics: bullies who violate liberal principles by shutting up speakers they dislike; brats who riot in Berkeley, Portland, Oakland and elsewhere when they dont get their way; hypocrites who denounce their opponents unreason and violence yet cant see their own; and brutes who whip each other into vulgar frenzies on the Internet. The alt-left is populated by ideologues who reject the American value of compromise. They see a world of conspiracy theories, imagined enemies and exaggerated slights. Ironically, they echo their far right rivals by demonizing Wall Street, the Big Banks, the Mainstream Media and, frequently, Jews or Zionists. Both far right and far left radicals represent a politics of backlash and lashing out, not consensus-building or reaching out.

Neither Left nor Right has a monopoly on virtue or violence. The alt-left continues the violence of the Weatherman and the Black Panthers in the 1970s, and the hooliganism of the Battle of Seattle WTO Protestors in 1999. And like the alt-right, leftwing radicals are finding ideological allies worldwide, particular among Jeremy Corbyns Labourites; these British leftists also prefer dictating the outcomes they seek instead of trusting democratic processes to work.

Yes, calling radicals the alt-left is mischievous, tarring those fanatics with their ideological rivals brush. But as Communists and Fascists showed, the political world is round. If you go too far left or right, you meet in the anti-democratic land of intolerance and violence.

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Antifa Berkeley: Why the 'Alt-Left' Is a Problem | Time