Internet clickbait promotes mental tooth decay, squirting syntheticcontroversy out of a can of Reddi-wip, but an article by Eileen Jones on January 9 went out of its way to swirl it on extra thick. HeadlinedAGAINST MERYL STREEP, the indictment declared, Meryl Streepsspeechifying at the Golden Globes was the worst thing to happen sinceTrumps election. Hoo-kay. If Donald Trump speaks Jerkish, accordingto retired novelist Philip Roth, Joness broadside was written inSnarkish: That I should live to see the day when Meryl Streepsspeechifying at a Hollywood awards show is admired as solemnly anddiscussed as fervently as Lincolns second inaugural address is apersonal nightmare. Lectured by Streep! And about how her and all herHollywood pals, decked out in everything that costs the earth andsparkles in the spotlight, are among the true victims of Donald TrumpsAmerican authoritarianism! Streeps chastising of Trump in heracceptance speech at the Golden Globes was derided as a sniffy displayof royal hauteur, as if her ladyship had gotten her blue sash in atwist. The way she condemned the performance of Donald Trump when hemocked disabled New York Times reporter Serge Kovaleski, as if Trumpwere up for a rival Golden Globes Award and had disgraced the ScreenActors Guild, was truly righteous, wasnt it? Shes so classy, isntshe?

Such derision of liberal Hollywood pietiesJones ripped Streep forbeing the sweetheart of Hillary Clintons faux-feminist pantsuitnation is familiar gargle from right-wing hucksters such as radiohost Laura Ingraham, the author of Shut Up & Sing: How Elites fromHollywood, Politics, and the Media Are Subverting America. But heresthe twist: Eileen Jones is no righty coveting a rotation spot in the FoxNews greenroom. She teaches film at Berkeleyand you know what itslike at Berkeley, radical fervor springing from every hairfollicleand her Streep denunciation was published in Jacobin, whichbills itself as a leading voice of the American left, offeringsocialist perspectives on politics, economics, and culture.Disillusionment with Obamas presidency, loathing of Hillary Clinton,disgust with identity politics, and a craving for a climacticreckoning that will clear the stage for a bold tomorrow have created akinship between the alt-right and an alt-left. Theyre not kissincousins, but they caterwaul some of the same tunes in different keys.

The alt-right receives the meatiest share of attention in the media, asit should. Its powerful, vicious, steeped in neo-Nazi ideology,nativist white supremacy, mens-rights misogyny, and Ayn Rand capitalistbermensch mythos, and it heralds a conquering hero in the White Housein President Donald J. Trump, while the former executive chairman of thevenereally right-wing Breitbart News, Steve Bannon, functions as despotwhisperer, trickling Iago-ish poison into Trumps receptive skull. Thealt-left cant match that for strength, malignancy, or tentacled reach,but its dude-bros and purity progressives exert a powerfulreality-distortion field online and foster factionalism on the lib-left.Its outlets include not only Jacobin but also the Intercept, one ofwhose co-founders is the inexhaustible Glenn Greenwald, lawyer, author,journalist, and crucial conduit for Edward Snowdens stolen N.S.A. datato The Guardian; Web sites such as Truthdig, Consortiumnews, and NakedCapitalism; and anomalous apostates such as Mickey Kaus, a formercontributor to liberal percolators of ideas and opinions such asWashington Monthly, the New Republic, Harpers, and Slate, who migratedsideways and down to the right-wing Daily Caller, did a temporary hitchas a columnist for the Breitbart bughouse in 2016, and serves as atweeting defender of Trumps proposed wall. Other busy beavers onTwitter include Michael Tracey, Freddie deBoer, Mark Ames, ConnorKilpatrick (a Jacobin contributor), Jeremy Scahill (journalist andIntercept co-founder), and similar fun guys. A Tumblr site devoted toTrumpian Leftism captures the intellectual flavor of theirtemperaments. One of the alt-lefts political darlings is Tulsi Gabbard,a progressive congresswoman from Hawaii who met with thenpresident-elect Donald Trump in Trump Tower and was rumored to be underconsideration for a Cabinet position, and its quixotic preacher-man andnoble leper is Cornel West, once an orator at every social-justiceconvocation who got so uncoiled by his rancorous contempt for Obama andcast adrift into the hazy fringes of the alt-leftsee Michael EricDysons definitive autopsy, The Ghost of Cornel West, the NewRepublic, April 19, 2015that in 2016 he supported the Green Partycandidacy of Jill Stein, that stellar mind.

VIDEO: Steve Bannon, the Shadow President

It was Jill Stein who said Hillary might be the greater evil in a Trumpmatchup (Hillary has the potential to do a whole lot more damage,get us into more wars), a sentiment shared by actress Susan Sarandon,who told an interviewer she believed that Clinton was more dangerousthan Trump because she was more hawkish and better able to ram heragenda through Congress. In words I suspect Sarandon wishes she couldreel back, she discounted the threat level posed by a Trump presidency:Seriously, I am not worried about a wall being built . . . . He isnot going to get rid of every Muslim in this country. She speculatedon another occasion that a Trump win might hasten the revolution. Thelefts romance with revolution has always been a reality-blinder, thisthermodynamic belief that things need to get bad beyond the breakingpoint so that people will take the vape pens out of their mouths, riseup, and storm the Bastille. But the history of non-democracies andauthoritarian personality cults shows that things can stay bad and getworse for a long time, leaving unhealable wounds. Maos China, forexample. Putins tubercular Russia.

See the original post here:

Why the Alt-Left Is a Problem, Too | Vanity Fair