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from the will-provide-tattoos-for-right-applicant dept.
Seems someone got the whole thing seriously wrong, but evidently there was a casting call for actors for a Cadillac commercial that was looking for "alt-right" or "neo-nazi" types.
Cadillac caused a stir this week when a casting service put out a request on behalf of the American luxury brand looking to fill the role of an "alt-right (neo-Nazi)" in a new commercial. Cadillac denied it had ever authorized the notice and condemned it, while the casting company took responsibility, saying that it had been issued by mistake. Regardless of who did what, the idea had to have been hatched somewhere and by someone, which reveals something far more troubling than a mere streak of poor taste and even poorer judgement in corporate America: the marketability and mainstreaming of an alt-right population, or those "identified variously with anti-globalist and anti-immigrant stances, cartoon frogs, white nationalists, pick-up artists, anti-Semites, and a rising tide of right-wing populism," as Tablet contributor Jacob Siegel wrote in a profile of Paul Gottfried, the alt-right's "godfather."
Hmm, maybe now that the "alt-right" has become just another marketing demographic, we do not have to worry about them taking over the country? I mean, who buys Cadillacs as a status symbol anymore? Not like they are your father's Oldsmobile. Except that, really, it was your father's Olds. So that brand no longer exists. Are we at the point where we can say, "Brietbart: it's not your grandpa's fascism!"? Except, really, maybe it is?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by bradley13 on Friday December 30 2016, @09:52AM
What I find amusing is the way that the MSM so desperately and blatantly tries to label the alt-right as "neo-Nazi". They think they are defending liberal values, but in fact, they are just defending the existing political establshment. The Republicans and the Democrats in the US are nearly indistiguishable: both love big government, both enjoy throwing American troops into every possible conflict around the world, and both are really all about preserving the power of the 1%. They all go to the same schools, belong to the same clubs, golf on the same courses - any signs of disunity are mainly for the entertainment of the proles.
Are there neo-Nazis? Sure there are. Are there active members of the KKK? Sure there are. The existence of these groups has zilch to do with the alt-right, except that they all happen to be against the existing political establishment. As such, the establishment happily encourages painting all of these groups with the same brush.
The Alt-Right is a collection of right-wing individuals and groups who reject the globalist and "invade the world, invite the world" ideologies of mainstream conservative and center-right parties in the Western world. [infogalactic.com]
Rejecting globalism means encouraging nationalism. While there is no single coherent movement, I think the largest subgroup is the "alt-west": A group that believe that groups and countries descending from European (Western) civilization (going back to the Roman and Greek roots) need to take pride in their heritage, and need to work towards its preservation. They perceive things like the recent influx of millions of immigrants from the Middle East and Africa to be a danger, because these immigrants bring with them cultures that are fundamentally incompatible with Western civilization.
Why this reply? Remember the Tea Party (on the right)? Remember Occupy Wall Street (on the left)? Two nascent political movements that were co-opted and destroyed - in different ways, but with equal success - until they no longer posed any sort of threat to the existing political elite. The weapon of choice this time is to paint the Alt-Right with the neo-Nazi brush. It would be a shame to allow that to succeed.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Whoever on Friday December 30 2016, @10:39AM
The alt-right are not neo-Nazis.
No, the alt-right are White Supremacists.
The whole purpose of the invention of the term 'alt-right' is to disguise their real motives.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 30 2016, @11:47AM
Nope, 1488'ers are white supremacists. The NRx movement are rationalists and Moldbug was Jewish.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 30 2016, @07:07PM
> No, the alt-right are White Supremacists.
With lots of nationalism and socialism (for the 'deserving' aka whites) thrown in to the mix.
But if neo-nazi is too narrow, then lets just stick to alt-white.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 30 2016, @12:26PM
The point of painting them with the neo-nazi brush is to make it attractive to actual neo-nazis who will then flock to it so that the label becomes accurate, as was the case with pegida in Germany.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday December 30 2016, @01:13PM
Seriously? You know there are so few actual racists in the nation that K3 membership is under 25K nationwide, right?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Friday December 30 2016, @01:38PM
I agree that the Establishment Media is in a pickle and trying very hard to smear the forces it lost the election to. They've lost their credibility, erased any reputation they had left, and know they're not going to get it back any time soon, so they're taking the only route open to them and trying to drive the general esteem for everyone else even lower. Of course it will backfire, because the harder they try, the worse they look.
That said, white supremacists were not the bulk of Trump's support, but they were in the mix. Let's not pretend they weren't. The ones who are unabashedly white supremacists, who wear their membership in the Klan or the Nazi party proudly, do number as few as you claim. But the people who share their views and only shy away from wearing the label openly form a larger group. To assert that both sets are not racists is incorrect.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Friday December 30 2016, @01:52PM
The thing is, they simply do not exist in significant numbers, so who cares what they think or support?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Offtopic) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday December 30 2016, @06:28PM
Because it only takes a few in the wrong places, and you know very well this is the case. Stop being disingenuous. I wouldn't give a fuck what Steve Bannon believed *if he weren't in a position of power.*
I don't know what's more insulting: that you think we won't pick up on this kind of evasive, self-serving bullshit, or that you don't seem to care.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Troll) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday December 31 2016, @12:00PM
I know it's in the playbook to change the subject then act like it always was the new subject but we expect better than that around here. If you'd care to weigh in on what is actually being discussed here or start a separate thread for your new complaint, I'm game. Otherwise you're Offtopic.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 1, Flamebait) by Azuma Hazuki on Sunday January 01 2017, @04:14AM
That is precisely what was being discussed here, you pusillanimous piece of shit. It only takes a few neo-nazis (no, I will not call you festering bowel polyps "alt-right") in the wrong place to undo decades of civil rights legislation. Fuck your attempted censorship, and may you fry in hell for the part you had in bringing this about, then get reincarnated poor, black, and female in what remains of Atlanta.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 1, Troll) by The Mighty Buzzard on Sunday January 01 2017, @11:08AM
It wasn't and you're wrong on every single assumption above. Your kind are rapidly ceasing to matter though, so I'll be magnanimous and go ahead let you have the last word in your inevitable venom-filled reply.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Monday January 02 2017, @02:52AM
Yuk it up while you can, dipshit...you and your buddies have just voted for the end of the US as a nation. If you're getting venom, it's because you deserve it, and being angry doesn't make someone wrong.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by BK on Friday December 30 2016, @03:14PM
That said, racists of all stripes do/did not make up the bulk of the support for either major candidate, but they were in the mix. For both. If we are going to tar candidates (or their 'parties' with the worst traits of their most despicable supporters, let's at least pretend to be fair and honest about it.
...but you HAVE heard of me.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Friday December 30 2016, @04:14PM
Ignore history much?
...both enjoy throwing American troops into every possible conflict around the world...
No Democrat since Kennedy has started a shooting war. No Republican since Ford has failed to. Like war? Vote Republican, at least for commander in chief. As to big government, also have a little peek at history. Republicans talk small government and balanced budgets, but at least since Reagan, no Republican ever left office with a smaller budget deficit that he started with. Democrats suck at this, too, just not as badly.
And why did you link to a completely unknown wikipedia wannabe instead of the real thing? [wikipedia.org] Your site, perhaps? Your composition, perhaps?
You do your cause no favors.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 30 2016, @06:16PM
Sure, we can draw tasteful veils over the shenanigans under Carter and Clinton, (Hi there, Iran and Bosnia! And Rwanda!) because it turns out that the democratic vision of pacifism is a very ... what's the word? Nuanced? Triangulated? Contingent? Well, it's complicated...
But democrats have a long, happy history of continuing wars. I know I'm saying this to the ceiling, but I'm looking at you, Obama.
The budget is however a red herring with respect to presidents. They can suggest budgets - but Congress writes them. It was because of that sort of thing resulting in long-term problems, that Reagan played games with funding, and ultimately we ended up with the budget deal, and sequestration, and a couple of shutdowns in the new century.
Congress does budgets, not presidents.
So what I'm getting from this is:
If you don't like deficits, throw the bums out.
If you don't like war, find someone other than the D and R groups for your presidents.
(Score: 2) by fritsd on Friday December 30 2016, @04:37PM
Honestly, I haven't yet formed a fixed picture in my mind of what "alt-right" encompasses. I only know the following:
- Steve Bannon from Breitbart, who is going to be in Trump's government, apparently said something like "Breitbart is a platform for the alt-right", so that may become a nucleus for all molecules of "alt-right" to coagulate around, and shape the definition.
- I once visited Breitbart website for fun (!???! wrong decision) and got actual stomach pain from reading the comments on just one story.
- I once read an article somewhere about a cartoon frog Pepe who was co-opted for cartoons of grinning Nazis, which made the original author of said frog sad.
Um, that's about it. The concept is still nebulous :-) I am (morbidly) curious, but I have to watch out what I surf to, otherwise my depression gets worse.
So far, if you say that "alt-right" and neo-nazism don't overlap to a great degree, I'll take your word for it.
Would you say "alt-right" is "fascist", though? That's a much broader term.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 30 2016, @05:15PM
Seemingly any opposition to the gutting of nation states by oligarchs under the banner of "globalism" is enough for an individual to be labelled "alt-right" and by extension "a nazi". It doesn't matter if you are a traditional conservative, libertarian or even a left-leaning classical liberal.
How amusing that governments arming Saudi Arabia (see: The Yemen), supplying arms to terrorists in Syria, importing that terrorism into their own countries via migration and then trying to step-up security to deal with the problem they created are associating their opponents with authoritarians. Good thing those same governments didn't support an actual neo-nazi coup in the Ukraine... Oh no, it's the Russians wot done it all... must be true because (former Nazi collaborator) George Soros says so.
If you really want to read up on the bogeyman:
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 30 2016, @10:19PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 31 2016, @01:41AM
George Soros once posed as a gentile in order to confiscate wealth from the Jews in the same way he now poses as a liberal in order to confiscate wealth from entire nations. FFS indeed! [rt.com]
Soros is on record as saying the time he spent with the Nazis was the best time of his life. He supports BLM in order to create racial division that he can profit from. He supports Neo-Nazis in the Ukraine in order to float his stakes in Ukrainian energy companies on the open market. He supports open borders whilst living behind the tallest wall in Bedford NY. Why in the fuck do you people keep defending this indefensible twat?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 30 2016, @05:35PM
No, it does not. Both globalism and nationalism are forms of collectivism; what about individualism instead?
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Friday December 30 2016, @05:53PM
I don't think even one in ten people, of either sex, has the strength of character for that unfortunately. I want to see it too but if you study people for any length of time you very quickly come to the conclusion that most of them are simply incapable of critical thought and self-examination.
It's kind of like something an atheist friend of mine said once: "I'm not entirely anti religion because so many people are moral retards. Just imagine what they'd do without that carrot and that stick." I hate this argument to hell and back, as I hate all "little people" arguments, but it seems to be true :(
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 30 2016, @08:33PM
Your friend is in good company.
George Washington, frequently cited by religionists as a man of faith, had this to say about religion:
Let us with caution indulge the supposition, that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect, that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.
And to the more general issue of people being naturally collectivist animals - that's not a weakness, its our greatest strength. The ability to organize in groups and work collectively to accomplish goals that are far beyond the grasp of any individual is why we run the planet and not apes, tigers, sharks or any other animals far more physically fearsome than us. Its got its downsides too, but anyone preaching pure individualism is preaching a state of nature where few people would even have fire to warm themselves at night.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 30 2016, @11:12PM
Um... Individualism doesn't preclude the division of labor; it simply means that the division must emerge through the voluntary interaction of individuals, rather than be imposed by some external power.
A robust free market is still individualism.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 31 2016, @12:54AM
> A robust free market is still individualism.
That level of "free" doesn't exist, at least not for the vast majority of the population.
All markets for individuals are coercive. You need food, shelter, clothing, etc. Therefore you must participate in the market. The only people for whom such free markets actually exist are those who are free to completely walk away from the market at any time and for as long as they wish.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday December 31 2016, @05:35PM
You're angry at the nature of this Universe, pal. You'll never be satisfied.