Hail Trump: A Year Later

November 21, 2017 Hunter Wallace Alt-Lite, Alt-Right, Politics 26

Hail Trump was a year ago.

It has also been a year since the beginning of the Twitter purge of the Alt-Right, Donald Trump’s disavowal of the Alt-Right and the beginning of the public feud with the Alt-Lite. This moment was the peak of the Alt-Right’s relationship with Trump.

At the time, I believed that the attacks on Richard Spencer were exaggerated. A year later, I still believe that. It was the first clear sign that the Trump administration and the Alt-Lite were going in one direction and the Alt-Right was going in another. The Alt-Right was going to remain an explicitly racial movement. It wasn’t going to be marshalled into a Trump cheerleading squad.

By the beginning of 2017, it was clear that the Overton Window had shifted. The fight over the Deploraball had shown that the new line in the Trump administration was going to be homosexuals are in and racists are out. This had been telegraphed throughout the campaign with the repeated disavowals of White Nationalists in contrast to the warm embrace of homosexuals.

I still don’t believe that the Hail Trump moment had anything to do with this. Instead, I think it reflects a deep ideological difference between civic nationalism and racial nationalism. A year of fighting with the Alt-Lite has revealed that it is fundamentally nothing more than warmed over conservatism and libertarianism. It is the same old conservatism with better marketing on social media. These people are vultures who steal our content and attempt to monetize and channel our energies.

I began to smell a rat around the same time last November. As I recall, the first sign was the news that Anthony Scaramucci was part of the Trump transition team, but I became truly alarmed when Gary Cohn was selected to head the National Economic Council. We would later learn this was the beginning of the emergence of the Jared Kushner faction. The Cabinet picks were announced and it was a full slate of CEOs, generals, big donors, establishment hacks and conservative throwbacks. In particular, the choice of Andrew Puzder for Labor Secretary (he was never confirmed) didn’t sit right with me. The staffing of the Trump administration for smaller positions skewed even more one sided.

The Trump administration was Donald Trump’s creation. President Trump surrounded himself with family, with “winners” and people he perceived as being useful like Mitch McConnell’s wife. It is clear the man isn’t an ideologue and didn’t give much thought to detail. He delegated those tasks to others and most of those people were members of the corporate and political establishment he had ostensibly overthrown in the 2016 election. It was Reince Preibus’s idea to do healthcare reform.

Before Trump was even sworn into office in January, we knew that all of 2017 would be squandered on pushing the Ryan agenda of healthcare and tax cuts:

This was waved away at the time as “you’re black-pilling me, bro.”

In hindsight, a number of factors produced the year that has since passed: Trump’s lack of an ideological core, nepotism and delegation of power, his instincts as a New York social liberal, the “winners” he surrounded himself with in the Cabinet, Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnell and the True Conservatives on Capitol Hill and the intensity of the Democratic resistance. The “nationalist-populist revolution” lasted for about a month, faded and ended when Steve Bannon was fired in August.

It has come to this:

And this:

These two images juxtaposed side by side tell us something important about the Trump administration. Candidate Trump was very useful for us. President Trump not so much.

About Hunter Wallace 12392 Articles
Founder and Editor-in-Chief of Occidental Dissent

25 Comments

  1. What ball is Bannon carrying right now?

    The ball fumbled away by the Alt Right.

    When you go outside the Overton Window you push it back the other way.

  4. Trump is like a bull elephant who unexpectedly wrecked a fair part of the GOPe and the neocon/lib village. He was able to do this because of the tech revolution that came good in roughly 2014 – mass availability of broadband and smartphones. The villagers after some initial shock fought back.

    It’s what to do with the meta-political space that the bull elephant opened up that’s important. Not the elephant who will end up shot or in the swamp. However if the elephant still rampages in the cultural space all too the good. Delegitimisation of elites is a precursor to radical change.

  5. Spencer is a talented speaker but far too undisciplined to be a leader or spokesman.

    Spencer never got the alinskyite nature of the Altright and its roots in Internet subcultures. Ricky Vaughn and Anglin were the key players.

    • Good points sbout the Earl of Spencer and the Alinskyite nature of the alt-right. But Ricky (((Tavana))) is a sketchy character about whom virtually nothing is known. And Anglin is too polarizing to unite all the disparate elements of the WN movement.

      That’s where I come in.

      • no one can unite the hardRight at this point.

        and that’s just as well.

        but let us know when a lib rag like the Atlantic puts you on the cover and does an article full of smears.

        then you’ll be really important. Meanwhile

        I’ll keep financing Anglin.

        • You don’t have to be such an Anglin fanboi. I too appreciate his efforts and sacrifices. But I also acknowledge his serious limitations as an alt-right leader.

          • And I acknowledge your serious limitations as a functional citizen spahn… Don’t worry, you’ll make it out of your parents basement…one day

        • Anglin is a funny guy, but his foray into leading the entire movement over the internet didn’t work out too well

    • An open aetheist will never be the leader of any large group of strong men in America.

      I like Spencer, but he seems to have his head seriously up his ass as to what the Bible and Christianity are about.

  6. WE are the alt right and we’re NOT “Alinskyite !!!” Saul Alinsky dedicated his book to Satan ! he was a leftist freak that wanted the opposite of what we want.

    Spencer should be groomed to be the Confederate Party nominee in 2024. Michael Hill should be the 2020 guy with Spencer as VP.

    • The methods and techniques – not the ends. Altright is a counter counterculture – an anti-68. Kwa can’t take a joke. David Brooks was right – the elite established in 68 is ripe for overthrow. It’s disintegrating before our eyes.

    • “Spencer should be groomed to be the Confederate Party nominee in 2024. Michael Hill should be the 2020 guy with Spencer as VP.”

      I respond:

      Running for obscure 3rd party for President is the worst waste of time – puts our hope in a miracle savior somehow being elected President, never happens. Might as well put all your hopes in some 80 year old White guy trying to win the NBA slam dunk competition.

      Go local, we have all the Governorships and state houses in the Confederate South and Midwest except DC Sububurbed corrupted Virginia.

      There are David Duke type state representatives all over the South – local folk heroes just waiting to revolt against Washington DC, Hollywood, Harvard and Yale.

      Here’s a great populist campaign for the South.

      Make it reality that degrees from Harvard and Yale are not recognized in Southern States. Cucks like the Bush Family, Mittens Romney who think their Harvard and Yale degrees enable them to be filthy rich, leaders in states like Texas – NOPE. Texans can tell Bushies to go back to New Haven CT slums and PC Lib Leftists who are obsessed with Halloween cultural appropriation. How about some disguised Tiki torch mobs burning George Dubya Bush in effigy dressed in a Yale male cheer leader sweater.

      • I’m with you on the act local. De-certifying certification scams like Harvard and Yale is also essential. The USA brand is tarnished with massive debt and unfunded liabilities. The “Alt-Right” is probably going to win this but there will be no spoils.

        From the article “it reflects a deep ideological difference between civic nationalism and racial nationalism.”

        I am starting to think a pure ethnostate might be a distraction and some good things might be done with civic nationalism like 1) identify which goups want to kill us and marginalize them. I would start with Muslims here but we all know there are more. Zero tolerance except for possibly an embassy staff. They all need to go. 2) Members only organizations (currently illegal for whites) are another good starter. Membership could be converted to citizenship in the likely event the USA collapses.

        • Listen you ‘young’ns,’ of course act local, but always be pushing for the big picture. An enlarged white Confederate States. Steps and phases, steps and phases. Start with an end goal / vision, then go back to the beginning. Now proceed in steps towards that end. Even the marches / protests are 1 of many effective arms of THE CONFEDERATE PARTY.

          And young’n … no it’s not a waste of time to run a 3rd party ! The 3rd party THE CONFEDERATE PARTY won’t just go ka boom into full existence. It. like everything else, has a beginning ….

  7. I’m glad to be old enough to remember America before the Carter era, and ‘young’ enough, to see the change you young people are bringing about.

    May God defend the Right.

  9. Trump can disavow all of us “racists” and virtue signal to his civic nationalist cheer leaders all he wants. It won’t stop the Left, Dems, MSM. from trying to get him impeached or getting him to resign. As far as they’re concerned he’s another “Nazi” just like us. The Repukes resent Trump so they either do nothing to help him or join in the attack.

    IMO, Trump represents the last dying breath of America as we knew it, when a super White majority could make civic nationalism work. All the calls to “unity” are disingenuous or self deception. The center can no longer hold and White ID politics is coming no matter how hard they try to stop it.

  10. I see where a judge knocked down Trump’s executive order banning federal funds for sanctuary cities. Judges have also knocked down his travel ban and ban on trangendered people serving in the military. If his presidency cannot convince you that it is folly to imagine reform will come through the system I don’t know what to tell you. All red states should secede and form their only nation. Do not limit it just to the South.

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