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Originally Posted by detbuch
Not quite right--it's spelled lennonists. Here's an old fashioned precursor of the Alt Right, Norwegian white supremacist ditty just for you:
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The American Right’s “21st-century Leninism”
The dismissal of Steve Bannon — leading intellectual of the US alt-right — before the first anniversary of Trump’s presidency comes as false relief. In fact, Bannon’s White House adventure was only one stage of a long journey — the migration of revolutionary-populist language, tactics, and strategies from the left to the right. Bannon has reportedly said: “I’m a Leninist. Lenin … wanted to destroy the state, and that’s my goal too. I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.” But what does this Leninism consist of? In a complex democracy, Leninism can only maintain itself as a populism of the long revolution. For decades, social science has insisted that due to entrenched institutions, no third party can succeed in the US. This very “scientific fact” has enabled a smug self-certainty among liberal leftists and autonomists/anarchists (who find therein further justification for, respectively, their subservience to neoliberalism and evasion of organized politics). The American far right has subverted this “fact.” It was as if they were following directions from a 21st-century, condensed version of Lenin’s (1902) What is to Be Done?, starting with the sentence: “If you can’t build a party, paralyze the party; circumvent it; and take it over.” They did all three simultaneously. Our imaginary, revised What is to Be Done? would then continue: “Before you become the de jure leaders of the party, make sure all of its institutions are crippled.” If the Tea Party (a populist grouping among Republicans) had not already paralyzed the Republican establishment, the latter would have been able to stop Trump’s rise.
American right-wing populism is Leninism under democratic conditions. Unlike the Russian Bolsheviks who had to avoid almost all above-ground society and politics, American rightists embrace society. The revised What is to Be Done? would therefore say: “Organize in every cell of society. Don’t underestimate any venue of organization and politics, even if (especially if) it seems to belong to the enemy camp.” The right learned not to leave education, science, and culture to the monopoly of the left. “Appropriate the organizational terrain and ideology of your enemy, to the extent possible. Dismantle whatever you fail to appropriate.” Starting with Andrew Breitbart himself, the founder of the “alt-right” media outlet, the right read the Frankfurt School; it made healthcare a big deal; and with the rise of Trump and Bannon, it promises jobs and infrastructure.
Today the Leninist Right cannot ignore the existence of other potentially populist forces on the social map, however meager they may be. The 21st-century What is to Be Done? would thus conclude with the sentence: “If certain trenches of the enemy appear to be beyond the reach of any of these tactics, provoke its occupants into immature and illegitimate action.” As the alt-right descended on the University of California, Berkeley and other pockets of residual left-wing influence in early 2017, liberals came to their defense (in the name of “free speech”) when a far left without a mass base attacked them. Liberal enthusiasm for “free speech” diminished slightly after an alt-rightist drove a truck into an anti-racist crowd in Charlottesville, but the Washington Post still emphasized far left violence and the alt-right’s freedoms when the latter returned to Berkeley in September 2017. Many birds are killed with one stone: the enemy is divided; its confusion, lack of will, and weakness are exposed; its reputation is tarnished; and the far right itself is further galvanized.
Since “the state” today is more complex than any 20th-century definition could capture, “smashing” it involves much less dramatic action than in 1917, at least for now. We still don’t know what the right holds in store for the time when the existing institutions are completely incapacitated, but we may soon find out. Right after his resignation, Steve Bannon declared “war” on his enemies, adding gleefully that he is returning to his “weapons” (meaning electronic media). A populist revolution in a land of entrenched (if decaying) liberalism is an uphill battle, and is bound to suffer setbacks. But the show is far from over.