“Dedicated to the heritage, identity, and future of European people in the United States”

What is the Alt Right?

Steve Bannon is the new Chief Strategist of the Trump Administration and a huge promoter of the Alt Right.

Lots of Trump supporters are expressing surprise (and resistance) at the prospect that Trump’s Chief Strategist is a supporter and advocate of white ethno-nationalism (aka racism).

He is.

Bannon has bragged that he made Breitbart a “platform for the Alt Right.

The Alt Right’s self-description (not the description given it by its enemies) is “dedicated to the heritage, identity, and future of European people in the United States” aka “white identity” aka “racism.”

Here is a sample of white identity thought published in Radix recently, explaining that the prolife movement is “dysgenic” (i.e. that it encourages the birthing of mixed race children) and making the “identitarian case” for abortion:

Not only is the pro-life movement dysgenic, but its justifications rely on principles we generally reject. The alt Right is skeptical, to say the least, of concepts like “equality” and “human rights,” especially as bases for policy. The unborn fetus has no connection to anyone else in the community. If it is not even wanted by its own mother, criminalizing abortion means that the state must step in and say that the individual has rights as an individual, despite its lack of connection to any larger social group. This is no problem to those in the conservative movement, who decide right and wrong based on principles like “the right to life.” It is no coincidence that some of the most pro-life politicians are those most excited about adopting children from Africa and those in their movement are among the conservatives most likely to denounce the “racism” of their political opponents.

The mother-child bond is the strongest of human relationships, the one least subject to being altered by government policy or societal forces. While over the last decades, fathers have become more likely to walk out on their children and divorce rates have risen, there has been no similar rise in females abandoning their children. When the parent-child bond does not exist for a pregnant woman, society has no business stepping in. Those who want to do so, by banning abortion because it’s “racist” or adopting children from Africa, are the ultimate cuckservatives.

“Cuckservative” is the awkward portmanteau coined by the Alt Right precisely to distinguish themselves from normal, sane non-racist conservatives they deem “afraid” to embrace the “reality” of white supremacy. “Cuck” is from “cuckold” and communicates the notion of a white man too weak to defend his racial purity from dark-skinned men having sex with “his” women. Rassenhygiene is a *big* thing with the Alt Right, as is the sophomore high school fantasy that women are personal property to be kept out of the hands of racial inferiors. The Alt Right sees itself as the hero in a Frank Frazetta painting, defending nubile white feminine flesh from the assault of dark alien hordes bent on sapping and impurifying their precious bodily fluids with injections of inferior chromosomes. Regular conservatives–“cuckservatives”–are too weak to say this out loud with their wimpy commitment to “all men are created equal” and the Christian insistence that all human beings are made in the image and likeness of God, that “God is no respecter of persons”, that “in Christ Jesus you are all sons of God, through faith. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ have put on Christ. There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is neither male nor female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Ga 3:26–28).

Note that when you click the second link above, you find that self-description for a whole slew of Alt Right organizations. That’s because white identity is not an accidental feature of Radix and a couple of outliers, but the fundamental ideology of the Alt Right–the Alt Right Bannon boasts of supporting, the Alt Right of which he is now the most powerful and prominent representative on Planet Earth as Chief Strategist to Donald Trump.

What does the Alt Right do? David French can tell you all about it and what it will look like in power. So can this family. So can all these people. That’s why Twitter finally took the step of shutting these people down. Facebook, I’m told, will be following suit.

My point is this: There is not a reason in the world prolife Christians should be putting themselves out to defend this racist filth. If they are serious about abortion being their core issue they should, if they are strapped for time and energy, simply be focusing on defending the unborn. If they have time and energy to spare for other things, they should be *protesting* the racism of the Alt Right as (in the words of Nostra Aetate) “foreign to the mind of Christ.”

But instead, prolife leadership like Fr. Frank Pavone and a host of the rank and file of the “prolife” movement are lining up to spend their time and energy, not on defending the unborn, but on cheering for the appointment of Steve Bannon and on denying the existence of, excusing, and defending the Alt Right racism he champions.

That is the infallible pattern the anti-abortion-but-not-prolife movement–the Old Prolife Movement–now follows. It *claims* the defense of the unborn is the “core value”. It *claims* that it will “hold Trump’s feet to the fire”. But in practice it does one concrete thing over and over–it defends Trump and whatever evil or foolish thing Trump says or does. It did it all throughout the election cycle, crowning itself with an act of what Fr. Pavone’s own bishop and Priests for Life Canada denounced as an act of desecration. And now it is moving on to spending its time defending, not the unborn, but Alt Right racism, because that is what the Boss likes.

We need a New Prolife Movement. One that is simply dedicated to the defense of the dignity of all human life–of whatever color–from conception to natural death. One that says simply, “Listen to the Church’s *whole* teaching and not just the bits your political ideology likes.”

And the good news is, we have one. Support (and help grow) the New Prolife Movement. It’s a wee little thing, still finding its feet and still working out all the implications of the Church’s teaching and still struggling to find its voice. But it is on the right track.

Be more prolife, not less. You cannot be prolife and defend racism.