This “fight” the last 24 hours (and months?) is really, really stupid. People seem to have a major problem with the term “alt-left”. Because it was (maybe?) invented by Sean Hannity, and maybe somehow refers to Nazis simply because “alt-right” refers to Nazis, even though that makes no sense.
I’ve seen people frame their argument with displeasure at the term itself. Great. But I’ve seen more people say something like “the alt-left doesn’t exist”. Uh oh. Wait a minute.
There’s no denying the segment of the Left that trades in conspiracy theory, out-there ideas, racism, sexism, Russia apologia, and even violence. My first experience with this segment was 16 years ago, in the form of 9/11 Truthers, many of whom are left-wing individuals. It certainly wasn’t invented in 2017 by Sean Hannity.
Not only does it exist, its “percentage share” of all the noise online has increased a great deal in the last 24 months. What used to be 1% of the noise on the left-wing internet has become 10%, 20% even 100% in some places. At the reveal of the eleventeenth undisclosed Russia meeting, there were still hundreds of commenters at a site I used to frequent claiming the entire thing was invented by neoliberals to distract from “$hillary’s massive failure”.
I’m not sure what some people are playing at with the denial of this. And this denial can take more than one form. Making any mention of “alt-left” into a pie fight about the term itself, is a form of deflection and denial. I might go so far as to say the defensive reaction to “alt-left” is cousins with a nefarious rhetorical and psychological phenomenon known as White Fragility, whereby you project someone’s discussion of racism as a personal attack against yourself.
The point I’m trying to make is that what most of us refer to when we say “alt-left”, DOES exist. Maybe that’s a terrible term. Maybe there’s bad actors who want it to mean “Bernie Sanders voters”. I just find it problematic that for so many people, the biggest problem with the “Alt-Left” is not that they exist in our ranks, but that we gave them a name.