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EMNs Reactionary Reader: The New Right: A Journey to the Fringe of American Politics by Michael Malice

EMNofSeattle

No Russian ever called me deplorable
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This book was one I've been hearing a lot about for around a year and I was very excited to actually read it. It might be fair to say I was more excited to read it then I actually was to read it. It's an ok book, it it's very informative although I wonder if Malice is overintellectualizing the origins of the so called "new right" which I will get into. Also I didn't actually "read" this book, I listened to it on Audiobook but as I learned when I reviewed Michael Anton's The Stakes audiobooks are hard for me to write a review on so I bought the E-reader version too on apple books and all page citations are using the E-reader format, which I think is different then the hard book.

Michael Krechmer (aka Malice) is an American comedian, author, and podcast host of an anarcho-libertarian political bent. He is the author of several books including Dear Reader: The Unauthorized Biography of Kim Jong Il which he wrote after traveling to North Korea. His podcast You're Welcome is hosted on the GaS Digital network and runs every wensday, he has been featured on The Joe Rogan Experience, Timcast IRL, and was a contributor to the Fox News Comedy program Redeye He is very active in internet subcultures. He was born in Ukraine prior to the breakup of the Soviet Union.

Malice begins the book by briefly explaining Ayn Rand and other influences on the Libertarian political ideology, This doesn't last for long as he shifts to explaining how he was invited to private members only facebook group called the "trollboard" (this shift will be my biggest criticism of the book, his chapters seem only loosely connecting, it actually reads like a guest on Joe Rogan just in text and without Rogan talking about weed in between guests points) he explains how the trollboard began as a hangout for those interested in Ron Paul but as the years went on he saw more media critics, racists, and race realists seep in (I'm condensing this a lot) then the NRX movement taking from Curtis Yarvin. Malice then
recalls being invited to online get-togethers of the trollboard, where he is exposed to many different kinds of people considered political "heretics" from avowed Monarchists to quasi-nazis bringing up the "JQ" (Jewish Question, Malice is Jewish and secular and he will continue to discuss anti-semites the rest of the book) One thing to note in the beginning chapter is Malice explaining Curtis Yarvin's use of the term "The Cathedral" to describe a sysmtem of thought and political power derived throuh the universities and pushed to society via the "evangelists" of the left who graduate from the universities and take up positions in media and culture. Yarvin believes "The Cathedral" takes the same place as the established Christian chuches of old to form the basis of a "new religion" of progressive leftist. Malice has fully appropriated this term and for the rest of the book he will call the university-media system "The Cathedral"

Chapter 3, Malice describes the formation and intellectual heritage of the "New Right." Specifically a political alliance drawn up between Pat Buchanan and Murray Rothbard, he also describes the formation of the current Republican party mainstream created by William F Buckley with the publication National Review. In a slow and meandering way he ties this to George HW Bush and how Bush famously wanted to promote a "New World Order" to ensure global stability. The rightwing fringe of Buchanan and Rothbard began attracting disenfranchised whites and began to take shape.

Chapter 4, "Meme Magic is real" Another meandering chapter, Malice begins by breifly explaining Rush Limbaugh's rise to prominence before explaining the creation of a combative right wing internet culture. 4chan, Reddit, and Taki mag. He explains the interchange between the various right wing users of these sites and how they form an effective way to organize outside of the gatekeeping of the Cathedral. He also uses this chapter to hammer some stupid media statements and how they form the basis for the idea of fake news, like when Ed Shultz called Rick Perry a racist for saying a "black cloud hangs over America" in the 2012 primaries Malice muses "Though obama is not floating mass of water vapor" (lol pp 123) he goes on to show statements like that are why the media cannot be taken seriously.

Continued....
 
Part 2


Chapter 5, Explains the beginnings of organized online resistance to the left with the Gamergate controversy. In Malice's retelling, the Gamergate Scandal was the first time it was apparent to the public how far the reach of the Cathedral truly was, and Gamers came up with the ways of harassing leftists online and also getting around censorship of insults on online platforms. An example being referring to black people as "n-word" or "n" or "outdated farm equipment" and creating new and ever changing slang and lingo with which to levy insults. This is effective Malice says, because leftists are sociopaths who view their reality as self evident truth and thus disrupting them is emotionally hurtful to them. Applying this logic to Politics, Malice says that the problem is modern Republicans spend to much time focusing on winning arguments with leftists, who are sociopathic and don't care. Malice says the only real objective of Republicans should be to win and leave the democrats crying. He says "who cares about the arguments of Roe v Wade, 5 justices who will say no is far more important" (pp 160)

I am going to run the next few chapters together, at this point Malice is now detailing actual factions of the New Right, from Anti-Democracy advocates to pornographers, to specific personalities like Jim Goad, Gavin McInnis, and Chris Cantwell when Malice went to Charlottesville. The interview with Goad was particularily interesting, Goad muses that "everyone who has ever said I have white privilege has more privilege then me" and also muses that "liberals will cry about acid rain in a village in Brazil, but laugh at Rednecks at a trailer park getting cancer". Malice interviews Jared Taylor of American Rennasaince and his desire for a homeland for hwu---ite people. What's amazing about this interview is that Taylor is unable to really define what white means when pressed by Malice, at one point even admitting "If Thomas Sowell decides he is hwite [sic] (Malice is mocking Taylors upper class southern accent) I'd have a hard time telling him no".(pp431) Apparently Trans-whites are white in Jared Taylors ethnostate. Ciswhites can check their privilege.

His interview with Cantwell was sad because Cantwell's decline from normal libertarian into a legit Nazi leads to his estrangement from the libertarian community. Despite being a practical nazi he offers the funniest remark about holocause denial I've ever hear "I'm skeptical of holocaust deniers, everyone who says the holocaust didn't happen believes it should have" Cantwell remarks. Malice arrived at Charlottesville the day Heather Heyer was hit and wanted to cover it. After the end of the protest he was going to go to an afterparty, but his contact got a text "Don't bring the Jew".

Malice's conclusion is that the New Right has coopted the mainstream right, Trump has broken cultural norms, and the new right occupies the space of the counterculture. Malice has different feelings then Anton who believes in the "demographics is destiny" mantra, Malice does not subscribe and he thinks the edginess of the New Right plus the discrediting of the Cathedral will actually break the power of the left in the future.

Malice's writing is not incoherent, but it wanders and this is a book that might've done good to be cleaned up and edited down by 100 or so pages. It is too long for me to really give a detailed review. There is a lot of interesting writing although much of it is opinion. I think his claims of the "New Right" having its origins in Buchanan and Rothbard is an interesting thought, but this would require more research I feel if it was an actual political treatiste. I have to count on my own knowledge of internet culture to make sense of this as there are no footnotes or bibliography. A good portion of the appeal of this book to me is that I am a fan of and already familiar with the Author. While Malice is smart, he's not a philosopher or theorist or really an intellectual. I liked it, but I feel it's largely a waste of time for anything other then an inside look of the online right-wing community.

3/5 stars.

EMNofSeattle
 
Michael Krechmer (a.k.a. Michael Malice)
DOB: July 12, 1976
Apparently, based on the number of books he co-wrote and the people he co-wrote them for, Michael can tout talent as a sought after writer. Established author, Harvey Pekar found Michael so interesting he wrote the book, Ego & Hubris: The Michael Malice Story.

One review reads, in part:

Who’s Michael Malice, and how did he become the subject of a graphic novel by Harvey Pekar, the curmudgeon from Cleveland?

First of all, Michael Malice is a real person. He’s 5’6” and weighs 130 pounds. Although on the cusp of thirty, he could easily pass for a scrawny teenager.

One day Michael, a guy with a patchwork employment record and dreams as big as his ego, meets Harvey and begins to relay all these wild stories about his life. Simple as that. Harvey thinks the guy is bright but a bit of a riddle–though not the kind wrapped in an enigma. It’s strange. He seems like the type of person you meet every day, rather ordinary, until you really get to know him. Then you realize he’s exceptional, unusual, and contradictory. Pleasant one minute, really nasty the next. But isn’t cruelty part of human nature? We digress. . . .

I ask, "Who in the hell pays $299 for a book written by a modern day obscure author about a skinny, egotistical young man who grew up in NYC?" NOT ME!
MichaelMalice.jpgApparently, Michael hosts a weekly TV Talk Show.


Count me as unlikely to listen to the audio version or to read the written version of:
The New Right: A Journey to the Fringe of American Politics by Michael Malice
 
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