Both political factions need to be aware of extremism

The bad behaviour of one group does not excuse the bad behaviour of another.

OPINION: I expected criticism from the Left when I wrote a column against violence as a means of intimidating hard-right activists. There was some of this, usually in the form of special pleading about fascists not deserving protection under the law. I don’t accept any such exception applies.

I did not expect to cop it from the Right for expressing disapproval of Richard Spencer, a key figure in the ‘‘alt-right’’ – a new strain of radical Rightists that reject traditional conservativism, which they consider decadent and weak. For that criticism, I was accused of social justice warmongering and of attacking conservatism.

I do not recant. Unless the conservative movement is able to successfully distinguish itself from the alternative-right, it will be marginalised for decades.

Further background on Richard Spencer may assist in demonstrating why this is so. Spencer is the director of the National Policy Institute, a think tank based in Washington DC. If you peruse its website, you will see the organisation’s mission is related to what a kind of ‘‘white nationalism’’. At the end of last year, the institute held a conference in which Spencer gave a long speech, the text of which is published in its journal, Radix.

Here are some of the lowlights: ‘‘[Liberals] occasionally pay wistful tributes to the early 1960s America of the moon race and the middle-class lifestyle, while conveniently forgetting that American society was 90% white at the time.’’

‘‘America was, until this past generation, a white country, designed for ourselves and our posterity. It is our creation, it is our inheritance, and it belongs to us.’’

‘‘To be white is to be a striver, a crusader, an explorer and a conqueror.’’

‘‘[President Trump] is deeply compromised by the perversions that define this decadent society. Donald Trump warred against segregated establishments.’’

Those sentiments are repugnant in form and content. They are incompatible with the notion that all human beings are equal in natural dignity. Speak them a loud and you will probably be left with a sour taste in your mouth.

Whenever you point to rhetoric like this, you are always guaranteed to hear protests based on the behaviour of others. They point to groups like the Nation of Islam, a black supremacist organisation that has called for the effective segregation of the races. Where, they ask, is the media condemnation of that organisation? This is an invalid response. The bad behaviour of one group does not excuse the bad behaviour of another. Nor does any imbalance in media coverage.

It is also not enough to point out how small the alt-right is in absolute terms. Only 200 people attended the latest National Policy Institute conference and, as some commentators have pointed out, that’s several orders of magnitude lower than the 7000 in attendance at the most recent conference for adult male fans of My Little Pony. But as Canadian author Mark Steyn likes to point out, if you add a little bit of dog excrement to a lot of ice-cream, the resulting mix tends to be dominated by one of the two flavours.

The uncomfortable fact is that conservatives need to be vigilant about racists in their ranks because their philosophy is particularly prone to being subverted by, and tainted by association with, those who have surrendered to racial prejudice.

That is not because there’s anything innately racist about conservatism per se. Racism is more like a heresy which, as defined by the historian Hillaire Belloc, is heresy tends to be the perversion of a virtue or truth rather than an outright rejection of it.

All movements have their corrupting influences. Radical leftists are prone to making excuses for – and even admiring – murderers like Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. Fanatical environmentalists can show shocking disregard for the primacy of human life and indifference to the misery ordinary people suffer in the absence of modern industry.

In case of conservatives, the virtues of localism, traditions and distrust of elites can be warped into a reactionary radicalism twisted by chauvinism and scapegoatery. Intelligent and guarded scepticism about change becomes rejection of all progress. Respect for the past becomes a wilful blindness to its imperfections.

In the 1950s, conservatives excommunicated the radical anticommunist John Birch Society from their movement. This wasn’t a rejection of anti-communism, but of paranoia and extremism. The same thing should happen with the alt-right today. It was one thing to defend the rights of the Richard Spencers of this world to say what they will. That is required to safeguard the privilege of all to think and speak freely. But you would have to be a scoundrel or a fool to make common cause with them in relation to anything else.