When neither is on your side, claim alt-right racist.

An interesting piece on the importance of accurately naming things. From Why The Left Can’t Understand The Alt-Right: To conservatives it is obvious that Ben Shapiro is not a member of the alt-right. Why is that so hard for many on the left to understand? by David Marcus.

This ties to something Jonathan Haidt found in some of his early research on polarization. Conservatives in general were far better at predicting Liberal policy responses to a given scenario than Liberals were able to predict Conservative responses. It was clear that conservatives better understood the liberal mind than liberals understood the conservative mind. Haidt hypothesized that because the mainstream media skews strongly left, that perhaps it was simply a product of conservatives always being exposed to the liberal mind whereas liberals rarely were exposed to conservative thinking.

Fair enough. I suspect there is truth in the hypothesis but I have not seen good rigorous research testing it.

I suspect that another factor is that the conservative tent is far bigger than the liberal wing both by degree and by kind.

Liberals often vary by degree but not especially by kind. There is the European Christian Democratic parties which look sort of centrists, then more explicit socialists, on towards Statist/Marxists. Sure, there is the complication of social justice theorist, critical theorist, postmodernists, feminist theorists, etc. but in policy substance, they generally fit along the continuum reasonably neatly.

In contrast, in the Conservative tent there are Classical Liberals (Age of Enlightenment), there are Libertarians, there are religious conservatives, Burkean conservatives, economic conservatives, Hayekian conservatives, etc. While they might share some 40-60% of policy views, they are different in kind, not just in degree.

The upshot is, I think, that it is easier for conservatives to place liberals on a single continuum by degree than it is for liberals to understand the range of conservative vectors, much less where someone falls on that vector.

Marcus:

This week, The Economist, one of the most respected outlets in the world (and arguably one that is fairly centrist), falsely labeled pundit Ben Shapiro as “the sage of the alt-right.” Shapiro, and then seemingly every conservative on social media, expressed outrage at the accusation. Before long, The Economist corrected itself, instead labeling Shapiro a “radical conservative,” whatever that means.

In this case the misappellation was not just factually incorrect, it was unintentionally cruel. During the 2016 Republican primary when the alt-right came to the fore as shock troops supporting Donald Trump (seemingly without his consent) Shapiro was, perhaps more than any other public figure, a target for their hateful tweets and rhetoric.

Most journalists, especially those of Jewish descent, who opposed Trump at the time were inundated with anti-Semitic tweets depicting images of hook nosed Jews that had previously seemed to be relics of the last century. I myself received hundreds of these, at least, during the primary. And while I and others tried to shrug it off as a few anonymous trolls, many perhaps part of a foreign influence campaign, it took an emotional toll. They were difficult images to have to scroll through every day.

So how could The Economist have gotten this so wrong? How could the writer and editors have missed the fact that Shapiro is not associated in any way, shape, or form with the alt-right, and was, in fact, a central target for their harassment?

Because it is a convenient rhetorical argument despite its falsity.

But as the George W. Bush presidency—the first deeply connected to the neocon movement—went on, the term changed meaning. It came to simply mean “very conservative,” or “far right.” Eventually the once specific term came to essentially mean nothing but “conservative.” Something very similar has happened with the term alt-right. But alt-right is not far-right, the “alt” is there for a reason. It is an alternative or a departure from actual mainstream conservatism.

I think that is what has happened with alt-right. It was convenient to morph the meaning from white supremacist, violent nationalists to cover anyone who wasn't of the left. Which is what has happened to Shapiro. He is not alt-right by any stretch of the imagination. It is incomprehensible that any sentient journalist would not understand this.

He self-identifies as libertarian. He plausibly might be called either a Classical Liberal or a Constitutional Conservative.

On the other hand, Shapiro is an extremely sharp and effective debater. His very effectiveness in communicating conservative ideas and arguments has, I think, forced his ideological opponents to use whatever tool is at hand to try and discredit him. It is a backhanded compliment to your effectiveness when your ideological opponents are so bereft that they have to resort to false ad hominem arguments.

It is a variant on the old legal adage.

When the facts are on your side, pound the facts. When the law is on your side, pound the law. When neither is on your side, claim alt-right racist.