THE LEFT IS THE RIGHT:

The alt-right is more diffuse, and diverse in its tactics and objectives, than the PC left. It encompasses sophisticated neo-reactionary Silicon Valley engineers like Curtis Yarvin, 1990s-style white nationalists like Jared Taylor, and legions of race-baiting online trolls with Pepe the frog as their Twitter avatars. But they are united by their contempt for pluralistic liberal democracy, their view that Western Civilization is in a profound and perhaps irreversible state of decline due to the empowerment of women and minorities, and their open embrace of white identity politics, and even white separatism, as the only solution.

This is a precarious cultural moment. How can it be that it is impossible to really understand the 2016 U.S. presidential election without reference to anti-liberal ideologies developed in the dark corners of 4chan and the inner sanctums of once-marginal campus bureaucracies?

Many commentators have observed that the radicalisms of the right and left feed on one another, teaming up to suck the liberal center dry. On the one hand, excessive left-wing speech policing and cultural brinksmanship on issues of race and gender was bound to make Milo-style ideological transgression more appealing. On the other hand, the alt-right's newfound cultural power seems to vindicate some of the assumptions of the PC left: that racism and misogyny are deeply embedded in America's cultural fabric, just below the surface, ready to erupt unless controls on thought and language are continuously tightened.

But what if instead of thinking of the campus left and the alt-right as mortal enemies, each bringing out perpetually heavier firepower in a long-running war of attrition, we thought of them as allies in a battle for the fate of liberalism? Because despite what they might say about each other, the radicalisms of 2016 actually align with one another more than they align with the Anglo-American Enlightenment tradition that has always occupied the American political center.

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