Jackals howling in the wind (how the alt-right lost)

Pictured: Alex Jones of Infowars

Time of death, Sunday, May 7th, 2017, 7 p.m. GMT. The international populist movement, which counted the alt-right movement as its loudest, most organized, faction, is no more.

Game over, Alex Jones, Mike Cernovich, Mark Dice, Kurt Nimmo. Bow out, Paul Joseph Watson, Daniel Friberg, Pierre Larti, Jean-Yves Le Gallou, Richard Spencer. Say goodbye now, Bernd Lucke, Alain Soral and Milo Yannopoulos. They, and all the other believers in would-be nationalistic societies and populist fervor, have suffered defeat on a grand scale. Emmanuel Macron, France’s least-worse candidate, won the French presidential elections. So pack your unicorns and your frogs in your cardboard boxes and go home, populists.

Macron, France’s youngest president, ever, is a product of big banking with appreciable experience in governance. He’s a formatted candidate, right out of central casting, a PR dream molded to appeal to the broadest swath of the population. And yet, we know nothing about him. Will he do the lobbies’ bidding, run a plutocracy like Donald Trump? Or will France reclaim its world ranking under his watch? I don’t know, and you don’t know either (ain’t nobody a clairvoyant around here). But, with a right-wing PM and a semi-decent cabinet, common sense would have us think that Macron’ll do alright. And unlike Fillon (the more eminent and capable candidate in this here election) Macron isn’t — no matter what Alex Jones said on his post-election debrief show from yesterday — the establishment candidate. And in the absence of hard evidence, Macron has no offshore bank accounts, where I’m concerned.

Pictured: Daniel Friberg

Sure, it is possible that Macron will continue in similar one-step-forward, two-steps-back fashion as the discomfited governing style of Fran?ois Hollande. More of the same, yes, yadiyadiyada. But this is still, still better than having a Le Pen in power. The broad-shouldered Marine Le Pen, the intrepid spawn of Jean-Marie Le Pen, extreme-right winger politician who mused during a TV interview that the gas chambers were but a “detail” of history, is that rare political animal, a fighter. But a loser, too. Didn’t she commit political suicide a few days ago, continuing in the tradition of the Front National, the one that dictates that candidates self-destruct when they reach the finish line? Yes, yes, she did just that: the seppuku mindset was on full display in the final televised debate with Macron, on May 3rd. That evening, while Macron consolidated his position as most-favored for an Elysée victory with well-constructed arguments and detailed, common-sense assertions, Pen embarrassed herself and the National Front leadership (Florian Philippot, Gilbert Collard, Marion Maréchal Le Pen) with laments, low blows, negative statements, empty attacks, posturing as victim (by the way, did Alex Jones watch the entire debate?)

Pictured: Alain Soral

Sure, O.K, I’ll play that what-if game. What if Marine Le Pen had been elected president? Even if she stood up to the people demonstrating in the streets (a national sport in France) in response to any set of reforms she looked to introduce as law, even if she helped successfully sell French technology to foreign states, helped clean up the current worldwide messes, even if she managed to reign in France’s runaway social system (France gives out no fewer than one hundred different benefits, to the poor, the unemployed, the homeless, some of which can be obtained without having ever contributed before) and bring the unemployment rate below 8% (it currently stands at 9.9%; source) Le Pen would risk bringing her government, and the country with it, to the brink of destruction because of a platform that is, in large part, based on France exiting the European Union (assuming she would keep her campaign promise). In terms of private savings measured across Europe, France holds the largest balance. In fact, and according to Fox News, France is second-only to Ireland, worldwide, in terms of people who save (source). Exiting the European Union would mean a brutal devaluation of those savings, a run on banks, Venezuela.

Arriving at an agreement on a common currency was a terrible idea. Viewpoints in terms of tax collection, savings, and the place of government in people’s lives, differ too greatly from one European country to another (look at Greece, its famous inability to collect taxes from its citizens. Behold the rampant corruption of certain European governments, such as Italy’s). But a point that is lost on the populist movement, and the reason why Le Pen lost, is that getting out of the EU will cause more harm than staying in it. Electing a pro-EU president makes sense, and Europe’s latest economic results should put some spring in any europhile’s step (source: The Economist).

Unlike Dominique Strauss-Kahn (that once-in-two-generations statesman, uniquely poised to both lead and inspire, abhorrent sexual freakishness notwithstanding) Emmanuel Macron was never a shoo-in for the Elysée Palace. We know zipedeedoo zilch (that means zero) about him. But, a Macron in power is infinitely better than a Le Pen in power. And if only Alex Jones and his confederates weren’t such trigger-happy, armchair commando propagandists, maybe they would understand all this. But this is one point that’s moot, now. Because just like the Brexit vote was a capstone event in the rise of populism, the Emmanuel Macron win spells the end of the scrappy alt-right movement, a form of cult, intent on brainwashing as many dunces as possibles. The fortunes of Alex Jones, Cernovich and all their confederates were tied to the rise of the Brexit event. But it wouldn’t last. With a final round of elections in Austria taking place in December 2016 that delivered a strident loss to the anti-EU, extreme right-winger Norbert Hofer, and now, the Macron win, the populist movement is dead. A look at the traffic card of Infowars on Quantcast (source) reveals that the show’s ratings spike up at the end of June 2016, which is the time of the Brexit referendum. That time marks the beginning of the current wave of populism, the same one that many people said would “sweep over the world.”

And so, the wave of populism that was to sweep the world has turned out to be more of a ripple, over there, by the docks (the ones where Piers Morgan now likes to go fishing at). People like Alex Jones of Infowars, Mike Cernovich, Mark Dice, Kurt Nimmo, Paul Joseph Watson, Daniel Friberg, Richard Spencer and Milo Yannopoulos, their dreams of unicorns shattered, can go back to being prophets of doom and gloom (“the end is nigh, repent!”), recording podcasts and tweeting away. Common sense would dictate that their audiences will eventually lose interest in what they have to say, and move on. With right-wing populism stopped dead in its tracks, the frenzy will die down, the phone won’t ring anymore, alt-right populists will be left to their own devide, like so many jackals howling in the wind.

Pictured: Mike Cernovich