A New Third Way/No Labels Movement - A Coalition Between Progressives and the Alt-Right?

[TomCADem]

14. The Alt-Right Are Supportive of Protectionist Measures as Opposed To Establishment Republicans

Indeed, America First, is Trump's motto. This could be the roots of a new Third Way/No Labels coalition between the Alt-Right and Progressives.

http://www.salon.com/2017/03/19/the-global-history-of-the-alt-right/

Since Putin’s goals were to roll back values-based institutions like NATO and the EU that might threaten his rule (and possibly undo the Russian Federation), he had to find useful assets that could corrode those institutions. NATO and EU values are rooted in neoliberalism: free trade and open borders through the EU and human rights protected by hard power through NATO. By supporting parties that undercut these values, Putin sought to undermine both the NATO and the EU.

We now know about Putin’s Facebook and Twitter bot army and Russian financing of Alt-Right parties throughout Europe. The accusations that the Kremlin did something similar in the United States is gaining credibility. Russian spy tradecraft provided discipline to movements that were otherwise too prone to fracturing.

But that would have been irrelevant had neoliberalism’s cracks not begun to show. Even as early as 2000, it was obvious that free trade deals were widening the wealth gap and benefiting only the upper classes. The battle of Seattle, the anti-globalization protests that took place in 1999, were just a harbinger of the energy that would be mobilized against neoliberalism.

The world realized the emperor had no clothes, however, in the wake of the Financial Crisis, when all the inequalities of neoliberalism were laid bare. Years went by with both American and EU leaders trying to cobble together formulas to save the system without addressing any of the problems caused by it: during that time, conservatives began to drift away from economic freedom and free trade and towards the protectionism that had long been espoused by the Alt-Right.