Online misogyny and the alternative right: debating the undebatable

The aim of this critical intervention is twofold: first, to offer a few insights to the online misogyny debate based on a case-study involving myself and Milo Yiannopoulos, the prominent anti-feminist and self-styled ultra-conservative “bad boy;” second, to add a new, politically pronounced inflection to the meticulous work in the field, by arguing that although misogyny is not exclusively affiliated with a certain political register, its ferocious articulations in contemporary culture—especially online—should be understood as a type of discourse fuelled largely by a set of well-organised far-right, white supremacist determinations collectively camouflaged by the media-friendly term “alternative-right” (hereafter, “alt-right”). I contend that far from being a subculture that seeks to articulate a credible anti-establishment position, the alt-right is better understood as a polished, technologically adept strand of the far-right—a strand, what is more, that is easily assimilable by neoliberal socio-economic and political rationality. Much like neoliberalism itself, the alt-right is vehemently opposed to any form of politics or political imaginary that seeks to establish a socialist or socialist-democratic hegemony predicated on class consciousness, collectivism, and egalitarianism.