On the “alt-” in alt-right and the “post-” in post-punk – more similar than you may think!

When philosopher Kwame Appiah asked “is the post- in postmodernism the post- in postcolonial?”, he was referring to their shared de-centering of (mainly) Eurocentric master narratives about universality, objectivity, and other Enlightenment values. When I riffed on his 1991 article in 2017 and asked “is the post- in post-identity the post- in post-genre?”, I referred to their shared narrative of overcoming rigid race- and gender-based categories (in this respect, it’s also the same as the “post-” in “post-punk”). Sam de Boise’s new article on “Musical Metapolitics and the Alt-Right” suggests that the “alt-” in “alt-right” allows the movement to present itself as being “post-genre” when it comes to aesthetics and cultural values while being decidedly “pre-” on the identity front.

As de Boise argues, the alt-right is unlike traditional white supremacist movements in its “aesthetic pluralism” with respect to music. Right-wing extremists have typically privileged musics whose aesthetics are equally as extreme as their politics, such as punk or metal; this helped limit the ideological purity of the in-group by driving away outsiders and tourists who found the music distasteful. Whereas the alt-right is ideologically committed to white racial supremacy, what makes it “alt-” is its overcoming of the demand for ideological and aesthetic purity. (There’s also some loosening of the demand for the racial purity of its membership. North Carolina Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson infamously called himself a “Black Nazi”, and Enrique Tarrio was a leader in the faction of the alt-right called the “Proud Boys.” The multi-racial character of this white supremacist movement is one of the things that makes it “alt-”.) “What is new, today,” de Boise argues, “is that ideologues and party leaders have, en masse, turned to supporting musical forms which have a wider appeal among the general public but which still advance, either implicitly or explicitly, ethnonationalist messaging” (6). For example, he points to alt-right music criticism that claims to find white supremacist messaging in work by mainstream pop stars like Taylor Swift or Lana del Rey. Michael Berry has written about the “Trumpification of Hip Hop.” The point of this “aesthetic pluralism” is to use the ubiquity of the aesthetic content to make the extreme ideological content the alt-right peddles feel more mainstream than it is. Aesthetic pluralism thus helps a completely illiberal commitment to white racial supremacy appear more liberal than it actually is.

As Mimi Haddon has argued in her book “What Is Post-Punk,” the “post-” in “post-punk” refers to the overcoming of rockist commitments to demographic and stylistic purity through the inclusion of non-rock styles that were, in the 1970s, associated with women, queer people, and the Black Atlantic outside the U.S. As she explains, “the ‘post’ in post-punk…stands for ‘beyond’ or ‘surpassing’ the punk genre, by both including women and opening a dialogue with other, previously maligned genres, such as disco” (7). Punk is stereotypically (i.e., not fully accurately but commonly) presented as a return to rock basics in the face of glam and prog excess, and this had the effect of centering a narrow stylistic and demographic profile such as that of The Ramones or The Sex Pistols. In contrast to that, post-punk bands like New Order or Gang of Four went head-first into dance music and included women (Gillian Gilbert in New Order and Sara Lee replaced Gang of Four bassist Dave Allen in the early 80s). In this respect, the “post-” in post-punk is the same as the one in post-genre and post-identity: it indicates a pluralistic overcoming of the largely identity-based genre categories from the 20th century music industry. 

However, despite these outward commitments to demographic and aesthetic pluralism in the music, Haddon notes that the culture around post-punk nevertheless “forges a white masculinity” through, for example, modulating rock’s white masculine appropriation of stereotypical Black masculinity in its bringing of “disco’s ‘eroticism’ into contact with punk aggression and awkwardness” (99) to perform a white masculine embodiment that registered the damage of late capitalism. [In the American context, this damaged white post-punk masculinity will, in the late 80s and 90s, synergize with the affirmative action backlash’s articulation of whiteness and white masculinity as personal injury as heard e.g. on Pretty Hate Machine.] As in the 21st century alt-right, late 20th century post-punk featured outward commitments to aesthetic pluralism that had the effect of doubling down on white masculine privilege. 

Nineties alternative rock is rooted in seventies post-punk; Nirvana’s use of the guitar riff in Killing Joke’s “Eighties” is as clear evidence of such influence as one can get. As part of my broader project of thinking about the relationship between alt rock and the alt right, the homology between post-punk’s and the alt right’s use of aesthetic pluralism as a way to recenter white men and masculinity suggests an underlying discursive affinity between the two phenomena. I’ve been thinking about the alt rock/alt right issue largely as one rooted in the political economy of financialized media industries, but this homology points to other affinities. Most notably, it shows that the metapolitical strategy of using a proclaimed aesthetic pluralism to reinforce patriarchal racial capitalist supremacy is not inherently or necessarily exclusive to the illiberal extremism of avowed white nationalists, but also functions in the more traditionally liberal context of avant-garde Anglophone popular music (but I guess that was the point of my post-genre article anyway lol).