Did Hipsters Create The Alt-Right?
How irony got us where we are now
In 2005, I nabbed an internship at a burgeoning magazine that was popular in the Montreal and NYC area called VICE. It had gone from being an alt-monthly printed on newspaper (VOICE) to a glossy with its back cover almost always adorned by those American Apparel ads—the ones that seem so unsurprising now. (I remember that deal—if American Apparel promised to advertise for an extended period of time, VICE would give them the coveted back cover. I filed the hastily written IO, or insertion order, for that.)
VICE’s editorial operations existed in New York, and I helped out in the marketing office, a tiny one room loft in The Plateau neighborhood of Montreal. We rarely interacted with the publishing staff, except for one guy.
That guy was the publisher and head of editorial Gavin McInnes, and he would come back to Montreal to visit his home country. He would swing by the office, gregarious and loud, and make me feel extremely nervous—not because he was mean, but because he had a big personality and a certain way of zeroing in on you. One time, when he was in town, he had a lunch meeting with my boss and extended me an invite. Obviously I accepted. He asked if I had “any weird eating shit” and at that time, I was well aware of the VICE tendency to skewer anything hopeful, earnest, or aspirational, so I demurred that I was a vegetarian.
“Oh, that’s not so bad. I know this place that does a great vegan BLT,” he said, and took us out to lunch (La Sala Rossa, I think, or a place right next to it), ordering the same thing as me. He asked me what I was studying, how I found VICE, if I liked it, and then summarily ignored me.
Ten years later, he founded the Proud Boys, one of the most notable groups that stormed the Capitol Building this week, the group that Trump suggested “stand by” during the presidential debates. The fact that he founded one of the more notable left-wing news and lifestyle brands in America seems to confound a lot of people. But not me—or anyone paying attention to those foundational years of VICE. The VICE brand of hipster irony that categorized its early tenure is a great place to point to as the birth of the alt right, the type of extremism that laughs at you for being offended, because laughing at someone is a sort of exertion of power.
Let me first be clear: VICE Media is a place I deeply respect. A company’s roots and founders do not determine its meaningful output. (One of my favorite men’s publications happens to be a paid sponsorship with a shaving company, the best beer website in America is owned by InBev. In media, you take money where you can and make the best thing possible.) VICE also owns Refinery29, which I worked at, on-and-off, for nearly five years. VICE has made indelible and incredible contributions to news, culture, music, video and media as a whole.
But it also absolutely tapped its dope-laden needle into a vein that pulsed within urban, white America: Being shocking is cool (as the New York Times wrote); harassing normal sensibilities is the coolest. It’s why we love outlaws, metal, and mohawks. And to a bunch of hipsters in post 9/11 New York, anything anti trying hard—against, say, my above description of hopeful, earnest or aspirational—was cool. Of course we know not to be bigoted, of course, the magazine would often posit. But our ability to employ it ironically still shocks you, doesn’t it?
From the above-linked NYT piece in 2003.
(McInnes) actually leans much further to the right than the Republican Party. His views are closer to a white supremacist's. ''I love being white and I think it's something to be very proud of,'' he said. ''I don't want our culture diluted. We need to close the borders now and let everyone assimilate to a Western, white, English-speaking way of life.''**
Some people assume that such remarks are posturing, akin to the ethnic and anti-gay slurs that pepper the pages of Vice, establishing its rebel credentials. They argue that for 20-somethings raised in a multicultural society, ethnic slurs -- part of contemporary street patois -- do not have the sting they do for older generations.
**He later noted that he said this jokingly because he loved to create a stir. Haha, jokes on us, I guess.
I’ve thought a lot about this over the last two decades (yikes). I’ve collected a grouping of really hard to read “jokes” that no one minded 15 years ago—I won’t subject you to them here, but they are filled with a lot of pretty rotten words.
In fact, I wrote a blasted 50 page paper on it in 2005 where I suggest that “VICE Magazine attempts to occupy two positions at once—the position assumed by the autonomous high aesthete, and the ‘vulgar’ popular aesthetic.” (Brillson, 2005 [lol]) I also mentioned, kind of aptly if I do say so myself, that “VICE insinuates that anyone who misconstrues the irony inherent in the article is clearly not exercising his or her cultural capital. They are outside of the joke. Situated within the article is a type of inner mockery that allows the reader to feel as if they are a part of the ‘inner circle’—those with adequate cultural competence.”
In other words, if you don’t get this, you are getting laughed at. And in order to get this, you have to be rich, well-educated and generally white.
VICE stopped working with McInnes in 2008—but he was still in demand. He continued his comedy/cinema career with people like David Cross, Kristen Schaal, Reggie Watts, and more up to 2015 when his fancy friends disappeared and his politics took center stage. It is also no mistake that he went on to found his own advertising and branding agency because, uh, if dude knows one thing it is how to serve something that feels “cool” to those hungry for it, a la white nationalism.
Whether it be a clean-cut, Fred Perry-version of white supremacy, or his earlier iteration of tapping into the so-ironic-it-ticks-over-into-the-real versions of hipster racism, the one thing that McInnes does understand is how to package things to his intended audience and, with heavy-handed irony, make it feel like either you are either in on “the joke” or not. But there is no delineation between the gulf of you and casual racism because “everyone ought to know better,” and then insisting that this sort of “devil may care” offensiveness only angers anyone who is “intellectually lazy and knee-jerk”… and being, haphazardly (or, now, professionally) racist.
This was 2003, and here we are, 18 years later. McInnis’ trajectory isn’t a rebrand in as much as it is a reveal to anyone listening, and the Proud Boys are now a no-holds-barred hate group, with or without irony. But that vein, that desire to court the unsavory by being “shocking” takes place by cancelling yourself, willingly and gleefully.
At the Trump rally-turned-attack, pictures appeared of musicians Ariel Pink and John Maus. Both Pitchfork darlings and alt-rockers, I’ve personally listened to Pink since 2009 and Maus for the last handful of years. In other words, these are not mainstream acts, but often headliners at things like Pitchfork Fest or SXSW. But before he showed up at the rally, Ariel Pink tweeted
The ultimate hipster rebellion: I’ll cancel myself before you cancel me. In an old interview with John Maus, VICE reports (ha ha, we’ve come full circle) that he identified his politics as “left of left of left of left.” But with all those lefts, at what point does your posturing take a hard veer to the right?
Above: VICE Magazine, circa when I was there, going so far “ironic” it ended up praising the KKK
When our whole demographic feels one way, what is more rebellious than becoming a contrarian? Isn’t that kind of what McInnes was saying? It’s like that disgusting trope that the right is the new punk, as if punk rock wasn’t interested in rejecting masculine hegemony.
This type of extreme ironic behavior is nothing new, of course. We used to call it “relevant” or authentic, and then it became trolling, and that morphed into shit-posting, and now it exists in a series of weird takes that exist to demonstrate how much of an edgelord one can be.
This kind of irony has reared its head in the wake of the “dirtbag left”, a cynical burn-it-down option that aims to critique the capitalistic culture that birthed it. The female-led podcast the Red Scare, with a host who went “softly viral” for becoming “Sailor Socialism,” loves to “make fun of PC culture” and uses the word r*tard and gay as slurs regularly…as a rejection of liberal feminism. Sure, critiquing liberal structures for their performative purity is one thing, but doubling down on slurs to present something as shocking is straight out of the early VICE playbook: violating norms just because you can doesn’t make you revolutionary. It’s empty shock. (Note: Said host has now landed features in NYLON and will be in the new season of HBO’s Succession. And I had a vegan BLT with Gavin McInnes.)
Satire, mockery and irony is powerful, and being an edgelord doesn’t lead you straight into the alt-right. Hell, being brutal is funny. But being brutal to be deliberately shocking regarding marginalized identities is an old trick that’s used to create and uphold power structures. Voluntarily cancelling yourself for your bad opinions isn’t being fearless. If you aren’t laughing with us, we are laughing at you has its own type of power, but only when inflicted on the already powerful. If irony-trolling people target those asking for basic human decency, it becomes truly awful…and then that delicately thin line between ironic shitposting and being an outright bigot disappears.
Interesting, thanks.
Great, thoughtful piece, thank you.. I'm revealing my un-hipness (and my age) here, but please, what is "edgelord?"