Hipster Fascism?

I’ve heard of Hipster racism thanks to Hawthorne, but Hipster Fascism? Really? I think some people are a bit paranoid.

I first ran across the idea here, in a piece about the band Death in June. The article is long and tedious, but it’s worth a read just to see what is going on inside the heads of the antifa militants. To his credit, the author does attempt to be somewhat measured and nuanced in his analysis, as if he is aware that a fair criticism of the antifa mentality is a total lack of such.

Death in June is a “neofolk” band and the name is a reference to the Night of the Long Knives which occurred in June when the Nazis purged some of the left-wing Nazi elements (as well as some conservative critics). Weaver might be interested in a digression the author takes where he discusses the relationship between Third Positionism and the purged left-wing Nazis.

Death in June is apparently somewhat popular and the antifa showed up to protest one of their concerts in Portland. They apparently incorporate some Nazi symbolism into their aesthetic, although I believe they would argue that they are reclaiming some older pagan symbolism. For what it’s worth, the lead singer of DIJ is gay, so I doubt they are a bunch of raging traditionalists.

So after reading this, I decided to Yahoo “hipster fascism” and apparently this is a thing, at least in the minds of the PC paranoids.

The always interesting J. Arthur Bloom comments on the phenomenon here in the new and intriguing blog The Mitrailleuse.

I’m not sure I get what motivates this fear of latent hipster fascism that the antifa seem to fear will rise up at any moment and start marching undesirables off to the camps. Hipsters are, in my mind, generally associated with left wing politics and an embrace of PC attitudes. What the Bloom article gets at, however, is that they are not militantly political or revolutionary as have been past groups of young people, like the hippies. In fact, many hipsters, who are the first generation poised to do worse than their parents, appear to have lost faith in the political process and have a healthy skepticism about what government can do. As a result they have some soft libertarian tendencies. And they are not truly counter-cultural in any major sense. In fact, intentional or not, you could argue that drinking PBR and wearing retro glasses for example, signal a yearning for the past and better times masked by their protests of irony. This makes them dangerous in the minds of the paranoid PC warriors.

I’m reminded of the Bible verses Luke 11:23 and Matthew 12:30 where Jesus declares “He who is not with me is against me…” The PC guardians seem to adopt this same attitude. Since hipsters aren’t waving signs and protesting with the antifa, they are obviously then a dangerous cohort who might at any time start acting on wrongthink.

One thing that seems to hack off the antifa, is that hipsters are behind the trend toward gentrification of some city neighborhoods. What is going on here is obvious. These hipsters, who are an urban phenomenon, want to live in the city but don’t have the money to move to the traditionally upscale white areas of the city and they eschew the suburb. So they move into traditionally minority neighborhoods where they can afford rent. As the percentage of whites increase the property values go up and different sorts of businesses start to move in and the minorities, no longer able to afford the new rent or upscale retail, move out. A reverse phenomenon can be seen in closer in suburbs where blacks have moved in, aided by Section 8 housing vouchers, and whites have fled. (Can you say Ferguson, Missouri?) But this gentrification and the reverse phenomenon of suburban white flight, present an intellectual dilemma for the antifa. Why, do whites moving into a neighborhood gentrify it, and blacks moving into a neighborhood cause decline and decay? They can babble about white privilege all they want, but they know that’s not the answer because they’re not stupid.