Out-Dirtbagging The Alt-Right Dirtbags

Classic conundrum: when fighting dirtbags, how can you keep from stooping to become a dirtbag yourself? Or is the only way to win to succumb to the rules of the playing field, to fight fire with fire, and try to out-dirtbag your opponent?

Never has the puzzle or the term “dirtbag” been so apt as the current American political landscape and its growing alt-right contingent. In his analysis for the New Republic, Jet Heer looks at what happens when the (alt?)left borrows the tactics of white-boy trolls and their acolytes. Or if not their actual tactics, then at least their douchiness. He dubs this demographic the “Dirtbag Left”, aka:

“a movement that uses many of the tactics of the online alt-right—humour, memes, Twitter trolling and open animosity—while remaining committed to progressive leftist ideology.”

As an example, Heer quotes a recent episode of the popular Chapo Trap House podcast, where the hosts requested that center-lefties should “bend the knee to us”.

Heer and others call this “dominance politics”, which is certainly “the default mode of the Republican Party and especially Trump", but which liberals theoretically don’t buy into. After all, they’re supposed to be asking nicely for peace, equality, and “handouts”.

Dominance politics, whichever side one pledges allegiance to, take the debate into a territory where power play is the only play. But, while for the right, “dominance politics is a perfect marriage of style and content", for so-called lefties, it’s much more likely to end up in hypocrisy.