Trolling the Enlightenment: Lewis, Marinetti & the Modernist precedent for America’s 'Alt-Right' (Invited Paper)

This paper explored a precedent for the shock tactics of the American ‘Alt Right’ in the methods of European avant-gardes of the early 20th century. It contributed to a common conversation in the late 2010s about the parallels between that time and the 1930s—an economic crash followed by a retreat to political extremes; the resurgence of the far right & the far left and a bewildered liberal elite sensing they’re on ‘the wrong side of history’. I argued that Trump’s election in 2016 had brought to the fore a new kind of alternative anti-liberal politics whose tone & methods had something in common with the conservative avant-garde manifesto writers of the early 20th century. At the same time as acknowledging major differences between their politics, I wanted to compare both the larger rejection of enlightenment certitudes connecting these two cultural moments and to think about similarities between their tactics of provocation.