The alt-right inverted sixties antiestablishment defiance against progressive institutions.

Evidence

The rise of such conspiracy theories illustrated the counter-counterculture’s weaponization of sixties-style defiance, but with its progressive ethos inverted. Where liberals had once championed antiestablishment rebellion, the alt-right recast progressive institutions as oppressive forces. The Black liberal president became “the Man,” feminists were labeled “bullies,” and affirmative action was derided as “reverse racism.” Many white men began to frame themselves as an oppressed group, with 55 percent of white Americans in 2017 claiming “discrimination against white people” was a problem—even though fewer than 20 percent reported direct experiences of it. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 451

Categorization

• XREF: Directly supports Marx’s omnivore monoculture thesis — shows style-signals of defiance being emptied and re-coded by an oppositional subculture, extending the chapter’s mechanism. — connects to: Progressives can redeploy left vocabulary to defend an autocratic populist regime. — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 351