You and I don’t get to define what the alt-lite/IDW is. That’s the point of my paragraph about Bari Weiss’ essay. They embraced the label of fringe thinkers because it adequately describes them. Putting someone like Steven Crowder or Ben Shapiro nearly in the same ballpark as mainstream conservatives is just flat-out wrong. “Heartland republicans” for instance — which constitute the majority of conservative constituency in the US — are the Church-going, evolution-denying variety — contrast that with what the New Right is saying, and there’s a clear stark difference.

And if we concede to the fact that they’re still rank-and-file conservatives, it is then also the case that conservatism has moved further rightward, and that has made it far more welcoming to ideas by the likes of Jordan Peterson and Sam Harris. You simply can’t abdicate the alt-lite or the alt-right from being who they are based on consensus, and just chalk it up to a corruption of the meaning of “liberalism”. Liberalism hasn’t had much to do with “Libera” (unconditional freedom that is) since the dawn of modern democracy.