Richard Spencer came up with the term “alt-right” some years ago in an attempt to provide a cool-sounding euphemism to describe a bunch of people who might otherwise have been labeled “f*cking Nazis.”
This past weekend, Spencer and roughly 200 other “alt-rightists” put on suits to attend the annual conference organized by Spencer’s innocuous-sounding National Policy Institute and held in the Ronald Reagan Building in Washington, D.C. And Spencer apparently forgot the number one rule of alt-right club, which is: Don’t talk about Adolf Hitler, at least not anywhere where non-alt-rightists can hear you.
Spencer didn’t literally bring up Hitler by name, but his evocation of the old man was not what you’d call subtle. After most journalists had left the premises, Spencer gave a speech the Atlantic describes as “dripping with anti-Semitism” and blatant racism, declaring the United States a “a white country” that rightfully “belongs to us.”
“Hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory,” Spencer called out, raising his right arm in what looked more than a little bit like a Nazi salute. Many in the audience responded with Nazi salutes of their own, no ambiguity about them.
Here’s video of the whole embarrassing spectacle, courtesy of The Atlantic.
Err… Re-reading my post, I just realised how White Feminist™-y and “What about the womenz” it sounded. That wasn’t my intention at all – I don’t think that anybody should be focussing on feminist issues over racial issues or anything horrible like that, only that they should be focussing on both equally. Apologies, my wording skills take a serious dive when I’m confused. >_>;
@SFHC
That’s how I read what your comment 🙂
@SFHC,
What Axe said 🙂
I hate the Illinois Alt-right.
@Scildfreja,
Earlier you posted a picture of an orchid mantis, but in my browser the picture doesn’t show up and there isn’t even enough space in the comment box for a missing picture. I also notice that sometimes David makes reference to pics he sticks in his stories that don’t show up as well, or sometimes I just see a yellowish square where a pic could be.
I only notice this on this site. Obviously something is not set right in my firefox browser. Other pictures, gifs, videos, etc. show up just fine. Could you tell me what format the pic you posted was in so I can use that as a starting point in figuring out what I’ve got wrong? thanks
“I should note that this classification long predated the Nazis in German anthropology. Uralic speaking peoples were thought to be at least in large part Asian, and that really pissed Finnish nationalists in the late 19th/early 20th century. So unfair of the international community to not recognize our totally real whiteness! When Finland first succeeded in the early international beauty contests – essentially whiteness contests for white nations – that was a huge deal here just from white supremacism standpoint.”
This is interesting to me, because over in Tumblr’s social justice circles, the release of “Frozen” produced a storm of argument and posturing about the whiteness/PoCness of the Saami in particular, and whether Kristof had been whitewashed and appropriated. They wanted him to be darker, I believe, and insisted that the blondeness of modern Saami was only due to ‘assimilation’. (Actual Saami trying to help with this discussion got shut down.)
gijoel: the Illinois nazi running for US Senate lost.
In part because he doubted on racial grounds that his opponent, Tammy Duckworth, was DAR. Her mother is Thai.
I’ve always thought of DAR as a racist organization devoted to erasing minorities from the history of the US revolution. Has that actually changed?
I grew up in Canada’s version of the alt right (back when they were called the Reform movement). I considered myself part of it until I was about 20. I can tell you a few things about it, from the POV of someone who was on the inside:
1. White supremacy isn’t a bug, it’s a feature. If you trace back the origins of the Reform movement in Canada, you wind up encountering white nationalist and supremacist groups like the Christian Heritage Front and the Northern Foundation. In fact, our ex-PM, Stephen Harper, was a founding member of the Northern Foundation. In the States, if you scratch the surface of the alt-right, you wind up at the KKK and the NPI. A lot of right-wing conservatives act ever-so-shocked when the alt-right does something explicitly white supremacist (see also the furor over the Nazi salutes to Trump), but they’re blowing smoke: Anyone with serious involvement in the movement knows for damn sure that it’s a white supremacist movement, or they’re willfully blind to it.
2. An alt-right leader is a neo-Nazi with a suit on. Look into alt-right rhetoric and compare it with neo-Nazi rhetoric. It’s the same argument, with a “respectable” coat of paint slapped on.
3. The alt-right will never admit to being racist. In the 90s and 00s when I was in, they used the term “race skeptic” and I’m not sure what they use now. But racist? They’ll deny that. Noooo, they’re not racist, you’re the real racist for calling them racist! See also: they seek to dilute the meaning of the word racist and use it as a catch-all perjorative, so as to muddy the waters about who is talking about what when the racism question is raised.
4. The alt-right actively seeks out single-issue voters to pull into the fold. A lot of people who aren’t alt-righters to begin with get pulled in because the alt-right parrots their unpopular beliefs surrounding gun control, or abortion, or what have you. They know single-issue voters will hold their nose and vote for whomever gives their cause even the barest of favorable lip-service, and by going after them hard, they can mobilize a number of highly devoted minorities – get enough of them and you get a huge leg-up in the election. See also Donald Trump’s campaign strategy.
5. The alt-right actively seeks out white men in stressful periods of their lives – ex-military guys having trouble with the transition to civvie life, kids fresh out of high school adjusting to work or to college, etc.
6. Sexism is not a bug in the alt-right – it’s also a feature. They try to brainwash their daughters into thinking they shouldn’t have suffrage. Very often I was handed shit written by women like Ann Coulter and other less famous names in their movement, arguing that women already have the “amazing power” of birthing and rearing children and so we don’t need the vote. (FYI folks: I’m trans, so he pronouns. That I was raised as a girl doesn’t mean I am one).
7. They actively seek out “pets” – by which I mean token minorities who will uncritically parrot their bullshit – Ann Coulter and the like. I was one – this brainwashed teenager agrees with me, therefore you’re the real sexist for accusing me of sexism.
8. The alt-right has a masterful sales process, and their funnel starts at Fox News. Back in the 90s it relied a lot more on message boards and “alternative” newspapers, but nowadays, the process goes a bit like this:
8.1. They attack main-stream networks for liberal bias, trying to sow doubt in the reliability of actually balanced networks. They hold up Fox as the actual source of fair and balanced news coverage (see also why “fair and balanced” was a big part of Fox’s marketing ploy for a while). They do this while exploiting the Doctrine of Equal Time to get themselves on the air in mainstream networks, because mainstream networks are fucking terrified of accusations of bias, even when obviously spurious.
8.2 Fox promotes figures in the alt-right and also promotes alt-right lies and conspiracy theories – often under the plausible deniability of I’m “just asking questions.” Those who are already leaning that way self-select and look up more on these people or theories – and usually wind up at Brietbart.
8.3 Brietbart continues the radicalization by bombarding them with bigoted stories. At some point the person is recommended towards one of a number of extremist websites. People are encouraged to stop reading or talking to people who disagree with the alt-right’s viewpoint. At the same time, they’re learning the alt-right’s code and whistlewords.
8.4 – they start getting most of their “news” from these extremist sites. They’ve long since abandoned meaningful discourse with those who disagree. Questioning is met with aggression. They have their own code and whistlewords so they can say something that sounds relatively benign in mainstream but other alt-righters will know who they’re talking to. Sales process is complete.
Note: If it sounds like I’m describing a cult’s recruiting practice, you’re right!
Note 2: The book The Authoritarians by Prof. Bob Altemeyer is illuminating when you read it in regards to the Alt Right, and it was what completed my deconversion.
Note 3: One of the big things for the alt-right is to get people into a self-imposed echo-chamber ASAP and keep them there. Exposure to diversity and other ways of thinking is the antidote to alt-right extremism. Case in point: It’s hard to believe that Muslims are all child-killing religious extremist monsters when you work with Nadia, an hijabi woman from Saudi Arabia who’s studying for a graduate degree so she can improve education standards for women back home and with Hamid from Turkey who likes to play soccer and is about the biggest social liberal you’d ever meet.
9. The alt-right grooms their children as soldiers. Authroritarian parenting so you don’t question orders, gun training from an early age, brainwashing to think of Liberals as the Enemy who wants to turn “this great nation” into a “communist totalitarian regime”. They raise their kids to be terrified of anyone who disagrees with them – because they know if you think the liberal next door will have a boot on your neck in a year, you don’t exactly want to go make friends.
10. The average alt-righter has convinced themselves they are genuinely oppressed. They genuinely believe the shit coming out of their mouths – even when it’s self contradictory, and especially when they pretend it’s a joke even before they say it. Jokes test the water to see if you’re receptive – if you are, they bring you in deeper.
11. Fake news isn’t a bug in the alt-right – it’s a feature. See above about Brietbart and echo chambers. The alt-right propaganda engine is well-developed, and their marketing and organization is much, much stronger than the left gives them credit for. Trump won because the left underestimated the alt-right. They look like they don’t have their shit together – but that’s on purpose. They want you to think they don’t have their shit together so you underestimate them. They’re masters of the long game, and of coordination and strategy and of getting their message out to receptive ears. Generally, the left is not – hence why Hillary Clinton won the popular vote by more than any candidate in recent history and still lost the electoral college.
12. The alt-right is like a doomsday cult, if you replace Armageddon with civil war. Every few months, there’s a new figurehead urging people to prepare for the “inevitable” civil war that will be here by [insert date here]. When that date comes and goes, it’s attributed to the actions of the “peace-loving” alt-right leaders, and not to the fact that the Left is not in fact a tyranny in the making. I spent my entire fucking childhood believing my country would be at war before my next birthday – and I’d been groomed to not even question the “reality” that I’d be a soldier in that war. Imagine feeling at 8 that you’ll be a child soldier by 9.
I could go on about some of the higher-ups’ more scary ideas, but I’m not sure what the character limit is here so I’ll stop there.
@chemgeek
Bruh, if there was a limit, you’d have crushed it a few times over by now ?
Hiya, I’m Axe! Sorry ya had to go thru all that, and thanks for the insight. Welcome package on the right side of the page. It’s got kitties! And don’t be a stranger, eh?
chemgeek,
On your point number 3, I hear the term race realist as a euphemism for Nazi.