The white supremacist Alt-Right movement has grown over the last eight years or so, incubated in racist forums like StormFront and meme-loving corners of the internet like 4chan and 8chan. Its members generally share a disdain for political correctness, feminism, zionism, Jews in general, immigration (especially Hispanic and Muslim immigration), and anyone who criticizes them for holding these views.
This is the election that introduced 99% of Americans to a group of people living in their midst who they’d never heard of before—the“alt-right”, who make up a significant portion of Donald J. Trump’s voting base. If Trump’s campaign can be taken as an indicator, if and when he is elected these are the kinds of people we can expect to see elevated to higher positions in the United States government and implementing policy.
Our media have jumped all over themselves trying to describe who or what the “alt-right” is, but most of them seem to agree that these folks are all about promoting their “white identity,” which, fairly translated, means their "white superiority.” There is also general agreement that these “alt-righties” are taking their cues from older Baby Boomer and Gen X racists who made the leap at the turn of the Millennium from obscure shortwave radio conversations and furtive meetings in each others’ basements to the much more public-friendly Internets and “social media:”
The alt-right has its origins in the white nationalists and “white identity” movements of the 1990s, but in the past year, it has found a home on Twitter and other social media, where adherents traffic in white supremacist and anti-Semitic memes; threaten and harass female, nonwhite, and Jewish users: and decry “white genocide,” defined as multiculturalism.
The comfort and safety of the Internet has been a boon like no other for white supremacists. They can find like-minded soulmates and “hang” with people as racist as themselves long into the night, trading witty observations, venting their frustrations, and honing their intellectual pretensions. There’s even a “white people dating site.”
And like any successful movement, leaders have emerged. Three of the most visible ones are Jared Taylor, founder of the white supremacist “American Renaissance" website, Richard Spencer, President of something called the “National Policy Institute,” described as a “white supremacist think-tank,” and Peter Brimelow, President of a non-profit called VDARE, that warns against the “polluting of America by non-whites, Catholics, and Spanish-speaking immigrants.”
But the single most galvanizing event in the history of this unabashedly “modern” white supremacist movement has been their warm embrace by the Republican Party in the personage of Donald J. Trump. Not only has Trump provided aid and comfort to these racists, he has exponentially increased their media exposure, most prominently through the right-wing news site, Breitbart News. Trump’s hiring of Breitbart's CEO white nationalist-promoting Steve Bannon as his campaign manager effectively sealed the deal between Trump and this “digital supremacist” generation:
The site says it had 31 million visitors in July. And in March, it ran a piece describing Taylor, Spencer, and their ilk as “fearsomely intelligent,” and praising them for speaking truth to power or whatever.
On Friday afternoon these three gathered in the Willard hotel ballroom half a block from the White House for their very first press conference:
Spencer, Brimelow and Taylor at Friday’s press conference, unveiling a new white supremacist logo. Photograph by Rosie Gray of BuzzFeed News.In a windowless room in a swanky hotel half a block from the White House on Friday afternoon, three of the most visible leaders of the Alt-Right movement held a two-hour press conference to discuss their affection for Donald Trump and their hopes for a white homeland.
One of the speakers, hardcore Trump supporter Jared Taylor, authored a column last August for the white supremacist publication American Renaissance, titled “Is Trump Our Last Chance?:” in which he wistfully imagined the future under a Trump Presidency in which racism would gain a new “respectability:”
A change in tone would be as dramatic as a change in policy because a president and his cabinet have tremendous influence that goes well beyond policy. They can put a subject on the national agenda just by talking about it. They can make it respectable just by continuing to talk about it. Actually looking at the pros and cons of immigrants could open the door to looking at the pros and cons of different groups of people. White, high-IQ, English-speaking people obviously assimilate best, and someone in a Trump administration might actually say so.
During Friday's conference Taylor explained the philosophy that sustains these folks:
Jared Taylor, who founded the white supremacist American Renaissance site, explained the Alt-Right as predicated entirely on the belief that some races are inherently superior to others—the movement, he said, is “in unanimity” in rejecting “the idea that the races are basically equivalent and interchangeable.” There are genetic differences in race that make some races more ethical and intelligent than others, he said. That’s what the Alt Right is all about.
“They also differ, as a matter of fact, in the patterns of the microbes that inhabit their mouths,” he said.
Yep. He actually said that.
Richard Spencer, another conference speaker, has in the past explicitly spelled out the need to establish ”white identity:”
"Race is real. Race matters and race is the foundation of identity," said Richard Spencer, one of the group's leaders and activists.
Spencer advocates for an all-white “homeland.” During yesterday’s Press Conference, he made it clear that the “homeland" he envisions would not include Jews:
Spencer in particular fixates on the homeland idea.
The Alt-Right needs to aspire to something, even if that dream won’t come true in his lifetime—and that means they should aim to build an ethno-state for just whites. And Spencer made it clear that white-only means Jews aren’t invited. They have their own identity, and it isn’t white-slash-European, and that’s that.
Like Taylor, Spencer applauded Donald Trump for breathing new life into a movement that had previously been limited to slinking about in the shadows, but he and all of the speakers took pains to stress that that their existence was not dependent wholly on Trump’s candidacy:
"It is in a way projecting on to him our hopes and dreams," said Spencer, a man who has said before he dreams of a white ethnostate. "We have not been made by Trump, but we want to make Trump and we want to imagine him in our image."
The key takeaway from the press conference was that now that they have seen their star rise thanks to Trump, these people have no intention of crawling back under their rocks:
The overwhelming message was that the alt right is not going away even if Trump loses, or if Trump wins and begins to disappoint them. The message was that the alternative right is awakened and it's ready not to back down even after its brief moment in the spotlight subsides.
Taylor told the audience that his job wouldn't be over until at a PTA meeting, a woman could rise to defend the fact that fewer African Americans were in AP classes because they had a lower IQ and "no one objects."
It seems like only a few short months ago that the idea of a group of white supremacists holding a “press conference” to shower praise on a Presidential candidate would have been unthinkable. If nothing else, the candidacy of Donald Trump has elevated these people and their “philosophy” to national status.
Americans will have their chance to thank him for that in less than 60 days.