Luke Ford

Weekly Standard: “The alt-right may not be who you think they are, according to George Hawley: “The notion that youthful rebellion necessarily leads young people to the left is an additional blind spot in mainstream thinking. To begin with, it is ahistorical. In the early 20th century we saw multiple transgressive movements on the right. Furthermore, as radical leftists of the baby boom generation assumed important positions in politics, academia, and the media, it should not have been shocking to see millennials with a contrarian streak respond by taking embracing right-wing radicalism. Not all such young people, of course, but enough to make waves. Another misconception about racism is that education is a panacea. Overall, higher education does apparently lead to lower levels of racial hostility. Yet again, the alt-right complicates this picture. The typical alt-right supporter does not lack education. The movement’s skillful use of the internet alone suggests otherwise. In interviews with people in the alt-right —including the movement’s leading voices and anonymous Twitter trolls—I found at least some degree of college education was a common denominator. To complicate matters further, many people in the alt-right were radicalized while in college. Not only that, but the efforts to inoculate the next generation of America’s social and economic leaders against racism were, in some cases, a catalyst for racist radicalization.”

George Hawley writes:

In my experience with the alt-right, I encountered a surprisingly common narrative: Alt-right supporters did not, for the most part, come from overtly racist families. Alt-right media platforms have actually been pushing this meme aggressively in recent months. Far from defending the ideas and institutions they inherited, the alt-right—which is overwhelmingly a movement of white millennials—forcefully condemns their parents’ generation. They do so because they do not believe their parents are racist enough.

In an inverse of the left-wing protest movements of the 1960s, the youthful alt-right bitterly lambast the “boomers” for their lack of explicit ethnocentrism, their rejection of patriarchy, and their failure to maintain America’s old demographic characteristics and racial hierarchy. In the alt-right’s vision, even older conservatives are useless “cucks” who focus on tax policies and forcefully deny that they are driven by racial animus.

Despite some growth over the last few years, the alt-right itself remains a small, mostly anonymous, and marginal movement. So when considering the attitudes of young people, it may be helpful to consider a much broader category: Trump supporters. How did the youngest white Americans respond to the most racially polarizing election in recent memory? It looks like they favored the man who campaigned on the promise of a border wall.

According to a large 2016 study conducted by the Hispanic Heritage Foundation, whites in high school favored Trump over Clinton by a staggering margin—larger even than Trump’s margin among adult white voters. Among this sample, 48 percent preferred Trump, 11 percent preferred Clinton, and the rest would not vote or choose another candidate.

One study is not definitive, and the political identities of Generation Z are still forming, but the rising generation of whites shows signs of being more right-wing than the millennials. It raises the possibility that a significant number of them will come to embrace open racism.

John Sharp writes for AL.com:

Most of the people identifying in the movement are younger, white men. “The alt-right is predominately millennials and even younger,” said Hawley, referring to those born after the early 1980s. “There seems to interest in it from the upcoming Generation Z, today’s high schoolers and where the alt-right hopes to see their big wave of interest.”

Hawley said the alternative right movement was first born in 2008, and the term “alt-right” was coined initially be Spencer. “It was then a fairly broad ecumenical term that could have been applied to anyone whose political thinking was right-wing, but they were opposed to George Busch conservatism.”

Two years later in 2010, Hawley said, the movement became more racial-focused. Alt-right beliefs focused in on isolationism, protectionism, nativism, and sometimes tied into Neo-Nazism, Islamophobia, homophobia and right-wing populism.

“Spencer stopped using it in 2014, and the (term) was doormat,” said Hawley. “In 2015, without direction or any one person pushing it, (the alt-right) emerged again on social media and online forums.”

Indeed, the “alt-right” has its roots on the Internet, where members often create and circulate Internet memes that express their ideologies. Members have utilized Twitter, Reddit and other social media platforms to convey their messages…

Charlottesville, Hawley added, “was an attempt at a real-world movement.” He classified it as a bit of a “coming out” in which “alt-right” protesters emerged from the anonymity of Internet trolling to the forefront of a public movement.

“Whether that was a start, remains to be seen,” said Hawley.

At least one media organization wants to disqualify the term all together. The Associated Press, this week, said it would avoid using the term “alt-right,” claiming it was an euphemism to disguise racist aims.

Pacific Standard magazine:

George Hawley: Although the term was created by the alt-right, and is suspect for that reason alone, the people involved in the March on Google can be called “alt-lite.” That is, they are similar in style and tone to the alt-right, but they generally shy away from white supremacist rhetoric. Understandably, this category does not prefer the term “alt-lite,” and instead usually refer to themselves as “New Right.” There is actually a tremendous amount of hostility between the two camps. Throughout the 2016 presidential election, the two sides generally got along, but after the post-election National Policy Institute conference—the one where Richard Spencer said, “Hail Trump,” and some in the audience gave Nazi salutes—people uncomfortable being in the same camp as white supremacists dropped the alt-right label.

Hawley: Both the alt-right and the alt-lite believe Damore did nothing wrong, and that this controversy demonstrates that Google does not believe in free expression. Thinking bigger picture, the alt-right community has been fighting with the tech giants because they run the risk of losing their major platforms. Being kicked off Twitter, YouTube, PayPal, and other sites can cause the alt-right real harm. This movement lives on the Internet, so if these corporations shut down white nationalist speech, the movement will have a hard time continuing.

That said, there are a lot of people associated with the alt-right that are extremely tech savvy. I know that some people associated with the movement are already at work trying to build their own platforms that will be independent of these giants. The extent of these future crackdowns on certain types of speech, and the alt-right’s ability to work around these challenges, remains to be seen.

ON WHAT ACTUALLY SETS THE FREE SPEECH FACTION APART FROM THE REST OF THE ALT-RIGHT MOVEMENT:

Hawley: I would say that both factions say they favor free speech, for strategic reasons, if not for principle. That said, a case can be made that the alt-lite has actually been less consistent than the alt-right in defending free speech, since it was two major alt-lite figures [Jack Posobiec and Laura Loomer] that recently disrupted a Shakespeare play because it depicted the assassination of a Trump-like figure. That seems to undercut their insistence that everyone deserves to have their say.

A problem for the alt-lite/new right is that it has a confusing message. It understandably wants to distance itself from the alt-right brand, which has become increasingly toxic. But aside from cheering on Trump, it does not really have a unique and compelling vision of its own. If Richard Spencer took over a country—which will never happen, but we are talking hypothetically—I know what kind of country he would create, and it is not a pretty picture. But if Posobiec or Mike Cernovich or Gavin McInnes were suddenly in power, I really do not know what they would do.

George J. Bryjak writes:

Hawley notes the characterization of alt-right as a rebranding of radical conservatism is inaccurate as alt-right websites have little if anything to say about the constitution, make no demands that everyone “support the troops,” and evangelical Christians “are more likely to be mocked than defended.” Many in the alt-right do not oppose abortion, noting this procedure is a form of “inferior race” birth control as more black and Hispanic women have abortions than white women. The alt-right despises gender equality, and many of its adherents argue that women should be denied the right to vote. For Hawley, the alt-right is “a distinct brand of conservatism as we know it” and a destabilizing force in American politics. The alt-right is benefitting from the decline of traditional conservatism and is “working to expedite its final collapse.”

According to Hawley, the alt-right cannot be considered a “mass movement” in the sense that Eric Hoffer used the term in “The True Believers.” Existing largely online, the alt-right has no formal organization and no leadership hierarchy. The goal of some alt-right members is the creation of one or more “white ethno-states” in North America. Less ambitious alt-right supporters want to end mass immigration and make a white-identity, social, cultural and political agenda the centerpiece of political discourse. While the alt-right has eschewed white robes and swastikas for suits and ties (“button-down racism”), the agenda of a bigot is the same, no matter how attired.

While the alt-right is lurking on the internet, long-standing hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and various neo-Nazi organizations have become emboldened since Trump became president. Members of these groups often refer to him as “GEOTUS” — “God Emperor of the United States.”