The alt-right may bill itself as something new, but its roots are in the white supremacist politicians of the late 20th century.<\/p>\n
The movement embraces much of the racism and xenophobia of this elder generation, generating racist cartoons, hosting discussions of \u201cthe Jewish question,\u201d and engaging in a passionate online discussion about the scientific justification for racism.<\/p>\n
And while some of the \u201calt-right\u2019s\u201d leaders are maneuvering away from figures that once defined the American extreme right, such as David Duke, he also created the political and ideological road map on which the newer movement has set its course. A former leader of the Klu Klux Klan, Duke once defined white supremacy in the American consciousness.<\/p>\n
White supremacist movements have often oscillated between imagining themselves purely as vehicles of hate \u2014 carrying out lynchings, church bombings and voter intimidation \u2014 and as more benign, \u201cpro-white\u201d organizations. Since at least 1954, the year of the Brown v. Board of Education decision, white supremacists have called for the specific protection of white rights. In October of that year, the leader of a fledgling organization called National Association for the Advancement of White People held a rally in Delaware to protest the rising tide of desegregation. The ostensibly nonviolent NAAWP, started by a \u201conetime Baltimore contractor who has brushed with the law over bogus checks,\u201d according to Time magazine, was \u201cnot anti-Negro but just prowhite [sic].\u201d<\/p>\n
Though the original NAAWP petered out within a year, the name was resurrected in 1980 by David Duke after his exit from the KKK. The ambitious former Grand Wizard had decided that the Klan was not the organization from which to launch a political campaign.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Klan had gained too much reputation of being violent,\u201d said Tyler Bridges, author of The Rise of David Duke. \u201cWhat he hoped to do was continue to get the media attention by forming the NAAWP without the baggage of the violence.\u201d<\/p>\n
Over the course of his many runs for elected office throughout the late 1980s and 1990s, Duke spoke to the anxieties of working class whites in his home state of Louisiana with rhetoric that would be quite familiar to us in 2016.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn certain ways Duke was ahead of his time by tapping into the concerns of working class white people \u2014 that they were losing their country, that blacks were getting their places in school and at the workplace, and illegal aliens crossing the border took positions that really belonged to them,\u201d said Bridges.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a really a message tapping into grievances \u2014 a sense that the country, and the country and the state of Louisiana, were heading in the wrong direction. That the elites were against them,\u201d Bridges added.<\/p>\n
Duke turned white supremacy into a vehicle for advocacy, mixing politics with protection of the \u201csacred white gene pool.\u201d At the same time, white nationalist groups like the New Century Foundation, founded in 1994 by Jared Taylor, sought to help put a respectable face on white supremacy.<\/p>\n
They were \u201csuit-and-tie Nazis,\u201d Beirich said. \u201cThey wanted to look like respectable characters who were making \u2018rational\u2019 arguments about IQ and genetics.\u201d<\/p>\n
David Duke\u2019s downfall came when it became clear that his true preoccupation was not race relations, but Jewish control of the world economy and America\u2019s minorities.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was branded as an \u2018anti-Semitic loser,\u2019\u201d Tyler Bridges said. \u201cIf he didn\u2019t have the Jewish part of it he might have had more success in a national way.\u201d<\/p>\n
Until this year, Duke\u2019s last campaign was in 1999, which saw him once again repudiated by Republicans across the country. Without another nationally recognized face, American white supremacy seemed to be on a downward spiral for much of the 2000s.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
The idea of racial supremacy is unknown among Jews as is racism and xenophobia. Jews never feel the need to dominate anyone. <\/p>\n
Ari Feldman writes for the Forward: The alt-right may bill itself as something new, but its roots are in the white supremacist politicians of the late 20th century. The movement embraces much of the racism and xenophobia of this elder … Continue reading ![\"Israeli-attack\"](\"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/08\/Israeli-attack.jpg\")
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