{"id":117719,"date":"2017-09-27T07:53:28","date_gmt":"2017-09-27T15:53:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=117719"},"modified":"2017-09-27T07:53:28","modified_gmt":"2017-09-27T15:53:28","slug":"the-alt-right-after-charlottesville","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=117719","title":{"rendered":"The Alt Right After Charlottesville"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Haaretz<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cThere\u2019s really no going back from Charlottesville,\u201d she says. \u201cAs the movement moved offline, elements like trolling and the nihilistic culture of transgression have kind of dropped away.\u201d The movement has shed its online persona to appear like its true self.
\nGeorge Hawley, a political scientist at the University of Alabama, also spent years studying the alt-right and white-nationalist movements. His new book, \u201cMaking Sense of the Alt-Right,\u201d studies the movement\u2019s evolution and the differences \u2013 and similarities \u2013 to previous white-nationalist movements.
\nUnlike the white-nationalist movements of the 1980s and \u201990s, which he says \u201cwere not known for attracting people who were particularly talented or bright,\u201d the alt-right was youthful and tech savvy, totally different from previous white-supremacist movements like the KKK, which the alt-right viewed as ineffective and derisively called \u201cwhite nationalism 1.0.\u201d Uniquely, the alt-right was leaderless, not beset by \u201cwannabe f\u00fchrers.\u201d It offered anonymity and laughs.
\n\u201cAlthough I think the people pushing the movement for the most part were all serious, part of its appeal with lots of young people was that there was a spirit of youthful rebellion about it,\u201d Hawley says. \u201cIt was also offering something more attractive than William Pierce ever did,\u201d he adds, referring to the American white nationalist who founded the National Alliance in 1974. As Hawley puts it, the alt-right presented itself as \u201csomething you can be a part of that\u2019s fun and also safe. You get to laugh along the way. I don\u2019t think anybody is going to join Aryan Nation with that in mind,\u201d referring to the white supremacist religious organization.
\nHawley agrees with Nagle that the ironic phase is over and that the movement is turning into a more typical white-nationalist movement. Starting earlier this year, Hawley says, people in the alt-right realized that \u201cthere are limits to what internet harassments and memes and trolling campaigns could accomplish,\u201d so a push to take it off the internet and into the real world ensued.
\nBut that gambit backfired with Charlottesville and the last month has seen a break between the movement and much of the online troll army that helped the alt-right explode onto the international stage. Many of the trolls simply broke with the movement.
\n\u201cI think there\u2019s a growing indication, especially after a big wave of doxxing, that this isn\u2019t a game that people can just engage in and disengage from without potential for real consequences,\u201d Hawley says.
\nNagle says that in Charlottesville, \u201cthe alt-right wasn\u2019t being ironic, for once.\u201d It was very obvious that the movement believed in white nationalism. That, she says, forced a break between the more fervently ideological faction and people just along for the ride.
\n\u201cAll those guys who spent time in all these forums, now after Charlottesville, see they\u2019re not willing to go through with what it would take to turn their flirtations with the far right into something real. They don\u2019t have the serious political commitment to really be part of the movement that Richard Spencer is leading,\u201d Nagle says.
\n\u201cThey\u2019re not going to go and face down militarized riot police and Antifa [the anti-fascist movement at the forefront of the counterprotests], they\u2019re not serious enough about their goals. In many cases, I think these were young people who enjoyed the fun of transgression, but hadn\u2019t really seriously thought through the gravity of the ideas that they were flirting with.\u201d
\nStill in the game
\nPart of the problem, Hawley says, is that once the alt-right stepped into the outside world, it looked less like its youthful, rebellious online persona and \u201ca lot like the earlier white nationalism they had been trying to distinguish themselves from.\u201d
\nStill, Hawley and Nagle don\u2019t believe that the blows of the past month mean the alt-right is close to an end just yet, despite all the arrests and disavowals.
\n\u201cThere are people who were really enthusiastic about the alt-right\u2019s message before \u2013 they probably still are. If somebody was committed to the creation of a new ethno-state, it\u2019s unlikely that they\u2019ve had a real change of heart,\u201d Hawley says.
\nThe problem for the alt-right, he argues, is that after Charlottesville, it\u2019s unclear how to harness the youthful energy of online trolling and turn it into a unified, serious white-nationalist movement. \u201cI\u2019m not sure they really know how to move forward without going back and doing the things that were ineffectual before,\u201d he says.
\nAs for the near future, Hawley suggests that a model more akin to European far-right movements \u2013 groups that \u201cdon\u2019t announce months in advance exactly what they\u2019re going to do and where they\u2019re going to do it\u201d \u2013 seems likely: PR stunts like taking over mosques.
\nAs Hawley puts it, \u201cThey can\u2019t really have big rallies, but they can show up, make a show of force, take the pictures they want to take and then disperse. I\u2019m thinking of the mosque occupation in France a few years ago. I wouldn\u2019t be surprised if that might be a model that is more likely to be replicated in the U.S.\u201d
\nBut the alt-right is a leaderless movement, which means in-house opinions about its future vary widely. Some people, Hawley says, think the alt-right should lay low for a while and let Antifa \u201coverstay their welcome,\u201d while others want a \u201cmillion Charlottesvilles.\u201d
\nThe most energized faction seems to be the so-called alt-tech, which aims to create the white-nationalist movement\u2019s own technological infrastructure \u2013 things like social media, fundraising platforms and web-hosting services \u2013 now that so many web-service companies are banning it.
\n\u201cWe tend to think in terms of groups and organizations, but the alt-right still hasn\u2019t achieved that yet,\u201d Hawley says. \u201cIt\u2019s still sort of a thousand monkeys on a thousand typewriters kind of movement.\u201d
\nAccording to Nagle, the bigger problem is that the anger that sparked the movement hasn\u2019t dissipated. The alt-right, she says, has lost a lot of activists who are afraid of the consequences, but still believe in the movement\u2019s core messages. And though the alt-right finds itself diminished, she says, the threat of violence might be bigger now that the stalwarts don\u2019t have to placate the more moderate wing, and now that the movement is linked to the far-right militia movement.
\n\u201cI worry that there\u2019s this group of particularly younger men who have not been convinced that they\u2019re wrong,\u201d Nagle says, adding that the anger still exists.
\n\u201cIt\u2019s not that they\u2019ve been convinced that any of their critiques of liberalism or feminism are wrong, because there is a real crisis in liberalism and its ability to defend its own ideas and inspire people,\u201d she says. \u201cThat problem is not going to go away. It\u2019s just going to continue festering and take different forms.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From Haaretz: \u201cThere\u2019s really no going back from Charlottesville,\u201d she says. \u201cAs the movement moved offline, elements like trolling and the nihilistic culture of transgression have kind of dropped away.\u201d The movement has shed its online persona to appear like … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[42720],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-117719","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-alt-right"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t