A new book examines the rise of the ‘alt-right' in the US and its impact on the country's politics
In the weeks after Trump's election, an up-and-comer on the far right named Richard Spencer appeared on NBC, NPR, and CNN. Profiles of him appeared in the Washington Post and the Los Angeles Times. More were in the works. Showtime was putting out feelers for a documentary. Then, just before Thanksgiving, Spencer gave a speech at the annual conference of his think tank, the National Policy Institute. NPI was dedicated to the 'preservation of the heritage, identity, and future of European people in the US and elsewhere.' Spencer might have ended his speech declaring that America belonged to Europeans. But he knew his moment. America belonged to white people.
'America was, until this past generation, a white country designed for ourselves and our posterity. It is our creation; it is our inheritance, and it belongs to us.'
This was met with a roar of approval from the hundred or so men assembled, culminating in scattered, stiff-armed Nazi salutes, like a mini-Nuremberg rally. He acknowledged these with a sloppy salute, not bothering to put down his drink. A clip of this went viral. I watched it while tracing the arc of Spencer's journey from obscurity to Charlottesville. And when I did, something about the world I had known abruptly shifted. Two 20th-century sources of national pride, providing decades of patriotic uplift, collapsed in a heap. That we had fought a 'Good War' against the horrors of Nazism and fascism. That our country's civil rights leaders had scored a moral triumph over racist Southerners and politics as usual. I knew these were national mythologies that historians did their best to complicate; by pointing out the Red Army's role in breaking the back of the Wehrmacht, for example, or the communist and nationalist forces of China doing the same to Japan. Still, it hadn't occurred to me that the American creed they embodied could be dispensed with altogether, replaced by something called the 'alt-right.'
This was a term coined by Spencer in 2008, on the eve of Obama's election and the collapse of the US economy. The alt-right was a reaction to mainstream Republican politics, to the Christian right, libertarianism, paleo-conservatism, and the 'war on terror.' It was the online edge lord's response to what was once called political correctness or multiculturalism and is now called woke. It was old-fashioned white nationalism and white supremacy, with its grab bag of bigotries, wrapped in contrarian, countercultural, and hypermasculine cool. Like the hip alt-weeklies of yore, it had its own outlets where an ironic sense of style and subversive humour had been shaped and fashioned in the company of those with like-minded dispositions.
Kicked off traditional social media, the figureheads of this new movement created a replacement 'alt-tech' with their own browsers, plug-ins, payment processors, web hosting, domain registrations, and VPN services. 'They are just building a copycat version of the internet playground,' data scientist Megan Squire has said, describing how the rise of these new platforms allowed men like Spencer to say the formerly unsayable in the name of edginess. In so doing, the 'alt-right' stole the glamour of the rebel, the revolutionary, the outlaw, the punk, and the perennial stance of épater les bourgeois from the boomer left. They used it to skewer the moral pretensions and ideological conformity of progressives, and the square, self-serving Republicans in Name Only, War on Terror–supporting dads. For many, it had a dark, naughty allure. I got it.
With a knowing nod to Steve Bannon, with whom he keenly aspired to ally himself, Richard Spencer used the media attention to openly audition for the role of Trump's brain. He offered a political language for the incoming administration. No more foreign wars, a proud embrace of white heritage, the cultivation of white grievance, a flirty fascism, and a renunciation of 'globalism.'
The latter was a newish euphemism, replacing cosmopolitan, for Jews. But it was also an abstraction that needed a face. The Jewish financier and funder of democracy initiatives George Soros provided it. Similarly, the woke liberal elite driving the conversation in media, business, and culture, were either Jews or in the pay of Jews, and thus hostile to a political order in which Christian white men claimed ascendancy. In place of the founders' notion of religious freedom, one that, on paper, protected not just Jews and Muslims, but also atheists and infidels, the alt- right proposed a Christian nation, if Christianity is understood to be an aspect of white heritage, stripped of long- standing ethical notions of right and wrong. Some foresaw an indivisible, sea-to-shining-sea, white nation; others, a confederacy of single-race, single-religion 'ethnostates.'
Spencer even called himself a Christian Zionist; Israel, which quarantined and policed Christian and Muslim Palestinians in the townships of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, exemplified his idea of an ethnostate. The two movements had a shared history. In 1941, a right-wing Zionist proposed to a German diplomat the solution to the Jewish 'problem' lay in Jewish resettlement in Palestine. By then of course Nazi Germany had other plans. And when, in a debate with Spencer, a rabbi at Texas A&M Hillel insisted that the Torah taught 'radical inclusion and love,' Spencer pointed out that, on the contrary, blood and soil white nationalists shared not only the Zionists' vision of a single-race ethnostate but a virulent hostility to assimilation. The rabbi had no answer to that.
Spencer was far happier debating who would or wouldn't be admitted to his Klan than getting to the nitty-gritty of how to make one hundred million Americans disappear. In a bold step beyond Mitt Romney's 'self-deportation,' Spencer called for 'a peaceful ethnic cleansing.' He was joking. There would be nothing peaceful about it. In 2012, Spencer had published a piece on the AltRight.com website titled 'Is Black Genocide Right?'
'Instead of asking how we can make reparations for slavery … we should instead be asking questions like 'Does human civilisation actually need the black race?' [and] 'What would be the best and easiest way to dispose of them?'' This went overboard and was taken down, like a product release before the market was ready. Spencer's cavalier pose over the prospect of genocide was calculated to throw a normal person off, stuck in 'he can't be serious' mode. One journalist wrote that Spencer's ideas didn't arise from deep conviction. It was an intellectual exercise, 'performed for his own amusement.' The ferocity of his vendettas argued otherwise. Spencer isn't amused. That's an affectation. He is enraged.
Amid the media furor he'd stoked by summoning Adolf Hitler, Richard Spencer decided just then to appear on the podcast of Andrew Anglin, the balding, squirrelly-eyed editor of the neo-Nazi website the Daily Stormer. Why, I wondered, with the mainstream media at his feet? Because he was embarked on a vendetta. Spencer divided his time between a loft above a chocolate shop in Alexandria, Virginia, and the picturesque mountain ski resort of Whitefish, Montana (pop. 8000), where his Dallas-based parents had a vacation home. In the latest chapter of a long-running feud, the Whitefish city council had recently declared Spencer persona non grata. This was where Andrew Anglin came in.
'Never back down' was Spencer's personal credo. He had started with the local paper. His wife wrote a letter accusing the city council of orchestrating a Stalinist witch hunt against her husband. A social death sentence, perhaps, but a henchman's bullet at the back of the head? A midnight transport to the gulag? Overstating the harm, then playing the victim, was part of the white nationalist toolbox. Rand and Sherry Spencer, Richard's parents, wrote another letter. A downtown commercial property his mother had developed was being unfairly targeted by protesters. Her Realtor made the mild suggestion: sell it. For Spencer, this amounted to backing down. Time for the big guns.
Andrew Anglin and Richard Spencer scarcely knew each other, but they understood each other. Learning of Spencer's feud with the Whitefish city council, Anglin activated his cyber mob. When Sherry Spencer's Jewish Realtor picked up her phone, she heard gunshots. Then slurs: 'You fucking wicked kike whore.' She was doxed. One of Anglin's boys made a meme featuring a photo of her 12- year-old son at the Auschwitz gate. The campaign spread to local rabbis, and then anyone with a vaguely Jewish name. Local businesses that exhibited 'Love Lives Here' window signs had their phone lines tied up. The governor met with the mayor, but there was little anyone could do.
Though the practice of choreographed mega harassment has since become ubiquitous, the experience felt unprecedented to Whitefish residents hoping to spend their retirement in vigorous exercise. Two people involved in preparing Charlottesville for the Unite the Right rally told me the saga known as Gamergate was an important inflexion point in the development of the weapon Andrew Anglin unleashed on Whitefish after Richard Spencer's appearance on his podcast. Even gaming journalists struggled to describe what was underway when, between August and October 2014, over two million posts attached to the Gamergate hashtag went out on various social media, but largely on Twitter and Reddit.
Excerpted with permission from Charlottesville: A Story of Rage and Resistance, Deborah Baker, Penguin Random House.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Time of India
32 minutes ago
- Time of India
Federal judge says Trump can't tie state funding to immigration enforcement
A US judge on Thursday stopped the Trump administration from forcing 20 Democratic-led states to help with immigration enforcement in order to receive federal transportation grants. Chief US District Judge John McConnell in Rhode Island ruled that the US Department of Transportation cannot require states to work with Immigration and Customs Enforcement ( ICE ) to get billions in funding. The judge said this condition violated the US Constitution. 'Congress did not authorize or give authority to the Secretary of Transportation to impose immigration enforcement conditions on federal dollars meant for transportation,' McConnell wrote in his ruling. by Taboola by Taboola Sponsored Links Sponsored Links Promoted Links Promoted Links You May Like Join new Free to Play WWII MMO War Thunder War Thunder Play Now Undo The judge added that the administration failed to show any logical link between cooperating with ICE and the purpose of the transportation grants, which are meant for highways, bridges, and other public works. (Join our ETNRI WhatsApp channel for all the latest updates) The 20 states, along with local governments, had sued after Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy warned them they could lose funding if they did not help enforce federal immigration law. Duffy's April 24 notice told states they must support ICE or risk losing money for road and bridge projects. Live Events RECOMMENDED STORIES FOR YOU 'Any illegal immigrants?' Trump asks White House workers about deportation status Trump shifts immigration enforcement to US cities after farm sector backlash America's immigration mess shows it failing as a nation of laws McConnell's ruling blocks the policy while the lawsuit continues. The Trump administration had defended its policy as part of its broad crackdown on sanctuary cities and states that refuse to help with immigration arrests. Since returning to office in January, Trump has signed several executive orders calling for cuts to funding for jurisdictions that do not assist ICE. California Attorney General Rob Bonta welcomed the judge's decision. 'Trump was treating these funds — money for roads and public safety — as a bargaining chip,' Bonta said. The states also have another case in Rhode Island challenging similar conditions the Homeland Security Department placed on other grant programs. The Trump administration has not yet commented on the ruling.
Indian Express
32 minutes ago
- Indian Express
‘You can worry about this later': Trump rejects Putin's offer to broker Israel-Iran ceasefire, asks him to mediate his own first
Amid the ongoing Israel-Iran conflict, US President Donald Trump said he rejected his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin's offer to mediate a ceasefire between the two longstanding foes in the Middle East, telling him to focus on brokering his own peace deal with Ukraine first. 'I spoke to Putin yesterday and he actually offered to help mediate,' Trump told reporters on Wednesday (June 18). 'I said, 'Do me a favour, mediate your own. Let's mediate Russia first.' I said, 'Vladimir, let's mediate Russia first. You can worry about this later,' he added. Trump's remarks come after Putin, during his meeting with senior news leaders of international news agencies in St. Petersburg, said that Russia had shared proposals with Israel, Iran and the United States to de-escalate the situation in the West Asia region. 'We are not imposing anything on anyone; we are simply talking about how we see a possible way out of the situation,' he said. 'But the decision, of course, is up to the political leadership of all these countries, primarily Iran and Israel.' He then affirmed that even though the situation is complex, a solution to the conflict is possible 'It's a delicate issue,' the Russian president said. 'In my view, a solution could be found.' Trump and Putin held a telephonic conversation on Saturday where the two leaders discussed the escalating tensions between Israel and Iran and also spoke about Russia's military campaign in Ukraine. Trump, in a post on his Truth Social handle, said that he and his Russian counterpart spoke about Israel's ballistic attacks on Tehran and Iran's retaliatory missile salvos, while also highlighting that he pressed the Russian president to end the war in Ukraine. 'President Putin called this morning to very nicely wish me a Happy Birthday, but to more importantly, talk about Iran, a country he knows very well,' Trump wrote. 'We talked at length. Much less time was spent talking about Russia/Ukraine, but that will be for next week. He is doing the planned prisoner swaps — large numbers of prisoners are being exchanged, immediately, from both sides,' he said. 'The call lasted approximately 1 hour. He feels, as do I, this war in Israel-Iran should end, to which I explained, his war should also end.'
Time of India
34 minutes ago
- Time of India
EU to press China for better rare earth access at July summit
European Union leaders will use a summit with China next month to seek better access to Chinese rare earths and critical minerals, four sources familiar with the plans said, as the two sides tackle an array of tariff-related issues. For years, China has had a near monopoly on rare earth production . It increased its export controls on the minerals, in demand from automakers, the defence industry and producers of renewable energy, following the tariffs announced by US President Donald Trump on April 2. China also has grievances with the EU as the bloc has sought to protect its auto-making sector from cheaper Chinese imports, while China has imposed measures on France's brandy industry. European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and European Council President Antonio Costa will travel to Beijing for the summit on July 24-25. It marks 50 years of EU-Chinese relations and will also take place two weeks after a deadline set by the United States for most trade partners to agree deals to avert higher tariffs. As automakers have said China's export restrictions on rare earth alloys, mixtures and magnets could cause production delays, European leaders are expected to press their case with President Xi Jinping and Premier Li Qiang in separate meetings, said an EU official, who declined to be identified. Two EU sources said the EU mission to China is solely focused on rare earths until the summit. China's ministry of commerce in May said a "green channel" expediting rare earth licences for EU firms had been set up. However, one EU diplomat said that out of several hundred applications, no more than half had shown signs of being processed. "The situation is improving, although the percentage of cleared licences does vary. Additionally, even once the licence is given, delays can still be seen in customs clearances," Adam Dunnett, secretary general of the European Chamber of Commerce in China, said. The quest to resolve the supply crunch is among a number of trade conflicts between Europe and China. Brussels has imposed tariffs on Chinese-made electric vehicles alleging unfair state subsidies, prompting China to impose anti-dumping measures on EU brandy. Beijing has also initiated trade probes into EU pork and some dairy goods. Beijing not Brussels The lead-up to the summit, has not been smooth. It had been Brussels' turn to be the host but after China indicated Xi would not travel to the Belgian capital, Beijing was chosen as the venue. Some EU officials said they did not expect the summit to produce major deals, one commenting that China was "playing its cards very well". The official said China had identified rare earths as a major vulnerability and was waiting until the last minute to make any concessions. The EU wants China to grant rare earth licences for a longer period or to scrap them for exports to the bloc. In any case, it wants Beijing to clearly differentiate between the EU and the United States. China offered to prioritise civilian-use rare earth export licences for US firms during talks in London earlier this month. "If China wants the EU equidistant between itself and the Trump administration, China's trade regimes cannot equate the US and Europe either," said Hosuk Lee-Makiyama, director of trade think tank ECIPE, who met senior Chinese officials last week. Another EU official said the impending deadline to secure an agreement with the United States, which might press the EU to be hard on China in exchange for moderating US tariffs, made it difficult for the EU to work on a deal with Beijing. The official said it was always possible the July 9 deadline would be postponed or that details of any US deal could emerge later, limiting the possibility of EU progress with China. China wants the EU to replace its import tariffs on Chinese electric vehicles with minimum price commitments and other concessions after it delayed the imposition of duties on EU brandy. China has said talks are in the final stages, but EU officials say progress has been limited.
