Old-guard racists like David Duke aren’t the only white nationalists to have been encouraged by Donald Trump’s candidacy this year: His bid has also provided a tremendous boost to a newer movement calling itself the “alt right.”
Up until now, the alt right labored mostly in obscurity, its internal fights and debates hidden from anyone who wasn’t directly looking for them. But all that’s starting to change, and it’s only getting stronger.
“This is really a phenomenon that’s been happening over the last year,” said Richard Spencer, president of the white nationalist National Policy Institute. “2015 has been huge.”
The movement probably doesn’t look like anything you’ve seen before. The alt right is loosely connected, and mostly online. The white nationalists of the alt right share more in common with European far-right movements than American ones. This is a movement that draws upon relatively obscure political theories like neoreaction or the “Dark Enlightenment,” which reject the premises on which modernity is built, like democracy and egalitarianism. But it’s not all so high-minded as that. Take a glance at the #altright hashtag on Twitter or at The Right Stuff, an online hub of the movement, and you’ll find a penchant for aggressive rhetoric and outright racial and anti-Semitic slurs, often delivered in the arch, ironic tones common to modern internet discourse. Trump is a hero on the alt right and the subject of many adoring memes and tweets.
In short, it’s white supremacy perfectly tailored for our times: 4chan-esque racist rhetoric combined with a tinge of Silicon Valley-flavored philosophizing, all riding on the coattails of the Trump boom. ...
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