Making Sense of the Alt-Right

George Hawley

• Publisher: Columbia University Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9780231546003
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Radicalism
• Index: Politics & International Relations

During the 2016 election, a new term entered the mainstream American political lexicon: "alt-right," short for "alternative right." Despite the innocuous name, the alt-right is a white-nationalist movement. Yet it differs from earlier racist groups: it is youthful and tech savvy, obsessed with provocation and trolling, amorphous, predominantly online, and mostly anonymous. And it was energized by Donald Trump's presidential campaign. In Making Sense of the Alt-Right, George Hawley provides an accessible introduction and gives vital perspective on the emergence of a group whose overt racism has confounded expectations for a more tolerant America.

Hawley explains the movement's origins, evolution, methods, and core belief in white-identity politics. The book explores how the alt-right differs from traditional white nationalism, libertarianism, and other online illiberal ideologies such as neoreaction, as well as from mainstream Republicans and even Donald Trump and Steve Bannon. The alt-right's use of offensive humor and its trolling-driven approach, based in animosity to so-called political correctness, can make it difficult to determine true motivations. Yet through exclusive interviews and a careful study of the alt-right's influential texts, Hawley is able to paint a full picture of a movement that not only disagrees with liberalism but also fundamentally rejects most of the tenets of American conservatism. Hawley points to the alt-right's growing influence and makes a case for coming to a precise understanding of its beliefs without sensationalism or downplaying the movement's radicalism.

1

THE ALT-RIGHT’S GOALS AND PREDECESSORS

The Alt-Right can scarcely be called an organized movement. It has no formal institutions or a leadership caste issuing orders to loyal followers. There is no Alt-Right equivalent of The Communist Manifesto. Different people who describe themselves as part of the Alt-Right want different things. Using the loosest definition, we could say the Alt-Right includes anyone with right-wing sensibilities that rejects the mainstream conservative movement. But there are certain common, perhaps universal attitudes within the Alt-Right. The Alt-Right is fundamentally concerned with race. At its core, the Alt-Right is a white-nationalist movement, even if many (perhaps most) of the people who identify with the Alt-Right do not care for that term. The most energetic and significant figures of the movement want to see the creation of a white ethnostate in North America.

Because of its novel tactics, the Alt-Right represents something genuinely new on the American political scene. But it did not emerge from nowhere. We can see elements of the Alt-Right in preexisting movements, including mainstream conservatism. In this chapter, I will discuss some of the right-wing currents that made their way into the Alt-Right.

As I examine the Alt-Right’s political and ideological genealogy, I must make one clarifying point. Although I see parallels between the Alt-Right and other right-wing movements in the United States, I am not suggesting that they are driven by the same underlying ideological premises. When I say that the Alt-Right, libertarianism, and conservatism have some features in common, I am not suggesting that either of those more mainstream ideologies share the racial animus and anxiety present in the Alt-Right.

Similarly, although there is a connection between the Alt-Right and earlier white-nationalist and white-supremacist groups, and some of those groups and their supporters have engaged in violence and terrorism, I am not implying that the Alt-Right is a terrorist movement. At the time of this writing, I am aware of no acts of physical violence directly connected to the Alt-Right—online harassment is another story, but I believe we should make a distinction between threatening tweets and real-world bombings, assaults, and murders. This is not to say that racist violence is not a real threat in contemporary America. We have, as just one example, the chilling case of Dylann Roof, who murdered nine parishioners at a historically black church in Charleston, South Carolina. Yet Roof’s manifesto suggests he was more influenced by older white-nationalist writers and organizations, such as the Council of Conservative Citizens (the offspring of the Citizens Councils that once flourished in the South during and following the civil-rights era) and Harold Covington’s Northwest Front, than by the Alt-Right.1 It is possible that the Alt-Right will morph into something more dangerous and tangible in the real world,2 and for that reason vigilance is necessary. But for now, the Alt-Right’s activities are mostly limited to the Internet.

One more note on terminology before delving in: In the previous paragraph I used the terms “white nationalist” and “white supremacist.” It is conventional among those that study the far right to label all racist groups “white supremacist.” I do not oppose that convention. But it is worth noting that white supremacist is not usually the preferred term within the radical right. It instead relies on terms like “white nationalist,” “white separatist,” and “identitarian” (a word I will explain later). To outsiders, the distinction between a white supremacist and a white nationalist may not be obvious. But activists on the radical right claim there is an important difference. According to far-right nomenclature, a white supremacist favors a society in which people of multiple racial backgrounds live together but where whites are the socially dominant group (as in the Jim Crow South or apartheid South Africa). In contrast, a white nationalist favors the complete separation of the races into separate states. Many white nationalists also deny that their vision is based upon the belief that whites are a superior race. As a white nationalist who used the penname Yggdrasil put it, “The desire of White Nationalists to form their own nation has nothing to do with superiority or inferiority.”3 The sincerity of such statements is, at best, questionable, as open hostility toward other races is common within far-right movements.

Throughout this text, I use the term “white nationalist” largely because that is the term used by many on the Alt-Right to describe themselves. But I acknowledge the critique that white nationalism was a term invented to make white-supremacist views more palatable.

WHAT DOES THE ALT-RIGHT WANT?

There are diverse opinions within the Alt-Right. In fact, as I will show in the conclusion, it appears that this diversity is increasing. But the core of the Alt-Right remains white identity, even if many of the people who now associate with the Alt-Right do not call themselves white nationalists. So what does white identity really mean in terms of policy? At present, the Alt-Right is not unified on this question.

The neo-Nazi element of the Alt-Right desires the creation of something akin to the Third Reich, with everything this entails. Their best-known website is the Daily Stormer, run by a neo-Nazi named Andrew Anglin. Sites like this are where you find the most outrageous and violent rhetoric, delivered without a hint of irony. At the Daily Stormer, articles with titles like “Jew Admits Dreams of Defiling Aryan Blood” are common.4 The openly neo-Nazi are the most extreme element of the Alt-Right, and this facet of the Alt-Right is similar to the older varieties of white nationalism in the United States. Neo-Nazis are also frequently denounced by others associated with the Alt-Right on the grounds that they taint the movement’s “brand.”5 The most flamboyant neo-Nazis are even accused by others on the Alt-Right of being “FBI informers and [Anti-Defamation League] shills,” deliberately harming the movement.6

The neo-Nazi wing of the Alt-Right, which does not seek to distance itself from the Holocaust and talk of race wars, appears to be in the minority. Others on the Alt-Right tend to eschew the most extreme rhetoric while still calling for the creation of an all-white country or something very close to it. Yet few people in the less radical corners of the Alt-Right have explained in any detail how this can be achieved.

This is one way that the Alt-Right tends to differ from earlier white-nationalist movements. People like William Pierce and Harold Covington were quite explicit when explaining how whites would reclaim all or part of the world. In his 1978 novel The Turner Diaries, Pierce described a global race war, instigated by a small circle of elites, which ultimately led to apocalyptic levels of violence, including the use of nuclear weapons around the globe. Harold Covington’s vision was less ambitious, but his novels about the creation of a white nation in the Pacific Northwest also involved extreme violence—in Covington’s imagination, the war would be won by tactics developed by the Irish Republican Army in the twentieth century. On the most visible platforms of the Alt-Right, such calls for revolutionary violence are uncommon.

Richard Spencer (who is the person most associated with the Alt-Right and who will be discussed in detail in the coming chapters) supports the idea of creating one or more white ethnostates in North America. While he does not seem to anticipate some kind of violent conflict as the major catalyst for the creation of such an ethnostate, he also admits he does not have a clear idea about how such a state will come about. Spencer told me: “I don’t know how we’re going to get there, because the thing is, history will decide that for us. History has lots of twists and turns.… You have to wait for a revolutionary opportunity to present itself, and history will present that opportunity.”7 According to Spencer, the idea of a white ethnostate is now akin to Zionism at its early stages: “We need to go back and look at [Zionism’s] most basic impulses. And its basic impulses are identitarian.”8 At this stage, much of the Alt-Right will be happy if they simply plant the idea of white nationalism in the minds of people who had never previously been open to the notion—the exact policies can apparently be worked out later.

Some writers on the Alt-Right have offered more specific details about how a white-nationalist vision can be achieved without resorting to a brutal race war. According to Greg Johnson (also prominent in the movement and the subject of more discussion shortly): “If it was not too much trouble for all these people to come here, then it will not be too much trouble for them to go back.”9 He suggested that if white nationalists become a dominant force in American politics, it will be fairly straightforward to implement policies that encourage nonwhites to leave the country. He did acknowledge, however, that after the easier steps are taken—such as the deportation of undocumented immigrants—more draconian measures will need to be implemented.10

Among the less radical voices within the Alt-Right, the long-term goal seems to be more modest: an end to mass immigration, the end of political correctness, and the acceptance of white identity politics as a normal element of mainstream politics. Rather than the destruction of the United States as it is currently constituted and the creation of a new white nation, some say that they will be satisfied if whites simply stop shrinking as a percentage of the population. As one Alt-Right supporter on Twitter told me: “The majority of alt-righters do not think the goal of an all-white nation is realistic. They just want to stop the bleeding.”11 Within the Alt-Right, commentary on race ranges from calls for massive ethnic cleansing, through violent means if necessary, to new restrictions on nonwhite immigration into the United States. But even the mildest elements of the Alt-Right are far to the right of mainstream conservatives, and all agree that race is the movement’s single most important issue.

Outside of the race question, there are a few other points of agreement, although exact policy positions are often lacking. We can say that the Alt-Right is also an antifeminist movement opposed to contemporary notions of gender equality and in favor of a more patriarchal society. But its critique of feminism is not usually based on traditional religious arguments about gender roles. The Alt-Right promotes what it calls “sex realism”—that men and women have biological differences that make them suited to different social roles. There is some overlap between the Alt-Right and the so-called Men’s Rights Movement, which argues that discrimination against men is now a greater problem than discrimination against women.

The Alt-Right also uniformly rejects traditional Republican views on foreign policy. I am aware of no one on the Alt-Right who supports Bush-era strategies for the War on Terror, for example. The Alt-Right, for the most part, has favorable attitudes toward Vladimir Putin of Russia and Bashar al-Assad of Syria. It has no interest in spreading democracy abroad and opposes the close relationship between the United States and Israel. But, again, there is not a specific Alt-Right foreign-policy platform.

On other policy issues, there are few points of universal agreement. Unlike mainstream conservatism, the Alt-Right does not have much to say about economics. Broadly speaking, few on the Alt-Right favor the kind of laissez-faire economic policies traditionally promoted by conservatives and libertarians, and most seemed to favor Donald Trump’s call for new economic protectionist measures. But the proper level of taxation and economic regulation seem to be peripheral issues for the Alt-Right. The movement is also divided on issues such as tolerance for homosexuals and abortion, but these issues (so important to many conservatives) do not interest the Alt-Right very much.

For the Alt-Right, identity politics is everything. Conservatives say that they are fundamentally interested in ideas—constitutional government, liberty, morality, etc. They furthermore argue that these ideas are universal and equally accessible to all people. For this reason, conservatives often declare that they have no problem with nonwhite immigration, provided the newcomers assimilate to American values. In contrast, the Alt-Right views the world as being fundamentally divided into competing groups, and the success of their group (whites) is their primary concern. If a core conservative principle such as individual liberty is a hindrance to their group’s collective interests, then that principle can and should be jettisoned. Thus, to the Alt-Right, constitutional questions about equality are beside the point. If the Constitution dictates a policy that is inimical to white interests, then the Constitution is the problem.

WHAT DOES THE ALT-RIGHT DO?

The Alt-Right is almost exclusively an online phenomenon. It has no brick-and-mortar think tanks distributing policy papers to congressional staffers. It does not run any print newspapers, have a meaningful presence on television, or broadcast its message on the radio. No major politician or mainstream pundit is a self-described Alt-Right supporter. It is predominantly anonymous. For all of these reasons, it is remarkable that it became such a visible presence in American politics in 2016.

The Alt-Right is able to punch above its weight in the political arena because it is very good at using the Internet. Like other ideological movements, the Alt-Right has a large number of blogs, podcasts, forums, and webzines that discuss cultural and political ideas—examples of these include Radix, The Right Stuff, Counter-Currents, A...