#whitegenocide, the alt-right and conspiracy theory: How secrecy and suspicion contributed to the mainstreaming of hate (original) (raw)
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Trump and the Alt Right: The Mainstreaming of White Nationalism
Right-Wing Extremism in Canada and the United States, 2022
This chapter explores the Trump presidency and the new “Alt-Right”. It argues that Trump and the Alt-Right are part and product of America’s own past and persisting structures of racism, not outliers in some essentially inclusive, tolerant, and colour-blind way of life. To show how, the chapter’s first section historicizes the white nationalist structures, ideologies, parties, presidencies, and campaign strategies that preceded Trump’s 2016 election and which made a Trump presidency seem “common sense” to so many millions of white people, including the “Alt-Right”. The second section contends Donald Trump is a poster boy for white nationalist class power and privilege, and probes his “new racist” presidential campaign and White House. The third section interrogates the Trump presidency’s convergence with and eventual divergence from the Alt-Right. Overall, the chapter assesses the mainstream politics of Trump and the Alt-Right with regard to continuity and change in American racial capitalism, white nationalist presidencies, the Republican Party’s Southern Strategy, and conservativism’s “reactionary mind”.
Obscure Subjects: Myth and Metapolitics on the alt-Right
Critical Theory Network
In this essay, I situate the neo-fascist movements, specifically the alt-Right in an historical context that examines both the conditions that capitalism reaches wherein it begins to produce fascism. I also provide an account of the internal development and deployment of the alt-Right compared to prior fascist movements of the twentieth century. The historical period in which fascism first arose, the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, provides an important point of reference for understanding the external societal conditions as well as the internal function of fascism. In The Birth of Fascist Ideology Zeev Sternhell notes two defining characteristics of what led to the fascism of the 1920's and 1930's in France and Italy: Firstly, there was a steady cultural revolution aimed at overthrowing liberalism in response to the failure of Marxist approaches to revolution which emphasized an economic revolution to the modes of production. Secondly, and this is perhaps a distinctive feature of every fascist movement, these political movements of the early 20 th century turned against Enlightenment metaphysics of materialism and science, replacing the reason of Marxist revolutionary thought and action with an emphasis on mobilizing followers around a romanticized myth. Sternhell argues that the myth that began early 20 th century fascism was the event of the violent general strike as theorized by the reactionary socialist syndicalist Georges Sorel (1847 – 1922). This myth would eventually be modified to adhere to nationalist and biological racism with the rise of the Nazi's, but the important functionalist point is that fascism requires the deployment of a myth to organize its followers.
In Want of a Sovereign: Metapolitics and the Populist Formation of the Alt Right (Introduction)
In Want of a Sovereign: Metapolitics and the Populist Formation of the Alt Right, 2023
The thesis examines the politico-rhetorical dynamics around the 2016 US presidential election through the lens of the Alt-Right, not as a movement but as a signifier in broader political struggles to shape the political space of representation. It employs Ernesto Laclau’s post- foundationalist theory of populism to challenge the conventional perspectives that the Alt- Right was an extension of a radical right-wing movement or ideology. Instead, it demonstrates how the signifier rose to prominence due to its political and rhetorical utility for both its supporters and opponents, and how it eventually led to a political formation expanding beyond the far-right milieu in which the term 'Alt-Right' originally was coined. The study revolves around two questions: How was the Alt-Right symbolically formed in 2016, and how can it inform our understanding of the present conditions of populism? It analyzes the elements that eventually were articulated as Alt-Right, including a far-right milieu of writers with a long-term ”metapolitical” propaganda strategy, online subcultures known for irony, trolling, and provocative humor, and the ”Gamergate” controversy, eventually articulated as a right-wing backlash against progressivism. Quantitative data analysis of the term’s usage on Twitter/X provides an outline of the signifier's career on Twitter. The outline informs the study of the articulation process whereby different elements came to be associated with an emerging Alt-Right political identity. The study analyzes the pivotal moments in the process and emphasizes the significance of Hillary Clinton’s Alt-Right speech in August, 2016. The thesis argues that the formation of the Alt-Right as a political identity challenges the conventional view of populism as proposed by Laclau. In 2016, ‘Alt-Right’ became a counter- hegemonic empty signifier not primarily through counter-hegemonic processes but rather due to the discursive efforts of the hegemonic political axis. The conclusion discusses how this inversion aligns with post-politics, premised as a prevailing logic of articulation and political legitimization, and how this form of legitimization in and around 2016 inadvertently sustained the very far-right movements depicted as its ultimate threat. The concluding discussion offers a theoretical discussion of how and in what way it may continue to do so. In so doing, the thesis indicates present socio-historic conditions for the emergence of populism, understood in the sense explained in the dissertation: as a political situation characterized by a chasm between political alternatives generative of a counter-hegemonic identity.
Nowhere has xenophobia, racism and misogyny challenged International Human Rights Conventions, humanitarian principles and the core values of Cosmopolitan Solidarity more than in the United States with the election of Donald J. Trump. In the aftermath of the 2016 Presidential election in the United States, as media, political operatives, the American public and the global community began to come to terms with the outcome, it soon became evident that the use of new media was key to the resurrection of old hates. The chapter explores the message content, construction and dissemination of alt-right themes—misogyny, racism, white supremacy, xenophobia, Islamaphoboa, fear of immigrants and “white genocide”—employed in the campaign discourses of Donald J. Trump and outlines how they propelled him into the White House. Online hate groups from alt-right activists to the anti-woman crusaders of Gamergate, together with political activists adept at the creation of propagandized fake news such as Stephen Bannon of Breitbart, were key in spreading xenophobia and white supremacy over social media platforms, most notably Twitter and Facebook. Trump provided the Alt-right with a megaphone, and they thanked him be shouting Sieg Heil outside his rallies. The effects of these messages are drawn out in an analysis of voting patterns and exit polling data, which demonstrate the efficacy of the alt-right influences of pushing Trump over the top in key swing states.
International Research Journal of Social sciences and Humanities, Vol.:02, Issue:02,July-Dec,2023PP:82-95, 2023
The elements of white supremacy and white nationalism are deeply embedded in the American society since the end of American civil war. White nationalism and the Alt-right movement fundamentally revolve around the identity politics and considered race as the lens to view all political issues. This paper attempts to find out the historical evolution of the white nationalism and Alt-right, their core beliefs, views and motivations, discussing the proponents and ideologue and criticism on the ideology. The findings revealed that both white nationalism and Alt-Right movement have risen and fallen over the course of history but the online social media platforms and meme culture provided a new dimension and brought them back to the mainstream political and societal discussions.
Cultural Politics, 2018
This article examines rise of the alt-Right and Donald Trump’s successful campaign for President of the United States in the context of three overlapping contradictions: that of subversion in postmodern culture and politics, that between the democratic and commercial logics of the media, and the failure of the Left in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. Referring to these three contradictions, this article looks at the rise of “Trumpism” and the new brand of White nationalist and misogynistic culture of the so-called alt-Right in its historical context to show how it is consistent but also distinguished from previous Right wing ideologies. More generally, the three contradictions presented here are proposed as explanations for understanding the mainstreaming of the alt-Right in contemporary politics and culture.
Social Policy Review 31, 2019
A series of journalistic books and articles exploring the Alt-Right provide detailed empirical data critical to understanding the underpinning social networks of the Alt-Right. However, intensive media focus on young, working-class-usually American-white supremacists sharing extremist material over the internet masks incidences of closely related racist, conspiracist, misogynist, and 'anti-elitist' ideology in wider, often middle-class mainstream media, politics, and social policy discourse. This article problematises these narratives. Drawing partly on the work of Mary Douglas and Antonio Gramsci, we contribute to ongoing national and international 'Alt-Right' debates with an interdisciplinary, political-anthropological model of 'mainstremeist' belief and action. This approach highlights the links between 'fringe' and 'centre' into an entangled social network seeking to deploy social policy as a tool of misogynist, patriarchal, racist, and classist retrenchment.
‘The fire rises’: identity, the alt-right and intersectionality
Journal of Political Ideologies, 2018
This article examines the ideology of the 'alt-right, ' specifically in its relation to the importance of identity. Placing the alt-right within the context of the rising importance of identity within American society, the article discusses the alt-right as overlapping in significant ways with the identitarian elements within the American Left. Investigating the manner in which national/racial identity plays a central role in altright thinking and using the notion of 'category-based epistemology' for guidance, this article argues that the alt-right-rather than a quirk of the 2016 electoral cycle-is likely to increase in its importance as a 'rightist' form of intersectionality. Who you are elucidates who you hate. As identity becomes more central in political confrontations, the importance (and danger) of in-group/out-group dynamics increases. In various parts of the Western world-be it in the nationalist rhetoric of Donald Trump's presidential campaign and its supporters, the nationalist rhetoric of many 'Brexit' supporters within the United Kingdom, or the electoral fortunes of the Freedom Party in Austria's 2016 presidential election-the saliency of national identity (at times with an ethnic/racial undercurrent) has increased in recent years. But unlike much of the nationalist rhetoric of earlier periods (particularly between 1922 and 1945), this current form of nationalist identity is separatist rather than imperial. In the American context, the 'alt-right' best represents this identity-focused movement on the Right. This movement is less an outlier, however, when seen in the context of the broader identity focus in the West: in effect, the ideational structure of movements like the alt-right becomes much clearer once one sees it in comparison with the importance of identity for the progressive Left, exemplified by the notion of intersectionality. This article will present the alt-right as engaged with identity politics in the United States as it has developed in recent decades. In particular, this article places the alt-right as a continuation of identitarianism that saw its initial growth in progressive politics. The discussion will be in three parts. The first section examines the similarities and overlaps between the alt-right and what can be called the 'intersectional Left, ' presenting them as two subtypes of 'category-based epistemology. ' The second section explicates the role of identity within the alt-right, especially as it differs from some earlier political forms of racial/national
Rethinking Nationalisms Trump and Alt-Right " White Nationalism "
Voices of Mexico, 2017
Reflexión en torno al ascenso del llamado nacionalismo blanco a partir de los planteamientos de dos autores que se identifican con el enfoque modernista de las teorías sobre el nacionalismo: Billig (nacionalismo banal) y Anderson (comunidades imaginadas). Se concluye que el eje articulador del llamado nacionalismo blanco no es el Estado ni la nación (o etnonación), sino el racismo como la ideología que le da sentido a este más o menos incipiente movimiento.