Last updated on July 17th, 2023 at 09:05 pm
It is an interesting convergence, that just as Trump hires Steve Bannon, the alt-right head of Breitbart, to win him the White House, he issues a phony appeal to minorities to support him. There is nothing that says anti-minority like the white supremacist alt-right. Today, in Reno, Nevada, Hillary Clinton is calling him out.
Observers can claim this is a stroke by Clinton to nail Trump mid-pivot, but Trump’s association with these people is nothing new, and unlike what the right says about Clinton, these charges are not unfounded. Even Fox News doesn’t pretend the alt-right doesn’t love Trump. They focus instead on, if you’ll pardon use of the term, “whitewashing” the alt-right.
Fox News yesterday joined Breitbart launched into a defense of the alt-right, but CNN’s Brian Stelter points out that the “passion on these fringe websites, fringier than Breitbart, does sometimes come across as sexist, racist, and antisemitic.”
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BRIAN STELTER: Breitbart dot com, the website chaired by Steve Bannon, has proudly led the charge. Last month, Bannon told Mother Jones “we are the platform for the alt-right.” Now Bannon is the Trump campaign CEO, and Clinton is seizing on the connection, calling the alt-right disturbing and extreme. So what is it, exactly?
[…]
This video blogger says the movement, which started online several years ago, is about ethnic nationalism, race — specifically the sense that white identity is under assault in America, fuels the alt-right, which stands opposed to both progressive and mainstream conservative thought. Supporters say they’re not racist or divisive, but that is what critics charge.
[…]
Trump is a favorite of the mostly young, mostly white men who identify as alt-right.
[…]
Nativism and even racial separatism are themes of at-right websites that embrace Trump, but some of the loudest adherents say they are just being provocative. Milo Yiannopoulos has become a face of the movement through social media stunts, though he has been banned from Twitter. He is cheering on Trump.
MILO YIANNOPOULOS: He represents the best hope we have of smashing political correctness apart, of breaking open, you know, all of the taboos, the stuff you’re not supposed to say allowing real debate to be had again.
STELTER: Some of his supporters of this mostly online movement say they’re bringing new energy, new passion to a party that needs it. But that passion on these fringe websites, fringier than Breitbart, does sometimes come across as sexist, racist, and antisemitic, and Jim, I’m sure that’s what Clinton will bring up tomorrow.
Philip Bump at The Washington Post‘s The Fix calls the alt-right “the worst of the Web.” Bump points out too that “Anti-Jewish, anti-Muslim and otherwise explicit images riddle the online alt-right.”
Just this morning Fox News’ Doug McKelway wrote at that the “‘Alt right’ conservative movement embraces the Trump campaign.” McKelway objects to the Clinton campaign speaking of the alt-right as
“[E]mbracing extremism and presenting a divisive and dystopian view of America which should concern all Americans, regardless of party.”
Ann Coutler blames the alt-right on multiculturalism, which sounds a great deal like a National Socialist excuse, and this is no mere coincidence. If the term did not exist yet in the 30’s, the animus was very real.
I brought you the example of The Daily Stormer yesterday, which has nearly the same name as the Nazi-era The Stormer (and is about as anti-Jewish but without the creepy cartoons). The Daily Stormer claims to be the most visited alt-right site, and it echoes a Nazi propaganda rag in more than its name.
Hillary Clinton has every reason to criticize Trump’s relationship with these people when she speaks in Reno, Nevada today. Mainstreamed Nazism? In the United States?
Yes. Even McKelway admits,
Some Jewish conservatives who have criticized Trump – Fox News contributor and National Review columnist Jonah Goldberg among them – have been targeted by the alt right with hate mail and tweets that use holocaust imagery.
McElway doesn’t seem concerned by the Nazi imagery of websites like The Daily Stormer or the rampant anti-Semitism and racism exhibited not only on these fringe websites but by Trump supporters at his rallies; he wouldn’t admit to it in any case.
You can’t make excuses for this kind of sexist, racist, and anti-Semitic behavior.
People like Jared Taylor, editor of the non-profit American Renaissance, whom McKelway profiles, can claim they are not “white supremacist” and don’t even know what that means, but when Taylor says…
“The idea that America is just a nation up for grabs, that whoever can get here owns the place. No. We think that the United States has an identity and that the people who are extended from the founding stock have a right to resist dispossession.”
Or tweets this:
Blacks are more prone to crime. They have higher levels of testosterone than whites, as well as the following: https://t.co/X6X3AzwW75
— Jared Taylor (@jartaylor) July 15, 2016
…You get the idea Taylor knows pretty damn well what it means. And practices it. And so does Donald Trump.
H/t to reader NathanDerby for pointing me to Taylor’s tweet
Hrafnkell Haraldsson, a social liberal with leanings toward centrist politics has degrees in history and philosophy. His interests include, besides history and philosophy, human rights issues, freedom of choice, religion, and the precarious dichotomy of freedom of speech and intolerance. He brings a slightly different perspective to his writing, being that he is neither a follower of an Abrahamic faith nor an atheist but a polytheist, a modern-day Heathen who follows the customs and traditions of his Norse ancestors. He maintains his own blog, A Heathen’s Day, which deals with Heathen and Pagan matters, and Mos Maiorum Foundation www.mosmaiorum.org, dedicated to ethnic religion. He has also contributed to NewsJunkiePost, GodsOwnParty and Pagan+Politics.
