Here’s a familiar setting: The Republican nominee for president is viewed as a dangerous bigot and a fascist. He is supported by the Ku Klux Klan, and has openly spoken about using nuclear weapons in wars we’ve recently been involved with. He is seen as a dangerous, far right-wing demagogue.
The Democratic nominee is viewed as warhawk and someone who will continue the failed foreign policies of the past two presidents, even though the last one tried to be progressive about getting out of the war. This person carries the momentum of the last president and is currently supportive of black civil rights, but has a shaky history when it comes to social justice.
You may be picturing the current 2016 race between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, but what I am describing is the 1964 election race between incumbent Democratic President Lyndon B. Johnson and Republican Nominee Barry Goldwater.
Goldwater’s campaign, though failed, is what is considered by most historians to be the turning point in American politics. The Election was violent and permeated with hatred. Goldwater’s campaign gave rise to the conservative movement, which saw an overhaul of congress and the senate, and the elections of presidents Nixon, Reagan, Bush Sr. and Bush Jr.
But we are now at another turning point in American politics, and the nominees are Donald Trump and Hillary Rodham Clinton.
And the movement that Donald Trump is inspiring and giving rise to is a much darker, much more sinister movement. And we cannot allow this movement to continue to grow and influence our elections.
The social aspects of the conservative movement spawn out of opposition and disgruntlement with rising social movements on the left, such as the Civil Rights Movement, the Gay Rights Movement, and Second Wave Feminism.
Each of these movements, though these movements were viewed as controversial and even problematic, they have been absolved by history for the most part.
But just as every action has an equal and opposite reaction, every movement and has and equal and opposite alternative movement.
The birth of the alt-right can be traced throughout the twenty-first century, with the rise in popularity of Fox News and other right wing media. But the most explosive tool of the alt-right has hands down been the unprecedented use of the internet, and its subsequent opportunities to spread different viewpoints.
One of the most popular website to do this was the forum posting site 4Chan. This is site is essentially where the alt-right movement was formed. There were forums, such as the notorious /pol/, in which people posted racist rhetoric in a joking fashion, purely for shock value, until people who actually held to these viewpoints took over, and began to influence others.
To quote from an article on the alt-right website, The Daily Stormer, written by avowed white supremacist Andrew Anglin,
“The anonymous nature of 4chan allowed for all different sorts of people to get together and discuss all sorts of ideas, without having those ideas attached to an identity of any kind (not even an internet pseudonym). Anti-Semitic and racist jokes had been a key feature of /b/, but on /pol/ the sentiments behind the jokes slowly became serious, as people realized they were based on fact. /pol/ became a haven for virulent anti-Semites and aggressive racists, and tone of the Alt-Right is drawn directly from these roots on 4chan.”
He then goes on to describe how the culture of internet trolling (posting intentionally offensive images or phrases solely to provoke outrage), and with the ideologies of Adolf Hitler and the NSDAP or Nazi Party of 1930’s Germany merged together to form the highly influential alt-right, a term which would not come along until Richard Spencer, another avowed white supremacist, would coin the term in the early 2010’s.
The Alt-right is essentially, a highly coordinated and increasingly successful movement of white nationalists, Neo-Nazis, and other racists and misogynists. Their chief belief is that minorities and immigrants, including Syrian refugees, are attempting to genocide white people, who are the superior race, and that the Jews are controlling it.
Sounds familiar right? If you’ve studied anything about the rise of the Nazi Party, it should.
The alt-right, though mainly focused on social issues, takes its economic views from libertarianism, and were supporters of Ron Paul in 2008. His support fell off in his 2012 campaign because of the rapid growth in more popular hard right wing philosophies.
Andrew Anglin writes the previously cited article,
“In the early 2010’s, we saw many in the libertarian community becoming seriously disillusioned with their own movement. Ron Paul had failed miserably to gain traction in his 2012 Presidential bid, and much of the basic doctrine of the movement was beginning to look stale as other ways of looking at society were beginning to be presented – in particular, Fascism and National Socialism were introduced as competing alternatives to the current system of materialism, consumerism and corrupt crony capitalism.
At the same time, discussion of economics appeared to be becoming increasingly irrelevant, partially due to the immediate nature of social and cultural problems, and partially due to the development of technology making the old economic models obsolete.”
The news outlet Breitbart News is now the epicenter of the alt-right movement. One of it’s key journalists, Milo Yianoppolous, has become the poster boy of the alt-right. He is currently incredibly influential with millennial alt-righters and has cleverly used social media to spread his message.
You may recognize him as the white haired, flamboyant Brit whose videos have been shared by racist uncles all across Facebook.
The CEO of Breitbart News, Stephen Bannon, was recently the manager of Donald Trump’s presidential campaign until being replaced. The hiring of Bannon cemented Trump’s ties to the alt-right movement, further compelling their support.
To conclude, the alt-right movement is like nothing we’ve ever seen before, yet it is so reminiscent. It takes it’s ideologies from white nationalism, the German Nazi Party, and other racist/extremist sources. It is a racist and hate-fueled movement that has bred right under our noses, and now, it has it’s fingers outstretched towards the White House. It’s time to stop pretending that that we are choosing between two equally unacceptable candidates. Don’t turn the country of our families into the next Third Reich.
Don’t be the ones who have to explain to your grandchildren why you stood on the wrong side of history.
We need to stand together, not as Republicans and Democrats or Conservatives and liberals, but as Americans, and as sensible human beings who wish to preserve basic human decency, and not only defeat Donald Trump, but also to make sure that the movement that empowered him never takes hold of American politics ever again.
