How Hillary Clinton caused the rise of the Alt-Right — in three images
In August, 2016, during the 2016 Presidential Campaign, Hillary Clinton handed the Alt-Right a megaphone, and catapulted them into the public consciousness with the following speech:
“This is not conservatism as we have known it. This is not Republicanism as we have know it. These are race-baiting ideas, anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant ideas, anti-woman — all key tenets making up an emerging racist ideology known as the ‘Alt-Right.’
Now Alt-Right is short for “Alternative Right.”
The Wall Street Journal describes it as a loose but organized movement, mostly online, that “rejects mainstream conservatism, promotes nationalism and views immigration and multiculturalism as threats to white identity.”
The de facto merger between Breitbart and the Trump Campaign represents a landmark achievement for the “Alt-Right.” A fringe element has effectively taken over the Republican Party.”
(link goes to the Washington Post)
The alt-right went from nothing to something the moment the speech happened.
The moral of the story?
Be careful when you hand people megaphones.
Giving exposure to people who don’t deserve or warrant exposure often gives them power. Even if you’re desperate, and are pulling out every last thing in your bag of tricks, you risk emboldening them, and giving them a voice, a presence, and a calling on the world stage.
What is the Alt-Right anyway?
It’s hard to tell. It’s actually three different groups.
They love stirring shit up, for the “lulz”.
Group One called themselves the alt-right in response to the “ctrl-left” — the authoritarian left. This group sprung up in places like Reddit — they’re not your traditional conservatives. They’re young, tech-savvy, areligious, and enjoy dank memes. Generally, they don’t care if you’re gay, bi, straight or transgender. You could be an attack helicopter for all they care. They do hate hypocrisy though, and the current wave of victim-led, post-modernist social justice, identity politics and intersectional politics that is rife with it — because it’s divisive, doesn’t help, and appears to be done for an agenda.
Some of their members are traditional left-leaning types — Bernie Sanders supporters, Clinton supporters, Julie Stein supporters, Obama supporters. This usage was pretty common before the end-game of the 2016 election cycle, but started to decay after Clinton’s speech.
People such as Milo Yiannopoulos (an inveterate troll, who tells people all the time how to deal with him so he vanishes and never shows up again — ignore him, stop talking about him, and ridicule him — the classic anti-troll moves) were using the terminology in the run up to the Clinton speech in this sense. (But, of course, being a troll, Milo ran with it after the terms were conflated — although it’s clear in an interview with CNN, that Milo was blindsided by it).
Group Two is a much smaller group — Nazis, and white nationalists.
Group Three is made up mostly of 4chan/8chan/Something Awful/Reddit trolls. As a form of aposematism, they hide under the guise of the most disgusting, awful, and offensive things they can say. So if you ever come across them by accident, you recoil in horror and leave. And they’re trolls. They love stirring shit up, for the “lulz”.
The press conflates them, all the time — and it’s hard to tell if this is a deliberate effort at social manipulation, genuine ignorance, or just a way to dredge for clicks and advertising revenue.
Where’s the truth? It’s irrelevant, sadly. Now all we’ve got are Nazis. Thanks, Hillary.
