The Rise Of The Alt Right

Download or read book The Rise of the Alt-Right written by Thomas J. Main and published by Brookings Institution Press. This book was released on 2018-07-31 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the Alt-Right, and how will it affect America? Donald Trump’s election as president in 2016 suddenly brought to prominence a political movement that few in political circles or the mainstream media had paid much attention to: the so-called Alt-Right. Steven Bannon, Trump's campaign manager, was a leading figure in the movement, and the election results seemed to give it a real opportunity to gain some political power. But what is the Alt-Right? Is it a movement, a theory, a trend, or just an unorganized group of people far outside of what used to be the political mainstream in America? Or, could it be all of these things? Why has it suddenly emerged into prominence? What impact is it having on American politics today, and what are the prospects for the Alt-Right in the future? Through careful research and analysis, The Rise of the Alt-Right addresses these and other questions, tracing the movement’s history from the founding of modern conservatism in postwar America to the current Trump era. Although the Alt-Right might seem to be just the latest extremist group to arise in the United States—one likely to take its place in the graveyard of its many predecessors—Thomas J. Main analyzes evidence that the Alt-Right is having a greater influence on the American political mainstream than did past extremist tendencies. The Rise of the Alt-Right is thus an important study for anyone interested in the future of American politics and public life.

Download or read book Making Sense of the Alt-Right written by George Hawley and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2017-09-19 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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.

Download or read book Alt-America written by David Neiwert and published by Verso Books. This book was released on 2017-10-17 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This important piece of investigative reportage studies the roots of right-wing extremism in American culture and history to understand its modern-day resurgence in the Trump era Just as Donald Trump’s victorious campaign for the U.S. presidency shocked the world, the seemingly sudden national prominence of white supremacists, xenophobes, militia leaders, and mysterious “alt-right” figures mystifies many. But the American extreme right has been growing steadily in number and influence since the 1990s with the rise of patriot militias. Following 9/11, conspiracy theorists found fresh life; and in virulent reaction to the first black U.S. president, militant racists have come out of the woodwork. Nurtured by a powerful right-wing media sector in radio, TV, and online, the far right, Tea Party movement conservatives, and Republican activists found common ground. Figures such as Stephen Bannon, Milo Yiannopoulos, and Alex Jones, once rightly dismissed as cranks, now haunt the reports of mainstream journalism. Investigative reporter David Neiwert has been tracking extremists for more than two decades. In Alt-America, he provides a deeply researched and authoritative report on the growth of fascism and far-right terrorism, the violence of which in the last decade has surpassed anything inspired by Islamist or other ideologies in the United States. The product of years of reportage, and including the most in-depth investigation of Trump’s ties to the far right, this is a crucial book about one of the most disturbing aspects of American society.

Download or read book Alt-Right written by Mike Wendling and published by Fernwood Publishing. This book was released on 2018-04-03T00:00:00Z with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is a vital guide to understanding the racist, misogynist, far-right movement that rose to prominence during Donald Trump’s successful election campaign. To some, the movement appears to have burst out of nowhere, but journalist Mike Wendling has been tracking the Alt-Right for years. He reveals the role of technological utopians, reactionary philosophers, the notorious 4chan bulletin boards, and a range of bloggers, vloggers and tweeters, and the extreme ideas they attempt to popularize. Analyzing what the Alt-Right stands for, based upon interviews with movement leaders and foot soldiers, Wendling provides evidence linking extremists with terror attacks and hate crimes. Ultimately the book argues that, despite its high profile support, the movement’s contradictory tendencies will lead to its downfall.

Download or read book Post-Digital Cultures of the Far Right written by Maik Fielitz and published by transcript Verlag. This book was released on 2018-12-31 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How have digital tools and networks transformed the far right's strategies and transnational prospects? This volume presents a unique critical survey of the online and offline tactics, symbols and platforms that are strategically remixed by contemporary far-right groups in Europe and the US. It features thirteen accessible essays by an international range of expert scholars, policy advisors and activists who offer informed answers to a number of urgent practical and theoretical questions: How and why has the internet emboldened extreme nationalisms? What counter-cultural approaches should civil societies develop in response?

Download or read book Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate written by Alexandra Minna Stern and published by Beacon Press. This book was released on 2019-07-16 with total page 194 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is the alt-right? What do they believe, and how did they take center stage in the American social and political consciousness? Historian Alexandra Minna Stern excavates the alt-right memes that have erupted online and digs to the root of the far right’s motivations: their deep-seated fear of an oncoming “white genocide” that can only be remedied through aggressive action to reclaim white power. The alt-right has expanded significantly throughout America’s cultural, political, and digital landscapes: racist, sexist, and homophobic beliefs that were previously unspeakable have become commonplace, normalized, and accepted—endangering American democracy and society as a whole. When asked to address the Proud Boys and growing far right violence, President Trump directed the group to “stand back and stand by;” and just two weeks before President Joe Biden’s inauguration, a white supremacist mob breached the US Capitol—earning praise from the Proud Boys leader amongst threats of future violence. In order to dismantle the destructive movement that has invaded our public consciousness and threatens American democracy, we must first understand the core beliefs that drive the alt-right. Through careful analysis, Stern brings awareness to the underlying concepts that guide the alt-right and its overlapping forms of racism, xenophobia, and transphobia. She explains the key ideas of “red-pilling,” strategic trolling, gender essentialism, and the alt-right’s ultimate fantasy: a future where minorities have been “cleansed” from the body politic and a white ethnostate is established in the United States. By unearthing the hidden mechanisms that power white nationalism, Stern reveals just how pervasive the far right truly is.

Download or read book Empire of Resentment written by Lawrence Rosenthal and published by The New Press. This book was released on 2020-09-08 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From a leading scholar on conservatism, the extraordinary chronicle of how the transformation of the American far right made the Trump presidency possible—and what it portends for the future Since Trump's victory and the UK's Brexit vote, much of the commentary on the populist epidemic has focused on the emergence of populism. But, Lawrence Rosenthal argues, what is happening globally is not the emergence but the transformation of right-wing populism. Rosenthal, the founder of UC Berkeley's Center for Right-Wing Studies, suggests right-wing populism is a protean force whose prime mover is the resentment felt toward perceived cultural elites, and whose abiding feature is its ideological flexibility, which now takes the form of xenophobic nationalism. In 2016, American right-wing populists migrated from the free marketeering Tea Party to Donald Trump's "hard hat," anti-immigrant, America-First nationalism. This was the most important single factor in Trump's electoral victory and it has been at work across the globe. In Italy, for example, the Northern League reinvented itself in 2018 as an all-Italy party, switching its fury from southerners to immigrants, and came to power. Rosenthal paints a vivid sociological, political, and psychological picture of the transnational quality of this movement, which is now in power in at least a dozen countries, creating a de facto Nationalist International. In America and abroad, the current mobilization of right-wing populism has given life to long marginalized threats like white supremacy. The future of democratic politics in the United States and abroad depends on whether the liberal and left parties have the political capacity to mobilize with a progressive agenda of their own.