The alt-right, or alternative right, is a loosely-connected and somewhat ill-defined grouping of white supremacists, neo-Confederates, neo-Nazis, neo-fascists, and other far-right fringe hate groups. Alt-right beliefs have been described as isolationist, protectionist, antisemitic and white supremacist, frequently overlapping with Neo-Nazism, nativism and Islamophobia, antifeminism, misogyny and homophobia, right-wing populism and the neoreactionary movement. The concept has further been associated with several groups such as American nationalists and neo-monarchists, men's rights advocates and the 2016 presidential campaign of Donald Trump.
White supremacist Richard Spencer initially promoted the term in 2010 in reference to a movement centered on white nationalism and did so, according to the Associated Press, to disguise overt racism, white supremacism, neo-fascism and neo-Nazism. The term drew considerable media attention and controversy during and after the 2016 United States presidential election.
The alt-right has its roots on Internet websites such as 4chan's /pol/ and 8chan, where anonymous members create and use Internet memes to help express their ideologies. Commentators have stated that it is difficult to tell how much of what people write in these venues is serious and how much is bait and intended to provoke outrage. Members of the alt-right use websites like Alternative Right, Twitter, Breitbart and Reddit to convey their message. Alt-right postings generally support the policies of Donald Trump and Mike Pence and oppose non-white immigration, multiculturalism and what they see as political correctness. The movement grew in 2015 and 2016, but started declining in power and membership in 2017 and 2018 following a decline in popular opinion. Republicans and conservatives such as President Donald Trump, Ben Shapiro, Ted Cruz, Cory Gardner, and members of the conservative Heritage Foundation have condemned the alt-right for its racism, antisemitism, and prejudice. The Trump administration has included several figures who are associated with the alt-right, such as former White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon. In 2016, Bannon described Breitbart as "the platform for the alt-right", with the goal of promoting the ideology. After Trump's election, other candidates for office, such as Roy Moore and Paul Nehlen, ran with the support of the movement.
According to a Southern Poverty Law Center report published in February 2018, over 100 people have been killed and injured in 13 attacks by alt-right influenced perpetrators since 2014. Political scientists and political leaders have argued that it should be classifed as a terrorist or extremist movement. The SPLC report expressed strong concern about the alt-right, claiming that its ideologies are radicalizing young, suburban white males and helped inspire the 2014 Isla Vista killings, the Charleston church shooting, the Quebec City mosque shooting, the vehicle ramming attack at the Unite the Right rally, the Umpqua Community College shooting, as well as other lower-profile attacks and acts of violence. In 2017, terrorist attacks and violence affiliated with the alt-right and white supremacy were the leading cause of extremist violence in the United States.
Video Alt-right
Etymology and scope
The term "alt-right" was first used in November 2008 by self-described paleoconservative philosopher Paul Gottfried, addressing the H. L. Mencken Club about what he called "the alternative right". This was republished in December under the title "The Decline and Rise of the Alternative Right" in the conservative Taki's Magazine, making this the earliest published usage of the phrase in its current context according to Slate. In 2009, two more posts at Taki's Magazine, by Patrick J. Ford and Jack Hunter, further discussed the alternative right. Since 2016, the term has been commonly attributed to Richard B. Spencer, president of the National Policy Institute and founder of Alternative Right.
The scope of the term "alt-right" is, as of February 2018, still in flux. The Associated Press advises its journalists to not use the term without providing an internal definition, due to its vagueness. The Anti-Defamation League states that "alt-right" is a "vague term actually encompass[ing] a range of people on the extreme right who reject mainstream conservatism in favor of forms of conservatism that embrace implicit or explicit racism or white supremacy." Conservative writer Ben Shapiro claims that the American Left has attempted "to lump in the Right with the alt-right by accepting a broader, false definition of the alt-right that could include traditional conservatism," but other conservatives have advocated for a broader definition. For instance, Allum Bokhari and Milo Yiannopoulos of Breitbart News described the Alt-right in March 2016 as "an amorphous movement ... some--mostly Establishment types--insist it's little more than a vehicle for the worst dregs of human society: anti-Semites, white supremacists, and other members of the Stormfront set." On the other hand, the Southern Poverty Law Center states that "[t]he Alt-Right is intimately connected [to] American Identitarianism, a version of an ideology popular in Europe that emphasizes cultural and racial homogeneity within different countries," and also notes that multiple alt-right leaders, including Richard Spencer, embrace explicit anti-semitism.
Maps Alt-right
Beliefs
The Associated Press stated:
The 'alt-right' or 'alternative right' is a name currently embraced by some white supremacists and white nationalists to refer to themselves and their ideology, which emphasizes preserving and protecting the white race in the United States in addition to, or over, other traditional conservative positions such as limited government, low taxes and strict law-and-order. The movement has been described as a mix of racism, white nationalism and populism ... criticizes "multiculturalism" and more rights for non-whites, women, Jews, Muslims, gays, immigrants and other minorities. Its members reject the American democratic ideal that all should have equality under the law regardless of creed, gender, ethnic origin or race.
There is no formal organization and it is not clear if the alt-right can be considered a movement, according to a 2016 description in the Columbia Journalism Review: "Because of the nebulous nature of anonymous online communities, nobody's entirely sure who the alt-righters are and what motivates them. It's also unclear which among them are true believers and which are smart-ass troublemakers trying to ruffle feathers". Many of its own proponents often claim they are joking or seeking to provoke an outraged response. Andrew Marantz of The New Yorker describes it as "a label, like 'snob' or 'hipster,' that is often disavowed by people who exemplify it".
It has been said to include elements of white nationalism, white supremacism, antisemitism, right-wing populism, nativism and the neoreactionary movement. Andrew Marantz includes "neo-monarchists, masculinists, conspiracists, belligerent nihilists". Newsday columnist Cathy Young noted the alt-right's strong opposition to both legal and illegal immigration and its hard-line stance on the European migrant crisis. Robert Tracinski of The Federalist has written that the alt-right opposes miscegenation and advocates collectivism as well as tribalism. Nicole Hemmer stated on NPR that political correctness is seen by the alt-right as "the greatest threat to their liberty".
Milo Yiannopoulos claims that some "young rebels" are drawn to the alt-right not for deeply political reasons but "because it promises fun, transgression, and a challenge to social norms". According to The New Yorker, "testing the strength of the speech taboos that revolve around conventional politics-of what can be said, and how directly", is a major component of alt-right identity. The beliefs that make the alt-right perceptible as a movement "are in their essence not matters of substance but of style", and the alt-right's tone may just be concealing "a more familiar politics".
White supremacy and white nationalism
White supremacist Richard Spencer coined the term in 2010 in reference to a movement centered on white nationalism and has been accused by some media publications of doing so to excuse overt racism, white supremacism and neo-Nazism. Spencer has described the alt-right as "identity politics for white Americans and for Europeans around the world".
While the label of white nationalism is disputed by some political commentators including Allum Bokhari and Milo Yiannopoulos, alt-right figures such as Andrew Anglin of neo-Nazi website The Daily Stormer and Marcus Halberstram of Fash the Nation have embraced the term as the core philosophy their movement is based on. In response to a Washington Post article that portrayed the movement as "offensiveness for the sake of offensiveness", Anglin said: "No it isn't. The goal is to ethnically cleanse White nations of non-Whites and establish an authoritarian government. Many people also believe that the Jews should be exterminated".
One observed oddity is that many leaders of the alt-right movement are married to or romantically connected with women with Asian backgrounds. Examples include Andrew Anglin, Richard Spencer, Mike Cernovich, John Derbyshire and Kyle Chapman. Audrea Lim, writing in The New York Times, quotes an alt-right commenter as writing that "'exclusively' dating Asian women is practically a 'white-nationalist rite of passage.'" Lim speculates that the trend may be "at the intersection of two popular racial myths", the first that Asian-Americans are a "model minority" that works hard, is high-achieving and behaves itself. The other is that Asian women are subservient and hypersexualized.
Anti-feminism
The alt-right is often described as "misogynistic" and supporting an "anti-woman" view. Opposition to feminism and intersectionality are common. The alt-right has a significant overlap in supporters with the men's rights movement.
Anti-Christianity
Some elements of the alt-right are anti-Christian and seek a revival of paganism. According to an essay by Richard Spencer, "critics of Christianity on the Alternative Right usually blame it for its universalism."
History
According to economist Jeffrey Tucker of the Foundation for Economic Education, the alt-right "inherits a long and dreary tradition of thought from Friedrich Hegel to Thomas Carlyle to Oswald Spengler to Madison Grant to Othmar Spann to Giovanni Gentile to Trump's speeches". He states that alt-right proponents "look back to what they imagine to be a golden age when elites ruled and peons obeyed" and believe that "identity is everything and the loss of identity is the greatest crime against self anyone can imagine".
In March 2016, Breitbart News writers Allum Bokhari and Milo Yiannopoulos published a piece on the alt-right, which CNN described as being similar to a manifesto. In that article, they described the alt-right as being derived from the Old Right of the United States as well from various New Right movements of Europe, citing the movement has been influenced by Oswald Spengler, Henry Louis Mencken, Julius Evola and modern influences such as paleoconservatives Patrick J. Buchanan and Samuel T. Francis. Jeet Heer of The New Republic likewise identifies the alt-right as having ideological origins among paleoconservatives, particularly with respect to its positions restricting immigration and supporting an openly nationalistic foreign policy.
An analysis by The Guardian described the ethno-nationalism of the New Right as the alt-right's progenitor. Writing in the Washington Post, Matthew Sheffield said the alt-right has also been influenced by anarcho-capitalist and paleolibertarian theorist Murray Rothbard, specifically in regards to his theorizing on race and democracy and had previously rallied behind Ron Paul in 2008. Anarcho-capitalist Jeffrey Tucker has said the alt-right is opposed to libertarianism because the alt-right focuses on group identity and tribalism instead of individual liberty. American professor and scholar Benjamin R. Teitelbaum compares the alt-right in the United States to identitarianism in Europe and notes that both were influenced by thinkers in the French New Right or Nouvelle Droite.
Notable current promoters of alt-right ideology include Vox Day, Steve Sailer, Richard Spencer, and Brittany Pettibone.
Trump presidential campaign and presidency
The term drew considerable media attention and controversy during the 2016 presidential election, particularly after Trump appointed Breitbart News chair Steven Bannon as CEO of the Trump campaign in August. Steve Bannon referred to Breitbart News as "the platform for the alt-right". The alt-right was exceedingly vocal in support for Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. During the campaign, opposing candidate Hillary Clinton attacked the alt-right as "racist ideas ... anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, anti-women ideas" and accused Trump of taking the alt-right "mainstream".
Media attention grew after the election, particularly during a post-election celebratory meeting near the White House hosted by Richard Spencer. Spencer used several Nazi propaganda terms during a meeting and closed with "Hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory". In response, supporters of Spencer gave the Nazi salute and chanted in a similar fashion to the Sieg Heil chant used at the Nuremberg rallies. Spencer defended the conduct, stating that the Nazi salute was given in a spirit of "irony and exuberance". Following the episode, the Associated Press described the "alt-right" label as "currently embraced by some white supremacists and white nationalists" that "may exist primarily as a public-relations device to make its supporters' actual beliefs less clear and more acceptable to a broader audience". The AP said that it has previously called such beliefs "racist, neo-Nazi or white supremacist".
In February 2017, Reddit banned the r/altright subreddit for violating its anti-doxxing policy. In April 2017, many alt-right populist media figures criticized Trump's 2017 Shayrat missile strike for being an apparent reversal of his policy towards war in Syria and the Middle East. Ann Coulter pointed out that Trump "campaigned on not getting involved in Mideast" and this was one of the reasons many voted for him.
Although the movement saw significant gains in 2015 and 2016, it began significantly declining in power and membership in 2017 and 2018. This has been due to multiple reasons: including the backlash of the Unite the Right rally, the fracturing of the movement, more effective banishment of hate speech and harassment from major social media sites, and widespread opposition by the American population. There has been widespread concern that as the chance of a large-scale political movement dies out, that lone-wolf terrorist attacks from members will become common. In 2017, terrorist attacks and violence affiliated with the alt-right and white supremacy were the leading cause of extremist violence in the United States.
Reactions
Conservatives
Writing in The Federalist, Cathy Young stated that the website Radix Journal had replaced the Alternative Right website and describes a Radix Journal article on abortion which proclaimed that the pro-life position is "dysgenic", since it encourages breeding by 'the least intelligent and responsible' women".
In The Federalist, conservative political scientist Nathanael Blake stated that Christianity and Greco-Roman philosophy, rather than race, are the foundations upon which Western Civilization was built and that the alt-right is actually attacking Western Civilization rather than defending it. Writing for National Review, David A. French called alt-right proponents "wanna-be fascists" and bemoaned their entry into the national political conversation. Writing for The Weekly Standard, Benjamin Welton instead described the alt-right as a "highly heterogeneous force" that "turns the left's moralism on its head and makes it a badge of honor to be called 'racist,' 'homophobic,' and 'sexist'".
In an interview with The New York Times on November 22, President-elect Donald Trump disavowed and condemned the alt-right to the dismay of many of his alt-right supporters.
Liberals
Writing for The New Yorker, Benjamin Wallace-Wells described it as a "loosely assembled far-right movement", but said that its differences from the conventional right-wing in American politics are more a matter of style than of substance: "One way to understand the alt-right is not as a movement but as a collective experiment in identity, in the same way that many people use anonymity on the Internet to test more extreme versions of themselves".
On August 25, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton gave a speech accusing Republican candidate Donald Trump of "helping a radical fringe take over the Republican Party". She identified this radical fringe with the alt-right and noted that Trump's campaign chief executive Steve Bannon has described his Breitbart News Network as "the platform for the alt-right". Some members of the group were delighted and described Clinton's speech as "free publicity", noted that Google searches peaked afterward and suggested that millions of people were hearing of the movement "for the very first time".
In Newsday, Young called the alt-right "a nest of anti-Semitism" inhabited by "white supremacists" who regularly use "repulsive bigotry". Chris Hayes on All In with Chris Hayes described alt-right as a euphemistic term for "essentially modern-day white supremacy". BuzzFeed reporter Rosie Gray described the alt-right as "white supremacy perfectly tailored for our times", saying that it uses "aggressive rhetoric and outright racial and anti-Semitic slurs" and that it has "more in common with European far-right movements than American ones".
Writing for Haaretz, Yishai Schwartz described the alt-right as "vitriolically anti-Semitic" by saying that "The 'alternative' that the alt-right presents is, in large part, an alternative to acceptance of Jews" and warned that it must be taken seriously as a threat. Also writing for Haaretz, Chemi Shalev, has observed that alt-right supporters of Trump "despise Jewish liberals with same venom that Israeli right detests Jewish leftists".
Political scientists
Professor George Hawley of the University of Alabama suggested that the alt-right may pose a greater threat to progressivism than the mainstream conservative movement.
In December 2016, artist Arrington de Dionyso, whose murals are frequently displayed at the Comet Ping Pong pizzeria, described the alt-right's on-line campaign of harassment against him in detail and averred of the attacks in general: "I think it's a very deliberate assault, which will eventually be a coordinated assault on all forms of free expression". The Pizzagate conspiracy theory has drawn comparisons with the Gamergate controversy. A wave of threats against Jewish Community Centers starting in 2017 were blamed on the alt-right in a January 2017 article by Slate's Elissa Strauss, who said members of the alt-right viewed them as "a practical joke".
Online
The activist group Stop Normalizing, which opposes the normalization of terms like alt-right, developed the "Stop Normalizing Alt Right" Chrome extension. The extension went viral shortly after the release of Stop Normalizing's website. The extension changes the term "alt-right" on webpages to "white supremacy". The extension and group were founded by a New York-based advertising and media professional under the pseudonym George Zola.
Commentary
In National Review in April 2016, Ian Tuttle wrote:
The Alt-Right has evangelized over the last several months primarily via a racist and antisemitic online presence. But for Allum Bokhari and Milo Yiannopoulos, the alt-right consists of fun-loving provocateurs, valiant defenders of Western civilization, daring intellectuals--and a handful of neo-Nazis keen on a Final Solution 2.0, but there are only a few of them, and nobody likes them anyways.
Bokhari and Yiannopoulos describe Jared Taylor (founder of American Renaissance) and Richard B. Spencer (founder of Alternative Right) as representative of intellectuals in the alt-right. Kevin B. MacDonald is also mentioned as an alt-right thinker.
Breitbart News has become a popular outlet for alt-right views.
On September 9, several figures of the alt-right community held a press conference, described by one reporter as the "coming-out party" of the little-known movement, to explain their goals. They proclaimed racialist beliefs by stating: "Race is real, race matters, and race is the foundation of identity". Speakers called for a "white homeland" and expounded on racial differences in intelligence. They also confirmed their support of Trump by saying: "This is what a leader looks like".
Use of memes
The alt-right's use of Internet memes to express and advance its beliefs, often on websites such as 4chan, 8chan and The Daily Stormer, has been widely reported. Among the most widely used are the following terms:
- "Cuckservative", a portmanteau of "cuckold" and "conservative".
- Triple parentheses or "echoes" to identify and target Jews online, which originated on the neo-Nazi podcast The Daily Shoah.
- Variations of the Pepe the Frog and "Emperor Trump" memes popular in alt-right circles, leading to references of "Nazi Frogs" in the media. These variants of the Pepe the Frog meme attracted significant media attention after the meme was criticized in an article published on Hillary Clinton's campaign website.
- Satirical worship of the Ancient Egyptian deity Kek has become associated with alt-right politics, as well as satirical nationalism of the nonexistent nation of "Kekistan".
- The use of alt-right music such as Trumpwave and Fashwave, which is a Neo-Nazi, Neo-fascist subgenre of vaporwave.
- The use of "Deus Vult!" and various other crusader iconography as a means of expressing Islamophobia.
- Ironic support of the Black Egyptian hypothesis, often using stereotypical African-American vernacular such as "We wuz kangz n shieet."
- The use of the phrase "dindu nuffin", a bastardization of "Didn't do nothing", in reference to claims of innocence for African-American victims of police violence, especially about Eric Garner and Michael Brown.
- Usage of "helicopter ride" memes, which endorse documented cases of leftists being dropped from helicopters by Chilean and Argentine juntas.
- Usage of the OK hand sign as a way of either expressing or agreeing with alt-right viewpoints.
The prevalence of memes in alt-right circles has led some commentators to question whether the alt-right is a serious movement rather than just an alternative way to express traditionally conservative beliefs, with Chava Gourarie of the Columbia Journalism Review stating that provoking a media reaction to these memes is for some creators an end in itself. Marc Hetherington, professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt University, sees these memes as an effort to legitimize racist views.
Links to violence and terrorism
Debate over classification
The alt-right movement has been considered by some political researcbers a terrorist movement and the process of alt-right radicalization has been compared to Islamic terrorism by political scientists and leaders.
A research study of 447 self-identified alt-right members found higher levels of psychopathy, narcissism, and Machiavellianism compared to the general population; members of the alt-right were more likely to express prejudice against black people and admit to engaging in aggressive behavior. Alt-right members had significantly high levels of dehumanization, with the mean alt-right scores comparable to how the general public views ISIS. Alt-right members viewed Hilary Clinton, Muslims, Feminists, Nigerians and Journalists as the least well rated groups on the Dehumanization scale, while White people, Men and Americans were rated the best.
A paper on the subject stated that it clearly fell under an extremist movement, saying that "alt-right adherents also expressed hostility that could be considered extremist: they were quite willing to blatantly dehumanize both religious/national outgroups and political opposition groups."
Violence
In February 2018, the Southern Poverty Law Center assembled a list of 13 violent incidents between 2014 and 2018 perpetrated by alt-right influenced people, in which 43 people died and 67 people were injured. The earliest perpetrator listed is Elliot Rodger. The list also includes Dylan Roof. The perpetrators of these events were all white men between the ages of 17 and 37, with an average age of just over 25 years old; only three of them were over 30. All but one was American, the other was Canadian.
According to the SPLC:
[T]he dark engine of the [alt-right] movement is reactionary white male resentment. Alt-right propaganda is designed to nourish the precise grievances recited by the disillusioned and indignant young men that dominate its ranks. It provides a coherent - but malicious - worldview. For a recruit, the alt-right helps explain why they don't have the jobs or the sexual partners or the overall societal and cultural respect that they believe (and are told) to be rightfully theirs. ...The alt-right worldview, this rebranding of old hatreds, will remain compelling to disaffected white males and those who claim to speak for them for the foreseeable future. Worse, as this study suggests, punctuated violence will continue. For the same vision of society that the alt-right promulgates--its externalization of blame that lands on a host of enemies seen to be in the ascendancy--also aligns with the indicators of mass violence.
The SPLC's analysis of these violent alt-right incidents leads it to believe that the killings it studied are not isolated events, but that the alt-right is structurally responsible for them by alienating those it attracts from participation in their communities, and giving them reasons to continue to be disaffected, and, indeed, to increase their alienation to the point where they can perform acts of violence without concern about the consequences to themselves or others.
The sprawling networks the alt-right has built around its poisonous, racist ideology have violence at its core in its pursuit of a white ethnostate. The white, male grievance culture that the leaders of the alt-right are incubating has already inspired more than 40 deaths and left more than 60 people injured.
And unfortunately, the alt-right seems likely to inspire more, as it moves further into the real world. Its leaders continue to abdicate all responsibility for the violence their ideology inspires and are becoming increasingly recalcitrant in the face of widespread condemnation. ... After a year [2017] of escalating alt-right violence, we are probably in for more.
Notable incidents
2017 Aztec school shooting
On December 7, 2017, gunfire erupted at Aztec High School in Aztec, New Mexico, United States. The shooter, 21-year-old William Atchison, a former student at the school, killed two students in a classroom, and then committed suicide.
William Edward Atchison (1996 - December 7, 2017) lived in Aztec with his parents, and was a former student at Aztec High School, but did not graduate. He worked at a local gas station. When Atchison entered Aztec High School on December 7, 2017 at approximately 8:04 a.m., he was "disguised as a student", and carrying a backpack with a Glock 9 mm semi-automatic pistol inside. Atchison was investigated by the FBI in March 2016 due to posts he had made on an online forum indicating that he was planning a shooting, but was not charged because he had not committed a crime and did not own a gun at the time. He legally bought the pistol used in the attack in November 2017.
Atchison's online activity included posting pro-Hitler and pro-Trump thoughts on alt-right websites like The Daily Stormer under such usernames as "Future Mass Shooter" and "Adam Lanza", and joking about school shootings, in particular the Columbine High School massacre. He also posted about his frustration with life in rural New Mexico and bleak career prospects.
At the shooter's home a schedule for the killings was found, with the last entry being "8:00 a.m. die". He also had a thumb drive on his person with the same schedule. He had no criminal history; however, he was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in 2016 when he had asked on an internet forum "where to find cheap assault rifles for a mass shooting". The shooter told the FBI that he was simply trolling, and thereafter the FBI dropped the matter.
The incident led to 3 deaths, 2 by murder and 1 by suicide.
Antipodean Resistance
Antipodean Resistance is a neo-Nazi, fascist, and alt-right group in Australia. The group, which makes use of Nazi symbols such as the Swastika and the Nazi salute, has explicitly called for the legalisation of the murder of Jewish people.
Counter-terrorism experts have suggested that Australian authorities should focus more on alt-right extremists such as Antipodean Resistance. Anne Aly, the Labor MP has suggested that the group may turn to terrorism, stating "For a terrorist attack to succeed, it really only takes one person." Dr Aly called for the group to be banned stating "I would like to see some of these groups proscribed ... as terrorist and violent organisations."
It has been reported that ASIO, the Australian national security organisation, is monitoring the group whom they suggest are "willing to use violence to further their own interests."
Brandon Russell
The leader of Atomwaffen Division, Brandon Russell, is alleged to have described Omar Mateen, who pledged allegiance to ISIS and perpetrated the 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting, as "a hero." A member of Atomwaffen Division, Stephen Billingsley, was photographed at a vigil in San Antonio, Texas for the victims of the Orlando shooting, with a skull mask and a sign saying "God Hates Fags."
One 18-year-old member, Devon Arthurs, converted to Islam and described himself as a "Salafist National Socialist." In May 2017 Arthurs allegedly killed two of his roommates and fellow Atomwaffen Division members in retaliation for ridiculing his conversion. Arthurs was arrested following a hostage situation, during which he told police he shot 22-year-old Jeremy Himmelman and 18-year-old Andrew Oneschuk earlier that day.
After Arthurs' arrest, his third roommate and fellow Atomwaffen Division member, a 21-year-old, Brandon Russell, was arrested by the FBI and Tampa Police Department, who found in Russell's garage an explosive compound known as hexamethylene triperoxide diamine which has been used by other groups in improvised explosive devices such as the 2016 New York and New Jersey bombings. The police bomb experts were drawn to Russell's bedroom due to the presence of thorium and americium, radioactive substances. Russell, a former student University of South Florida and a Florida National Guardsman, had a framed photograph of Timothy McVeigh, the perpetrator of the Oklahoma City bombing, in his bedroom.
Rise Above Movement
The group, based in Southern California, claims more than 50 members and a singular purpose: "physically attacking its ideological foes". The group has been described as an alt-right fighting club, and many have criminal records.
Unite the Right rally
After the aborted rally, at around 1:45 p.m., a man drove his car into a crowd of counter protesters, hitting several and slamming into a stopped sedan, which hit a stopped minivan that was in front of it. The impact of the crash pushed the sedan and the minivan further into the crowd. One person was killed and 19 others were injured in what police have called a deliberate attack. The man then reversed the car through the crowd and fled the scene.
The ramming occurred at a pedestrian mall at Water and Fourth streets, about four blocks away from Emancipation Park (38°01?46.17?N 78°28?46.29?W). Heather D. Heyer, a 32-year-old paralegal from Charlottesville, was fatally injured in the attack and pronounced dead at the University of Virginia's University Hospital. Video footage recorded at the scene showed a gray 2010 Dodge Challenger accelerating towards crowds on a pedestrian mall, hitting people and sending them airborne, then reversing at high speed, hitting more people. The moment when the car was driven into the crowd was captured on video by bystanders and in aerial video footage taken by a drone. A photographer present at the scene said the car "plowed into a sedan and then into a minivan. Bodies flew. People were terrified and screaming." Bystanders said it was "definitely a violent attack", according to The Guardian. Of the 19 injured survivors, the University of Virginia Medical Center reported that five were initially in critical condition. By the afternoon of August 14, ten patients had been discharged from the hospital, and the nine remaining patients were in good condition.
Shortly after the collision, James Alex Fields Jr., a 20-year-old from Ohio who reportedly had expressed sympathy for Nazi Germany during his time as a student at Cooper High School in Union, Kentucky, was arrested.
Fields had been photographed taking part in the rally, holding a shield emblazoned with the logo of Vanguard America, a Neo-Nazi, anti-Semitic, white supremacist organization. Vanguard America's leaders later stated he was not a member and that "The shields seen do not denote membership" as they were "freely handed out to anyone in attendance." On August 14, Fields was again denied bail. He is being held at the Albemarle-Charlottesville County Regional Jail.
National Security Adviser H. R. McMaster and several U.S. senators described the alleged ramming attack as an act of domestic terrorism, as did various commentators. Late on the night of August 12, U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions said the U.S. Department of Justice would open a civil rights investigation into the incident; federal investigators are investigating whether the suspect "crossed state lines with the intent to commit violence". Later, Sessions said the ramming meets the definition of 'domestic terrorism' and that it was "an unacceptable, evil attack."
Heyer's mother said she wanted Heather's name to become "a rallying cry for justice and equality and fairness and compassion." Heyer's memorial service was held at Charlottesville's Paramount Theatre on August 16; Heyer's mother spoke to hundreds of mourners, asking them to honor Heyer by acting against injustice and turning "anger into righteous action."
Separate GoFundMe pages were set up for the Heyer family and for those injured in the crash; the latter was organized by the Anchorage co-chairman of the Democratic Socialists of America. The UVA Health Foundation created a fund for medical expenses of "patients at UVA Medical Center and Sentara Martha Jefferson Hospital who were injured and impacted by this unwanted violence in our community."
Two motorists injured in the vehicle incident have sued the organizers of the event and the driver. Fields was charged with second-degree murder, three counts of malicious wounding and failure to stop following an accident resulting in death, and held without bail. On August 18, Fields was charged with three additional counts of aggravated malicious wounding and two additional counts of malicious wounding. The murder charge was changed to first-degree murder on December 14.
Additionally, other acts of domestic violence committed at the Unite the Right rally were an African-American man named DeAndre Harris assaulted by white supremacist members and a Klansman shooting a gun towards counterprotestors.
In January 2018, a court hearing was held in which November 26, 2018 was set as the date for Fields' trial to begin. Trial is anticipated to take three weeks.
Later, an alt-right male named Taylor Wilson who attended the rally reportedly attempted to execute a terror attack on an Amtrak train. He also reportedly held a business card from the American-based Neo-Nazi political party National Socialist Movement.
"Alt-Left" neologism
In an August 15, 2017 press conference at New York City's Trump Tower, President Donald Trump used the term "Alt-left" while doubling-down on his initial statement in response to the vehicle-ramming attack against rally counter-protestors committed by a 20-year-old white nationalist during the August 12 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. While stating that there was "blame on both sides" for the violence at the rally, Trump criticized what he called the "very, very violent ... alt-left."
Various experts have pointed out that "alt-left" is a made-up term, and no such label has been adopted by any members of the progressive left.
The term "alt-left" has been criticized as a label that, unlike alt-right, was not coined by the group it purports to describe, but rather was created by political opponents as a smear implying a false equivalence. According to Mark Pitcavage, an analyst at the Anti Defamation League, the term was invented to suggest a false equivalence between the alt-right and their opponents.
In a Los Angeles Times article, historian Timothy D. Snyder stated that "'alt-right' is a term ... meant to provide a fresh label that would sound more attractive than 'Nazi,' 'neo-Nazi,' 'white supremacist,' or 'white nationalist.' With 'alt-left' it's a different story. There is no group that labels itself that way." Professor Thomas J. Main commented on the alt-right by saying: "They don't think blacks and Jews should have equal rights. On the left, there is nothing analogous."
See also
- Alt-lite
- Gab (social network)
- Patriotic Spring
- Right-wing authoritarianism
- Vigilantism
- White genocide conspiracy theory
References
External links
- The dictionary definition of alt-right at Wiktionary
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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