The following from Hillary Clinton's speech at a community college in Reno, Nevada

Alt-Right is short for "Alternative Right."

The Wall Street Journal describes it as a loosely 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.

This is part of a broader story -- the rising tide of hardline, right-wing nationalism around the world.

She claims the Alt-Right has taken over the Republican Party.

I don't know about "taken over." I does appear they're being accommodated.

Why would right-wing nationalism be rising around the world?

Because the media and politicians want you to be afraid. Very afraid!

Why would right-wing nationalism be rising around the world? — Mongrel

Good question, I don't know. Because people feel more military threat now than... maybe 50 years ago? Or... Because stabilizing organizations like the UN and/or dominant countries like the USSR and USA appear to be less reliable than in the past? Because close relationships between neighbors (or among regional partners) have collapsed?

Fundamentalism seems to be on the rise too, along with greater secularism. Globalization seems (or would seem) to drive nations into alliances, rather than a narrow nationalism, but... maybe not.

Because liberalism, internationalism, global trade, secularism, 'progress', etc. have turned out to be disappointing?

If right-wing nationalism is increasing, it seems like it would be reactionary -- against a dilution of local values.

I've read some of a couple of their intellectuals, Nick Land and Mencius Moldbug (you can google their key works). I suppose the high-brow aspect has little to do with low-brow stuff, especially after looking at videos of that Milo character. He has a certain charisma, but he's basically absurd.

Check out Vox's article on the movement, which is pretty comprehensive: http://www.vox.com/2016/4/18/11434098/alt-right-explained.

"The label blends together straight-up white supremacists, nationalists who think conservatives have sold out to globalization, and nativists who fear immigration will spur civil disarray. But at its core are the ideas of a movement known as neoreaction, and neoreaction (NRx for short) is a rejection of democracy. ... The purpose of government, in the view of neoreactionaries, isn't to represent the will of the people. It's to govern well, full stop. 'From the perspective of its subjects, what counts is not who runs the government but what the government does,' Moldbug explains. 'Good government is effective, lawful government. Bad government is ineffective, lawless government. How anyone reasonable could disagree with these statements is quite beyond me. And yet clearly almost everyone does.'

And democratic government, the neoreactionaries insist, is not effective, lawful government. Because the will of the people is arbitrary and varying, it cannot have the consistency of real, durable law, and it creates incentives for wasteful and, worse still, left-wing government. ... But while mainstream libertarians are outspoken about democracy's deficiencies, they rarely propose an alternative. The neoreactionaries do: monarchy. Well, not monarchy specifically, but some kind of nondemocratic system with rule-driven succession. Moldbug likes to use the term "formalism," or "neocameralism," a reference to "cameralism," the philosophy of government embraced by Frederick the Great of Prussia. Moldbug's vision is corporatist, where instead of a nation belonging to a royal family, it belongs to corporation with shareholders to whom it is accountable. 'To a neocameralist, a state is a business which owns a country,' he writes."

1) Take some fear and hate
2) Sprinkle it with vanilla essence
3) Mix it up during the Obama administration
4) Add some coconut frosting
5) Put it on the Alex Jones show.

Et voilá, the Alt-Right fruitcake.

I'm starting to think at least part of this negative portrayal of the average Trump supporter - or Alt-Right - is a calculated attempt by 'elites' to fend off criticisms of a status quo that benefits them at the expense of working class folk. This is achieved through association of hostility to globalization and neoliberal economics with white racism and xenophobia.

For a long time this demographic stood firmly within the Republican fold, at the expense of their own economic interests no less, but this is no longer the case and the free market fundamentalist wing of the Republican Party appears to be collaborating with the Democratic elite to marginalize the very group they exploited for the past 40 or so years through implicitly racist imagery.

One obviously needn't be a racist of xenophobe to feel bitterness towards the growing disparity in wealth and power between the absurdly wealthy and everyone else -- but of course no respectable white person wants to be accused of racism or xenophobia, so we distance ourselves from those uneducated dolts and whatever they stand for. By doing so, we prove our own sophistication and membership amongst our 'respectable' and progressive fellow citizens. Pretty straightforward but effective strategy.

I'm also beginning to think that BLM and other divisive movements are being fomented at this precise moment when that old concatenation of power and interest are, or could have been, under their greatest threat from a broad grassroots movement of disadvantaged people of all races and type. It's the old divide and conquer approach which has worked in this country from its inception.

Anyhow the key now, to me at least, is to separate the essential from the inessential, the legitimate social, economic and political grievances of our current world from accidental traits of race and nationality. Not sure if this is even possible but it's worth thinking through: finding some common ground that people from different cultures and nationalities can agree upon that goes even deeper than the old communist notion of class warfare.

Yeah, I'm becoming a bit paranoid and cynical these days.

The alt right as I've come to understand it is a resurgence of genuine rightism, as opposed to mere modern conservatism (which is just a brand of classical liberalism) and in particular in the US the Republican party, which is not even classically liberal but a weird centrist populist statist mishmash. That means rejection of core tenets of liberalism, not just epiphenomena, welcoming back notions of racial difference, nationalism, hierarchy (possibly even monarchy), and rejecting broad notions of equality generally taken for granted in modern western political discourse. It seems to be mostly a tech savvy revival at this point, but its earlier incarnations (and the 'dark enlightenment' and 'neoreaction' and so on) has its source in oddball internet intellectuals like Nick Land and Mencius Moldbug. Since then it's become a little less interesting, and has attracted broader social issues like the backlash against 'PC' culture, racist and anti-semitic tendencies, anti-feminism, and Trump's campaign. It looks as if right now the term is fast on its way to losing any meaning at all and becoming an Emmanuel Goldstein sort of thing for moderate liberals, identifiable with any vaguely disliked sentiment. Hillary Clinton awkwardly seemed to want to tie it into Trump himself, Wikileaks?, Russia, and so on, it doesn't make much sense.

I'd define it at its most basic with a core lack of sympathy for basic, foundational liberal impulses among a tech-savvy and disenfranchised youth.

My personal take on this is that rightism is more or less the natural state of things and leftism is a historical aberration that has to be fueled by specific cultural trends. People are naturally in-group supporting, and that cashes to in nationalism and racism and desire to defend their own identity and so on.

Liberalism is a weird historical quirk spurred for the most part by the unique historical position white people found themselves in during the 18th century. It is, by and large, an ideology of modern white people and their hangers-on. It's still an open question of course whether this historical aberration will become the new norm or go back to the nothing that it came from.

I'm also beginning to think that BLM and other divisive movements are being fomented at this precise moment when that old concatenation of power and interest are, or could have been, under their greatest threat from a broad grassroots movement of disadvantaged people of all races and type. It's the old divide and conquer approach which has worked in this country from its inception. — Erik

Maybe -- BLM seems to me sinister because it equates being black with being criminal, and defending criminality as equal to defending black communities. This is of course a narrative that your average Democrat, white or black, implicitly believes in all that they do, and is calculated to keep black people in America a perpetual Democrat-voting underclass.

That's my tinfoil hat speculation for the day. Shrug.

Good point.

I just find it strange that BLM makes a concerted effort to dissociate itself from ALL white people, regardless of class, educational background, or any other relevant issue that could possibly make the 'movement' more sympathetic, at least to poor and marginalized white people. The spokespeople that I've read or listened to do this very aggressively too, bludgeoning white people (again, ALL white people) for being the beneficiaries of some ubiquitous 'privilege' floating around them that they apparently can neither fathom nor appreciate. And for poor white folk struggling to afford the basic necessities of life, this seems bizarre -- and then, to make matters worse, even suggesting how strange or disconnected from reality it is results in loud cries of " RACIST!!!', apparently for questioning the dogmatic narrative.

To make the issue even harder to comprehend is that, almost without exception, the BLM attackers of white privilege don't appreciate being lumped together and stereotyped with other black people, yet they do that very thing to white people, and don't hesitate to make broad sweeping (and negative) generalizations about them. Of course some who do this may engage in the tactic with a sense of irony, in order to make some relevant point, but most that I've argued with don't appear to even be aware of the inconsistency, or to feel the need to offer some justification for it beyond the platitude that only those with power can be racist.

As a pragmatist, I can't fathom how anyone in a position of influence would purposely alienate and marginalize the group they represent, when even the possibility to expand your base of support exists potentially. But I'm probably missing some important feature of BLM that would make the strategy intelligible, or the seemingly favorable portrayal BLM received in the media, at least until it got out of hand and cops started getting killed. The public visibility of BLM - perpetuated by major media outlets and prominent politicians - seemed to coincide with a growing sense of anger amongst Trump's supporters, specifically against a 'system' they were finally beginning to see as rigged against them by both traditional Republicans and Democrats. Probably just coincidence.

Anyhow I don't want to turn this into a discussion of BLM, and I'm probably connecting dots haphazardly. I just found the timing and emphasis of BLM to be interesting. I do know of the taped killings and how those played a role, but I began to wonder how certain issues gain prominence for a time and what role the media has in this. And who owns the media outlets? And do they have a vested interest in stirring up certain groups against each other? If manipulation via divide and conquer has even a hint of truth, I'd imagine it's due more to instinctive self-preservation of those who dominate politics and business and media than a coordinated and self-conscious conspiracy amongst them.

Apologies to any who read this for the disconnected rambling. I'm on guard against turning into a conspiracy nut, although I do believe people with similar interests conspire collectively to protect those interests. That seems a pretty rational if not ethical thing to do.

Tom Slater's take on it in Spiked is quite interesting:

On the one hand, the alt-righters are actually a product of political correctness. The politics of victimhood nurtures victimisers; the more people talk up their emotional and moral vulnerability – as a result of their gender, race or sexuality – the more saddos will try to have a pop. A culture of You Can’t Say That will inevitably embolden some people to Say That – again and again and again. So, the liberal journalists currently penning self-righteous takedowns of the alt-right need to have a word with themselves. By contributing to the cult of victimhood, they helped make these monsters.

But, on the other hand, the alt-right is the mirror image of political correctness, specifically the victimhood that underpins it. They don’t just want to have a pop at self-styled victims – they want to claim victim status for themselves. Their broadsides against feminists, Black Lives Matter or Islam are underpinned by the idea that straight, white males are an oppressed group – that ‘white culture’ is under attack. They may take up arms against weepy identitarians, but they share the same, deadening sense of victimhood – just with another set of dreamt-up grievances attached.

Source

Their rightism was once an ideology of the ruling class, but now it is just another identity. I like this criticism partly because it's the one that I imagine would annoy them the most.

Examining how the balance of power between the colonizer and the colonized remains relatively stable, Freire admits that the powerless in society can be frightened of freedom. He writes, "Freedom is acquired by conquest, not by gift. It must be pursued constantly and responsibly. Freedom is not an ideal located outside of man; nor is it an idea which becomes myth. It is rather the indispensable condition for the quest for human completion".
Wiki

Not sure I agree with Slater, at least not without serious qualification, but these are definitely thought-provoking points, especially the second.

I know very few people who would talk openly about the need to preserve 'white' culture, but many do speak of an attack upon American culture, or Western culture. The growing equation of American culture with white culture, with special emphasis on its inherently racist and oppressive tendencies, may have the (perhaps) unintended consequence of pushing white people to identify as a group that's come under attack and, by default, caused them to rally together collectively. I'm sure there are white men and women (especially men) who find some strange psychological solace or even enjoyment in playing the role of victim in this new scenario, but I also think a distinction should be made between 'dreamt-up' and reasonable grievances.

I think we can all agree that the last 40 years has hit the middle and lower classes of all races hard, very hard in fact, and, in the US at least, the Democrats - who would appear to be the historical and ideological representatives of this demographic - have purposely fostered an emphasis on identity rather than class-based politics. I also think an argument could be made that 'progressive' intellectuals who push things like multiculturalism and identity politics could be the cause of increased white racism, precisely because they purposely go out of their way to highlight differences amongst people based upon race and ethnicity and sexual orientation - black culture, Latino culture, LGBT culture - and then refuse to allow straight, white men to have any identity beyond perpetual racist or bigoted oppressor.

So this group has been backed into a corner and forced to assume an identity, irrespective of vast social and economic differences, with no legitimate effort being made to find another, more transcendent and inclusive one. You are white, therefore you are the new 'other' who must be demonized and marginalized. You will be able to maintain your livelihood and profession as long as you don't voice any 'pride' in your background, or voice your displeasure that other groups are allowed and even encouraged to do so. There are reasons for this discrepancy, but they've been articulated by people much smarter and more educated than yourselves, largely within the comfortable confines and abstractions of academia. The motivation may have been pure (correcting past and current injustices), but the best way to overcome an unjust hierarchy IMO is not an inversion of the old one in favor of a new, but rather searching for commonalities beyond accidental differences of birth.

I'm partial to certain Romantic critiques of the Enlightenment, but I do appreciate the latter's universalist tendencies and lament its apparent demise in this day and age. Very sad. I 've always felt this to be one of the great things about America: I have zero sense of historical identity to European ancestors, I have married a woman of indigenous Mexican heritage, we have children that are (obviously) mixed race, and all of this is seen as pretty normal in the part of the US where I live and grew up in -- oddly one of those maligned white suburbs teaming with Trump supporters. These are non-issues to me and to most of the people I know, but others want to push a divisive race narrative that makes them more relevant than they should be. That's my limited experience at least.

Whatever the case may be, ending the blame game and searching for viable solutions that DO involve a new sense of shared identity and ethos needs to begin ASAP. This obviously gets into complex matters that try to balance the preservation of multiple cultures and identities while also facilitating the aforementioned transcendent sense of belongingness which encompasses each of these separate groups. Or we all blend into a homogeneous and dominant culture, regardless of race or ethnicity. Can't have it both ways, though, at least not as far as I can tell.

I agree with a lot of that Erik.

I also think an argument could be made that 'progressive' intellectuals who push things like multiculturalism and identity politics could be the cause of increased white racism, precisely because they purposely go out of their way to highlight differences amongst people based upon race and ethnicity and sexual orientation - black culture, Latino culture, LGBT culture - and then refuse to allow straight, white men to have any identity beyond perpetual racist or bigoted oppressor. — Erik

I think it's worse than this. I think these progressives are guilty of a kind of racism or racialism of their own, because they implicitly reject the dream in which people "will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character." Martin Luther King's vision is, to this way of thinking, a microaggressive denial of racial identity. (I think some conservatives have said what I'm saying here too, so I'll probably be accused of being a conservative, again).

It can also be seen in the European left-liberal attitude to Muslims, who become to them another monolithic group of victims with characteristic grievances. To these "progressives", the poor little Muslims can hardly be blamed for their rage against the West, and criticism of ISIS is deemed to be Islamophobic (an extreme example perhaps, but it did happen: NUS motion to condemn Isis fails amidst claims of islamophobia).

One obviously needn't be a racist of xenophobe to feel bitterness towards the growing disparity in wealth and power between the absurdly wealthy and everyone else -- but of course no respectable white person wants to be accused of racism or xenophobia, so we distance ourselves from those uneducated dolts and whatever they stand for. By doing so, we prove our own sophistication and membership amongst our 'respectable' and progressive fellow citizens. Pretty straightforward but effective strategy. — Erik

A number of my friends are saying stuff along these lines. They think of Clinton as the face of the establishment... or a servant of it. Trump's suggestion that the US should back out of NATO is an attack on that establishment, which promotes US dominance in the world as some sort of quasi virtuous adventure when it really just provides the means for certain parties to engage in exploitation.

But what I see is that Trump actually does come across as either racist or stupid. The answer I get back is that that's because what I know about either candidate is influenced by a biased media.

I guess what I'm saying is that I see how the puzzle pieces fit together.. but I think that this organization must partly be accidental?

What it reminds me of is the way that there were no books about Karl Marx in the school library when I was a kid. Yes, this benefited the Kings of the Status Quo, but the USSR really was a gravely diseased state and it really did have an aggressive stance. If you look at the whole thing naturalistically, the world has just been a very rich and nutritious environment for a certain type of organism: Exploitative Americanus (direct descendant of Exploitative Britannica.) Some of the success of this genus is its own genius. Some of it is just amazingly good luck.

Because the media and politicians want you to be afraid. Very afraid! — Thorongil

You're saying the same thing Erik did... I think. That bringing up Alt-right is an attempt to spin the facts against Trump and toward Clinton.

So, TGW gave his tinfoil hat speculation on BLM, I'll give mine on the Alt-Right. I see a relationship between the rise of the Alt-Right and the continually diminishing reproductive prospects of the poor white male. This goes back to the libralisation of American society in the past half-century and the associated steady movement away from monogamy and towards polygyny in the form of serial monogamy. (As serial monogamy allows older richer men of status disproportionate access to younger women's most fertile reproductive years - i.e. one rich man monopolises the pre-menopausal years of several women in sequence and in the process denies access to them to poorer males - it's effectively indistinguishable from polygyny). So in concert with the widening monetary wealth gap caused by neo-liberal economic policies, you get a widening of the reproductive wealth gap. Add to that recent advances in technology that allow more mobility in the dating market - giving women more choice than ever concerning their potential mate - and the movement of desirable females up the wealth and status ladder is exacerbated. The result of this is the creation of a huge cohort of reproductively frustrated lower status males, i.e. a recipe for social upheaval. And this is what it seems to me the so-called Alt-Right reflects, a channeling of the repressed frustrations of this increasingly reproductively diminished group with the nationalism, racism and xenophobia being used as a way of cementing group bonds, and also a regression away from the social contract that has so badly served their needs.

Yeah, and I think TGW made a good point about defining it. Now that Clinton has mentioned it, and dozens of pundits have followed up with their denunciations of it, whatever meaning it had will now be lost in a sea of negative connotations. It's just another spooky -ism to scare those on the left into voting for Hillary.

I was watching the CBS evening news the other night and they had a report on this. During the segment the presenter called Milo Yiannopoulos a white nationalist. I almost fell out of my chair. That's what the establishment media thinks of the Alt-Right and poor Milo? Wow. Milo is a professional troll who tries his best to test the limits of free speech, for which I commend him, even though it causes him to be utterly ridiculous. But it's not hard to understand that this is what he's doing, so it's amazing that CBS fell for it. Many of those on the Alt-Right may be genuine racists, I have no doubt about that, but to cast the whole movement in such terms shows once again that the left is only capable of smears.

It can also be seen in the European left-liberal attitude to Muslims, who become to them another monolithic group of victims with characteristic grievances. To these "progressives", the poor little Muslims can hardly be blamed for their rage against the West, and criticism of ISIS is deemed to be Islamophobic (an extreme example perhaps, but it did happen: NUS motion to condemn Isis fails amidst claims of islamophobia). — jamalrob

Yeah, I've heard Zizek talk about this, the denial to the right of the minority even to be morally wrong as a disguised form of racism. I tend to agree, and the NUS seem to have thought themselves into a hole on this one. On the other hand, the progressive attitude can have the positive effect of combating the creation in society of a group that it becomes socially acceptable to discriminate against.

Many of those on the Alt-Right may be genuine racists, I have no doubt about that, but to cast the whole movement in such terms shows once again that the left is only capable of smears. — Thorongil

CBS is a mouth-piece of the left? I think it's just a content purveyor looking for a market. News is entertainment.

If not, then how would you draw a line from CBS to some leftist entity? I'm not saying you're wrong.. I'm just asking how you connect the dots.

There's no way that reporter was not a self-identified liberal who's voting for Hillary.

Yeah, I've heard Zizek talk about this, the denial to the right of the minority even to be morally wrong as a disguised form of racism. I tend to agree, and the NUS seem to have thought themselves into a hole on this one. On the other hand, the progressive attitude can have the positive effect of combating the creation in society of a group that it becomes socially acceptable to discriminate against. — Baden

Agreed, but I think there's a big difference between, on the one hand, the defence of a group by standing up for the rights of its members to be treated the same as everyone else (the Civil Rights Movement), and on the other hand, the attempt to protect a group's identity and culture (multiculturalism and identity politics). A person's particular identity and culture may be exactly what he or she wants to escape from.

Of course, when identity and culture are precisely what a person is attacked for, there is good reason to defend them, and to assert them. This has often been an aspect of protest and is not peculiar to modern identity politics as such. But it's a problem when this becomes the deep and not merely symbolic mode of protest, and the only one seen as legitimate by the most vocal activist groups, which people formerly on the same side must abide by or else suffer the wrath of the self-appointed guardians. (For examples of that, just look at the way Peter Tatchell and Germaine Greer have been attacked by LGBT activists and feminists, and the the way that Muslim and ex-Muslim opponents of Islamic fundamentalism have been attacked by the Left.)

Where previously it was quite common to protest with "no, I am not defined by that group or culture; I am a citizen just like you and I demand the same rights," now everything is being drowned out by "I am defined by my identity and my background, and it is sacrosanct". At least, this is the sanctioned script.

Hillary Clinton awkwardly seemed to want to tie it into Trump himself — The Great Whatever

Doesn't the alt right try to attach itself to Trump?

There's no way that reporter was not a self-identified liberal who's voting for Hillary. — Thorongil

Could be. I don't know. I watch streaming CBS. They have a reporter named Sanchez who is a Republican strategist. She reported that Clinton "obviously" was engaged in pay-for-play while Secretary of State. It wasn't marked out as a editorial, although there were several people talking to each other.

The news has opinion all mashed into it. I don't remember it being like that in the old days.

The news has opinion all mashed into it. I don't remember it being like that in the old days. — Mongrel

I agree. It even spreads into sports reporting, which is ruined by continual opinionating :) How can I work out how the game really went?

With a caveat, though, that in my youth the news was more controlled by different vested interests, yet had a cleverly-maintained appearance of impartiality. In the UK, looking back, that's clear for instance in old reporting on stuff from the royal family to misbehaviour by public figures.

War reporting was very circumscribed - the Vietnam war then erupted with a much greater openness of reporting - the last war to be so well-reported at the time, for the military worked out how to control it.

Interesting thread: in Britain and especially England there's been some debate about people who voted to leave the EU - the Brexiters - and whether they partly represent this 'white working-class' group who aren't allowed to have an identity of their own. I think it's overdone in relation to the referendum - the political classes lost control of the terms of the debate - but there's definitely an element of it there.

That sounds plausible to me.

In general there is an odd tendency to see sex as preferably 'free market' in a context where most people despise an unrestrained 'free market.' This is, no surprise, dependent on whether you benefit from the freedom of the market (and let's not kid ourselves, sex is a commodity with a class structure built into it).

Initially I think no. As it's becoming popularized it's taken on a Trump wing, it looks like. But people like Milo Yiannopoulos that have fomented this change don't strike me as intellectually serious in any way and so not engaged with the movement's ideological origins. The Trumpers seem to be concerned more with the less interesting stuff I mentioned: reactions against PC and feminism and so on.

Well Trump certainly sells himself as the alternative against the right wing establishment.
And his rhetoric echo's the tone of white victimization that is the central theme of the alt right.