Guest post by A. P. Hill

For a liberal in the age of Trump, the news sometimes reads like a horror story. Stories of Muslims being chased, blacks being murdered, women being grabbed, and all of them by people who say that it’s all right now because of Trump.

It’s all right, because they’re Alt-Right.

This is a term you have surely heard by now. The New York Times and Washington Post are calling the Alt-Right a “white-nationalist” group. Sometimes they go as far as to call them “white-supremacist.” The Alt-Right themselves apparently do not like being compared to Nazis or hate groups, and some of newsradio at least uses couched language and calls them “the Alt-Right, which some people describe as a white-supremacist.” Mother Jones wrote that Steve Bannon — chief strategist to Donald Trump — has stated in an interview that his former media employer Breitbart News is “the platform for the Alt-Right.” Trump has claimed he doesn’t believe that Bannon or Breitbart are Alt-Right at all, they’re “just a newspaper” that reports the news “like The New York Times covers things.”

So, what exactly is the Alt-Right?

I decided to step out of my liberal bubble and actually read Breitbart News. Since I refuse to be the kind of closed-minded person who accepts what other people tell him something is, I wanted to see for myself how racist, anti-semitic, and misogynist the Breitbart really is.

I even went ahead and read the comments section, to see what the audience was like. It was a depressing night.

There’s plenty of “Islam is evil” and “women are stupid” and “liberals suck.” But I was surprised not to find any “greedy Jews” or “lazy negroes.” And even through the comments, I didn’t see any “Heil Hitler”s or “hang the coons” or “burn the Jews.” Maybe they are careful to remove those because they don’t want anything blatant, I don’t know. There’s certainly no liberal voices there that don’t get shouted down or deleted as trolls.

It’s really horrible writing. There’s no hint of objectivity, they constantly cite their own articles, it is an echo chamber set inside a deep, dark cave.

But there was this one article, “An Establishment Conservative’s Guide To The Alt-Right” that I found particularly educational in understanding just how the Alt-Right works.

The important part is that they break the Alt-Right down into a few groups they try to explain are actually separate and distinct from each other. At the bottom are what he calls the “1488s” which is just code for literal Nazis. These are the ones who were giving the “Sieg Heil” at Richard Spencer’s speech in D.C.

Just above them are the “meme team.” These are the frat boys of the group, the GamerGaters. They like making fun of everyone and everything, poking the SJWs for “lulz.” According to the authors, they are just rebelling against the left they way hippies rebelled against the right — it’s kids lashing out at parents and trying to get attention. But they do it with Holocaust jokes and hanging nooses from trees.

Apparently, “they are clearly racist, but there is very little sincerity behind them…. Everyone on the anonymous board hurls the most vicious slurs and stereotypes at each other, but like jocks busting each other’s balls at the college bar, it’s obvious that there’s little real hatred present.”

If this sounds familiar, think about the justifications of Trump’s comments about women. “Locker-room talk.” It’s all in good fun, you’re not supposed to take it seriously. Except the 1488s are there, listening, and taking it very seriously.

Next up the ladder is the supposed bulk of the Alt-Right, what the authors call “natural conservatives.” I call them “racist-lite.” The authors describe them as such: “They are mostly white, mostly male middle-American radicals, who are unapologetically embracing a new identity politics that prioritises the interests of their own demographic.” This is a lot of politically-correct jargon for “whites first.” They go on to say that they “want to build their homogeneous communities, sure — but they don’t want to commit any pogroms along the way. Indeed, they would prefer non-violent solutions”

This is call for a return to Segregation, from the people who wrote in a paper titled “The State of White America-2007” that Brown v. Board of Education was the worst legal decision in the history of the Supreme Court. They refuse to accept that separate is inherently unequal, both in nature and in practice. But they believe that since they are not advocating for outright genocide, their beliefs are just as valid as anyone else’s. And indeed, in a world where anyone is rightly entitled to say whatever they want, they are welcome to those beliefs. But that doesn’t mean we should tolerate them trying to put those beliefs into action. Just as freedom of religion does not give people the freedom to legislate religiously.

They argue that their desire is to preserve their own culture, not to disparage others. However, try reading between the lines of this passage: “they value the greatest cultural expressions of their tribe. Their perfect society does not necessarily produce a soaring GDP, but it does produce symphonies, basilicas and Old Masters. The natural conservative tendency within the alt-right points to these apotheoses of western European culture and declares them valuable and worth preserving and protecting.”

On the surface, this might seem like a valid viewpoint, and certainly it is true that these works of art are valuable. But the hidden meaning is also there: that non-European culture does not produce similarly valuable works of art. Or that they are not worth preserving and protecting. Or, even if they are, that white-art should be kept separate and preserved for whites only, and not shared with others. That exposure to non-white culture somehow cheapens the works of whites.

The natural conservatives will say “you have Black History Museums, why can’t we have a White History Museum?” But they don’t notice that the Black History Museum is there for the education of blacks and whites together. And they don’t appreciate the struggle that blacks had to go through to get their art recognized for what it is in a white-dominated culture. They just see “us” and “them.” They frequently talk about themselves as a “white identity” movement; the rationale is that since whites designated all people of non-white skin together as inferior for so long, the new unity of non-whites validates their white-insulation.

But most reasonable people recognize that resisting oppression is not oppression of the oppressors. The Alt-Right cries out that straight white males are oppressed by all the other groups, when the reality is that each of those qualities are — individually — losing their power to oppress. Straights can no longer deny gays their rights, whites can no longer deny blacks their rights, males can no longer deny females their rights. But no one is saying that straights are inferior to gays, that whites are inferior to blacks, or that men are inferior to women. Civil rights are not a zero-sum game. What straight white men have lost is their political power to deny others civil rights.

And this is where the “top” group comes in, according to the authors. These are the “Intellectuals,” but which they mean the Alt-Right pundits, politicians, and policymakers. The authors of the article certainly consider themselves to be among the Intellectuals, joining in with the likes of Richard Spencer when he calls out the mainstream media “in the original German, Lügenpresse” and questions whether they are actually “people at all, or instead soulless golem animated by some dark power.” For those who don’t know, the golem is a folkloric Frankenstein’s monster created by Jewish witchcraft. But don’t you dare suggest that he’s anti-semitic.

The “Intellectuals” like to bring up things like genetic differences between races, hereditary intelligence, and all the reasons why boys are better than girls. They cite questionable studies to prove their points, or else draw entirely dubious conclusions of how society should behave based on real science that was intended to illustrate a problem rather than suggest their solution. For example, a study claiming that people who feel shame about their bodies are more likely to lose weight is not a justification for shaming people about their bodies, but Milo Yiannopoulos would have you believe that pointing and laughing is a viable weight-loss program.

Of course, the authors present these groups from the top-down, starting with the Intellectuals, to make the case that the Alt-Right started out with high and lofty thinkers which first attracted the “natural conservatives,” and then the “meme team” cracking Holocaust jokes because they don’t know any better, and finally the 1488’s who didn’t get the irony and tag along because they think they are welcome.

But most of us know that trickle-down doesn’t work in economics, and it doesn’t work in sociology either.

What I think is a more plausible theory is that the American Nazis have been there all the time, have never really gone anywhere in the last century, and started making noise in various online groups. This got the attention of the so-called cyber-anarchists of the “meme team,” who realized it was a good way to make noise and get attention. But to suggest that they somehow don’t understand that Jews-in-oven jokes are beyond the pale because it’s so far back in history is just hand-waving with a wink and a smile. There are plenty of ways to be completely irreverent without being cruel. Just look at Cards Against Humanity. The Alt-Right chose the side of cruelty and hate not only because it got the biggest reactions, but because that side had an appeal to them.

Following the spread of these “jokes” through their communities, the “natural conservatives” realized that they could start saying the things they wanted to say, as long as they packaged it right. As long as the boards were filled with actual Nazis and blatantly offensive material, they always had someone to point to and say “hey, at least we’re not as bad as them.”

And finally, the “intellectuals” came along, and their smarts came not from scientific study, but from the realization that they could package this “racism-lite” and sell it back to all three groups and stand to make a profit. And when the liberal Lügenpresse cried foul, they would play the victim and argue that the left was lumping them in with the Nazis just because the Nazis happened to buy their papers. “They’re not with us! We’re Alt-Right!”

This schism is already happening. Just recently there was an article in which the more extreme of the white-supremacists decided that they had the right to the “Alt-Right” mantle, and dubbed the Breitbart crowd as “Alt-Lite,” and made the same claim as I do — that the Breitbart crowd jumped onto white-supremacism as a means to publicity, not the other way around. And certainly it has worked. They have propelled white-supremacism back into the spotlight, and now they feel they have a popular mandate to have their demands met. After all, the authors at Breitbart write, “the risk otherwise is that the 1488ers start persuading people that their solution to natural conservatives’ problems is the only viable one.”

And there is the unveiled threat: Give in to our demands, or we will get violent. Let us marginalize you again legally, or we will do it by force.

So now you’ve heard the truth — from their own pens. Alt-Right *is* white-supremacism, and white-supremacists are calling themselves “Alt-Right,” to the point of excluding other conservatives from that title for not being racist enough. But they still don’t want to be called Nazis. They want us to believe that those are just the fringe. “The 1488ers just hate everyone; fortunately they keep mostly to themselves.” All right, let’s imagine for a moment that that’s true.

There were Germans in the 1930’s who were not anti-semites. I’m sure most Germans, before Hitler came to power, would have called themselves good, tolerant people. Many of them probably even joined the German Workers’ Party because they supported workers, and stuck around when they turned into the National Socialist Workers’ Party. But at some point they must have looked around and noticed that there were a whole lot of racist, anti-semite, xenophobic, hate-mongers around. And at some point they decided that they were okay with that, if it meant they got what they wanted.

But this is not 1930’s Germany, so we’re safe right?

Well, yes, and no. Yes, we have some nice democratic institutions to safeguard us, but the Weimar Republic was a democratic institution as well, and their constitution included many of the same protections as our Bill of Rights, including freedom of speech and religion, privacy, and due process. But Hitler seized power and created the Third Reich by using “Emergency Powers” in a time of crisis.

The United States Constitution also allows the President to use Emergency Powers, which include using the military to suppress insurrection and suspending due process “when in cases of rebellion or invasion the public safety may require it.” There is a congressional check on the Emergency Powers, but it requires a joint resolution by both houses, and can be vetoed by the President. And if you think that states of emergency are rare, I’ve got news for you: they are not.

So what we have now is a country soon to be run by a President who believes that “Islam hates us,” advised by the former editor of some of the favorite reading material of white-supremacist wanna-bes, supported by a welcoming Congress that is willing to overlook his massive disqualifications in the hopes that they can control him, and we are one massive terrorist attack or economic crisis away from giving him extraordinary powers to subvert the civil rights of millions of American citizens. And, unlike Germany in the 30’s, we can throw in nuclear weapons and a home country the size of all of Europe, without any major military neighbors to oppose it, and the probable backing of a friendly Russia.

If Hitler came to power in 2016 America, do you think there is anything the rest of the world could do to remove him?

If this sounds like fear-mongering, ask yourself why, in the face of all these facts, you are not afraid. I, for one, am terrified. There are plenty of people who are saying “hey, we got through horrible Presidents before, and we can do it again.” And this is true. The United States will still be here in four or eight years. After all, Germany is still here, and doing very well for itself. Heck, even the damage Trump will likely do to the environment might all be completely reversible!

But take a moment to consider all the people who are no longer here, because good people looked around and thought that what was happening was not really so bad. Take a moment to reflect on how easy it is to let things get just a little worse, and a little worse still, because you still feel safe in your own home. Because there are many, many people who do not feel safe at all, because all those “natural conservatives” are drawing swastikas on their cars for “lulz.”

The Alt-Right is not all right. And very soon, there may be no alternative at all.