Matthew Heimbach, who at various points in his career has been called “the little Führer” and “the affable, youthful face of hate in America,” was wearing a pair of blue pajama pants decorated with Angry Birds as he nursed a cup of tepid coffee. His thick, bristly hair stuck out at odd angles and his eyes were bleary and tired after driving for most of the previous day. Sitting next to him at this restaurant in a Best Western in Manassas, Virginia, were Miles Blythe and Scott Hess. Blythe is tall, with long, delicate fingers and a friendly face on which he had recently cultivated a donut beard. Hess is short and squat, with an eager demeanor. Across from them sat Josef Weiss, a small and wiry southerner, and his fiancée Katherine Weiss, plump and cheerful. They are all key members of Heimbach’s political party, the Traditionalist Worker Party, a hard-line white nationalist outfit that had spread throughout Appalachia and the Rust Belt over the last year. They are all in their twenties.

Behind Heimbach, a television tuned to Fox News was blaring the latest about the inauguration of Donald Trump, which was only a few hours away. Aerial footage showed crowds milling on the streets of Washington, D.C., and queuing up at checkpoints leading to the National Mall. The coverage switched to footage taken the night before from outside the National Press Club, where members of a largely online coalition of alt-righters, trolls, and garden-variety racists had arranged an inaugural ball called “The DeploraBall.” The footage showed protesters throwing rocks and eggs at the attendees.

“What a shit show,” Heimbach said. Although one of the country’s preeminent nationalist leaders, Heimbach hadn’t been invited to the party. Over the last couple of weeks, it had become increasingly uncertain if the ball would go ahead at all, after the circle of activists arranging it publicly imploded over the so-called JQ—short for “Jewish Question.” “It’s so ridiculous,” Heimbach said. “The JQ basically boils down to whether or not Jews are counted as white people and if they have a negative influence on Western civilization. Baked Alaska”—the handle of an anonymous Twitter user—“who was one of the main guys behind the DeploraBall, tweeted some stuff about the Jews running the media and apparently some of the other guys took offense. All hell broke loose and everyone who was seen as anti-Jew got booted.”

By all rights the white nationalist movement in the U.S. should be walking on air. They played a key role in building grassroots enthusiasm for their preferred candidate, who embraced their favorite talking points with a fervor that had seemed impossible for a mainstream politician only a couple of years earlier. What’s more, a loose coalition of nationalists, anti-Semites, fascists, trolls, neo-Nazis, and cyber-bullies had successfully convinced the national media that they were more than just a modern manifestation of traditional white racism. They were instead a new thing that deserved its own name: the alt-right.

By all rights the white nationalist movement in the U.S. should be walking on air.

Yet at a time when they should be celebrating, the movement seemed more fractured and dysfunctional than ever. In addition to the recent bickering over the JQ, the days before the inauguration saw one of the most influential actors in the alt-right—blogger, podcaster, and virulent anti-Semite Mike Enoch—revealed to be Mike Peinovich, a New York City–based website developer who is married to a Jewish woman. His blog, The Right Stuff, collapsed and his audience of close to 100,000 regular readers scattered.