When it was first announced that Richard Spencer, one of the founding fathers of the alt-right, would be giving a talk on April 18 at Auburn University in Alabama, it immediately and quite predictably set off a flurry of threats and counter-threats between the strangely symbiotic camps of America’s fascists and anti-fascists. The website for Antifa (short for anti-fascist) blared that Spencer and his goons were descending on the South, threatening to overrun Auburn with white power combatants armed in “safety gear.” In response, a group calling itself the White Student Union at Auburn, which until recently had been going under the impressively serpentine acronym WAR EAGLE—Whites of the Alt-Right Educating Auburn Gentiles for Liberation and Empowerment—plastered Auburn with warnings that the anti-fascists, in their violent rage, would not distinguish between fascists and innocent freshmen. “We don’t mind if you disagree with us, we just want you to be safe,” a flier said with maternal concern.

In the face of all this, the university informed Spencer that he was not welcome after all, to which Spencer replied that he would come anyway, since Auburn is a public school and First Amendment laws applied. Auburn is a picturesque campus that could be mistaken for a northeastern liberal arts school, the main difference being the conservative bent of Auburn’s students. Even so, Spencer’s brand of nationalism is a bridge too far for most of the student body, and on the morning of the speech many of them were preparing to protest, drawing up signs of “Love Trumps Hate” and “No Fascists at Auburn.”

It is a disorienting time to be in the alt-right. Mere months after seeing its champion ascend to the height of power, the movement is going through a painful and public break-up. The members of the alt-right feel they played a large part in making Donald Trump president, and now he is giving them the cold shoulder. “It certainly feels like a parting of ways,” Spencer told me. “A lot of us feel disillusioned and even burned by Trump. In a sense we thought that the alt-right could be Trump’s brain, but now he has Ivanka, and Jared and Paul Ryan for that. Basically people who aren’t me. You can’t really prepare yourself for what it feels like.”

“We can be the vanguard we always wanted to be, and vanguards are powerful,” Spencer said.

Like most break-ups, the relationship has been troubled for a while. Many on the alt-right were disappointed in Trump’s rapid embrace of conservative dogma, focusing on heath care and tax cuts rather than building his promised wall on the Mexican border, with his bare hands and a hammer if he had to. Yet the final straw was the 59 missiles Trump fired at a Syrian airbase, which struck the alt-right as 59 daggers in their backs. Trump had not only broken his promise not to engage in any new wars; he was also pissing off Syria’s ally Russia, thereby attacking Vladimir Putin, the alt-right’s favorite strongman. In short, Trump was doing exactly what the alt-right had warned that Hillary Clinton would do.

Betrayed by Trump, the alt-right has been casting about for a new direction. Some, like Matthew Heimbach of the Traditionalist Worker Party, have been thinking about getting into electoral politics. Spencer has been considering not only fielding hand-picked candidates for elections, but also running himself. “Trump’s domestic policies have been just one lame shit burger after another,” Spencer said. “He’s become a normal president, and we can’t trust him anymore. Still, it presents us with an opening. We can be the vanguard we always wanted to be, and vanguards are powerful.”