The media have been focused on the “alt-right” since Donald Trump’s selection of Breitbart CEO Steve Bannon to be a senior counselor in the White House. Bannon has claimed Breitbart News is a “platform for the alt-right”.

Interest in what the “alt-right” stands for was only heightened after video emerged this week from a Washington DC conference hosted by the National Policy Institute, showing attendees giving the Nazi salute.

Hitler salutes and white supremacism: a weekend with the 'alt-right' Read more

The man who coined the term, Richard Spencer, has been taking somewhat of a victory tour since Trump’s election, seemingly being profiled in every outlet in the country. So what exactly is the “alt-right”? It is little more than a euphemism for white nationalism, and when you drill down into where it stands on the issues of the day, you quickly discover it has almost nothing to do with the American “right”.

Spencer does not deny this. I sat down with him on Monday to record an episode of my podcast, The Jamie Weinstein Show, set to be released later this week. Spencer admits the alt-right is against Pax Americana, against the free market, in theory for the European Union (as long as people like Spencer are in power), indifferent or opposed to the US constitution, against the idea of individualism, in many cases pro-abortion (to decrease the number of minority births) and even indifferent to religion (Spencer says he is merely a cultural Christian, not a believing one).

There is nothing in his platform that represents the conservatism of Ronald Reagan – indeed, Spencer and the “alt-right” stand opposed to the foreign policy, economic and social legs that has embodied the conservative movement for decades. The only thing he talks about that somewhat fits within the modern Republican party is his call for a reduction in immigration – though his position on the issue appears to be backed solely by bigoted reasoning.

Far from being a conservative, I found Spencer to actually be a revolutionary, someone who hopes to lay the intellectual groundwork for a white ethno-state, even if he recognizes that such a state isn’t likely to come to fruition in his lifetime. When asked what his ideal form of government would be, Spencer punted the question, noting that Karl Marx never laid out the institutions of a communist state in the Communist Manifesto.

It’s interesting he invoked Marx. Indeed, given the option between liberal democracy and Soviet communism, Spencer says he would prefer the latter. “I think the Soviet Union protected Russians from an even worse ideology, that is the liberalism of the United States and Western Europe,” he said in a different podcast interview last year.

‘Call me a racist, but don’t say I’m a Buddhist’: America's alt right Read more

This is not only not a previous generation’s conservatism, this isn’t conservatism at all. Spencer’s views are as leftwing as they are rightwing, at least in the American context. But they are hard to put in the American context because they have almost nothing to do with American political thought.

Spencer is trying to put palatable face on an insidious movement. He tries to charm journalists. He notes his movement is nonviolent. But during my interview with him, he refused to condemn the Ku Klux Klan or call Hitler evil. Though he said his commitment to nonviolence is based on moral principles, it seems more like a strategic decision.

It is true that Donald Trump has emboldened the alt-right. They believe his immigration rhetoric is in line with their cause. Trump has even retweeted members of the movement. Spencer claims to be in contact with people in Trump’s orbit, though he is elliptical when pressed on exactly who he is referring to and it is questionable whether he really has any deep ties in Trump world.

But Donald Trump is not an “alt-righter.” There is little evidence that Steve Bannon is an “alt-righter” either. From his writings, Bannon seems willing to work with such movements in order to achieve his aims – disgusting as that is – but no evidence has yet emerged to show that he is actually a fellow traveler.

What the alt-right does have is a talent to create media attention for itself and project the idea that its influence is greater than it is.

Despite Spencer’s protestations that he is leading an ascendant movement, there is little evidence of that. If he created his ethno-state today, it would likely be filled with losers. It would die off in short order since the movement appears to be filled with mainly men.

And a 200-300 people is all that turned up in Washington DC in the wake of the Trump’s election, to stand with the alt-right. If Trump’s success was such a victory for them, it certainly didn’t manifest itself it large numbers of people to willing to publicly stand as “alt-righters” for Trump.

Indeed, the alt-right garnered far fewer people at its post-election conference than BronyCon 2016 did in July. The convention for adult men who like to dress up in My Little Pony costumes attracted well over 7,000 attendees, more than 20 times what the far right was able to manage. That might tell us all we need to know about the power of this insidious white nationalist movement.