Web of Hate
Alt-Right
From 4Chan to the White House
They may be doing it strictly for the lulz, or to trigger a beta cuck or two, but channers and 1488ers like to celebrate the cult of Kek with meme magic, in order to red-pill normies about pizzagate and white genocide.
If the preceding paragraph leaves you scratching your head, then that’s a very good thing: it means you probably haven’t been lurking in the dark corners of the web with white nationalists, misogynists, neo-Confederates and neo-Nazis, known collectively as the “alt-right.” As Mike Wendling explains in this troubling but exceptionally well-organized guidebook from Fernwood Publishing, this ugly political movement has managed in a few short years to reach from obscure online discussion forums into the Trump administration.
White nationalist Richard Spencer (front), seen here in 2016 at a Texas college, has become one of the figureheads of the alt-right movement.
Given that the alt-right exists almost exclusively online, Wendling is perhaps the ideal journalist for the task of deconstructing their delusional, hate-driven politics and inscrutable codewords. As a senior broadcast journalist for the BBC, he has worked as an editor for the network’s radio show Trending — which examines the latest in web-driven global social phenomena — as well as produced the 2011 documentary radio series America’s Own Extremists.
Wendling first introduces the reader to the “intellectual” fathers of the movement, including retired professor and paleoconservative Paul Gottfried and his protegé, white nationalist Richard Spencer, both of whom are credited for coining the term “alt-right.” Spencer gained particular notoriety for shouting “Hail Trump!” at a rally following the 2016 presidential election, as well as for leading the deadly “Unite the Right” march in Charlottesville, Va., in August 2017.
We then learn of the various alt-right factions, each driven by different grievances: the racists, the antifeminists, the anti-immigrants and the neo-Nazis. Beyond their differences, these groups share the ridiculous belief that social progressivism (that is, multiculturalism and racial and gender equality) is an existential threat — in other words, “white genocide.”
Wendling further differentiates the subcultures of the alt-right by their tactics, which can range from the sharing of reactionary memes on the notorious discussion board 4chan/pol/, (which posters — or “channers” — can later defend as “just doing it for laughs” or “lulz”), to spreading bizarre conspiracy theories such as “pizzagate,” which alleged that there was a satanic child sex ring — linked to the despised Hillary Clinton, of course — being run out of the basement of a Washington, D.C.-area pizzeria.
The book further shows how these conspiracy theories reached Trump via their repetition on right-wing media outlets such as Alex Jones’ InfoWars and Breitbart News — which was once overseen by Steve Bannon, Trump’s former chief strategist.
Some members of the alt-right have also turned to violence, as we saw at the horrific Charlottesville march that left one woman dead and 19 injured, but which U.S. President Donald Trump — the alt-right’s “God Emperor” — refused to publicly condemn.
Wendling devotes one chapter to what really distinguishes the alt-right from conventional political parties: the glossary of distinctive terms they use with each other online, but which holds almost no meaning for outsiders. To cite one (despicable) example, “1488” refers to the 14-word phrase, “we must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children” combined with the numerical code for HH — or “Heil Hitler.”
As vile as its lexicon may be, it is symptomatic of the alt-right’s greatest weakness: its extreme insularity as a force of opposition to a cultural mainstream which it has no interest in joining.
What emerges from Wendling’s account is that — their current influence on the Trump White House notwithstanding, to say nothing of their (underestimated) potential for committing acts of terrorism — this fragmented coalition of angry white men is actually incapable of producing anything as culturally tangible as a book, much less translating their frustrated, barely literate rants into a coherent political force.
Michael Dudley is the librarian for political science at the University of Winnipeg.
— Winnipeg Free Press, May 2018