Many
were shocked by images of people raising their arms in a Nazi salute
and yelling “Hail Victory!” in celebration of Donald Trump’s
presidential win at an “alt-right” conference in Washington, D.C., over
the weekend.
Amid
outrage and under pressure to distance himself from such overtly
offensive behavior, the president-elect disavowed the so-called
alt-right during a meeting with reporters at the New York Times Tuesday saying, “It’s not a group I want to energize.”
But he already has.
America
might have just recently become aware of the alt-right, but the leaders
of this racist, white nationalist movement have been inching their way
from the political fringe into the mainstream for years, facilitated by
their use of coded language.
The movement was emboldened by Trump’s candidacy,
beginning with his early campaign promises to crack down on immigration
from Mexico and Muslim countries. In August, Trump hired as his
campaign CEO former Breitbart News chairman Steve Bannon, who has
credited himself with transforming the conservative news site into “the
platform of the alt-right.” Shortly after the election, Bannon was named
chief strategist and senior counselor to the president-elect.
For the proponents of this far-right faction — defined largely by the belief that white culture in America is under attack — Trump’s presidential election was seen as proof that their views had been legitimized.
The
Washington conference was sponsored by the white nationalist think tank
National Policy Institute. Its theme was Trump’s victory, but the bulk
of president Richard Spencer’s keynote speech was in line with the
nationalist views Spencer has espoused since becoming head of the
organization in 2011.
Loaded
with a mix of Internet slang, racist and anti-Semitic euphemisms, and
unabashed Nazi references, Spencer’s speech provides the perfect
opportunity to decode the real message of the alt-right, starting with
its name.
Alt-right: According
to the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups, the term
“alt-right” was coined by Spencer in 2008 as part of a “shallow
re-branding” of white nationalism. Short for “alternative,” the “alt”
refers to the movement’s rejection of both the mainstream media and the
Republican establishment.
The
definition of white nationalism varies, but the term essentially refers
to an ideology that promotes a national identity based on race, often
rooted in the perceived superiority of white people over those of other
races. The NPI describes itself on its website as “dedicated to the
heritage, identity, and future of people of European descent in the
United States, and around the world.”
“They don’t want to be identified as white nationalists anymore,” the SPLC’s Heidi Beirich told Yahoo News back in August. “People associate that with white supremacy, which is what it is, so instead they changed it to ‘alt-right.’”
In
fact, the through line that connects the nebulous collection of think
tanks, bloggers, radio hosts and redditors that have come to make up the
alt-right is a shared interest in protecting white American culture
from a perceived threat of multiculturalism. Its acolytes have endorsed a
variety of policies: ending social programs that benefit minorities;
banning immigration to the U.S. from non-European or predominantly
nonwhite countries; restricting U.S. citizenship to white Americans;
eugenics, a program of controlled breeding to change the racial balance
of the country in favor of whites.
Yet,
as Beirich noted at the time, this new and less threatening term has
enabled the movement to make its way from the farthest reaches of the
fringe and “into right-wing politics,” just in time for Trump’s
presidential campaign.
This spring, the Huffington Post
reported that it had obtained emails exchanged between leaders of the
white nationalist American Freedom Party, whose own presidential
candidate dropped out of the race in frustration over the party’s
apparent focus on getting Trump elected. According to HuffPost, the
emails revealed conversations about ways to temper the party’s message
in an effort to appear less extreme. Suggestions included identifying
themselves as “white advocates” or “advocates of European heritage”
instead of “white nationalists,” and replacing terms like “white
genocide” with something more benign, like “dispossession.”
“They’re
self-mainstreaming,” Beirich told Yahoo News in August. “But it should
be called out for what it is, which is just pure racism.”
The SPLC
notes that there are often overlaps between white nationalists and
other extremist groups like neo-Nazis. But while neo-Nazis are motivated
primarily by their hatred of Jews, white nationalists view all ethnic
minorities as the enemy. The biggest division within the alt-right,
according to SPLC senior fellow Mark Potok, is over whether Jews are
evil.
Before
the salutes and “heil” chants that stole the show on Saturday, Spencer
dropped several apparently anti-Semitic slights and not-so-subtle
references to Nazi slang.
Lügenpresse: Spencer
elicited laughs and applause from the crowd in Washington over the
weekend when he suggested that the “mainstream media” be referred to “in
the original German: ‘Lügenpresse.’
An
old German phrase meaning “lying press,” Lügenpresse was adopted into
the Nazi lexicon as a slur used to discredit Hitler’s critics in the
media. In recent years, the phrase has had a resurgence in Germany among
movements such as Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamization of the
West, or PEGIDA, which, according to Breitbart News,
“popularized the term to the point where it has become a pillar — even a
rallying cry — for the nationalist, populist movements across the
continent.”
The
phrase had become so synonymous with Europe’s burgeoning
anti-immigration movement that a panel of German linguists deemed
“Lügenpresse” the worst German word of the year in 2014.
By
the time Trump was riding his own wave of anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant
and antimedia rhetoric to the Republican presidential nomination, the
phrase had made its way to the United States. In Cleveland last month,
energized Trump supporters were heard hurling the slur at the penned-up
press following one of Trump’s last rallies before the election.
Golem: According
to Jewish folklore, a golem is an anthropomorphic figure of clay or
mud, created and magically brought to life by rabbis in order to protect
the Jews.
After
referring to the mainstream media as the “Lügenpresse,” Spencer went on
to say, “One wonders if these people are people at all, or instead
soulless golem.”
Victory of will: In
an apparent allusion to the 1935 Nazi propaganda film “Triumph of the
Will,” Spencer described Trump’s presidential election as “the victory
of will.”
Cucks: Perhaps
the most widely recognized word in the alt-right dictionary, “cuck,” or
“cuckservative,” originated as a dig at establishment Republicans
perceived as submissive, feminine and weak.
The portmanteau (cuckold + conservative = cuckservative) is also believed to have racist undertones,
as “cuckold” may not only refer to a man whose wife is unfaithful, but
to the more modern pornographic scenario involving a white man watching
his wife have sex with a black man.
Over the course of the 2016 election, this emasculating label has evolved into an all-inclusive insult,
applied to virtually anyone from Hillary Clinton supporters to
political consultants of either party to, of course, the mainstream
media.
Related term: Beta is used to describe weak, effeminate men, distinguished from “alpha males” like Trump.
Part
of the reason the alt-right is so hard to define is, aside from annual
gatherings like last weekend’s NPI conference, it exists mostly on the
Internet. As such, its followers have developed a catalogue of memes and
symbols to communicate online. Spencer’s speech was peppered with this
Internet slang, including references to “meme magic,” the “God Emperor,”
and the “Cult of Kek.”
Pepe the Frog: Much to the chagrin of his creator, this cartoon frog has become perhaps the most widely recognized
face of the alt-right. Whether depicted as a Nazi soldier, a menacing
Jew, or even as Trump, Pepe memes have become an all-encompassing symbol
of anti-Semitism and white supremacy online.
(((Echo))): Since at least 2014, the triple parenthesis
have been used as an anti-Semitic tool to identify Jews online. The
Anti-Defamation League added the so-called echo to its database of hate
symbols earlier this year after it started being used more aggressively
to harass Jewish journalists on Twitter. Many have since added the
triple parenthesis to their own Twitter handles as a means of
reappropriating the symbol, though it’s still frequently used as an
anti-Semitic dog whistle.
God Emperor: This grandiose title, bestowed upon the president-elect by fervent online supporters, originated last spring in Reddit’s densely populated pro-Trump forum, The_Donald.
One
redditor’s explanation for the nickname offers some insight into the
trolling — deliberately provocative — aspect that belies much of the
alt-right conversation online.
“Just a term of endearment for our leader,” user NewJersey908 posted in The_Donald back in July. “We know he can’t literally be one but it whips the cucks into a frenzy saying that we literally want a dictator.”
Cult of Kek: According to Know Your Meme,
the “Cult of Kek” is a satirical religion that originated on the
anonymous imageboard site 4chan in November 2015, and has since been
embraced by Trump supporters and described sarcastically as a “religion
of peace,” a reference to yet another meme mocking Islam.
Memes,
jokes and provocative Nazi rhetoric aside, about 20 minutes into his
speech on Saturday, Spencer made clear what the alt-right is all about
and how it will accomplish what its adherents consider the restoration
of America.
“America
was, until this past generation, a white country, designed for
ourselves and our posterity,” said Spencer. “It is our creation, it is
our inheritance and it belongs to us.”
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