What Makes the Alt-Right Dangerous?
Parallax News presents big issues broken down into multiple perspectives. This brief looks at 3 different perspectives on the rise of the alt-right.
The alternative right (alt-right) is an amorphous, online movement that supports Donald Trump while openly championing white nationalism. Once a fringe network notorious for offensive meme campaigns, the alt-right has now become a significant presence in American politics. Today, Hillary Clinton gave a speech explicitly about the movement and connected it to Trump. Clinton’s speech was made in response to the hiring of Stephen Bannon as manager of Trump’s campaign. Bannon runs Breitbart News, which he has described as a “platform for the alt-right.”
I. Hillary Clinton
Hillary Clinton believes that, by accepting alt-right sympathizers into his campaign, Donald Trump is “taking a hate movement mainstream.” Members of the alt-right, Clinton notes, reject the fundamental notion that all people are created equal. The network is rabidly anti-feminist and asserts that there are biological differences between races. Alt-right leaders argue that white nations are better off when ethnically homogenous. For Clinton, this “dystopian” worldview is an overt threat to the millions of Americans who are not considered by the group as white and might be subject to deportation or demotion within society. This includes Jewish Americans, who are often the target of attacks from the alt-right’s notorious army of online trolls, many of whom expressly identify as neo-Nazis.
II. Ben Shapiro
Ben Shapiro is a conservative commentator and editor-in-chief of the Daily Wire. Shapiro believes that the alt-right has little chance of taking control of the country. He thinks it can succeed, however, in weakening conservatism, which asserts that “only a philosophy of limited government, God-given rights and personal responsibility can save the country.” Shapiro notes that this creed is “not bound to race or ethnicity” and served as the backbone of the Republican Party until the “takeover” by Trump and alt-right sympathizers like Stephen Bannon. Now, the party is saddled with a “creed-free, race-based nationalism” that, Shapiro argues, alienates constitutionalists and will ultimately lead to massive electoral victories for Hillary Clinton and the progressive movement.
III. Milo Yiannopoulos
Milo Yiannopoulos is a right-wing commentator who sympathizes with the alt-right movement, despite being a gay man of Jewish descent. Yiannopoulos believes the alt-right is fighting righteous battles that conservatives abandoned long ago. He argues that conservatism, like liberalism, has adopted progressive and politically correct values that degrade America’s culture and politics. Both sides, he claims, obscure the massive shortcomings of multiculturalism and permissive immigration policies, which the alt-right believes make the U.S. less safe and more miserable. The alt-right’s faithfulness to uncomfortable truths, Yiannopoulos says, imbues the movement with a “youthful energy” that makes it a genuine threat to the less exciting, mainstream political establishment.
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Further Reading: Washington Post / Breitbart / Yahoo News
This brief was written by Jared Metzker.
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