Armed resistance, lone wolves, and media messaging: meet the godfather of the ‘alt-right’

Since you follow Timeline on Medium, I wanted to tell you about a new project I’m really proud of, one that is so important in today’s political climate.

As I was researching the origins of the “alt-right,” one name kept popping up: Louis Beam. A Promethean hate monger, he was involved in nearly all the important episodes in the rise of extremism, dodging charges on everything from bombing a radio station to plotting to kill a federal judge. The white supremacists of the 1980s were a media-savvy, politically astute, and militarized crowd. Since Richard Spencer was in diapers, they have been trading on the same ideas that still animate the far-right today. And Beam was their high priest. Without him, there would be no “alt-right.”

My longform profile of Beam is the result of that realization. Along the way, I came across a number of pivotal incidents involving Beam and his cohort — the birth of hate online, a terror campaign against a Texas immigrant community, the murder of a Denver talk show host, and the lethal beating of an Ethiopian student. These events were harrowing stories on their own, so I wrote them too. Taken as a whole, these five pieces create a vivid genealogy of the contemporary “racialist” movement in America — this is the lineage of hate.

It’s an unsettling story, which sadly has a lot to say about where we are today. I hope you’ll take the time to read it.

Best,

Laura Smith

Timeline Staff Writer