Alt-Right: How to Make Sense of Attention-Grabbing Neo-Racists
The question that haunts the Average Joe is: how do you make sense of a fresh class of openly misogynistic, louts flouting every norm of political decency? Until the summer of 2016, few cared or bothered about the existence of a shadowy clique of 4chan meme-peddlers. What changed that? The answer would the 2016 Presidential Elections. Two particular events which shot them into the limelight: Hillary Clinton admonishing Trump for bringing the Alt-Right into the mainstream of politics in an honest-to-God speech given in Reno, Nevada & Trump appointing Steve Bannon as the head of his presidential campaign.
Richard Spencer, the designated figurehead of the movement (since every movement needs one), is an interesting entry point if one seeks to comprehend the topsy-turvy realm of the Alt-Right. Credited with finding the term “Alt-Right” in 2008, Spencer, in his writings and speeches has repeatedly advocated a “White Ethno-State on the North-American Continent” and giving up “the false dreams of equality and democracy.” How exactly these goals would be attained is beyond the comprehension of those not enchanted by the charms of ethnic purity. How exactly he arrived at these conclusions is beyond comprehension too.
The name sounds like a keyboard-shortcut which is probably intentional because it is mostly an online phenomenon. Their methods are flashy underlined by what seems to be an intuitive grasping of PR; they play fast and loose with bold ideas and leverage themselves using the Internet. The use of memes, symbols is a recurrent method employed by the Alt-Right army to attract attention and visibility. As Vice puts it, “Memes and the alt-right go together like peanut butter and jelly that’s been spread into the shape of a swastika.”
There can be no two ways about this; the Alt-Right phenomenon can only be understood if one calls it out for what it actually is: an illiberal reaction against the perceived erosion of ‘American Values’.It sees the progressive trends of multiculturalism and globalization as threats endangering traditional American identity without taking into account the fact that it was immigrants of all kind who actually build America up from scratch. The white-male demographic which sees White, Male Christian identity as being threatened due to supposed “Woke”- Feminism does not want the sense of entitlement to be snatched away from it. The anonymity of the internet has been conveniently used by a virulent angry, “anti-establishment –without- a- cause” community to thrive on platforms such as “4chan”, where users post under pseudonyms with little or no moderation.
Now the question arises that- what is to be done? Can condescending appeasement be the answer to their feverish hunt for scapegoats? Would passively tolerating their aggressive encroachment in the discussions about the collective American Vision yield any significant victory? The answer is a decisive no. History has been witness to the fact that bending the knee in the face of bigotry has more often than not led to tragic consequences.
