Alt-right Movement Research Articles

Racial Determinism and Immigration in the Works of Ludwig von Mises: A comment on Slobodian’s Alt-Right Thesis

A recent argument by historian Quinn Slobodian contends that the modern Alt-Right movement’s genealogy derives, in part, from a posited ambiguity in the early 20th century writings of Ludwig von Mises about race and immigration. This article argues that while Slobodian has correctly identified an Alt-Right precursor in the work of Hans-Hermann Hoppe, he errs in attributing its derivation to earlier works by Mises or to the Austrian school of economics more generally. Mises’s arguments on immigration and race are shown to be in direct tension with the Hoppean position, and Slobodian’s treatments of the same rely upon misconstructions of Mises’s written works. The article concludes with an alternative genealogy of Hoppe’s anti-immigration arguments, showing that they emerged from a far-right adaptation of Habermasian discursive analysis and critical theory. As a result, Hoppe's epistemic framework may be better understood as what Murray Rothbard called a libertarian extension of Juergen Habermas and Karl-Otto Apel.

The Fellowship of the Crooked Cross: Trump’s Evangelical Hounds of Hell

This critical rage pedagogy article explores intersections between Alt-Right movements and Christian fundamentalist prosperity theology. Starting from The Fellowship Foundation founded in the USA in the 1930s and looking at similar and interconnected developments in various countries from South America, Africa, and Europe, the article explores theological foundations of today's worldwide ascend of fascism. Using the example of Anders Behring Breivik’s famous terrorist attack in Norway, it explores theoretical background for Alt-Right attacks on political correctness and ‘cultural Marxism’. Looking into the 'end of the world' theology and its morality, the article explains deep relationships between Christian fundamentalist prosperity theology and Israel. The article connects Christianity’s forward-looking, linear view of history with ‘end of the world’ theology and capitalism. It explores the postdigital and post-truth nature of evangelical Christians’ public communications and links them to various anti-intellectualist tendencies such as the anti-vaccination movement. Using insights from Marxism, critical pedagogy, and liberation theology, the article demystifies Christian fundamentalist theology and points towards opportunites for resistance.

The Pepe the Frog meme: an examination of social, political, and cultural implications through the tradition of the Darwinian Absurd

ABSTRACTThis article offers an examination of the meme known as Pepe the Frog. In 2015, the Pepe the Frog meme was crowned ‘biggest meme of the year’ by Tumblr. However, only one year later, the Pepe character was branded as a hate symbol by the U.S. Anti-Defamation League. Having begun as an innocuous joke, the Pepe meme took on a range of other complex characteristics. One of the most important was its incorporation into alt-right politics. We discuss this incorporation, especially as it relates to Donald Trump’s deployment of the meme. We propose that the Pepe meme became such a viral phenomenon as a result of the ways in which the meme articulates a mood of Trump-era politics. In order to unpack this proposal, we situate the arguments within the theoretical context of the Darwinian Absurd, especially using the work of Kathleen Robin Hart. We then move to an analysis of the meme as it functions across the broader memescape. By using the work of Derrida and Kristeva, we analyse of the role of intertextuality in generating the Darwinian Absurd. This examination reveals the complex mechanisms through which the alt-right movement mobilises and draws cultural currency from broader Internet culture.

Vaporwave

This article investigates various aspects of the popular online music genre known as vaporwave in order to understand how it functions as a form of socio-economic critique while problematizing aspects of identity. It begins by discussing some of the prominent features and objectives of vaporwave. Although there is much ambiguity in the overall attitude and message of vaporwave, its main unifying ideology is the re-configuration of pop music from the 1970s and ‘80s in order to critique and parody consumerism and corporate culture. With an analysis of one of the most well-known examples of vaporwave, Macintosh Plus’ Floral Shoppe (2011), the article explores the relationship of vaporwave to techno-Orientalism and the genre’s recent pernicious co-option by the conservative alt-right movement in the forms of Fashwave and Trumpwave.

Weaponizing the haters: <em>The Last Jedi</em> and the strategic politicization of pop culture through social media manipulation

Political discourse on social media is seen by many as polarized, vitriolic and permeated by falsehoods and misinformation. Political operators have exploited all of these aspects of the discourse for strategic purposes, most famously during the Russian social media influence campaign during the 2016 presidential election in the United States and current, similar efforts targeting the U.S. elections in 2018 and 2020. The results of the social media study presented in this paper presents evidence that political influence through manipulation of social media discussions is no longer exclusive to political debate but can now also be found in pop culture. Specifically, this study examines a collection of tweets relating to a much-publicized fan dispute over the Star Wars franchise film Episode VII: The Last Jedi. This study finds evidence of deliberate, organized political influence measures disguised as fan arguments. The likely objective of these measures is increasing media coverage of the fandom conflict, thereby adding to and further propagating a narrative of widespread discord and dysfunction in American society. Persuading voters of this narrative remains a strategic goal for the U.S. alt-right movement, as well as the Russian Federation. The results of this study show that among those who address The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson directly on Twitter to express their dissatisfaction, more than half are bots, trolls/sock puppets or political activists using the debate to propagate political messages supporting extreme right-wing causes and the discrimination of gender, race or sexuality. A number of these users appear to be Russian trolls. The paper concludes that while it is only a minority of Twitter accounts that tweet negatively about The Last Jedi, organized attempts at politicizing the pop culture discourse on social media for strategic purposes are significant enough that users should be made aware of these measures, so they can act accordingly.

White Nationalist Rhetoric, Neoliberal Multiculturalism and Colour Blind Racism: Decolonial Critique of Richard Spencer’s Campus Visit

This essay examines white nationalist discourses within the U.S. context of the alt-right movement from a decolonial perspective. It challenges concepts grounded in the enlightenment era that connect whiteness and European identity with civilisation and progress, thereby positioning whiteness as a disciplinary discourse. Specifically, our essay will use the hateful rhetoric of Richard Spencer, who is credited with coining the term alt-right movement, and analyze the white nationalist rhetoric surrounding his visit to Texas A&M University as a case study. It examines the fallacy and violence of white supremacist rhetoric that constructs Europe and North America as a “white” space, thus symbolically and politically erasing complex indigenous histories and peoples. It investigates how diversity, inclusion and multiculturalism are utilised to normalise discourses of white supremacy within historically white institutions. This type of multiculturalism serves as a form of colourblind racism that reinforces rather than challenges white supremacy. Specifically, it examines the University’s response to Spencer’s visit by hosting the Aggies United entertainment performance emphasising unity as an expression of neoliberal multiculturalism, which is contrasted with critical anti-racist pedagogy and other more meaningful forms of resistance such as protests.

Charlottesville and the alt-right: a turning point?

ABSTRACTThis article argues that education and exposure are essential tools in the fight against the alt-right movement. While the alt-right has flourished by disguising its core racist ideology, the August 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville VA revealed the movement's white supremacist leanings and affiliations. Building on this public unmasking, I outline what I see as the eight central white supremacist concepts that animate alt-right thinking: the Jewish Question, the 14 words, white genocide, white nationalism, identitarianism, race realism, misogyny, and the ethno-state. These concepts connect the alt-right to more traditional white power groups and organizations, and it is essential that educators, parents, students, and administrators understand and publicize those connections. The tragedy and chaos of the Charlottesville rally certainly forced alt-right leaders to make strategic and tactical modifications: public exposure intensified existing schisms and led to doubts about the efficacy of large-scale public rallies. But the central white supremacist tenets that emboldened far-right advocates to march through Charlottesville continue to motivate the movement, and anti-racist activists must understand and fight those ideas in both the real and virtual worlds.

Alt-Right Transgressions in the Age of Trump

Abstract The alt-right movement dates from 2008 when white supremacist Richard Spencer invented the term to identify contemporary right-wing and far-right socio/political movements. The movement relies on mass media, communicating graphically and symbolically through “trolls,” “tropes,” and “memes.” The “Sadomasochist trope” valorizes aggressive actors like Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin, while demonizing “passive” individuals like Hillary Clinton and Barak Obama. Trolls communicate through memes, single-frame or short video phrases matched with photos and cartoons, to attract online audiences. When not attacking liberals and progressives, alt-right memes turn on traditional conservatives. The alt-right community maintains it is “under assault” in today’s politically correct, overly secularized, culturally diverse society. However, Donald Trump elevated alt-right icon and former Breitbart ceo Stephen Bannon to chief advisor, providing the alt-right movement access to the highest government levels. Will alt-right organizations continue their recent expansion, or will the public lose interest in the movement?

Rescuing politics from liberalism

Both Judith Butler and Chantal Mouffe challenge liberal conceptions of politics based on their ontological descriptions of the political. Mouffe argues that the failure of liberalism to grasp the agonistic character of political life means that properly political conflicts get translated into moral terms. Mouffe thinks that the way to correct our “post-political” problems (like alt-right movements) is to avoid translating political conflicts into a moral register. I challenge Mouffe’s separation of ethics and politics by invoking Butler’s more nuanced account of the ethical sphere. I demonstrate that Mouffe does not consider that there are different orders of moral claims (for example, the claims that others have on us to treat them with justice and dignity, claims that at least implicitly demand not to be weighed in terms of economic or political utility); nor does Mouffe consider that there are different orders of affect, some of which cannot be simply opposed to rationality.

Popularizing Electoral Politics: Change in the 2016 U.S. Presidential Race

This special issue of the European Journal of American Studies examines the popularization of electoral politics during the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election. The popularization processes include the rise of populism penetrating the U.S. political landscape; a media focus on human interest, rather than policy substance questions; personality politics and celebrity culture at the center stage of the election; and the appropriation and dissemination of popular culture discourses by social media users. The articles draw from transdisciplinary American Studies approaches to tackle a range of issues which arose during the election, from contestations of “American-ness” and competing narratives of truth—or “post-truth”—to questions of campaign finance and displays of violence, verbal and physical. The issue also takes a closer look at specific expressions of popular culture as reflected in the media, specifically in relation to the rise of nativism and the alt-right movement, the political impact of comedy on the election, and the significance of memes in the battle over image and meaning-making. The processes of popularizing electoral politics of the 2016 race had distinct consequences, not only in shaping political culture as we know it, but also in destabilizing established rules of political conduct.

Kek, Cucks, and God Emperor Trump: A Measurement Study of 4chan’s Politically Incorrect Forum and Its Effects on the Web

The discussion-board site 4chan has been part of the Internet's dark underbelly since its inception, and recent political events have put it increasingly in the spotlight. In particular, /pol/, the “Politically Incorrect'” board, has been a central figure in the outlandish 2016 US election season, as it has often been linked to the alt-right movement and its rhetoric of hate and racism. However, 4chan remains relatively unstudied by the scientific community: little is known about its user base, the content it generates, and how it affects other parts of the Web. In this paper, we start addressing this gap by analyzing /pol/ along several axes, using a dataset of over 8M posts we collected over two and a half months. First, we perform a general characterization, showing that /pol/ users are well distributed around the world and that 4chan's unique features encourage fresh discussions. We also analyze content, finding, for instance, that YouTube links and hate speech are predominant on /pol/. Overall, our analysis not only provides the first measurement study of /pol/, but also insight into online harassment and hate speech trends in social media.

Building Movements Through Media

Building Movements Through Media Brittany Bounds (bio) Nicole Hemmer. Messengers of the Right: Conservative Media and the Transformation of American Politics. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016. xvi + 336 pp. Notes and Index. $34.95. Kevin M. Schultz. Buckley and Mailer: The Difficult Friendship That Shaped the Sixties. New York: W.W. Norton, 2015. 387 pp. Illustrations, notes, and index. $28.95. The publication of these books was well timed: Nielsen research recently declared Fox News the most-watched network in 2016; Breitbart made its own news in the media with the appointment of Steve Bannon as President Trump's chief strategist; and the declaration of Milo Yiannopoulos as the latest provocateur of the new Alt-Right movement is reminiscent of the scandals Norman Mailer generated in his day. New accusations resemble the old allegations of liberal media bias; except this time, it is being touted by a president who disseminates his own "alternative facts" and bans certain news outlets from the White House press room. A division used to exist between news and commentary, and the five main actors in these two books clearly fall into the latter category. We nearly always think of liberals when the word "activist" is used, but these books turn that paradigm upside down in their use of media activists, particularly those on the right. Other recent reviewers have covered the developing conservative historiography well, leaving little for this review to add, but these two works also fit nicely into the conversation about literary activism and movements. Both Nicole Hemmer and Kevin Schultz offer a glimpse into the history behind the growth of the movements that overtook the Sixties, and their two books complement one another. Hemmer's book sets the stage by explaining journalism's development toward objectivity in the twentieth century, mirrored in the centrist-liberal establishment that her three protagonists (William Rusher, Clarence Manion, and Henry Regnery) criticize through different types of media propagation in order to build a conservative movement through articles intentionally biased by selection (but not by content). Conservatives believed that liberals were the gatekeepers to power, thus in control of mainstream [End Page 511] media, higher education, the party system, and the federal government. Schultz also uses this backdrop of the 1950s consensus to explain well both Norman Mailer's and Bill Buckley's detestation of "liberal establishment" America: a nonconfrontational country, bland, and conforming, yet riddled with social problems. These two prolific authors were ideologically divergent, yet monumental in attacking the center, together, from their respective wings. The two books overlap at times, yet are not duplicative, as each offers a fresh perspective on some of the same events and developments. Messengers of the Right falls neatly into the historiography of the conservative movement but is the first to study the movement as a "coherent network of activists" whose leadership had profound consequences. Hemmer's story breaks out of the traditional narrative that claims the conservative movement rose in the 1950s; she instead traces their roots to the first generation of "media activists" in the late 1940s. These activists used their independent sources of media to turn consumers into activists who would ultimately vote conservatively and change U.S. politics. Hemmer makes three main points. First, she argues that conservatives won the rhetorical argument that liberal bias existed in both media and the academy during the 1950s age of post-ideology when the "vital center" illegitimated ideologues on both the left and right. Secondly, conservative media activists were able to articulate their "elite populism," which allowed them to speak on behalf of the "oppressed minority" of Americans (that became an "oppressed" majority in the mid-1960s). Thirdly, these activists tipped the scales between ideological purity and political pragmatism towards the former, and in their self-comparisons with radical revolutionaries like Thomas Paine and William Lloyd Garrison, they set themselves in opposition to party politics. The book is structured chronologically to appease the pickiest of OCD sufferers and the most alliterative of poets, with neatly named chapter titles such as: Networks (The Outsiders, The Outlets, The Obstacles); Leaders (The Movement, The Millstone, The Muzzle); Elections (The Purists, The Partisans, The Pivot); and Adaptations (The Compromise, The Contraction...