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THE VIOLENT PROTESTS that left a woman dead in Charlottesville, Virginia last week shocked many Americans with TV footage of an estimated 1,000 neo-Nazis and white supremacists, guarded by “militiamen” brandishing semi-automatic rifles and wearing body armor.
Encouraged by President Donald Trump and buoyed by social media, a new generation of extremist startups has taken root, mostly created by angry young white men anxious to exploit fears of Latino immigration and radical Islam, the shrinking white share of the US population and the cultural shifts of globalisation.
Analysts say theses groups may have members in the tens of thousands and tacit supporters in the hundreds of thousands.
They have supplanted the old hotbeds of racist, anti-government and fascist activism, including the notorious Ku Klux Klan, which has dwindled to a few thousand members.
Until now, even with the alliance of powerful Trump advisor Steve Bannon, the so-called “alt-right” movement and its violent fringes has been deeply fragmented, unable to coalesce around common ideologies, goals and tactics.
However, this could change.
“They are acting in concert right now,” said Spencer Sunshine of Political Research Associates, which specialises in research on right-wing groups.
“The rising tide of Trump-ist racism is raising their boats.”
Sunshine pointed to the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” protests.
Against multiculturalism
The alt-right rues the loss of an idealised American identity, espousing white nationalism and “traditional” euro-centric culture as the foundation of US culture.
It rejects “multiculturalism” that gives more prominence to non-white groups and elevates the equal rights of women, gays and minorities.
Its politics connect to traditional conservatives and libertarians, and are likened to the “identitarian” movement in Europe.
Bannon’s Breitbart News, launched in 2007, became the media hub of the sprawling movement, his support eventually rendering Trump a default figurehead.
As “alt-right,” the movement has touted itself as just a louder, consciously provocative but legitimate force in conservative politics.
But the Southern Policy Law Center, an anti-extremist research group, insists the alt-right “is pretty much the same thing as the old white supremacist right —- even if it does favor suits and ties over Klan robes or faux Nazi uniforms.”
SPLC counts scores of such groups under the alt-right umbrella, many of which were present in Charlottesville.
Saturday’s rally was led by Richard Spencer, whose Washington-based National Policy Institute think-tank is “dedicated to the heritage, identity and future of people of European descent in the United States.”
Groups he invited were openly neo-Nazi and white supremacist, such as Vanguard America, whose members chanted “blood and soil,” echoing the “blut und boden” cries of Hitler’s followers in the 1930s.
They also included Identity Evropa, an “identitarian” group that promotes white superiority and separatism, and the Traditionalist Workers Party, which marries a Nazi-like logo with a Christian whites-only ideology. Both are stridently anti-Semitic.
Defending white southern heritage
The Charlottesville rally ostensibly focused on the planned removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee, the general who led the south in the 1860s Civil War.
That attracted another alt-right type, southerners committed to preserving an idealised, heroic — and white — tradition of the South.
They reject the notion that the war was about slavery, and are fighting the elimination of symbols of that racist legacy, like the Confederate flag of the Lee monuments.
To Jason Kessler, a Charlottesville organiser of the rally, the statue’s removal represents “white genocide.”
Also taking part was the League of the South, which encourages white families to “secede” from “post-Christian culture in America,” and Confederate Riders of America, a biker group that says southern culture is “under attack.”
Skinheads and militiamen
Alt-right rallies increasingly attract groups determined to pick fights, including the Proud Boys and the DIY Division, also called the Rise Above Movement. Both allegedly have roots in the violent neo-Nazi skinheads of the 1980s and white nationalist prison gangs.
But also taking part in Charlottesville were so-called patriot-militia groups.
There are some 165 of these across the country, according to the SPLC, well-armed but focused more on grudges with the government, regulations and taxes and less concerned about issues of race. Some actively seek members from minorities, and disdain neo-Nazi ideas as anti-American.
The most prominent of these groups is the Oath Keepers, formed by former members of the military to “defend the Constitution” with a strongly libertarian ideology.
Yet the presence of militia at alt-right rallies is worrisome. Some clearly have white-power leanings.
In 2014 and 2015, they appeared heavily armed at anti-police rallies in Ferguson, Missouri, appearing to many as a self-appointed force ready to repress African American protesters.
In Charlottesville, they came well-armed, in camouflage fatigues, wielding AR-15 assault rifles, also seemingly to protect the other hardline rightists.
Yet, according to Sunshine, they took no part in the violence, and moved away when fighting broke out.
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FFS do we not have enough problems with the nuts on the other side?
@john Appleseed: how many white supremacists turned up in Charlottesville? 500/700 after weeks and weeks of organising. More hysterical nonsense. How many people have died because of open border supporters in government and MSM? Just curious.
@Danny foley: You’re right. The native Americans have been almost completely wiped out by these white blow-ins. Hundreds of thousands dead and lands pillaged and destroyed. They should all head back to Europe of wherever their ancestors came from.
@Joe Harbison: different American Indians fought each other over land, stole land and killed for land. Tis the way of the world. Is this a skin colour thing?
@Danny foley: Most didn’t, it was a big continent, but the land sure as heck wasn’t the white settlers to take but they did it anyway. The native Americans arrived first, the African Americans had no choice but to arrive. The European settlers, well they were after ‘free’ land and a new life. Some of them contained dangerous elements, Fenians and the like, responsible for outrages like the New York draft riots. These are now the guys saying ‘let’s not let any of these people in, some of them may be dangerous!’
@Joe Harbison: Did the American Indians have a flag?? You sure this is not about race????
@Danny foley: Of course some of the Europeans were fleeing tyranny, starvation, poverty and religious oppression and I understand there were some jerks at the time who thought they were dangerous and shouldn’t be let it. Generally I think the US benefitted from their arrival, don’t you?
@Danny foley: no Danny it’s about irony, its about carrying arguments to their absurd extremes, it’s about people saying ‘we were here first stay out’, its about saying ‘way back in the past your ancestors were emigrants too’, it’s about people saying ‘open borders are daaaaangerouuus!’. It’s about people saying ‘we have to protect ourselves from dangerous outsiders’. Danny, we’re all outsiders somewhere in the past. New people are going to come and go, the cultural and ethnic makeup of countries is going to change and change and change again. Get over it.
These numbskulls have been around for donkeys years, another misleading article .
@Danny foley: Did they have a flag, did they need one to live on their own land and have it taken from them by God fearing White Christians? Maybe they needed to be civilised and educated, or killed to get their land and import slaves in to make these white nazi’s richer?
@Joe Harbison: wish I could give you ten thumbs up for that comment!
@Joe Harbison: no thanks, why would Europe want America’s dregs of humanity
So their hatred of non-whites doesn’t extend to those making torches in a sweatshop somewhere…
@Avina Laaf: oh dear! Fact check: all torches used were made in the USA. Read more.
@Chris M.: The scary truth is your lot don’t see the similarites between the kkk and deash. But blindly foolow herr Trump trough the end, but with his close ally gone Bannon will hammer trump now.
It’s literally is his base. Plus they are running around yelling “Heil Trump” while everyone else is talking about what a terrible president he is.
He is so narcissistic, desperate for approval all the time.
@ianglen: literally loike mon!
@Chris M.: I think these idiots got into “supremacy” because they’re not alpha males and they feel they have to have power over other men and women. Is that what got you into it?
@Deborah Behan: I think it is that Deborah and because they have small willies
Interesting that black separatists are the single largest grouping in the US. By a wide margin I might add. Black separatists oppose integration and racial intermarriage and generally are extremely anti-Semitic, some even arguing that blacks not Jews are God’s chosen people. ‘The white man is the devil’ is the refrain. The number of black separatist hate groups has jumped from around 100 chapters in 2009 to 180 currently. A marked increase which interestingly enough has coincided with the term of office of president of Barack Obama. One could argue that this is purely co-incidental – good luck with that.
@Emmet Dillane:
Never heard of even one .
In sure racists come in all shapes and sizes .
I suppose you can only object to what you see or whose become a danger .
Like Hitler in his early years .Hes an example to these particular form of racists bigots .
Extremists will extremist.
Maybe we should hunt these clowns down like their cousins in groups like ISIL.
Afterwards give them a full Islamic burial while they are dressed up with a Yarmulke and a Tallit.
No word on the rise of the racist hate group the black panthers or the new racist group black lives matter.oh sorry I forgot only white people can racists
@Anthony Brennan: yeh but that’s yesterday’s news, until a few months from now we’re it will be back again. Just another repeat of media influencing seapertisim in humanity.
@Anthony Brennan: they all need to be shutdown. The right to bear arms needs to be dealt with. No way Trump will go there. That is his heartland not a few thousand idiots who think they are nazis. Had hope for Obama here but alas not to be.
@Anthony Brennan:
That comment says it all for me .
Its hard to know where to start .
All I can ask is when is the last time you seen an African American ,or a Jew dressed in a Nazi uniform .
BLM are “racists” because of them wanting police to have body cameras ? Doesn’t seem to be a racist thing to me
BLM are “racists” because they want more training for police officers ? Ohio?
Help us out here Anthony ..
@Anthony Brennan: BLM are only created after so many unarmed black are killed by white cops,
Thick rednecks!
Total Ding Dang Do brainless idiots. You’d get better intelligence from chimps.
@Shoot Thepiano: though on chimpanzees
@Shoot Thepiano: Trumpanzees?
dont think these confederate statues would being coming down under clinton glad trumps cant help making himself and his fanatics disgusting to the rest of the USA to the degree progressive civil rights are being defended and advanced, rip them statues all down, glorifying slavery and racism in any form is wrong
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