Normalization comes in a variety of forms, from the mainstreaming of white nationalist narratives about race to the demonization of Muslims. The term Alt Right is well-coded white nationalism, and a term that has become so well-known on Internet message boards that Hillary Clinton even used it as a sledge-hammer (unsuccessfully) against Donald Trump. Now that the Alt Right, and the term’s founder Richard Spencer, have become household names, it is fitting that they have headed into a dictionary of record.
Dictionary.com, the largest and most used online Dictionary, has now added Alt Right as unique term.
noun 1.a political movement originating on social media and online forums,composed of a segment of conservatives who support extreme right-wing ideologies, including white nationalism and anti-Semitism (oftenused attributively): the face of the alt-right;an alt-right candidate.Origin of alt-rightExpand2010Coined in 2010 by Richard Spencer; shortening of alt(ernative) + right (inthe sense “political conservatives”)
While the definition used here is not terrible, it does miss the weight and extent of the Alt Right. The Alt Right is a fascist ideology that is birthed from a mixture of French New Right meta-politics, the political history of paleoconservatism, the Ethnostate ideas of American white nationalism, and the snarky anger of the Manosophere. Together they make up the perfect modern example of generic fascism, repackaging traditional fascist tropes on race, Jews, women, sex, and identity. To say that it is a “segment of conservatives” is to miss the point that this is not a branch of conservatism as such, but a revolutionary rightist ideology.
