After the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville on August 12th, 2017, the Alt Right has been hit hard by organizers, community members, and, now, lawyers. There have been lawsuits filed against high profile members of the Alt Right who were connected to the rally, such as Mike Enoch (Peinovich) of the Daily Shoah, Richard Spencer of the National Policy Institute, David Duke, and others.
Well known corporate attorney Roberta Kaplan took up the case against the Alt Right and filed the lawsuit in November of last year. The twenty-five defendants range from individuals like Richard Spencer and Jason Kessler to organizations like the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, all of which were active in the rally and its violence. On May 24th a hearing was held on motions filed by some of the defendants, including Richard Spencer and Mike Enoch, to have the lawsuit dismissed saying that none of the violence on August 11-12th was pre-planned. This runs against evidence from places like leaked Discord servers that appeared to have discussions of violence, or the general communication from the white nationalists involved. These lawsuits are additional to the criminal charges against people like Christopher Cantwell (who is also being named in the lawsuit) and KKK member Richard Wilson Preston, who allegedly discharged a firearm into a crowd of protesters.
Richard Spencer has been trying to find appropriate legal council, especially after his former attorney, Kyle Bristow, decided to leave the white nationalist movement after pressure from activists. Spencer did a public plea asking for $25,000 in donations, the base fee his new attorney requires to defend him, but only has successfully brought in just over $20,000 by the morning of May 24th, though Spencer alleges he met his goal when crytpocurreny was included. On May 23rd, Charlottesville-based attorney John DiNucci filed court documents for Spencer, answering the question about whether or not Spencer would have to defend himself in court.
U.S. District Judge Norman K. Moon started hearing arguments at 10:30am on Thursday. Ohio-based attorney Jim Kolenich presented the arguments representing the majority of defendants, arguing that there is no real evidence linking the defendants and the violence of the rally.
These types of lawsuits have been successful in the past. The SPLC has taken down organizations like the United Klans of America, White Aryan Resistance, and the Aryan Nations by holding those organizations financially accountable for the violence their members carry out, noting that they have stoked that violent behavior. It is important to note, however, that lawsuits are not a sufficient response, and instead organizing is critical if the Alt Right is to ever really be shut down.
The final decision by the federal judge about whether or not the lawsuit will go forward will be made within the next month.
The last year has been difficult for the Alt Right.
Since Charlottesville the counter-organizing by antifascists and the broader community responses have forced Richard Spencer and his growing white nationalist cadre further into the shadows. Starting in 2015, the Alt Right began moving its fascist ideology into the more public realm through publishing, podcasts, activist organizations, and by linking up with the slightly more moderate Alt Light. That all changed in the wake of Trump’s election as the counter-movement grew, and that exploded after the debacle and murder at Charlottesville.
The two largest venues for struggle were their appearances and their web platforms. Antifascists made the Alt Right throw its hands up and stop public appearances as it became too difficult to operate in public. A parallel, but equally powerful, effect has been that public pressure has forced web companies to pull the Alt Right from using their services. Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, website companies like Cloudfire and WordPress, financial platforms like Patreon and PayPal, chat functions like Disqus, all have banned the Alt Right over this year, and that number only continues.
While Richard Spencer and his various websites, many associated with the National Policy Institute, thought that he had weathered the storm, he is now officially back offline.
GoDaddy had been handling the hosting for Spencer’s AltRight.com, a trashy tabloid style hate-site that is considered low-brow even for this most racist followers. Composed mainly of racist blog threads, rambling podcasts, and synth-fash aesthetics, it had become a main venue for his inner-circle.
GoDaddy did issue a statement as to why, outlining the content.
In instances where a site goes beyond the mere exercise of these freedoms, however, and crosses over to promoting, encouraging, or otherwise engaging in specific acts of violence against any person, we will take action. It is our determination that altright.com crossed the line and encouraged and promoted violence in a direct and threatening manner.
This came shortly after Spencer’s two Facebook pages for AltRight.com and the National Policy Institute were taken down, a common thread for the Alt Right. Right now Spencer is still on Twitter, but that has a short count-down to it.
As this “shuttening” continue to limit their ability to recruit, they are starting to shrink in numbers and turn to infighting. This is a standard cycle for white nationalists, who cannot sustain a movement when opposition is strong from organized antifascists.
Richard Spencer has moved from fascist ideologue to most hated person in the country as he targets college campuses. Spencer has relied heavily on state institutions to protect his access to public venues since private locations, such as hotels or conference centers, are often more vulnerable to organized public pressure. Since 2016, and later with the platform denial the Alt Right faced after Charlottesville, Spencer has had a plan to exploit the loopholes in policies at publicly funded universities (Which are actually funded by massive fees and tuition that students are straddled with debt to pay.). He will make bogus “free speech” claims to force his way onto campus at the cost of students, which he has successfully done at Texas A&M, the University of Florida, and others.
Next is Michigan State, which he was able to secure despite organized student antifascist pressure because of lawsuits put forward by white nationalist attorney, and Michigan State alumni, Kyle Bristow. Cameron Padgett was the person who issued the lawsuit against MSU for denying him the ability to manipulate the school’s facilities. After months of fighting, the day is finally coming where Richard Spencer will be speaking at Michigan State and bringing a bevy of angry and violent white nationalists with him.
On March 5th, 2018, Spencer will be speaking at the Pavilion for Agriculture and Livestock Education, on the southern edge of the campus. The choice to hold it at this facility on the outskirts of campus seems to be a method by the administration to hold back the inevitable conflict between antifascists and white nationalists in attendance. There is also a counter-event being held at the All Saints Episcopal Church on Abbot Road in East Lansing a ways away, which is really an attempt to draw protesters away from the campus so that the university can make this go as quietly as possible. While events like the “Celebration of Diversity Festival” are not bad on their face, they act as a safety valve to negate actual resistance that is happening at the point of contact.
Stop Spencer at Michigan State University, formed by antifascist students and community members in response to the white nationalist event, are planning the protest action right at the facility where Spencer will be speaking. Students across the Michigan State University system have been protesting since last year, arranging student walkouts at universities and communities colleges while the administration were in negotiations with Spencer’s people about the potential of a large white nationalist event.
Spencer’s March 5th event will likely draw a large crowd of white nationalists and neo-Nazis, especially considering there is an Alt Right conference nearby in Detroit on March 4th. The StopSpencer coalition has put the below instructions for the event:
People in East Lansing are expecting hundreds of people out on the streets, including students, community members, staff, and faculty. The fascists are going to be rolling into town the morning of March 5th from Detroit, after attending an Alt-Right conference the day before, on March 4th.
The actual speaking event is scheduled to take part inside a room which is located within the MSU Pavilion for Agriculture and Livestock Education from 4:30-6:30 PM. The area surrounding the pavilion is largely farmland and golf courses, and moreover, there are only several entrances into the Pavilion off of two main roads. In short, we want to flood the area with people – to shut down the Alt-Right in its tracks.
On our end, we will be mobilizing up the road at a set of large parking lots, which are located at Farm Lane and Mt. Hope Road. Parking is free, and this convergence point is located less than half a mile from the campus.
It is critical to show resistance on Monday, to make sure that campuses will not be an incubator for violent white nationalists and to make them centers for antifascist resistance. Come out and join the movement!
Richard Spencer has had his sites on colleges for some time now. In 2016 he announced what he called the “Danger Zone Tour,” trying to build on his 80s synth-pop aesthetic. After his speaking event at Texas A&M drew thousands of opponents and a few supporters, and he was able to speak despite mass protests, he thought that this would be a major opportunity for him. The Alt Right, especially groups like Identity Europa and Vanguard America, had decided to focus on college campuses for recruitment, going after a middle-income white male demographic that was both educated and upwardly mobile(until they are doxxed, that is).
After a series of platform removals and canceled appearances, Spencer and his ilk has found that publicly run facilities were much more friendly to him than private ones. As white nationalist institutions like American Renaissance(AmRen) had found out, private hotels and venues were especially vulnerable to public pressure, especially when it meant mass community boycotts and pickets. In 2010 and 2011, AmRen was canceled after the One People’s Project and other anti-fascist organizations created campaigns to have their hotels pulled. Jared Taylor, the founder of the white nationalist conference, finally rested on Montgomery Bell State Park in Tennessee that was resistant to canceling. While protests continued, organizers have been since unable to get the management to sever Taylor’s contract.
The same has largely been true for Spencer, who relies on the Ronald Reagan building in Washington D.C. for his National Policy Institute conferences. Spencer then decided to focus on state funded universities since he believes that they will be more likely to host him. After his appearance at Auburn University was canceled amid organized pressure, he sued to force his way on campus, essentially proving his point true.
Now he has again won his ability to appear on campus at the University of Florida – Gainesville, even though a coalition of student and community groups created a massive protest that did not allow him free reign to speak as he had wished.
Now Spencer intends on continuing the vision outlined in his “Danger Zone Tour” where he will continue to appear on campuses. We have collected a list of the intended universities, where students or community members from the areas are trying to bring him there to aid in organizing Alt Right student contingents.
Ohio State University
Right now this event has been canceled by the administration after student pressure, yet, as he did at Auburn, he is suing to appear.
University of Cincinnati
As it stands it looks like the Board of Trustees is going to allow Richard Spencer to speak there, saying that the university should be a “marketplace of ideas.”
Penn State University
The university president Eric Barron has officially shut this down citing safety concerns, but a student, Cameron Padgett, has now officially sued the school to allow it.
Michigan State University
This is another state school that has officially declined to allow Spencer onto campus and who he has decided to sue.
Spencer’s lawsuits are being done largely by Kyle Bristow, the white nationalist attorney who has spent years in the more vulgar wing of the supremacist movement and who is using far-right money to force campuses to host Spencer. In many cases, the university itself is left with the bill of hundreds of thousands of dollars of security costs, which come out of the already taxed bank accounts of students.
Each of these schools is a fantastic spot to begin organizing, pressuring the administration to not back down and, if he does come to campus, to shut down the events amid massive organized pressure. Organizations like No Nazis UF, the Campus Antifascist Network, and various antifa projects are set up to create this model of resistance.
The convergence in Charlottesville was planned weeks in advance, with organizations from the crisp collars of the National Policy Institute to the blackshirts of the National Socialist Movement joining forces. After their more mainstream counterparts in the Alt Light, the sphere of Trumpist conservatives that overlap with the Alt Right, betrayed them, the Alt Right wanted a chance to stand on their own. The Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, on August 12th was their chance to bring together everyone to the right of the Alt Light. This was finally an event to see how well white nationalists could fair on their own without the allyship of more mainstream conservatives. Though the Alt Right used the issue of Confederate statue removal as the impetus, the rally was instead a show of strength.
Their “coming out party” turned out to be the moment where they pulled the trigger of collective suicide, letting their own implicit violence become explicit and self-destructive. In the end there were dozens injured and a protester murdered by an associate of Vanguard America, a participating organization in their demonstration. In the weeks that followed, the Alt Right began one of the quickest implosions in the history of political movements, as the country, and their own organizing tools, turned on them, ripping at their foundations and leaving them vulnerable to expulsion.
The Shuttening
The Alt Right could not be possible in the earlier era of print publications and physical distribution, it just would not be able to respond to issues quickly and refine talking points through perpetual message revisioning. The world of the Alt Right is founded on social media and web publishing: blogs, podcasts, and Tweets. The fact that the Alt Right uses the same web hosting platforms that major media outlets do is how they gain equal cultural access, and their increased profile has still not impeded their access.
That is, of course, until their behavior, and the opposition, hit a point of critical rupture. In the days after Charlottesville, the Daily Stormer, the ironic-themed neo-Nazi website run by Alt Right blogger Andrew Anglin, was the first to lose their platform. While most of the Alt Right was, at least publically, sympathizing with the family of the murdered protester Heather Heyer, Anglin refused to take the high road. Instead, he published an article celebrating her death, calling her a “fat slut” and saying that the real travesty was the damaged Dodge Challenger that took her life. This rhetoric is standard for Anglin, who labels the Daily Stormer as “pro-Genocide” and gained popularity through his density of racial slurs and commemoration of racist violence. First, the “hacktivist” group Anonymous took over the website, though he wrestled back control quickly. The domain name server company Cloudflare decided to pull the Daily Stormer from its platform, citing a violation to the Terms of Service. “The tipping point for us making this decision was that the team behind the Daily Stormer made the claim that we were secretly supporters of their ideology,” said Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince in a statement.
While Anglin was working with other companies to re-establish hosting, GoDaddy, who had been running their domain name, canceled Anglin’s account. Google Domains and Tucows refused to help, leaving Anglin with few options. Anglin eventually placed it on a foreign server and to have it only available on the “Darkweb,” meaning it can only be viewed through the controversial Tor browser. The site has re-emerged in various places but is now isolated and marginalized.
The Right Stuff, the popular Alt Right blog that hosts the podcasts The Daily Shoah and Fash the Nation, also got booted from its hosting. Since then the site has been touch and go, stuttering on and offline, a serious problem since they recently switched to a pay-subscription system.
Squarespace, which is known for their easy-create web platforms and for handling online purchases, followed suit and began severing white nationalist accounts. Richard Spencer, one of the prime organizers of the Unite the Right rally, had been relying on Squarespace for his websites. After a 48 hour notice, Squarespace dropped the National Policy Institute (NPI) and Radix Journal websites, two Alt Right centers. NPI is the largest Alt Right specific conference holder, and without their web presence their outreach will be hobbled. At the same times as Unite the Right, Red Ice Media, one of the largest Alt Right media projects in the world, was taken down by hackers, opening up subscriber information and permanently deleting content.
AltRight.com
Despite the incredible shunning faced by the Alt Right in the wake of Charlottesville, some of their leaders continue to live in denial. Amid the backlash, cofounder of AltRight.com and editor-in-Chief of Arktos, Jason Reza Jorjani, claimed that his resignation from the alt-right was unrelated to the “great victory at Charlottesville.” With comrades losing jobs, expelled from the internet, and facing legal reprisals, Jorjani released a cryptic statement about reviewing “exotic technology” that a new Iranian political force called the United Front may use in the near future to create a “coming post-Islamic… archeo-futurist Iran.” Recently, Jorjani released a follow-up statement explaining that he left the Alt Right Corporation because his grand geopolitical schemes, which he alleges had high-level backing in the White House including Steve Bannon, went unsupported by Spencer and others. AltRight.com has since been a hub decrying the “censorship” of the left, with Richard Spencer putting out pleas for financial support. Jorjani has now faced campaigns to have him removed from his lecturer position at the New Jersey Institute of Technology, and has tried to say that he was tricking the Alt Right and did not really believe their ideas. This came after the Hope Not Hate hidden camera video surfaced that showed him talking about migrants being put into concentration camps and venerating Hitler. (They also doxxed the image of Counter-Currents publishing editor Greg Johnson)
Stormfront
Since the mid-1990s, Stormfront has been the center of white nationalism, linking up the insurrectionary groups like KKK formations and neo-Nazi gangs into a web-forum that was a catch-all for extreme racism. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, over the last ten years, Stormfront has been linked to almost 100 acts of white supremacist violence, from bombings to shootings at Jewish community centers. While Stormfront tends to have a different demographic than the Alt Right, more Blue Collar and Nazi-centric, this was still an organizing center for Unite the Right.
In one of the most pronounced consequences of the events in Charlottesville was that Network Solutions, the hosting company for Stormfront, finally took it offline. With more than 300,000 members, this was the largest white nationalist forum internationally, this was a major hit to neo-Nazi networking. Don Black, the founder of Stormfront and former KKK leader, says he is speaking to attorneys to try and get the site back online. The sudden drop of the hosting came without warning, leaving him with few options to temper the fallout.
Hitting Them in the Wallet
One major tactic for antifascists has been attempting to convince funding sources to scrub white nationalists from their sites. The shocking images of fascists in Charlottesville suddenly brought the rationale for this grueling and often frustrating work into sharp relief. Apple cut off ApplePay for sites that pedal white nationalist merchandise, with CEO Tim Cook insisting, “It’s a moral issue – an affront to America. We must all stand against it.”
GoFundMe cut off a number of white nationalist campaigns. Adding insult to injury, a spokesperson admitted that the campaigns “did not raise any money” anyway. Similarly, Kickstarter re-enforced guidelines against hate speech and PayPal set into place a ban on white nationalists. Further, Discover Financial Corporation terminated merchant agreements with the Alt Right, declaring, “The intolerant and racist views of hate groups are inconsistent with our beliefs and practices.” Some speculate that Discover’s move will put pressure on companies like Visa and MasterCard. This came only a couple of weeks after Patreon pulled the plug on a number of accounts, including Alt Light leader Lauren Southern after she publicly supported the blocking of refugee ships.
Social Media Shutdown
“The events in Charlottesville are yet another disturbing example of the many forms that racism and hatred manifest. Prejudice, however, does not always march in the street.” With these words, Twitter banned a number of far-right accounts last year and earlier this year, including Mike “Enoch” Peinovich, Ricky Vaughan, Pax Dickinson, Richard Spencer, and John Rivers. After Charlottesville, Twitter banned The Daily Stormer.
Twitter then updated their Terms of Service, making it unusable for people associated with hate groups. If the accounts in question could be tied to organized racist groups, from Alt Right meet-up organizations to activist projects like Identity Europa or Generation Identity in France, they would be shut down. This led to another mass wave at the end of 2017, clearing out even more accounts.
After the alt-right used the Discord comment service to plan the Charlottesville rally, the company shuttered all alt-right websites. Mail Chimp followed suit by banning AltRight.com and other figures, and SoundCloud dropped a number of alt-right podcasts. Though it is notoriously difficult to prevent the alt-right from creating new sock puppet accounts, the striking of alt-right media platforms shows that companies now connect their speech to the murderous actions of their followers.
Lawsuit
As the family of Heather Heyer was mourning her death, cradled by a nationwide community who joined in revering her sacrifice, two people injured in the attack decided to hold the Alt Right ideologues that had radicalized her killer responsible. A lawsuit was filed by sisters Micah and Tadrint Washington in the Circuit Court of Charlottesville naming 28 far-right defendants. This includes former KKK leader David Duke, the Daily Shoah host Mike “Enoch” Peinovich, Matthew Heimbach of the Traditionalist Workers Party, and Richard Spencer.
While figures like Peinovich have declared that this lawsuit is totally baseless, there is a history of these types of suits effectively stifling far-right movements. In 1981, the SPLC took on the United Klans of America after Nineteen-year-old Michael Donald was kidnapped and murdered by UKA members, eventually winning the suit and taking all the assets of the organization. Similarly, after the 1988 murder of Ethiopian immigrant Mulugeta Seraw in Portland by members of Eastside White Pride, the SPLC lawsuit identified Tom Metzger and White Aryan Resistance as responsible for radicalizing the gang to violence. The same model could be used in this case, showing that figures like Peinovich had set up a climate of violence, using revolutionary rhetoric that encouraged James Alex Fields to murder.
While much of the Alt Right treated this as meritless, information continuing to stream into social media shows the case is turning against them. The anti-fascist media outfit Unicorn Riot has released over 1,000 media images of chat rooms, along with audio recordings, that show the white nationalist contingent openly preparing for violence. The conversations were hosted on a private server controlled by Jason Kessler and Alt Right activist Eli Mosley, with many participants arguing for placing screws in poles and attacking protesters with shields. The proposition here is that the organizers prepared the event for terroristic violence, and that’s exactly what happened.
This perception of the Alt Right as the instigators of violence is only exacerbated by the recent video released by a member of the Virginia Civil Liberties union that clearly shows a member of the white nationalist contingent openly shooting at a crowd of black protesters with a handgun. Police later arrested the man, Richard Wilson Preston, but only after the video was released, and the video itself clearly shows them refusing to intervene on the act of targeted violence.
Alt Right Leaders Fall
No Alt Right figure got more attention out of Charlottesville than Christopher Cantwell, the anarcho-capitalist turned white nationalist who decided to perform in front of Vice New Tonight cameras. Cantwell runs a blog and podcast, mixing his virulent meritocratic viciousness with a vulgar hatred of non-whites and Jews, as well as a willingness to openly talk about murdering police and opponents. Shortly after the murders and street fights, Cantwell was told that Charlottesville police were issuing a warrant for his arrest for “illegal use of gases and injury by caustic agent or explosive.” Cantwell then put out a video where he sobs into the camera, talking about how scared he was and repudiating the violence he loudly celebrated just days before.
In the hours after this, things did not get much better for Cantwell. The dating website OKCupid, after pressure from anti-fascists, identified and banned his account, and Tindr quickly followed suit. Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter all did in kind, veritably severing the public persona he has crafted for years. Between his embarrassing performances and his inability to solicit donations, there is little left for Cantwell to continue his mission of stoking racial revolution. Cantwell eventually surrendered to the police, and is now being held in Albemarle County Regional Jail awaiting an October 12 court date.
Johnny “Monoxide” Ramondetta, a prime figure at Unite the Right, did not fare much better afterward. Returning to work in the San Francisco bay area as an IBEW Local 6 electrician at Rosendin Electric, Ramondetta saw that his worksite was covered with flyers identifying him as an active white nationalist and with quotes from his various appearances on The Right Stuff podcasts. As Ramondetta’s co-workers began to ask him if he was a racist, the foreman pulled him into his office and offered him a “layoff.” They admitted they had known about his behavior for several weeks and were waiting for it to become public, and passed him a contract that would disallow him to apply for unemployment. He continues to be a union electrician, however, which means he can be hired onto another union job, a problem that many activists are arguing the union should take a stand on. At the same time his regular podcast, The Paranormies, was banned on SoundCloud, along with a host of other Alt Right shows.
Nathan Damigo, the founder of Identity Europa, returned to school at California University at Stanislaus in Turlock, California, to find that a campaign to have him removed from campus in effect. A demonstration took place at the welcoming address of President Ellen Junn intended to usher in freshmen.
The Alt Right’s pan-European attempts to recruit across the pond have also been hit, especially in AltRight.com’s Nordic counterpart. After this participation in the Unite the Right rally, Christoffer Dulny, the Editor of Nordic.AltRight.com, was notified that his ESTA status was changed to “travel not authorized.” This means he is “effectively banned from entering the United States,” a fate likewise doled out to AltRight.com and Arktos Media co-founder Daniel Frieberg.
The prime organizer of the Charlottesville rally, Jason Kessler, has disappeared from public view entirely, and his organization, Unity and Security for America, looks to be heading to a lightning end. The Facebook page, Twitter account, and website have all been taken down; potentially by his own doing after receiving the kind of public backlash he never could have anticipated on the morning of August 12th. The death threats that Kessler says he received could have been inspired by his own comments, including saying that “[Heather] Heyer was a fat, disgusting Communist.” Richard Spencer, Baked Alaska, and James Allsup publicly disassociated with Kessler after that, yet they have not made public statements about Andrew Anglin or The Right Stuff who made similar comments.
Although founder of the “western chauvinist” Proud Boys, Gavin McInnes, identifies with the Alt Light, the participation of numerous leading Proud Boys in Unite the Right left the group with an inescapable stigma. Organizer Jason Kessler is a Proud Boy, as are the Unite the Right featured speakers and leaders of the “Order of Alt Knights,” Kyle “Based Stickman” Chapman and Augustus Sol Invictus. Since McInnes has found a large audience as a commentator for The Rebel right-wing media site, his attempts to distance himself from the Charlottesville rally fell flat when fellow Rebel contributor Faith Goldy provided favorable on-the-ground coverage of Unite the Right. After conservatives criticized the site, co-founder Brain Lilley resigned and two other commentators followed suit. McInnes’s anti-Semitism had caused contributing conservatives to flee The Rebel before, but after Charlottesville, McInnes, himself, abandoned the site the same day they fired Goldy. As Norwegian Cruise Lines cancelled an upcoming Rebel cruise, editor-in-chief Ezra Levant admitted that he is being blackmailed by a former contributor over accusations of misusing contributions.
The Rest of the Participants
Even more than the Alt Right’s leadership, the fallout from the Charlottesville events showed the Alt Right’s members that inclusion in the movement can lead to major consequences. With the heavy media coverage of the event, participants were widely photographed. This lead to a huge influx of identifications as anti-racist activists revealed who they were, leading to a string of firings and personal troubles. Named Alt Righters like Cole White and Ryan Roy lost their jobs. Peter Teft, whose angry remarks about so-called “white genocide” went viral, found himself disowned by his family.
In the small town of Honeoye Falls, New York, Unite the Right participant and alleged associate of the Daily StormerJarrod Kuhn faced a campaign against him upon his return. Eastside Antifascists did a flyering around the village, identifying who he was and what he had done. “There is a long history of white supremacist violence in the US. People have a right to know who their neighbor is and take steps to protect themselves,” said Peter Berkman, organizer with the group. “You don’t get to be a weekend Nazi. You don’t get to participate in deadly neo-Nazi riots and then quietly return to your community like nothing happened.” Kuhn has had his family and friends contacted, and with his new notoriety he is likely unable to remain in his home town. “I’m 21 years old and my life is over in this area,” said Kuhn.
The violence itself was incredibly broad and constant during Charlottesville, with the far-right contingent singling out and attacking protesters. Six white men were photographed beating a black man named DeAndre Harris in a parking garage during the confrontation, flailing metal poles at him as he crawled on the ground. Three of those men were charged with assaulting the man, including Richard W. Preston, who has been identified as an Imperial Wizard in the Confederate White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan out of northern Maryland.
Political Backlash
Despite the ostracizing of Alt Righters throughout the US, Donald Trump’s response to their violent rally has been tepid at best. First blaming “violence from many sides,” Trump came out two days later to denounce the KKK. However, he returned to the podium soon after to again claim that the “Alt Left” shares responsibility for the day’s tragic outcomes. Since then, he has offered impassioned support for the Alt Right’s campaign to keep the Confederate monuments in place, calling the movement to take them down “foolish.” As twice as many US Americans disapprove of Trump’s reaction than approve, key politicians from the GOP like Marco Rubio spoke out against him. Others, such as House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy, House Speaker Paul Ryan, Senator Jeff Flake of Arizona, Senator Rob Portman of Ohio and Representative Steve Scalise of Louisiana used the opportunity to voice opposition to white supremacy. Given their marginalization, Trump’s apparent support has been celebrated by the Alt Right, which in turn has further alienated Trump from the GOP. As some 10 percent fewer Republicans “strongly support” Trump than did in July, Steve Bannon’s firing signaled attempts to win back moderates and independents while maintaining Alt Right support.
The mass attack on Alt Right’s online platforms has the ability to render them completely invisible. As Richard Spencer lamented months back when he was first shut down on Twitter along with another Alt Right figures like Ricky Vaughn, if you can’t find them on Amazon, Google, or social media, do they even exist? They have acknowledged one complicated truth of the modern communication paradigm: a few companies control the access to speech for the vast majority. This creates an easy channel for activists hoping to limit the ability of far right groups to organize, but this also provides ominous signals for the left as well. Nonetheless, the Alt Right’s attempts to create counter-platforms for donations and social media are negligible since what has given them success is that regular people use services like Twitter and Patreon, not Gab and Hatreon.
The weekend after Charlottesville, more rightwing organizers converged on Boston for another “free speech” rally in the model begun by Lauren Southern in Berkeley. The fifty participants were met by a counter-insurgency of an estimated 40,000 protesters, who forced the early cancellation of the right-wing rally and took to the streets against the rise of insurrectionary white supremacy. Across the country, rallies, vigils, and demonstrations were raging, all in solidarity with the victims of Charlottesville and showing a united front against the rise of the Alt Right. After Boston’s response, the anti-Muslim group Act for America canceled their upcoming string of 67 rallies planned across 36 states. Act for America had been responsible for the recent “March Against Sharia” events where Alt Right groups were heavily represented. Another rally staged by Joey Gibson in the Bay Area attracted even fewer far-right demonstrators and thousands of counter-protesters, followed by dual follow-up rallies in Portland, Oregon, and Vancouver, Washington, during which the far-right’s numbers were again miniscule in comparison to counter-protesters. To cap it off, following Gibson’s rally in Vancouver, a far-right activist sped his car through a group of protesters once again showing the inevitable murderous violence of their side.
The cultural tide shifted away from the Alt Right, birthed out of their own hubris, the belief that the Trump-voting public was actually ready for open and unashamed white nationalism. As John Morgan, the former head of the Alt Right friendly publisher Arktos, said on Counter-Currents Radio, a white nationalist publisher who also got booted from funding platforms after Charlottesville, the Alt Right had spent its short life trying to unseat the specters haunting the public’s image of fascism. “What [The Alt Right] originally stood for when we all started doing this stuff the better part of a decade ago, it was to overcome what we now call ‘Cuckservatism’… and it was also to overcome things like the legacy of the Klan in America and National Socialism,” points out Morgan. “And basically Unite the Right has put us back in that mode, where everybody associates us with those things.”
Spencer decided to embrace the hatred most of the country now feels for him by returning to Charlottesville for an impromptu torchlight march, even though the maker of Tiki Torches has denounced him. After his recent appearance at the University of Florida, where a massive organized resistance mocked him and disallowed his speech, his followers opened fire on protesters. Disqus, the comment conversation plug-in for website, began dropping Alt Right websites like The Right Stuff as well.
The weeks after Unite the Right has shown anything but unity as people like Jason Kessler mock the victims, causing disassociation by figures like Richard Spencer and James Allsup. The rest of the country is turning even more thoroughly against them, they are losing their platforms, and their organizations are disintegrating. This provides opportunities for the left that must use this energy and the reality of the right’s violence to further build a mass movement that will overwhelm the right’s meager abilities. As the Alt Right realizes that it will not be able to plan mass rallies, however, they increasingly endorse “lone wolf” violence as the counterpart to their more attempts at respectability. For this reason, antifascist action remains critical on the grassroots level, not only to respond to larger rallies but to prevent fascist groups from gaining momentum toward violent acts that may leave countless people dead.
The conversational nature of the podcasts have allowed them to take the canon of white supremacist philosophy, from the Conservative Revolution to the French New Right to “Race Realism,” and make it easily understood. Richard Spencer, the founder of the Alt Right and the person behind the National Policy Institute and the Radix Journal, was on the front line of this with his original podcast Vanguard Radio. He had on guests like Jared Taylor and even Pat Buchanan, and starting at AlternativeRight.com he has churned out hundreds of episodes on everything from immigration scandals to film analysis. He ported his original Vanguard Radio podcast over to the Radix Journal in the form of the Radix Journal Podcast, then merging with other media projects to form AltRight.com.
His ability to do this, however, has been halted as his hosting, SoundCloud, has finally booted him. After a “tweetstorm” from Alternet contributor Alex Kotch, SoundCloud responded and took down his podcast library. This is an important and useful tactic for antifascists as going after their media communication is critical for severing their ability to recruit and organize. We have gone after many Alt Right podcasts in the past, helping to get podcasts like The Daily Shoah and Fash the Nation removed from SoundCloud. Spencer has already had his podcast removed from iTunes due to pressure, and so has most of the Alt Right podcasts (Counter Currents Radio archive is still available on iTunes, however.).
As it stands, the Radix Journal is basically a ghost town. It has been all but formally abandoned, and now with their podcast feed severed there is even less reason for people to visit there. This is an incredible turn of events as the most popular Alt Right media outlets are being destroyed. This method of community pressure needs to be continued for other podcasts held by SoundCloud and distrubited by places like Stitcher. Right now, Kulture Kampf and others are still on SoundCloud, and the Red Ice Radio feed is still available on Stitcher. The advantage we have is the Terms of Service of these platforms preclude this type of content, so we can easily push them to remove them through mass community comments.
This is how it can work: First, figure out the podcast in question. Then single it out and promote the SoundCloud or other platform’s customer service lines, whether by phone, email, or social media. Then do mass contact asking it to be taken down, and give examples of the offensive content (which is incredibly easy to find). This can take them down one at a time, and will easily sever their most popular platforms.
Spencer will likely find some type of hosting that will be free from pressure and where he will continue to be able to keep his podcasts running. What that lacks, though, is a mass audience social networking component that he gets by using well known services. This is what has allowed the Alt Right to gain an audience quickly, because they use the same platforms as some of the biggest media names in the U.S. Once that is gone they will only be able to reach their core audience, and their ability to recruit will be destroyed.
For the Alt Right, branding has been everything. The mission of people like Richard Spencer or groups like Identity Europa is to rebrand white nationalism as just another intellectual movement about identity, disconnected from the long and relevant history of violent white supremacist attacks. With expensive conferences, snarky advertising, and coded language, they want to avoid the linkage with violence.
This is obviously a mirage since they have always been tied to the violent wing of the white nationalist movement since they are birthed right out of it, the same people in a new generation. The Council of Conservative Citizens, while allying with Alt Right figures and talking points, has also been a meeting point for KKK members and inspired the violence of Dylan Roof. American Renaissance is regularly attended by the Stormfront crowd and Aryan Nations members, and even inspired the Arizona shooting that left many dead and a congresswoman with a critical head wound. In every one of these Alt Right organizations you will find a history of white supremacist violence, from Identity Europa’s Nathan Damigo’s conviction of a racially motivated assault to the neo-Nazis that make up much of Matthew Heimbach’s Traditionalist Workers Party.
As we saw on April 15th, the Alt Right has now shifted towards open assault and attacks on leftist protesters, uniting with militia movement members and more volatile parts of Trump’s base to create stirring confrontations in the streets. Led in part by “Based Stickman” Kyle Chapman, they are forming corps of volunteers to being attacking opposition in public ways.
Kyle Chapman, a California activist arrested earlier this month in a clash in Berkeley between anti-fascist protesters and pro-Trump demonstrators, announced this week he is forming the Fraternal Order of Alt Knights (cleverly called “FOAK).
Chapman, who uses the Internet meme “Based Stick Man,” says his new militant, highly-masculine group will be the “tactical defensive arm” of the Proud Boys, another group that shows up at pro-Trump rallies looking to rumble with counter-protesters.
“We don’t fear the fight. We are the fight,” Chapman said in a recent social media post announcing FOAK’s formation.
“I’m proud to announce that my newly created Fraternal Order of Alt-Knights will be partnering with Proud Boys,” Chapman said, with the “full-approval” of its founder, Gavin McInnes.
McInnes is a co-founder of Vice (although he and the magazine severed ties 10 years ago) and more recently has been a frequent guest on FOX News and a contributor for the racist site VDARE where he denigrated Muslims and called Asian Americans “slopes” and “riceballs.”
Now described as a “neo-masculine reactionary,” McInnes calls his Proud Boys a “pro-West fraternal organization.”
Others describe it as the military arm of the Alt-Right.
And now there’s “FOAK,” which Chapman proudly describes as a “fraternal organization,” a Proud Boys affiliate chapter, “with its own bylaws, constitution, rituals and vetting processes.”
Although there initially aren’t any overt racist themes, the new Alt-Right group of street fighters sounds quite similar to a neo-Nazi “fight club” called the “DIY Division.” Members of that white supremacist group showed up last month in Huntington Beach, California, mingling with an estimated 2,000 Trump supporters.
The Proud Boys reportedly have a four-step initiation process. It starts with a prospect declaring himself a “Proud Boy,” suiting up in Fred Perry polo shirts with yellow stripes—similar to those worn by skinheads.
The second degree is a “cereal beat-in” during which the new member is punched and beaten by current members until the plebe can rattle off the names of five cereals (you know, Corn Flakes, Rice Krispies, Cheerios!)
The third degree reported involves “adhering to the masturbation regimen and getting a tattoo,” blogger Will Sommer wrote in a recent post.
Since then, a fourth-degree has been added to the initiation ritual – brawling with antifascists at public rallies.
Chapman said his Proud Boys’ affiliate, Alt-Knights, are ready to take it to the streets.
“Our emphasis will be on street activism, preparation, defense and confrontation,” he said. “We will protect and defend our right wing brethren when the police and government fail to do so.”
Chapman says his organization “is for those that possess the Warrior Spirit. The weak or timid need not apply.”
The willingness towards this violence was seen especially in Nathan Damigo’s brazen assault of a protester on camera on April 15th, one that has been used as a snapshot of the movement’s turn towards excessive violence.
Spencer himself has been calling for right-wing “defense squads” since he cannot go out in public without opposition, yet this seems to be a code for far-right violence. This is something for the anti-fascist movement to consider, and especially when it comes to the necessity of community self-defense movements. The reality of their violence is becoming explicit, and this could result in seemingly random acts of violence as they become increasingly desperate.
The presidential election of 2016 is going to go down as one of the largest political upsets in history. Even into the evening, most mainstream pollsters and political rags were declaring a decisive Clinton victory, and as the states rolled in red, a sense of desperation hit the streets. Sure, Clinton was a candidate of the capitalist class, but Trump had awakened the racist id of white America. No matter what you think of the political caste, he provided a mass mobilization to the Alt Right, who lacked a connection to the mainstream before his campaign. They had grown by leaps and bounds, but what would have happened to them if Trump had actually lost?
***
A slight tone of mourning would have graced the Ronald Regan building as the suit and tie guests make their way through metal detectors and waves of counter-protesters. But also a feeling of victory. The sold-out conference, which sold out its discounted “Millennial” tickets weeks in advance, knows where its boost has come from. Even if Trump had lost, their numbers had increased more than any of them could have dreamed.
The National Policy Institute’s annual conference took place on November 19th, and was the largest Alt Right meeting of the year. With the steroid injection they have received from crossover figures like Milo Yianouplous and the caustic rhetoric of Trump, it was not surprising it was the biggest in their short history. The National Policy Institute is the benign name for the central institution of the diffuse Alt Right, the latest attempt at rebranding the white nationalist movement. Founded by William Regnery, the inheritor to the Regnery Publishing operation, and Sam Francis, now deceased paleoconservative and racialist author known for his work at the Washington Post, the organization was taken over several years ago by Alternative Right founder Richard Spencer. In the years since, Spencer has made it an “identitarian” think-tank, bringing together the various strains of the Alt Right into a meeting point that can try to take the movement’s ideas forward.
Their conferences have become a “who’s who” of the movement, linking up “shitlords” on Twitter with white racialists who have been in the movement for decades. In years past we have seen people like long-time white nationalist Sam Dickson, VDare founder Peter Brimelow, French New Right philosopher Alain De Benoist, and “male tribalism” advocate Jack Donovan. In 2016 they rode the wave of celebrity and even included Tila Tequila, the bi-racial reality-television celebrity who has come under fire for her virulent anti-Semitism, anti-black racism, and Holocaust Denial and “flat earth” conspiracy theories. Peter Brimelow was ported over again, as well as Dr. Kevin MacDonald, a former University of California at Long Beach professor whose work on Jews has become the central doctrine for modern anti-Semitism. Millennial Woes, F. Roger Devlin, and the people behind Red Ice Creations, all of which have become Alt Right stars in the world of Internet podcasting and streaming video, joined them. British nationalist politician Matthew Tait spoke about Brexit after his time supporing the UK Independence Party.
In an attempt to make the NPI gatherings more of a social network and fraternal community, they included nationalist neofolk and post-industrial musicians Xurious and Upward Path, as well as evening cocktails and polite banter before the main conference presentations begin the following afternoon.
For the Alt Right as a branded movement, this was the high water mark, and though the Trump victory added an element of celebration, a loss would have had much the same atmosphere. One of rebellion, race, and revolution. The cameras from The Atlantic later caught conference goers Seig Heiling as Richard Spencer yelled “Hail Trump, Hail our people, Hail victory!”
Breaking Through to the Mainstream
What is undeniable is that a Trump loss in the Presidential election would have cost the Alt Right their bridge to the GOP. As Spencer has often derided, the GOP is not explicitly in line with their political vision. Instead, the Republican focus on free markets, tax policy, foreign intervention, and other disparate “idea clusters” distracts from what they want, which is an institution dedicated to manifesting white ethnic interests. Beyond all of their guesses, the GOP then turned in their favor as Trump rode a populist-wave into the Republican nomination, and if Hillary had taken the White House that branding would not have stuck.
Instead, a Trump loss would lead the GOP to strip out all remnants of the Trump campaign, including supporters, messaging, and partnerships. For years the GOP has searched to reestablish a soul, one that was lost after the George W. Bush presidency took the country to the nadir of Neoconservative approval. It went through various stages of possible rebranding, such as the Tea Party and hard libertarianism, but all failed to galvanize the base into a real ideological force that they could ride into a new coherent identity. Trump’s civic nationalism represents another branding opportunity, and a loss would have added it to the list of losing identities.
Places like Breitbart would of moved on to the next trendy thing in conservatism, just like they did in the various incarnations it has been through since Andrew Breitbart first dreamed it up at the Huffington Post. This would have pushed the ‘Alt Lite,” the people like Milo Yianoupoulos and Gavin McGinnis who mainstream the Alt Right’s message, further away from the Alt Right’s ideological core, turning on the white nationalists and repudiating their radical base.
Since the base of Trump’s support in rural and midwestern states have yet to prove that they have a grassroots movement building strategy separate from the Trump campaign, it would have been unlikely that there would have been a mainstream “Trump Republican” movement beyond this election. This message can be drawn explicitly from the Bernie Sanders campaign, which has yet to show that it has legs to exist as something tangible past the election and piecemeal victories like influencing the Democratic Party platform.
For the Alt Right and the various strands of white nationalism, this would have effectively become the “black pill,” a tool for them to lose faith in the political system and forces them to look to other options.
No Enemies to the Right
Even before the election, the Alt Right began consolidating itself to the right. In a large part this came from the growth of the Alt Lite and the desire that many had in core Alt Right circles to define themselves ideologically. They were not just “anti-PC, “anti-SJW,” against immigration and for Trump, they were white nationalists. This meant creating strong allies within the “1488 crowd,” which means the more explicit neo-Nazi and KKK communities. This is going to help them re-enter the white nationalist subculture as access to mainstream conservatism shrinks over the coming months. This would help to slowly dissolve the cultural identity that made the Alt Right distinct from the larger white nationalist project, one that was forged out of its middle-class character and associations with high paying tech jobs. As they further meld with the larger mass of white nationalism it will further radicalize their constituency, even if people like Richard Spencer and American Renaissance’s Jared Taylor will desperately try to hold on to the moderate intellectual tone they have achieved.
“I do think that their approach, generally speaking, will be to double down and triple down on overt appeals to Ethnonationalism,” says Tim Wise, an anti-racist writer discussing their possibilities if Trump was to lose.
“There will be a threshold that they will find themselves bumping up against because there is still an aversion to their open fascism.”
This exit from the political sphere would force a “reform vs. revolution” discussion inside of the fascist right, one that has happened for years in anticipation. Even as recently as the 2015 American Renaissance conference there was as a staged debate about whether or not the “race problem” can be solved inside the American political system. Peter Brimelow and former National Review writer John Derbyshire sided with the electoral system, while Spencer and Dickson took a more revolutionary position. With their feelings confirmed, Spencer would likely have continued his call for a “meta-political identity” that can eventually take advantage of what many on the Alt Right see as the inevitable “Balkanization” of American states. They want to foment white revolution just as many neo-Nazis have suggested for years, and that notion would have crystalized after the loss. Their proposed “Ethnostate” would then become a revolutionary project; one that will require the overthrow of the U.S. government in some form, even if they believe the American project is doomed even without their revolutionary opposition.
U.S. Under Attack
The most dramatic increase in possibly violent tension from the far right would have happened in the form of the militia movement, which already poses itself as a revolutionary faction. Though Trump will only intensify this turn, it has been validated in the recent acquittal of the Bundy family and accomplices in the 2015 occupation and standoff at the Malheur Wildlife Sanctuary outside of Burns, Oregon. The recent verdict in federal court shocked many, especially as arrests and confrontations littered the largely peaceful encampment blocking the Dakota Access Pipeline at Standing Rock. The armed occupation, which damaged sacred Paiute land and cost the state millions, was the latest stage in a build up coming from Patriot groups fighting for privatizing land rights.
Though the Trump camp would likely have been unable to create a grassroots movement outside the election, it is fertile territory for a well-crafted message from militia groups like the Oath Keepers and the 3%ers. They will be able to speak to the rural angst of many of these groups, intermixing their experiences of financial instability with a reactionary white anger. As rural America sees hits on small farms, the decrease of unionized manufacturing, and the shrinking of local economies, the instability is likely to increase these feelings of isolation. The militias have used this to their advantage and have stoked a racially motivated anger out of that situation in the absence of the left.
Though the Alt Right is an outsider to these movements, they can continue to contribute rhetorically by continuing to ignite fears about immigration, non-white crime, and the perils of a “progressive government.” There may even be a material support that begins to transpire as the wealthier elements of the Alt Right attempt to hedge their bets, but either way it will means an effort to further racialized the Patriot movement and prepare them for nationalist confrontation.
A Move Towards Violence
The Alt Right, especially in its leadership, has been clear that they do not want violence. For people like Spencer and Taylor, this would change the public perception of their movement and stop them from achieving the mass groundswell they would need for a radical change in the country. They have an uphill battle since the history of white nationalism is the history of racist violence, and its one they are slowly trying to build an alternative for.
The problem for them is that this dynamic would begin to change with a swiftness as their core constituencies, who are radical white nationalists, saw that their previous efforts were partial failures and they begin to look towards possibilities with more firepower. Their rhetoric turns violent through an image of revolution where confrontation with the government, and eventually other races, is inevitable.
“Some of the people who have been brought into this Alt Right orbit, who are not the intellectuals…are going to turn to a much more reactionary approach,” says Wise.
“I fear that there will be a sort of uptick in blatantly terroristic actions, probably done in lone-wolf fashion, not necessarily organized… I think there will be certain there will be some folks in that movement that say ‘It’s time for war.’”
For years, white nationalism has seen this logic through its notion of “lone wolf” violence. This comes from the “leaderless resistance” model proposed by people like Louis Beam, who saw a failure in electoral politics after his participation in the early campaigns of David Duke. The notion was further proposed by Tom Metzger, the founder of the Nazi skinhead allied White Aryan Resistance who was sued into oblivion by the Southern Poverty Law Center after WAR affiliated skinheads murder an Ethiopian student. Lone wolf action sees spontaneous, disconnected violence and murder as a possibility, with the targeting of Jews, non-whites, and political officials as key action items. While this seems disconnected from the discourse inside the Alt Right, its further consolidation within the larger white nationalist movement and a feeling of political helplessness as conservatism abandons them after Trump’s loss could increase its likelihood. When the rhetoric is of necessity and the method is revolution, unstable individuals who feel like they “must do something” have the potential to slip into acts of seemingly random mass violence.
This turn would be self-reinforcing, as the increasingly violent rhetoric would continue to marginalize the Alt Right, which will continue to push it towards violent tendencies.
History Repeats Itself
The pattern of white nationalist failure has been seen over the last several decades as they have had similar periods of crossover. In the 1960s, as the Civil Rights movement began to set fire to the policies of the Jim Crow South, many white nationalists saw a crossover potential in the pro-segregationist movement and organizations like the White Citizen’s Councils. As they began to lose the third-era of the Ku Klux Klan began resorting to terrorist violence, including the bombing of children in churches and the murders of civil rights activists.
Through the 1980s, the failure of white nationalist politics to head into mainstream conservatism led to the creation of the revolutionary group The Order. Using support from militia groups and neo-Nazi havens like the Aryan Nations, they went on a stream of bank robberies and murder until federal agents took them down in fiery episodes of violence.
White nationalism from the Second World War onward has a pattern of attempting to find crossover movements that they can use to mainstream their messages. They are inevitably betrayed by those movements as they moderate, which sends their ideological core to become more radical. This often leads to disorganized actions of mass violence that horrifies their leadership, which were hoping that their ethnic nationalism could finally be taken seriously by the mainstream.
With this pattern in mind, it could be a mistake to dismiss the Alt Right as merely a fringe phenomenon of over-privileged white men using Anime avatars from their basement. The Alt Right has shown its ability to utilize electoral campaigns, but that is the end of its reach since it shares the same identity as the organizations posting on Stormfront, reveling in their long history of violence.
Anti-racist movements will have to tangle with this counter force for years to come, and that is only intensifying in Trump’s America. The advantages that these organizations have today is the years of education and multiracial organizing that have built a base to confront these voices, though undoing their logic of conspiracy theory, scientific racism, and manipulation is going to require an ongoing focus on anti-racist education and community empowerment. As these voices transmute and possibly become more pernicious it will mean a stronger effort in communities to see the threat that white nationalism actually presents for safety and to find solutions that both bring the community together and protect the most vulnerable.
Now that Trump has won, the question remains, what’s next? As Trump betrays his promises, capitulates to international capital, and is a failure at his primary policy points, it is likely the same direction will happen with the Alt Right. Some segments are growing, as seen with the recent Lauren Southern event, but others are shrinking as well. It seems like now that Alt Right is trying to define itself back into its radical image, and the final break with Trump could signal a return to the terrorism that white nationalism is known for.
On October 19, 2003 Tamás Molnár (later far-right Jobbik Party’s Vice Chairman) organized an event in the Hungarian city of Visegrád to discuss the future of “Hungarian National Radicalism,” a euphemism for the Hungarian neo-Nazi movement. Prominent far-right activists were invited to the Visegrádi Disputa as they called it, among them Gorka Sebestyén aka. Sebastian Gorka, today President Trump’s counterterrorism adviser. No mainstream political party would attend.
Far-right event Visegrád Disputa poster in 2003 featuring Gorka
Balázs Lenhardt — Mr Lenhardt later became a Jobbik MP. He has flashed Iranian flags at soccer games and burned an Israeli flag with a blowtorch in 2012 before his neo-Nazi brethren.
Mátyás Usztics — Mr. Usztics is an actor and one of the first members of the later banned neo-Nazi Magyar Gárda — Hungarian Guard. (The Magyar Gárda was Jobbik party’s Stormtroopers unit.)
Z. Kárpát Dániel: Long time far-right activist, he is currently an MP of the Jobbik party.
Kornél Döbrentey: Mr. Döbrentey is a poet and long-time far right activist. He recently inaugurated a statue of Albert Wass in a park at Margitsziget, Budapest. Mr. Wass was a convicted World War II criminal and a writer who depicted Jews as rats.
Mária Wittner: Ms. Wittner fought in the 1956 Hungarian Revolution and received lengthy prison sentence after that. She supported the creation of Magyar Gárda, attended several far-right Jobbik rallies. Later she switched colors and became a ruling Fidesz party MP and also developed a close relationship with Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
István Lovas: A journalist and author of numerous anti-American and anti-Semitic pieces.
Mária Wittner (right) with Jobbik leader Mr. Gábor Vona
Visegrád Disputa participants included Balázs Lenhardt: Mr Lenhardt later became a Jobbik MP. He has flashed Iranian flags at soccer games and burned an Israeli flag with a blowtorch in 2012 before his neo-Nazi friends.Balázs Lenhardt — Mr Lenhardt later became a Jobbik MP. He has flashed Iranian flags at soccer games and here is burning an Israeli flag with a blowtorch in 2012 before his neo-Nazi brethren.
Mátyás Usztics: Mr. Usztics is an actor and one of the first members of the later banned neo-Nazi Magyar Gárda — Hungarian Guard. (The Magyar Gárda was Jobbik party’s Stormtroopers unit.)
In a video obtained by the Forward of an August 2007 television appearance by Gorka, the future White House senior aide explicitly affirms his party’s and his support for the black-vested Hungarian Guard (Magyar Gárda) — a group later condemned by the European Court of Human Rights for attempting to promote an “essentially racist” legal order.
Asked directly on the TV interview program if he supports the move by Jobbik, a far-right anti-Semitic party, to establish the militia, Gorka, appearing as a leader of his own newly formed party, replies immediately, “That is so.” The Guard, Gorka explains, is a response to “a big societal need.”
Hungary’s official military, he stressed, “is sick, and totally reflects the state of Hungarian society…. This country cannot defend itself.
Immediately after the interview, the New Democratic Coalition, which Gorka co-founded with two former members of the far-right, anti-Semitic Jobbik party, posted news of the interview on its website under the headline: “UDK Supports The Hungarian Guard: Sebestyen [Sebastian] Gorka on EchoTV.”
Credit — The Forward
Needless to say Gorka is a Neonazi and Trump an obvious sympathizer to those views — or more specifically and more accurately a collaborator. Jargon aside they are Nazis. Of all the people in all the world there is a reason Trump chose Gorka.
As the article in the Forward notes – Gorka could be subject to deportation if he did not disclose his membership in this hate group. (I’m not thinking he did)
According to the Hungarian Free Press:
The late Congressman Tom Lantos considered some of the Hungarian fascists dangerous; not to be admitted to the United States. He introduced a bill in Congress, House Resolution 4197 in 2007 “to prevent the admission of any member or leader of the Magyar Garda into the United States, and for other purposes.”
Gorka was born in the UK to Hungarian immigrant parents. And in just that sentence the hypocrisy is as obvious as the sky is blue. Far-right fascist parties have demonized immigrants in time and memoriam — it is part of all the Nationalistic Fascist movements in Europe and this propaganda was and is clearly a part of Trump’s own brand of American Fascism.
Gorka’s explanation is that he wears it only to honor his family — suggestion, wear one of his old ties. And, where did he defend wearing this symbol of the most horrific and certainly the most organized genocide in history, the Holocaust — a Breitbart interview by none other than the Fascist, otherwise known as Milo (postolusly destroyed by joking about pedopehilia, but nothing else) Yiannopolus.
Fascist Fucks talking about hate — sounds like a sunny day in Berlin circa 1939.
(Fox News screenshot)
(Fox News screenshot)
Photo: Sebastian Gorka appearing on Fox News after the inauguration ball. Gorka seen wearing a medal from the Vitezi Rend, a Hungarian group listed by the State Department as having collaborated with the Nazis during World War II. 927mag.com
As the Hungarian Free Press writes, concerns about Gorka were overt and Trump must have known and ignored this information to garner support from his alt-right base.
Michael S. Smith II, a respected terrorism analyst who has advised members of Congress and White House officials, has raised serious questions about Sebastian Gorka’s qualifications as a counterterrorism advisor to President Trump, dubbing him on Twitter a #FakeTerrorismExpert.
Smith said “no one has anything nice to say” about Gorka who has the level of expertise “one would expect from a Congressional intern.” “His work is of little interest because he has never — not that I can think of — contributed anything to the body of knowledge which informs understandings of threats posed by the Salafi-jihadist groups of interest to him.”
Congressman Robert Pittenger responded by releasing the following statement in Gorka’s defense.
“Dr. Sebastian Gorka is a friend and trusted adviser on efforts to combat radical Islamic terrorism and increase the safety and security of American families. Since 2014, I have hosted seven Parliamentary Intelligence-Security Forums, bringing together more than 600 Members of Parliament and other leaders from 60 nations to discuss efforts to combat terrorism financing, money laundering, and other national security issues. Dr. Gorka has provided expert testimony at these forums, and I applaud President Trump for bringing him to the White House.
While I did meet Mr. Smith when he stopped by my office several years ago with another trusted adviser, he does not serve the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare in any capacity, nor has he contributed to any of the work we have produced.”
I am stunned to learn from this statement that “Dr. Gorka has provided expert testimony” to Congressman Pittenger’s Parliamentary Intelligence-Security Forums because in an earlier HFP article I called attention to the fact that Congressman Pittenger has invited openly pro-Iranian Mr. Márton Gyöngyösi, an MP of Hungary’s far-right Jobbik party to his Forum. (To read HFP article click here) His name even appears in the Forum’s report. (Pittenger report 2015–16.)
Mr. Gyöngyösi is not only openly pro-Iranian; he is also Hungary’s best known anti-Semite who has requested a “lists of Jews” in the country. (Read more here)
Mr. Gorka and Mr. Gyöngyösi together on Congressman Pittenger’s Intelligence-Security Forums? Is that possible?
Mr. Sebastian Gorka is certainly familiar with Jobbik since in 2007 he founded his Hungarian political movement with Mr. Tamás Molnár, the ex-vice-chairman of Jobbik. Mr. Molnár later warmly praised Gorka in an article published by kuruc.info, a California-registered Hungarian neo-Nazi website which was investigated by the FBI. Mr. Molnár was a regular contributor.
Mr. Gorka and Jobbik’s ex-vice-chairman Mr. Molnár announce their political movement in Budapest in 2006
Mr. Gorka’s name also appears on a Jobbik campaign event announcement in 2004 where Mr. Molnár introduced Mr. Balázs Kirkovits, Jobbik’s candidate in the city of Sopron. Alajos Chrudinák and Sebestyén Gorka planned to speak at the event.
Logo of the movement
These are uncomfortably cozy relationships with Hungary’s worst far-right thugs! For the record, Gorka was not a member of Jobbik and he also mercilessly criticized the current Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s dead-end policies in 2007. At the same time, he associated with Jobbik leaders and even appeared at party events when it was well known that Jobbik maintains strong ties with Iran and Russia. In 2008 Jobbik leader Mr. Gábor Vona even wanted to call in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards to Budapest. (watch here)
Mr. Gorka has some explaining to do. Many of us have a hard time to understand why didn’t he, a seasoned security expert and “trusted advisor,” warn Congressman Pittenger that pro-Iranian Gyöngyösi might present security risks to the US? Why didn’t he react to the kuruc.info articles? Why didn’t he raise his voice when Hungarian diplomats met with Jobbik members here in the US?
In 2008 Jobbik leader Mr. Gábor Vona even wanted to call in the Iranian Revolutionary Guards to Budapest.
As regards the Jewish problem, I have been an anti-Semite throughout my life. I have never had contact with Jews. I have considered it intolerable that here in Hungary everything, every factory, bank, large fortune, business, theatre, press, commerce, etc. should be in Jewish hands, and that the Jew should be the image reflected of Hungary, especially abroad. Since, however, one of the most important tasks of the government is to raise the standard of living, i.e., we have to acquire wealth, it is impossible, in a year or two, to replace the Jews, who have everything in their hands, and to replace them with incompetent, unworthy, mostly big-mouthed elements, for we should become bankrupt. This requires a generation at least.
Gorka’s involvement with the far right includes co-founding a political party with former prominent members of Jobbik, a political party with a well-known history of anti-Semitism; repeatedly publishing articles in a newspaper known for its anti-Semitic and racist content; and attending events with some of Hungary’s most notorious extreme-right figures.
Our intentions and goals are genuine, our programme is clear. We want nothing but to be able live in proud, free and liveable Hungary where the society is characterised by integrity, faith, security, order and solidarity. While preserving our national traditions and passing on our cultural heritage to the next generations, we also wish to represent universal humane values that are common in all cultures and religions. This is what we work for. For a better future, in a better world.
Haaretz reports that Jobbik is a Party with blatant anti-Semitism espousing from its platform:
Jobbik has a long history of anti-Semitism. In 2006, when Gorka’s political allies were still members of Jobbik, articles in the party’s official online blog included headlines such as “The Roots of Jewish Terrorism” and [“Where Were the Jews in 1956?”] (http://www.jobbik.net/index.php?q=node/3170), a reference to the country’s revolution against Soviet rule. In one speech in 2010, Jobbik leader Gabor Vona said that “under communism we licked Moscow’s boots, now we lick Brussels’ and Washington’s and Tel Aviv’s.
Simply, this short passage from the book Fabricating Authenticity in Soviet Hungary, establishes exactly what Horthy supported and what Gorka and Trump support – omission is no better than commission.
The Nazi that he is, Trump used Nazi propaganda as his own throughout the campaign,during the transition and currently during his administration — lying press, synonymous with fake news, signaling out specific journalists and attempting to usurp the Fourth Estate via Twitter — this is what dictators do. The definition of Lügenpresse in German is lying press, coined by Hitler to discredit the media. This among other demonic tactics Trump has copied from past tyrants t0 garner power and discredit dissent — if they benefit him, he uses them.
In Germany just after the American election, the AfD Chairwoman (the far-right fascist party leader), agreed with Trump and the Führer of the Third Reich, her country’s fascist tyrant and Germany’s Dance with the Devil, whose scars have yet to heal in her own country just as the tattoos branded on Hitler’s victims never would. Her concern for any of this nonexistent.
This election result gives courage for Germany and Europe,” read AfD Chairwoman Frauke Petry’s statement on November 9. “Just as the Americans did not believe the manipulations of their mainstream media, citizens in Germany also have the courage to make their decision in the election booth themselves and not to remain resigned at home.
Now, the party is poised for a historic result in next year’s national elections, in which Merkel faces her stiffest challenge yet. After narrowly missing the 5 percent needed to enter national parliament in the 2013 elections, polls now suggest the AfD will receive 16 percent of the national vote in 2017, making it the third-largest political party in Germany, after Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union (CDU), and the Social Democratic Party (SPD), part of Merkel’s grand coalition. The terror attack that killed 12 people at a Christmas market in Berlin on Monday is expected to bolster the AfD even more, and in turn, lower support for Merkel, who has been criticized for welcoming nearly 1 million migrants in 2015 alone, without proper background checks.
That level of success for a far-right party in the country that gave rise to Adolf Hitler would represent a political earthquake for Europe — and a national trauma for Germans, who have sought to expunge and confront their history in the 70 years since World War II. The country’s politics have been solidly liberal since the reunification of Germany in 1990. But over the past two years, as Merkel has welcomed Muslim refugees and led the bailouts of struggling European economies such as Greece, populist sentiments have surged — and the AfD is now reaping the rewards.
The AfD’s platform is a collection of right-wing themes: EU reform, closed borders and a return to the Germany of yesteryear, before what many of its members and supporters refer to as the “Islamization” of Europe. The party seeks to ban large minarets and the call to prayer, and require Muslim preachers to undergo government vetting. “Islam does not belong in Germany,” the platform states.
The AfD’s rise has been stunning, accomplishing in just three years what took other populist European parties — like France’s National Front and Austria’s Freedom Party — more than four decades to achieve. And it could have serious consequences. Unlike France and Austria, Germany, under Merkel’s leadership, has become the widely accepted leader of the liberal West. Now, the pillars of this leadership — from Merkel’s stewardship of the refugee crisis and the euro crisis — are under attack from the country’s increasingly popular populist party. That popularity has already led Merkel to veer to the right, hardening her stance on refugees and Islam in Germany.
“What they are managing right now is to make a very radical brand of right wing politics not exactly fashionable, but acceptable in Germany, and that’s new,” says Kai Arzheimer, a professor of politics at the University of Mainz. “They should be taken very seriously, insofar as I think they will do pretty well in the upcoming election. Sixteen percent on the national level is a very strong showing by German standards.
The true test will come soon with the Presidential Elections in France and far-right fascist Marine La Pen as well as elections later this year in Germany. And seemingly closing the doors tighter or loosening them for Putin?
Will 2017 depict this 1899 illustration of Russian power, as shown on an European Map, as it seemed to do in 2016, or will it mostly be in Putin’s head? Remember it’s just a drawing — not deemed historically accurate.
Push back has been holding against these movements with La Pen behind and PM Merkel Coalition leading as well. Unlike the United States — parliamentary systems draw representation based upon percent of the electorate won. So even though France and Germany seem to be holding back the fascist fire — the far-right parties are picking up governing power. This occurred in the Netherlands even though Geert hit the dirt and and in Austria but Turkey seems to be falling to autocracy, Poland and Hungary are no longer liberal democracies, at best illiberal, swinging closer to fascism.
These countries are on a straight trajectory with tyranny — as any recent study will make clear. Trump would foam at the mouth to tell you he was behind the far-right BREXIT — he’s not so fast to spew — its epic fail or Putin’s real pull.Putin has backed these fascist movements . Will Putin’s open aid help the movements going forward — that is still an open question but he clearly is the alt-right God King.
Le Pen wanted to soften her harsh image and “soothe” voters — she had posed for pictures hugging horses and pet kittens — but also to offer a hardline programme she believed would “reassure” a French population despairing of decades of mass unemployment and a persistent terrorist threat.
The aim, as always for the far-right Front National founded by her father, Jean-Marie Le Pen, in 1972, was keeping France for the French. There would be a referendum to change the constitution so that “national priority” would be given to French people over non-nationals in jobs, housing and welfare. There would be another referendum to leave the European Union. Le Pen promised an immigration clampdown and a ban on religious symbols, including the Muslim headscarf, from all public places in France.
Polls have forecast for more than two years that the populist, nationalist, authoritarian Marine Le Pen will advance to the run-off.
The polls also suggest Le Pen, who has promised to take France out of the euro and hold a referendum on France’s EU membership, would then lose to Emmanuel Macron, a former Socialist economy minister running as an independent centrist.
But the race is very tight. Both François Fillon, a former rightwing prime minister hit by an alleged corruption scandal, and Jean-Luc Mélenchon, a far-left veteran with a radical economic programme, could also make the final two.
In fact, with an estimated one-third of voters yet to make up their minds, polling inconsistencies and margins of error make it impossible to predict with certainty which two of the top four will face off in the final round.
After Britain’s Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump in the US, a President Le Pen would deal a heavy symbolic blow to Europe, send markets into turmoil, and be seen as the next step in a populist, nativist insurgency.
A victory for the Eurosceptic Mélenchon would also seriously shake the establishment, while a Macron win could — after the defeat of Geert Wilders in March’s Dutch elections — point to a future for centrist, pro-European politics.
Emulating these European fascist movements — The Trump platform has always been openly anti-Semitic and racist and xenophobic. Trump’s son, Don, Jr., used Nazi propaganda in his description of refugees as skittles. He is not smart enough to create this type of propaganda on his own — the Nazis used the same illogical argument against Jews — back then it was mushrooms instead of candy. In fact the Nazi that originated this propaganda was hung at Nuremberg according to The Intercept.
The alt-right are Neo-Nazis with a different name — like I said in the beginning of this piece — semantics aside — they are Nazis. The reason Trump has Gorka and Bannon (among other reprehensible individuals, I go into more detail on Bannon here) on the United States payroll, in high profile positions, is to appeal to this base.
The National Policy Institute is an alt-right conspiracy think tank. Nothing but Nazi propaganda. Because they are Nazis.
The independent organization is dedicated to the heritage, identity, and future of people of European descent in the United States, and around the world. It was founded in 2005 by William Regnery and Samuel T. Francis, in conjunction with Louis R. Andrews.
NPI hosts regular public events and conferences; we publish books, journals, essays, and blogs; we produce videos and podcasts — all dedicated to the revival and flourishing of our people.
But now his tone changed as he began to tell the audience of more than 200 people, mostly young men, what they had been waiting to hear. He railed against Jews and, with a smile, quoted Nazi propaganda in the original German. America, he said, belonged to white people, whom he called the “children of the sun,” a race of conquerors and creators who had been marginalized but now, in the era of President-elect Donald J. Trump, they are awakening to their own identity.
Spencer, using Nazi propaganda as his own, was so flagrant and obvious with his hate, it was as if the crowd descended into a literal hell while espousing:
One wonders if these people are people at all, or instead soulless golem,” he said, referring to a Jewish fable about the golem, a clay giant that a rabbi brings to life to protect the Jews.
And the evil, continued to spew, from his sick mind, carrying his delusional, virulent, hateful propaganda:
Mr. Spencer said that while he did not think the president-elect should be considered alt-right, “I do think we have a psychic connection, or you can say a deeper connection, with Donald Trump in a way that we simply do not have with most Republicans.
White identity, is at the core of both the alt-right movement and the Trump movement, even if most voters for Mr. Trump aren’t willing to articulate it as such.
WAKE UP! There are Nazis in power at the highest levels of the American Federal Government!
Here is Gorka on Fox News (Propaganda) with Trump, in August 2016, well after all the information I have reported on above was available. In fact, almost 13 years.
And these Nazis are freely espousing, implicitly at the very least, what Goebbels propaganda ministry flouted as reality in the 1930’s. The Reich’s Ministry of Propaganda, created in 1933, almost immediately after Hitler took power, and run by the Minister Joseph Goebbels, ignited the inferno of already virulent anti-Semitism, like a match to a gasoline soaked rag. The sole purpose of the Ministry — to demonize and control the minds of the masses.
The espousal of alternative facts should send a chill down humanity’s spine. This is done for only one reason — to demonize the other and control the minds of the masses — Goebbels, quickly instituted Nazi propaganda throughout the population so what was already a common societal delusion, (as is Protofascist, Neoantebellum Ideology and now Trumpian Neofascism, in the United States circa 2017), could become a collective delusion and soon after — law.
As can clearly be seen with an eye to the historical use of propaganda, the assertion that Trump’s Counselor to the President espoused that an alternative fact existed, was pure evil, and simply propaganda. George Orwell called it Newspeak in his novel, 1984 — Conway calls it alternative facts.
Conway like Goebbells has only one purpose — to espouse propaganda — she is not the Counselor to the President — that is propaganda — she is the Neo-Minister of Propaganda. Press Secretary, Sean Spicer — Neo-Mini Goebbells or Spicy Neo-MG.
Alternative facts can only be described as Hitlerian. The current nationalist, fascist movements around the world are fueled by similar hateful delusion and are a threat to all of humanity.
The creation of the other apparent in the video below, as Trump compares immigrants to venomous snakes in March 2016 — is what fascists do. The other is a historical basis for hate. Even as I write these words and you read them; this brutal evil is being indoctrinated into nationalist, fascist movements around the world.
Far-right fascist parties have demonized the other in time and memoriam — demonization of the other is currently part of all these Nationalistic Fascist movements in Europe, Venezuela and in the Philippines.
BBC Newshour — Venezuelan Protesters Clash With Riot Police: Venezuelan Protesters Clash With Riot Police. Venezuela sees the worst outbreak of political violence in three years; we hear from Caracas and assess the other.
When a President Says ‘I’ll Kill You’ is a Times documentary on the deadly crusade led by President Rodrigo Duterte of…In the Philippines President Duterte murders the other.
So, yes, along with all the other fascists running around the White House and hating all that don’t look and think like them — meaning pure evil thoughts. Trump and Gorka are fascists and they both are that particular kind of fascist that Mein Kampf inspired — Nazis.
In typical fashion, Richard Spencer is throwing a tantrum because his words were not welcomed with open arms. Spencer had been planning on speaking at Auburn University in Auburn, Alabaman on Tuesday, April 18th, and he had even shelled out $700 for extra security. Seeing exactly what kind of response comes from Spencer’s appearances, as well as the type of neo-Nazis and white nationalists his appearances invites, the canceled the event citing “security concerns.”
Spencer then went to YouTube and social media to declare that this has become “much bigger” and that it was their “utter cowardice” that canceled the event. He blamed the cancelation on “Antifa” and accused them of calling in a bomb threat, an unsubstantiated claim. He repeatedly said that he would not be able to live with himself if he did not heed their warning, and has now declared that he will show up anyway.
This will likely mean that he will be “soapboxing” outside of his original venue with a crew of supporters. He promised that he would have “Safety Squads” in tow, which is really his security detail that he has started hiring after he was punched on the street during an interview. These “bodyguards” are actually just fellow Alt Right “shitlords,” and LARP as if they are persecuted political dissidents.
The fact that this will be outdoors and open will make it easier for opposition to get close, and it would be surprising if he was even able to get a full sentence out during this attempt at holding a “talk.” The committed organizing that is taking place by Atlanta Antifa and others in the area is what will be the deciding factor about how this event takes place, as well as whether or not Spencer will be allowed on university campuses in the future.
Anti-Fascist News 