Alt-Right

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Alt-Right (short for English alternative right , German  alternative rights ) is a political catchphrase to denote ideologies on the fringes of the political right in the USA . The focus is on the racist , Islamophobic and anti-Semitic assumption that the “identity of the white Christian population” is threatened by the multicultural immigration society of the USA as well as by “ political correctness ” and laws promoting social justice and must be defended against them. Alt-right supporters are often referred to as “ white supremacists ”, right-wing extremists and neo-Nazis . The term received a lot of media attention during the 2016 presidential election in the United States .

Surname

The publicist Richard B. Spencer , a prominent representative of White Supremacy, claims to have established the term Alt-Right in 2008. In 2010 he founded an online magazine which he called Alternative Right . He closed it in 2013, others continued it shortly afterwards. The term alt-right has been criticized for being a euphemism devised by racists that is supposed to obscure right-wing extremist ideas and make them appear more acceptable to a wide audience.

Political ideas

The Alt-Right is intended to represent an ideological alternative to traditional conservatism and to stand in part in the tradition of American paleoconservatism . Spencer himself sees the Alt-Right as part of the ideas of the French New Right . He describes himself as an "Identitarian" and claims to be in contact with the Identitarian Movement in Europe. Alt-right ideologems include white supremacy , neo-Nazism , anti-Semitism and Islamophobia . Its representatives speak out against political correctness , feminism , multiculturalism and immigration , among other things , and in the 2016 presidential election campaign they used the term “ generation snowflake ” as a fighting term against “politically correct” and “liberals”. Large parts of the Alt-Right represent a self-proclaimed “ racial realism ”, which states that the existence of “races” after thousands of years of evolution is a biological reality and that the various “races” are fundamentally different: Often, alleged differences in the intelligence of ethnic groups, usually implying a superiority of whites. A people's culture is sociobiological and individuals can best thrive in homogeneous societies of their own "race". “Racial realism” is cited by supporters of the Alt-Right on the one hand to justify social inequality between ethnic groups in Western societies and on the other hand to justify the Alt-Right's opposition to multiculturalism and immigration from non-Western and non-European countries.

Outwardly, representatives of the Alt-Right usually claim to speak only impartially of differences: whites are only superior in societies created by whites. The idea of ​​a general superiority of the "white race" is therefore often rejected, at least in public, as is that of the predominance of white over other races in the sense of white supremacy . The goal is not the rule over other races, but only a consistent racial segregation , whereby the USA as well as Europe are understood as a "white" country. Prominent spokesmen of the Alt-Right such as Richard Spencer are calling for the establishment of a white “ethno state” in the USA and are in favor of “peaceful ethnic cleansing” . The Alt-Right has also adopted many elements of classic anti-Semitism . In particular, the "mainstream media" are controlled by Jews whose goal is to bring about a mixture of races.

The Alt-Right supported, among other things, the national identity movement in Europe, in particular its Defend Europe campaign .

Communication and Political Importance

The Breitbart News Network , founded by Andrew Breitbart in 2007, is an important mouthpiece of the movement. Stephen Bannon led the company from Breitbart's death in 2012 to August 2016 . In July 2016 he said in an interview on Breitbart News Network : “We're the platform for the alt-right” ( German : “We are the platform for the alt-right”).

Donald Trump instrumentalized and promoted the ideas of the alt-right during his 2016 election campaign to mobilize white voters. After his election, Trump initially made Stephen Bannon his highest-ranking policy advisor, while trying to verbally distance himself from radical supporters. Trump claimed that Bannon was neither a racist nor a right wing, and that he did not want to give radical supporters a boost.

Washington Summit Publishers , affiliated with the National Policy Institute, offered not only its own titles, but also books by Guillaume Faye , who is considered one of the leading thinkers of the French New Right, the far-right US cultural philosopher Francis Parker Yockey , the Italian right-wing esoteric racial theorist Julius Evola and Madison Grant , an American lawyer and author of racial theory, for sale.

Relationship to evangelical Christianity

The religious right evangelical Christians in the United States share some of the neoconservative values ​​of the alt-right movement. The religious right is strongly represented in the tea party movement and both support President Donald Trump. When a female counter-demonstrator was run over by a right-wing extremist during a neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville in 2017 and Trump initially refused to take a position against neo-Nazis in principle, this met with rejection from some evangelical congregations. More traditional right-wing Christians in the USA asked him in an open letter to “join the many other political and religious leaders in order to unanimously state that the 'Alt-Right' is racist and evil as well as the opposite of a well-ordered, peace-loving one Society is. ”The letter was signed by the president of the largest US congregation, the Southern Baptist Convention , Steve Daines and its senior president Fred Luther, and pastors TD Jakes and Tony Evans .

Importance of the internet and social media

The Alt-Right's ideas are mainly disseminated via the Internet, u. a. also because their supporters are rarely heard in the media of the masses (the so-called mainstream media); or are subject to critical reporting. For example, the National Policy Institute , led by Richard B. Spencer, dealt with racist issues online: “The State of White America”, “Costs and Benefits of Mass Deportations”, “Conservatives and Race”, “Prosperity IQ of Nations”, “Uhuru for South Africa".

Social media , with websites such as 4chan , 8chan and The Daily Stormer , but increasingly also Reddit , Twitter and Facebook, play a special role in spreading the alt-right idea . These services allow u. a. a relatively unobserved organization and communication among each other.

In social media, the movement has developed an active subculture ; Alt-Right supporters use constantly changing memes when communicating with one another. They abuse conservatives who are not right enough for them, for example as "cuckservative", a portmanteau word from cuckold ( cuckold ) and conservative , which arose within the Alt-Right. With triple brackets (triple Parentheses) are marked as such in the Internet communication Jews. Variations of Pepe the frog , for example as "Nazi frog", or designations such as Emperor Trump (Kaiser Trump) are also popular symbols of affiliation. One movement, the so-called Boogaloo Boys , increasingly appeared in public from 2015, in full armor and in Hawaiian shirts; the name is a meme with an allusion to an upcoming racist US civil war.

rating

Columbia Journalism Review journalist Chava Gourarie asked whether the alt-right was a serious movement or whether the provocation was just an end in itself. Marc Hetherington , Professor of Political Science at Vanderbilt University , sees the memes as an opportunity to spread serious racist ideas.

In 2017, Irish cultural scientist Angela Nagle examined in Kill all normies how the rise of the alt-right was promoted by her internet activities. Nagle shows that these right-wing extremists place themselves in a tradition of moral cross-border commuters, such as B. de Sade or Nietzsche . By crossing borders like this, they wage their - apparently intellectually based - war against political correctness . In their view, supporters of the gender issue are “downright obsessed” . They are enthusiastic about the fact that there is someone in the White House who openly confesses to and approves of sexual assault. They loathe anything that in their eyes calls into question their manhood .

The Swiss journalist Roger Schawinski criticized the Alt-Right movement that on conspiracy theories support, such as that which Jewish emigrants in the 1930s from Nazi Germany came to the US, where "cultural Marxism" ( Cultural Marxism ) would have spread with the intention of undermining American values ​​in order to subsequently establish a world government . Stephen Bannon believes that “Big Government”, “Big Hollywood” and “Big Journalism” are preparing for its takeover; Paul Joseph Watson wrote that the goal of the culture Marxists is “to completely undermine the foundations of Western civilization and us into them To steer submission and surrender. "

literature

  • George Hawley: Making Sense of the Alt-Right . Columbia University Press, 2017 ISBN 023118512X
  • Angela Nagle: Kill all normies. Online Culture Wars From 4chan and Tumblr to Trump and the Alt-Right . Zero Books, 2017 ISBN 1785355430 .
  • David Neiwert: Alt-America: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump . Verso, 2017 ISBN 1786634236

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Understanding contemporary white supremacy: Is the alt-right really something new? In: salon.com. June 11, 2017. Retrieved August 9, 2017 .
  2. ^ The Rise Of The Alt-Right: White Supremacy And Anti-Semitism Go Mainstream - HuffPost. In: huffingtonpost.com. November 3, 2016, accessed August 9, 2017 .
  3. ^ Wade Goodwyn: Alt-Right, White Nationalist, Free Speech: The Far Right's Language Explained. In: npr.org. June 4, 2017, accessed August 9, 2017 .
  4. ^ A b Lindy West: White nationalists? Alt-right? If you see a Nazi, say Nazi. In: The Guardian . November 22, 2016. Retrieved May 28, 2017 .
  5. ↑ Stephen Piggott: Is Breitbart.com Becoming the Media Arm of the 'Alt-Right'? In: Southern Poverty Law Center . April 28, 2016. Retrieved May 28, 2017 .
  6. ↑ Larry Keller: Paleocon Starts New Extreme-Right Magazine , on splcenter.com, March 15, 2010. Retrieved November 29, 2016
  7. ↑ Alt Right: A Primer about the New White Supremacy , on adl.org. Retrieved November 29, 2016
  8. ↑ Julian Sanchez: Keep calling the alt-right 'the alt-right.' Soon, it won't be a euphemism anymore. In: Washington Post . November 28, 2016. Retrieved May 28, 2017 .
  9. ^ A b Christian Fahrenbach, Jakob Pontius: Alt-Right: Hippe Hasser. In: zeit.de . November 21, 2016. Retrieved February 5, 2017 .
  10. ↑ a b Felix Schilk, Tim Zeidler: The archipelago of the disinhibited. In: Jungle World. October 20, 2016. Retrieved November 24, 2016 .
  11. ↑ Cornelius Janzen: The Alt-Right Movement in the USA. 3sat Kulturzeit, November 23, 2016, accessed on November 23, 2016 .
  12. ^ Joan Walsh: Islamophobes, White Supremacists, and Gays for Trump - the Alt-Right Arrives at the RNC . The Nation, July 20, 2016.
  13. ^ Candy, Hashtags and Hate . In: The New York Times , September 23, 2016. 
  14. ↑ With their Orlando response, Trump and the alt-right are playing directly into the hands of ISIS . In: Salon.com , June 14, 2016. 
  15. ^ A b c Tierney Mc Afee: What Is the Alt-Right? Inside the Movement Hillary Clinton Links to Donald Trump. In: people.com. August 25, 2016, accessed November 23, 2016 .
  16. ↑ Jessica Goldstein: The surprising history of 'snowflake' as a political insult. www.thinkprogress.org , January 19, 2017.
  17. ↑ Jared Taylor: What is the Alt Right? American Renaissance, October 11, 2016, accessed May 12, 2017 .
  18. ↑ Richard Bertrand Spencer. Southern Poverty Law Center, accessed May 12, 2017 .
  19. ↑ tagesschau.de: "Defend Europe": Support from the USA. In: faktenfinder.tagesschau.de. August 11, 2017. Retrieved August 13, 2017 .
  20. ^ Sarah Posner, How Donald Trump's New Campaign Chief Created an Online Haven for White Nationalists Breitbart News is “the platform for the alt-right,” Stephen Bannon boasts , August 22, 2016, on motherjones.com. Retrieved November 28, 2016
  21. ↑ JOSEPH GOLDSTEIN: Alt-Right Gathering Exults in Trump Election With Nazi Salute Era. In: New York Times . November 20, 2016. Retrieved May 28, 2017 .
  22. ↑ a b Visit to the "New York Times": Trump distances himself from "Alt Right" supporters. In: Spiegel Online . Retrieved November 23, 2016 .
  23. ↑ a b Devin Burghart: Who is Richard Spencer? on irehr.org, June 27, 2014. Accessed on November 23, 2016. “Uhuru” is the battle cry of the Proud Boys founded by Gavin McInnes , an organization of self-proclaimed “Western chauvinists”.
  24. ↑ Trump and the religious right. Retrieved February 1, 2019 .
  25. ^ Amanda Hess: For the Alt-Right, the Message Is in the Punctuation . The New York Times, June 10, 2016.
  26. ↑ Jake Kivanç: Nero, Nazis, and the New Far Right: The Phenomena of the Professional Troll . Vice, June 15, 2017. Retrieved July 14, 2016.
  27. ↑ Lisa Mascaro: David Duke and other white supremacists see Trump's rise as way to increase role in mainstream politics. In: Los Angeles Times. September 29, 2016. Retrieved April 11, 2017 .
  28. ↑ David Weigel: 'Cuckservative' - the conservative insult of the month, explained . The Washington Post , July 29, 2015.
  29. ^ Cooper Fleishman, Anthony Smith: (((Echoes))), Exposed: The Secret Symbol Neo-Nazis Use to Target Jews Online . Mic, June 1, 2016. Retrieved June 4, 2016.
  30. ^ Amanda Hess: For the Alt-Right, the Message Is in the Punctuation. In: nytimes.com. June 10, 2016, accessed April 11, 2017 .
  31. ↑ Asawin Suebsaeng: White Nationalists and Nazi-Saluting Tila Tequila Toast 'Emperor Trump' in Washington, DC . In: The Daily Beast . November 19, 2016. Retrieved November 22, 2016.
  32. ↑ Bellingcat: The Boogaloo Movement Is Not What You Think , May 27, 2020 (English)
  33. ↑ Chava Gourarie: How the 'alt-right' checkmated the media . Columbia Journalism Review, Aug. 30, 2016.
  34. ^ Patrick Jonsson: Donald Trump's candidacy and the rise of the 'alt-right' movement . Christian Science Monitor , August 27, 2016. Retrieved September 3, 2016.
  35. ↑ For excerpts see web links (English)
  36. ↑ Roger Schawinski: Conspiracy! The fanatical hunt for the evil in the world. NZZ Libro, Zurich 2018, p. 168 f.
  37. ↑ a b c washingtonpost.com: review (Engl.)