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aristarchus [soylentnews.org] writes:

Op-ed in the Los Angeles Times [latimes.com], and before all our alt-right trolls go ballistic, discussing opinions is what we do on SoylentNews, so this submission is fair play!

After the 2017 “Unite the Right” gathering in Charlottesville, Va., during which counter-protester Heather Heyer was killed by a rally attendee, a lot of pundits predicted the demise of the alt-right movement. And for a while, it seemed as if they might be right.

In the aftermath of Charlottesville, alt-right websites spewing white nationalist, misogynist and anti-Semitic diatribes were banned from standard internet service providers, and the de-platforming took a toll. A month before Charlottesville, the movement’s flagship website the Daily Stormer was getting about 1.9 million visits. After it was dropped by the web-hosting company GoDaddy, traffic dropped dramatically, and in November 2017 the site had only 13,000 visitors. The leftist Truthout declared the alt-right movement confined “only to the back alleys of the internet,” while the Guardian concluded “the alt-right is in decline.”

The past is prelude.

But the reversal didn’t last. In an era where the U.S. president has offered support for alt-right thinking and new communications technologies have expanded the reach of fringe ideas, the movement quickly sprang back. The alt-right’s web audience is now significantly larger than it was before its supposed Waterloo at Charlottesville, and the Daily Stormer and other publications have found new web platforms from which to broadcast their hate-filled messages.

Some examples: On July 22, after Trump’s excoriation of four nonwhite congresswomen, Andrew Anglin, editor of the Daily Stormer, wrote, “Jews should be apologizing to America right along with the anti-white Hate Squad and then we should send them all back. … I am really, really tired of the Jews, and I think they need to pay the ultimate price.” The Daily Stormer now refers to itself as “the most censored publication in history.”

So why will not this Nazi worm present his self into a legitimate court of law? Hmmm.

More alarming still is the penetration into mainstream discourse of alt-right ideology, including ideas of an immigrant “invasion” and the notion that white people are being “replaced” by nonwhite people. These themes are prominent not only in the El Paso shooter’s manifesto but also in the writings of Pat Buchanan, Ann Coulter and Michelle Malkin, all of whom appear regularly in the alt-right web magazine VDARE. Tucker Carlson of Fox News is viewed by Daily Stormer editor Anglin as “literally our greatest ally.” Anglin describes Carlson’s program as “basically ‘Daily Stormer: The Show.’” And then, of course, there is the nation’s most prominent mainstream proponent of alt-right themes: President Trump.

You know, I have heard from reputable sources that Trump has Saracen blood, and that he was not even born in America! He was born in the Bahamas! To an English mother! Not a citizen by birth! Not qualified to be Precedent of the United States of Distopia!!!

Original Submission