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Richard Spencer, a prominent white nationalist, said Tuesday that, despite President Trump's remarks denouncingwhite supremacists and neo-Nazis, the president has yet to condemn the alt-right.

"Trump has never denounced the Alt-Right. Nor will he," Spencer wrote on Twitter.

Trump has never denounced the Alt-Right. Nor will he. #ArizonaTrumpRally

Speaking at a campaign-style rally in Phoenix on Tuesday night, Trump insisted that he sufficiently denounced hate groups after violence erupted during a white nationalist demonstration in Charlottesville, Va., earlier this month.

Instead, he said, the media failed to accurately cover his remarks in the wake of the violence that left one counterprotester dead.

"They dont report the facts. Just like they dont want to report that I spoke out forcefully against hatred, bigotry and violence and strongly condemned the neo-Nazis the white supremacists and the KKK," he said.

But Trump made no mention of his initial claim in the aftermath of the violence that "many sides" were responsible for the mayhem a claim that drew fire from both Democrats and Republicans.

Continued here:
Richard Spencer: 'Trump has never denounced the Alt-Right' | TheHill - The Hill (blog)

In recent days, it has occurred to me that that radical Islamists and the alt-right have more in common than domestic terrorism. By tapping in to similar psychology and group dynamics, the alt-right is aping the recruitment strategies of radical Islam.

Consider this: Terrorist groups like al Qaeda purportedly believe that getting the West to overreact is more important than instilling fear. If you can provoke enough non-Muslims to treat all Muslims with fear and hostility, write Stephen D. Reicher and S. Alexander Haslam in Scientific American, then those Muslims who previously shunned conflict may begin to feel marginalized and heed the call of the more radical voices among them.

The alt-right is likewise playing the long game of engaging in behavior so despicable as to entice an overreaction. This is the smart thing to do if you are a relatively small (in number) movement that prioritizes recruitment. The end result is to increase polarization by red-pilling whites into viewing a shared racial status as their defining identity (which is why another term for the alt-right is identitarian).

Heres how it works: When minorities see Nazis marching in Charlottesville, they are understandably troubled. But when their leaders overreact to the acts of a small group of whites who are attempting to co-opt conservatism, it actually helps push mainstream whites into the alt-right.

A prime example of this overreaction played out recently when liberals like Al Sharpton and my CNN colleague Angela Rye suggested that statues of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson (not just Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson) should be taken down.

By coming after Washington and Jefferson, otherwise apolitical and moderate whitespeople who never thought much about their white identitycould have skin in this game.

The same liberals who worry that we are creating more terrorists by being overly aggressive on the anti-terrorism front dont seem to worry that they might be creating more racists by being overly aggressive in their opposition to racism.

This is not to say we shouldnt fight against fascism; we should. It is to say that we should fight smart. Sadly, some on the left have taken the bait.

This is not to say that left-wing iconoclasm is the moral equivalent of drone strikes, but it is to say that there are some parallels in the way extremists bait us into overreacting in order to grow extremism.

In the case of Washington and Jefferson statues and monuments, the desire to remove images of Americas Founding Fathers demonstrates the radical nature of ones adversaries. Even for those who would prefer to remain on the sidelines, confronting the unreasonable demands of retroactively imposing modern values on our nations most revered founders might justify fighting fire with fire.

Its plausible to imagine some young white conservative who is sort of on the fence about all of this now thinking: Well, if theyre going to come after Washington and Jefferson, I guess this really is a mutually excusive, binary choice. And the truth is, I dont have a choice. I was born this way.

This is just one small example of how liberal overreaction fans the flames of extremism, but its a timely one.

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Extremists on both sides make it harder for anybody to be a conscientious objector to this culture war.

It has been said that the first thing you should do upon going to jail is to join a gang for protection. In that regard, the outside world is becoming more and more like prison.

You may not be interested in tribalism, but tribalism is interested in you.

Just as moderate Muslims may come to believe that they will never be truly accepted by a white mob that wrongly conflates them with terrorists, some vulnerable whites increasingly feel pressed into service for their tribe. Young people are especially vulnerable to getting caught up in this cycle. If the alt-rights plan works, this same sort of misrecogntion will also help drive moderate whites into the alt-right.

It used to be easy to spot a white supremacist. They wore hoods or stupid black Hitler t-shirts or skinhead tats and regalia. In contrast, anyone wanting to signal that he was harmless could do so by looking preppy or stylish and being educated or cosmopolitan.

Thanks to the alt-righters, thats no longer the case. Consider the tiki-torch rally held in Charlottesville the Friday night before the big protest. Donning polos and khakis, these guys looked more like they were attending the Brooks Brothers riot than a Nazi rally.

This was not an accident. Recently, the editor of the Daily Stormer advised his fellow neo-Nazis to start dressing better and getting in shape. But theres more to it than aesthetics. As Cam Wolf writes in GQ, the khaki-wearing demonstrators in Charlottesville weren't trying to be fashionablethey were trying to blend in. And in doing so, they've turned the blandest items in our closets into a dog whistle. Is your neighbor wearing a polo and khakis because he's a style-agnostic dad? Or is he just actively supporting the creation of a white ethno-state? The problem is that when they put on our uniform, they dont just blend in with us, we blend in with them.

Case in point: The other day, a man was stabbed and accused of being a neo-Nazi in the parking lot of a Steak n Shake in Colorado, all because his haircut resembled that worn by alt-righters (called a fasci). This man is reportedly considering changing his look, and who could blame him? At the micro level, thats probably what will happen. But its the macro level that concerns me. Its not absurd to think that someone attacked or shamed (even in a case of mistaken identity) might be easier to radicalize. We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be, warned Kurt Vonnegut. But maybe we also become the people who pretend to be us?

This is not to say that it will work. There are lots of moderating traditions and mediating institutions in America to mitigate this. But its very clear that the alt-right is tapping into some of the same strategies that have been used to fuel the growth of other extremists in history.

Violence usually begets violence; hate usually begets hate. At least, thats what the alt-right is planning on.

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What the Alt-Right Has Learned From Al Qaeda - Daily Beast

The National Abortion Rights Action League (NARAL) is good at what is does. Thats why it is now trying to tie the white supremacists of the alt-right to the pro-life movement, even though the opposite is closer to the truth. White supremacists at #Charlottesville have close ties not just to Trump, but GOP & anti-choice groups, NARAL announced on Twitter. After connecting one racist marcher to a College Republicans chapter and pointing out that another attended a March for Life, the group rested its case:

It should be no surprise why white supremacists promote #antichoice policies. They disproportionately harm women of color.

This doesnt make much sense. For it to be true, the alt-right would have to want to keep abortion away from racial minorities, even though it knows that abortion reduces Americas black and Hispanic populations. Indeed, NARALs point can be made more effectively the other way around: It is not anti-abortion laws that disproportionately harm women of color, but abortion itself, which has claimed the lives of 19 million black babies since Roe v. Wade in 1973.

That is the reason why, contrary to NARALs protestations, the leaders of the alt-right are actually pro-choice. They dont oppose abortion because its good for racial minorities; they support abortion because it kills them. They hate black people and think America would be better if fewer of them were born.

Though this is terrifying to contemplate, it should not be unfamiliar. In fact, the alt-right tends to praise abortion for the same reasons that Margaret Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, praised it: It helps to rid the country of undesirables.

Richard Spencer, the keynote speaker in Charlottesville and the central figure of the alt-right movement, finds abortion useful. He has explained that abortion will help to bring about his vision of an elite, white America: The people who are having abortions are generally very often Black or Hispanic or from very poor circumstances. The people whom Spencer wants to reproduce, he says, are using abortion when you have a situation like Down Syndrome. It is only the unintelligent and blacks and Hispanics, he claims, who use abortion as birth control.

On this understanding, abortion is a form of eugenics, helping to shape the population to produce more desirables and fewer undesirables. This is why Spencer supports the practice not because he believes that it is a moral good or that women are owed the right to choose, but because he views it as a morally neutral tool that improves the American gene pool by making it whiter and richer.

Spencer has specifically contrasted his position on abortion with that of National Reviews Ramesh Ponnuru. Spencer mocks Ponnurus for undertaking a human rights crusade, built on the assumption that every being that is human has a right to life. Spencer, of course, doesnt believe that is true.

He has openly mocked conservatives who worry about a black genocide or how [abortion] is destroying black communities. He knows that an estimated 75 percent of women who have abortions are poor. He knows that black women, receiving an outsize 36 percent of all American abortions, are almost five times as likely to terminate their pregnancies as white women. Nothing could make him happier.

Also secure in that knowledge is the pseudonymous alt-righter Aylmer Fisher, who writes in Spencers Radix Journal. It is important we not fall prey to the pro-life temptation, Fisher proclaims. Her reasoning is predictable: The only ones who cant [avoid an unwanted pregnancy] are the least intelligent and responsible members of society: women who are disproportionately Black, Hispanic, and poor.

This sort of racism is largely foreign to todays pro-choice movement. Its members genuinely believe that a fetus either does not count as human life or does not carry moral value. The task of pro-lifers is to convince them on the science and ethics, and show that abortion preys on women more than it empowers them.

But abortion hits racial minorities harder than any other group, and this fact has not been incidental to its history in America. As National Reviews Kevin Williamson detailed extensively in a cover story earlier this year, progressive eugenics was the intellectual ferment out of which rose the American birth-control movement.

Sanger, the founder of Planned Parenthood, wanted to make the coming generation into such physically fit, mentally capable, socially alert individuals as are the ideal of a democracy. In other words, she sought to improve the human race.

However, she faced an obstacle the same one that so troubles Richard Spencer and his acolytes. In her book, Woman and the New Race, Sanger wrote, The feebleminded are notoriously prolific in reproduction. This would be a problem with a solution to which Sanger devoted her lifes work: controlling the birth rate, especially among the unfit (read: the poor, blacks, and Catholic immigrants).

This goal brought her into contact with Charles C. Little, the president of the American Eugenics Society (AES), and a founding board member of the American Birth Control League (ABCL), which eventually became Planned Parenthood. Littles two associations are not coincidental: The ABCL, founded by Sanger in 1921, even shared office space with the AES. Moreover, as Williamson notes, Little believed that birth-control policy should be constructed in such a way as to protect Yankee stock referred to in Sangers own work as unmixed native white parentage.

Linda Gordon, author of The Moral Property of Woman: A History of Birth-Control Politics, examined the ABCLs in-house publication, the Birth Control Review. She reports that, A content analysis of the Birth Control Review showed that by the late 1920s only 4.9 percent of its articles in that decade had any concern with womens self-determination. Furthermore, It was Sangers courting of doctors and eugenists that moved the ABCL away from both the Left and liberalism, away from both socialist-feminist impulses and civil liberties arguments toward an integrated population program for the whole society.

There is little doubt that the alt-right would like to pursue just such an integrated population program for the whole society. Unlike pro-lifers, its acolytes have no desire to protect life for its own sake.

Or, as Spencer himself has put it, pro-lifers want to be radical...human rights thumpers and theyre not us. On this point, I wont argue. Neither should anyone whose movements intellectual progenitor is Margaret Sanger.

Elliot Kaufman is an editorial intern at National Review.

Read the original post:
The Alt-Right Carries on Margaret Sanger's Pro-Abortion Legacy - National Review

Even as it wrestles with its own diversity issues, Silicon Valley has become the reluctant arbiter of the line where free speech crosses into hate speech in the wake of the deadly protests in Charlottesville.

In an age where a lack of condemnation is tantamount to complicity, experts say tech firms have no choice but to disassociate from the alt-right, although as a growing number of tech companies cut off white nationalist groups from the platforms they use for communication, commerce, and content distribution, some have criticized the response as too little, too late.

Theres a very intimate history between internet service providers and white supremacist groups, said Joan Donovan, media manipulation research lead at the Data & Society Research Institute. There was plenty of warning that this stuff was being coordinated in their spaces, she said, but tech companies initially resisted policing the activity.

Historically, Silicon Valley has presented itself on embracing diversity in all its forms, albeit for pragmatic rather than political reasons: Cutthroat competition for users and talent means that companies cant afford to be exclusionary.

The reason this is a heightened issue in technology is technology is much more heterogeneous its all over the world, said Dave Carvajal, CEO of a technology-focused recruiting firm.

Its this belief people have that the tech industry should be the most modern, the most cutting edge, said Brian Kropp, HR Practice Leader at CEB (now Gartner). It also has this promise of capturing what tomorrow is going to be like.

But putting these egalitarian principles into practice hasnt always been easy. Even before Charlottesville, companies have stumbled in the gap between bro culture and Silicon Valleys self-image of open-mindedness.

Ubers ouster of CEO Travis Kalanick shone an embarrassing spotlight on the ingrained misogyny at some firms, and Googles recent firing of engineer James Damore, who argued in a widely distributed memo that women are biologically less well-suited for tech jobs, triggered accusations that the search giant is intolerant of conservative views.

I think whats happening is a lot of these kinds of deep-rooted issues are being brought to the surface because of the political theater thats happening right now. Its stirring up a lot of this, Carvajal said.

The violence at a white nationalist rally that left one counter-protester dead and others injured has brought this tension into sharper focus.

Theyve been pushing very hard on many of these issues. Now theyre at a point where they have to make really hard decisions... whether or not they stand up to all the values theyve talked about and promoted, Kropp said.

Some tech firms have been more receptive to curtailing alt-right activity than others, said Rashad Robinson, executive director of advocacy group Color of Change.

A lot of them seem super-focused on terms of services and this idea of an open platform, he said. We hear things like they share our values but at this time theres not going to be an update to policy.

Some of the challenges are logistical rather than ideological, since much of the enforcement cant be automated. It takes humans making judgement calls, and the line between talk and action online isnt always clear. There hasnt been a good model so far for policy around how to monitor or prevent certain amounts of content, Donovan said.

Tech companies also dont want to alienate potential customers or trigger a public relations backlash. According to Ted Marzilli, CEO of YouGov BrandIndex, consumer sentiment metrics for Facebook, Apple and GoDaddy reflected little change this week. Theyre not getting a lot of credit from consumers, but theyre not being punished, either, he said.

This could embolden other Silicon Valley leaders to terminate alt-right and white nationalist business relationships, Marzilli said, even if it costs them. These things are always a bit risky for companies from the perspective of dollars and cents, he said.

Whether driven by a sense of moral obligation, concern about public perception or some combination of the two, last weekends violence seemed to be a wake-up call, Robinson said. Its certainly accelerated since Charlottesville, he said of companies willingness to cut ties with white nationalist groups.

They started to think about their role in promoting this kind of talk, Donovan said. One thing these platforms really understand about themselves is they dont just allow speech to flow, they do the job of coordinating action They saw that this kind of open unmoderated speech online produced violent effects.

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Alt-Right Activists Thrust Silicon Valley Into Debate on Hate Speech ... - NBCNews.com

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The city of Berkeley once again is gearing up for what could be another showdown between the right and left with rallies this weekend and in September, including a possible appearance by conservative speaker Milo Yiannopoulos. (Published Monday, Aug. 21, 2017)

The city of Berkeley once again is gearing up for what could be another showdown between the right and left with rallies this weekend and in September, including a possible appearance by conservative speaker Milo Yiannopoulos.

The rallies will focus on free speech, and while city and UC Berkeley leaders are not welcoming hate speech, they are allowing the rallies in the name of the First Amendment.

Congresswoman Barbara Lee and other city and county leaders are expected to speak Tuesday morning at Berkeley City Hall to make it clear to hate groups that they are not welcome in the city.

So-called alt-right ralliers plan to demonstrate on Berkeley's streets this weekend, and residents are concerned about violence and destruction similar to what occurred in February, before a planned Yiannopoulos speech was canceled.

"They're not alt-right; they're Nazis," resident Taye Taye said. "They're racists. They're not welcome."

UC Berkeley students also are concerned about what will happen this weekend and in September, when Yiannopoulos and other controversial alt-right speakers say they will be on campus.

"There is such a thing as too far left and too far right, so i think it's going to be a little dangerous around campus during that time," student Cindy Kreck said.

Still, the university says it will allow all speech on campus, even if it's filled with hate.

"We contest speech that we don't like with more speech, and the best disinfectant is sunlight," UC Berkeley spokesman Dan Mogulof said.

Mogulof said the school will spend a lot of money on security to keep people safe.

Berkeley Mayor Jesse Arreguin said the alt-right groups expected this weekend are not welcome but they will not be turned away if they remain peaceful.

"We as a community stand for free speech," Arreguin said. "We are the birthplace of the free speech movement, and we really can't dictate based on the content of the speech."

Published at 5:01 PM PDT on Aug 21, 2017 | Updated at 8:58 PM PDT on Aug 21, 2017

Read more:
Berkeley Braces for Upcoming 'Alt-Right' Rallies, Speeches - NBC Bay Area