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The white supremacists marching in Charlottesville, Virginia, this past weekend were not ashamed when they shouted, Jews will not replace us. They were not ashamed to wear Nazi symbols, to carry torches, to harass and beat counterprotesters. They wanted their beliefs on display.

Its easy to treat people like them as straw men: one-dimensional, backward beings fueled by hatred and ignorance. But if we want to prevent the spread of extremist, supremacist views, we need to understand how these views form and why they stick in the minds of some people.

Recently, psychologists Patrick Forscher and Nour Kteily recruited members of the alt-right (a.k.a. the alternative right, the catchall political identity of white nationalists) to participate in a study to build the first psychological profile of their movement. The results, which were released on August 9, are just in working paper form, and have yet to be peer-reviewed or published in an academic journal.

That said, the study uses well-established psychological measures and is clear about its limitations. (And all the researchers raw data and materials have been posted online for others to review.)

So while it is a preliminary assessment, it validates some common perceptions of the alt-right with data. It helps us understand this group not just as straw men but as people with knowable motivations.

A lot of the findings align with what we intuit about the alt-right: This group is supportive of social hierarchies that favor whites at the top. Its distrustful of mainstream media and strongly opposed to Black Lives Matter. Respondents were highly supportive of statements like, There are good reasons to have organization that look out for the interests of white people. And when they look at other groups like black Americans, Muslims, feminists, and journalists theyre willing to admit they see these people as less evolved.

But its the degree to which the alt-righters differed from the comparison sample thats most striking especially when it came to measures of dehumanization, support for collective white action, and admitting to harassing others online. That surprised even Forscher, the lead author and a professor at the University of Arkansas, who typically doesnt find such large group difference in his work.

There was a time when psychologists feared that social desirability bias people unwilling to admit theyre prejudiced, for fear of being shamed would prevent people from answering such questions about prejudice truthfully. But this survey shows people will readily admit to believing all sorts of vile things. And researchers dont need to use implicit or subliminal measures to suss it all out.

Forscher and Kteily got a sample of 447 self-identified alt-righters in an online survey on Amazons Mechanical Turk (an online marketplace for gathering study participants and people for quick paid tasks) and led them through a barrage of psychological survey questions. They then compared the alt-righters to an online sample of 382 non-alt-righters. (See the demographic breakdown of the samples here.)

A note on some limitations: This survey was not designed to be representative of the entire alt-right movement or to generalize to other right-wing-leaning groups. Its a convenience sample of alt-righters on the internet who were willing to take a survey for a small cash reward.

Even so, its instructive. The people who answered this survey are people who stood up and identified as alt-right, similar to the marchers in Charlottesville who put themselves out there in the public eye. Even if this survey only represents a small portion of the people who adhere to this ideology, its useful for understanding exactly how they are distinct as a group and whats behind their divisive views.

Here are some of the biggest differences between the alt-right and control group the researchers found.

One of the starkest, darkest findings in the survey comes from a simple question: How evolved do you think other people are?

Kteily, the co-author on this paper, pioneered this new and disturbing way to measure dehumanization the tendency to see others as being less than human. He simply shows study participants the following (scientifically inaccurate) image of a human ancestor slowly learning how to stand on two legs and become fully human.

Participants are asked to rate where certain groups fall on this scale from 0 to 100. Zero is not human at all; 100 is fully human.

On average, alt-righters saw other groups as hunched-over proto-humans.

On average, they rated Muslims at a 55.4 (again, out of 100), Democrats at 60.4, black people at 64.7, Mexicans at 67.7, journalists at 58.6, Jews at 73, and feminists at 57. These groups appear as subhumans to those taking the survey. And what about white people? They were scored at a noble 91.8. (You can look through all the data here.)

The comparison group, on the other hand, scored all these groups in the 80s or 90s on average. (In science terms, the alt-righters were nearly a full standard deviation more extreme in their responses than the comparison group.)

If you look at the mean dehumanization scores, theyre about at the level to the degree people in the US dehumanize ISIS, Forscher says. The reason why I find that so astonishing is that were engaged in violent conflict with ISIS.

Dehumanization is scary. Its the psychological trick we engage in that allows us to harm other people (because its easier to inflict pain on people who are not people). Historically its been the fuel of mass atrocities and genocide.

This is unsurprisingly the largest difference Forscher and Kteily found in the survey. They asked participants how much they agreed with the following statement: I think there are good reasons to have organizations that look out for the interests of whites.

And the differences between the alt-right and the control sample were about as big as you could possibly find on such a survey. The average difference was 2.4 points on a 1-to-7 scale. Thats nearly a full 1.5 standard deviations. In my work, Ive never seen a difference that big, Forscher says.

Heres what those distribution look like plotted. The green on the right represents the answers of the alt-right. The red on the left represents the comparison group. Theyre mirror images.

The alt-right wants and supports organizations that look out for the rights and well-being of white people. Historically, such groups have done so by striking fear in the hearts of immigrants, Jews, and minorities.

These survey questions ask respondents the degree to which they agree with statements like, I avoid interactions with black people, My beliefs motivate me to express negative feelings about black people, and, I minimize my contact with black people.

Again, these questions showed huge differences. Forscher explains it like this. When he runs these questions on samples of college students, he usually sees average scores around 2 (out of 9, meaning people largely dont agree with these questions.) In the alt-right samples, Im seeing numbers around 3 or 4, relatively close to the midpoint. In all the samples Ive worked with, I havent seen means at that level.

In other words, members of the alt-right are unabashed in declaring their prejudices.

The survey also asked participants to state how often they engaged in aggressive behaviors, like doxxing, the releasing of private information without a persons permission. They also asked about how often respondents physically threatened another online, or made offensive statements just to get a rise out of people.

Here, too, the alt-righters were much more likely to admit to engaging in these behaviors.

In the comparison sample, people basically never did those things, or reported [doing them], Forscher says. But it wasnt like the alt-righters were uniformly admitting to these behaviors.

We found evidence that theres a much more extreme group of [alt-right] people who are reporting harassing and being offensive intentionally, he says. He calls them supremacists.

But theres a group of people who doesnt do that that much, or not that much at all, he says. Forscher and Kteily label this less extreme group populists. Theyre less aggressive and dehumanizing overall, and more concerned with government corruption. But even these milder populists are as supportive of collective white action, and as opposed to the Black Lives Matter movement, at the supremacists.

Alt-righters in the survey scored higher on social dominance orientation (the preference that society maintains social order), right-wing authoritarianism (a preference for strong rulers), and somewhat higher levels of the dark triad of personality traits (psychopathy, Machiavellianism, and narcissism.)

Among the measures where the alt-right and comparison groups dont look much different in the survey results is closeness and relationships with other people. The alt-righters reported having about equal levels of close friends, which means these arent necessarily isolated, lonely people. Theyre members of a community.

Also important: Alt-righters in the sample arent all that concerned about the economy. The survey used a common set of Pew question that asks about the current state of the economy, and about whether participants feel like things are going to improve for them. Here, both groups reported about the same levels of confidence in the economy.

Whats more, the alt-right expected more improvement in the state of the economy relative to the non-alt-right sample, the study states (perhaps because their preferred leader is president).

It goes to show: The alt-right is motivated by racial issues, not economic anxiety.

But it goes deeper than that. The survey revealed that the alt-righters were much more concerned that their groups were at a disadvantage compared with the control sample. The alt-right (and white nationalists) is afraid of being displaced by increasing numbers of immigrants and outsiders in this country. And, yes, they see themselves as potential victims.

This is the quixotic hope behind a lot of social science research: The first step to solving a problem is defining the nature of that problem.

Once we understand the psychological motivations behind the alt-right worldview, maybe we can learn to stop it.

This survey is just a first step in that direction. One of the biggest reasons I wanted to do this in the first place was to find some leverage points for change, Forscher says. If we know, for instance, that alt-righters rapidly dehumanize others, we can turn to the psychological literature on dehumanization for clues to stage interventions (or prevention).

In their preliminary analysis, Forscher and Kteily found that willingness to express prejudice against black people was correlated with harassing behavior. If we can change the motivation to express prejudice, maybe that gives us a way to prevent aggression, they say.

Again, this is all early work. Forscher hopes to track some of these survey participants over the coming months and years, and see if they remain adhered to the alt-right. Or if not, he hopes to learn what caused them to ditch the worldview.

When were thinking about current events, our thinking should be grounded in evidence rather than intuition, he says. This provides some evidence. Its definitely not the be-all and end-all.

Read more from the original source:
Psychologists surveyed hundreds of alt-right supporters. The results are unsettling. - Vox

"I do not support the alt-right," he told CNN Tech. "Just because someone supports me doesn't mean I support them."

Many alt-right personalities have expressed their support of Damore and his document, which criticized Google for its "politically correct monoculture" and critiqued its efforts to increase staff diversity. He had been photographed in his "Goolag" shirt by Peter Duke, a photographer who has been called the "Annie Leibovitz of the alt-right."

Damore's break from the alt-right comes after a white nationalist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia turned deadlly. Members of the alt-right, who have condemned the violence in Charlottesville, plan to protest outside Google offices in nine cities on Saturday. Damore said he's "likely not" going to participate.

Related: Google CEO cancels town hall due to leaks

Even as Damore clarified his personal political views, he argued adamantly that Silicon Valley is closed off to people it considers conservative.

"There's a very strong idea that the left ideology is the only ideology possible. We should be able to express differing opinions," Damore told CNN Tech. "I'm a centrist, and they're calling me a Nazi. That is a real problem."

Damore said he's not alone. He said some of his colleagues are afraid to express their ideologies but, privately, conveyed their full support of his memo.

"They literally say they agree with everything I'm saying. And that they don't feel they can bring their whole selves to Google," Damore said. He said the memo has divided many at the tech company.

"Hopefully it will show there has been a lot of political discrimination in the workplace and that needs to stop," he said, calling Google a "psychologically unsafe environment" because people feel as though they have to self-censor. "You have to stay in the closet and mask who you really are," he said.

Google CEO Sundar Pichai condemned parts of Damore's post that he said perpetuated stereotypes about women. Some experts have taken issue with Damore's arguments.

Related: Free speech on the job, and what that means

Damore's post claimed that women aren't suited for tech jobs for "biological" reasons. Men have a "higher drive for status," and women have higher rates of anxiety disorders -- making for "lower numbers of women in high stress jobs."

He said in the interview that he wasn't "saying anything about the women at Google."

"I'm saying that people that go into tech are interested in 'things' versus 'people' generally," Damore said. "As a population, there are fewer women that are interested in things versus people."

He said the memo was never meant to be leaked outside of Google -- and that if he could change anything, he'd eliminate the use of the word "neuroticism." "I would definitely change that because that has a lot of negative connotations," he said.

CNNMoney (New York) First published August 15, 2017: 7:45 AM ET

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Former Google engineer: 'I do not support the alt-right' - CNNMoney

The voice and text chat app Discord has shut down its notorious alt-right server after the events in Charlottesville, Virginia that left one person dead.

Announced via its official Twitter account, Discord revealed it had not only shut down the server, but also a number of accounts "associate with the events in Charlottesville." The server was one of the larger on the app, and had become infamous for its level of hate speech, racist content and calls to violence. This behavior is against the sites Terms and Service, Discord CMO Eros Resmini pointed out to Polygon.

"We unequivocally condemn white supremacy, Neo-Nazism or any other group, term, ideology that is based on these beliefs. They are not welcome on Discord," Resmini said to the outlet. "When hatred like this violates our community standards we act swiftly to take servers down and ban individual users. The public server linked to AltRight.com that violated those terms was shut down along with several other public groups and accounts fostering bad actors on Discord. We will continue to be aggressive to ensure that Discord exists for the community we set out to support gamers."

According to the app's terms of service, those who "defame, libel, ridicule, mock, stalk, threaten, harass or abuse anyone" are in violation. Furthermore, its community guidelines caution that any users distributing intentionally harmful material to someone's "physical or financial state" are in violation of the site's Terms and subject to immediate account deletion.

"We will continue to take action against white supremacy, nazi ideology and all forms of hate," the company said. It is expected to continue to shut down other servers associated with the alt-right in the coming months.

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Discord Shuts Down Its Alt-Right Server After Charlottesville Protests - RollingStone.com

The white nationalist leaders who helped organize a protest in Charlottesville, Virginia two days ago that turned bloody gave a press conference in Virginia in which they refused to condemn the man suspected of driving his car into a crowd of protesters and dismissed President Trumps statement disavowing white supremacists earlier that day.

White nationalists have been struggling to distance themselves from the outbreak of violence Saturday, which lead to national media coverage and angry condemnations not just from the local mayor and governor but from world leaders like Germany's Prime Minister Angela Merkel. The violent images from the protest, organized to oppose the removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee, have badly damaged the white nationalists' movement attempt to rebrand itself as the more respectable and sophisticated "alt-right."

Why White Supremacists Find Comfort in Trump's Erratic Messaging

Richard Spencer and Nathan Damigo, two leading figures of the white nationalist alt-right movement who had participated in Saturdays Unite the Right rally , spoke to reporters at Spencers office and apartment in Alexandria. The press conference was also supposed to include white nationalist social media personalities Baked Alaska and James Allsup, but Spencer said Baked Alaska couldnt make it because his eye had been injured in the melee and Allsup was with him. Spencer had initially tried to hold the conference at two different hotels in Washington, before having to resort to the Alexandria location after the hotels cancelled on him.

Spencer associates functioning as security checked journalists in at the door and led them upstairs to where Spencer and Damigo stood in front of a bookshelf and a screen where they showed slides and photos of the protest area in Charlottesville.

Spencer blamed the authorities for what happened in Charlottesville, saying the citys mayor and governor of Virginia have blood on their hands for not policing the situation properly. The alt-right, he said, is nonviolent; he waxed nostalgic while speaking about the hundreds of white nationalists marching through Charlottesville with torches on Friday night, calling the event really beautiful. Some fighting between them and counter-protesters reportedly took place during the Friday event; Saturdays rally attracted militia members with guns, and descended into all-out street violence.

But one person who didnt come in for unequivocal criticism was Charlottesville suspect James Alex Fields, who has been charged with second-degree murder in the death of Heather Heyer, a 32-year-old woman who had come to protest the Unite the Right event. Fields was photographed earlier in the day at the rally with Vanguard America, a self-identified white supremacist and fascist group that attended the rally. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has called the incident an act of terrorism. Videos of the incident show a vehicle authorities have said was driven by Fields accelerating into a crowd of protesters, injuring more than a dozen and killing Heyer.

I am not going to condemn this young man at this point, Spencer said. When he first saw the video, he said, he saw it as a malicious act of violence; but hes now less sure that it was a purposeful act and wont come down on one side or another until an investigation is complete.

The press conference came just a few hours after Trump, whose initial reaction to Charlottesville had been muted and blamed many sides for the violence without singling out white supremacist groups, gave a grudging statement at the White House explicitly naming them after two days of criticism for not having done so. Photos from Charlottesville show Confederate and Nazi symbols among some of the demonstrators.

Racism is evil, Trump said. And those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans.

Spencer dismissed Trumps statement as kumbaya nonsense and said he didnt view it as a repudiation of his movement, which he defended as non-violent.

He sounded like a Sunday school teacher, he said. I just dont take it seriously.

Speaking to me afterwards, Damigo agreed that he didnt take Trumps words as an unequivocal denouncement of their movement.

I dont know exactly what he meant by that statement, Damigo said. People in his position, theyre not stupid, they make these very ambiguous statements with words that are very loaded and hard to interpret.

But Damigo is very disappointed that he would present himself in a way, appearing to jump to conclusions as to what happened, because simply, we dont know the facts yet. Theyre going to be coming out. An investigation hasnt even been done yet. But he already knows the intent of what happened?

Spencer has been critical of Trump over time, though We were connected with Donald Trump on a kind of psychic level, he said of the alt-right. Trump is the first true authentic nationalist in my lifetime.

Asked who in the White House he views as a fellow traveler of the alt-right, Spencer named top policy advisor Stephen Miller and chief strategist Steve Bannon, though he didnt say they themselves were alt-right.

They at least are connected with identitarian ideas in a way that the rest of them are not, Spencer said.

When I spoke to Spencer after the events of Saturday, he seemed keen to distance himself from what had happened, saying he hadnt organized the event (despite the fact that his name was on the flyer) and that his events would be more tightly controlled going forward.

Spencer repeated the same sentiments on Monday. But he seemed less than cowed, promising to return to Charlottesville.

Theres no way in hell Im not going back to Charlottesville, he said.

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'Alt-Right' Leaders Won't Condemn Ramming Suspect - The Atlantic

America has cancer.

On Saturday, a crowd of alt-right white supremacists, neo-confederates, and Nazi sympathizers marched in Charlottesville, Va.; they were confronted by a large group of protesters including members of the Marxist Antifa a group that has time and again plunged volatile situations into violence, from Sacramento to Berkeley. Theres still no certain knowledge of who began the violence, but before long, the sides had broken into the sort of brutal scrum that used to characterize Weimer-era Germany. The two sides then carried the red banner and the swastika; so did the combatants on Saturday.

Then a Nazi-sympathizing alt-right 20-year-old Ohioan plowed his car into a crowd of protesters, killing one and injuring 19. The president of the United States promptly failed egregiously to condemn alt-right racism; instead, he opted for a milquetoast statement condemning hatred, bigotry, and violence on many sides.

The Left leapt into action, declaring Trumps statement utterly insufficient which, of course, it was. But they then went further, declaring that Antifa was entirely innocent, despite Antifas launching into violence against pro-Trump marchers in Seattle over the weekend, as they have in Sacramento and Berkeley; berating New York Times journalist Sheryl Gay Stolberg for having the temerity to report that the hard left seemed as hate-filled as the alt-right; and suggesting that all conservatives were, at root, sympathizers with the Nazi-friendly alt-right.

And so here we stand: On the one side, a racist, identity-politics Left dedicated to the proposition that white people are innate beneficiaries of privilege and therefore must be excised from political power; on the other side, a reactionary, racist, identity-politics alt-right dedicated to the proposition that white people are innate victims of the social-justice class and therefore must regain political power through race-group solidarity.

None of this is new, of course. The Left has engaged in identity politics since the 1960s and engaged in heavy violence in the late 1960s and early 1970s. The white-supremacist movement has been with us since the founding of the republic. But both movements had been steadily shrinking until the last few years.

Now theyre growing. And theyre largely growing in opposition to one another. In fact, the growth of each side reinforces the growth of the other: The mainstream Left, convinced that the enemies of social-justice warriors are all alt-right Nazis, winks and nods at left-wing violence; the right, convinced that its SJW enemies are focused on racial polarization, embraces the alt-right as a form of resistance. Antifa becomes merely a radical adjunct to traditional Democratic-party politics; the alt-right becomes merely a useful tool for scurrilous Republican politicians and media figures.

Three factors led to this self-reinforcing growth loop.

First, increasing political polarization.

President Obama allowed the politics of racial fragmentation to fester on his watch; he repeatedly trafficked in broad generalities about American racism. Obama focused incessantly on the specter of white bigotry: the legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, discrimination in almost every institution of our lives, embedded in our collective DNA. In response, an identity politics began creepily infusing the Right, with some white people embracing the mold cast upon them by the Left, creating a soft racial solidarity in backlash. This, of course, only strengthened the Lefts views of white privilege, which in turn strengthened the Rights views of white victimhood.

The second factor was media malfeasance.

Left-wing media and objective media saw an advantage in highlighting the antics of racists such as Richard Spencer and David Duke. Focusing on the racist alt-right allowed the media to draw the convenient conclusion that the alt-right was a growing force in Republican politics that had to be fought through support for Democrats. Meanwhile, the media cast a blind eye toward Antifas violent Weimer-style rioting in Sacramento and Berkeley.

In response, right-wing media began tut-tutting the alt-right as victims of Antifa and focused exclusively on Antifa as a nefarious force; they also responded to the Lefts disgusting attempts to lump in the Right with the alt-right by accepting a broader, false definition of the alt-right that could include traditional conservatism. They even bought into the shameful rebranding of the alt-right as defenders of Western civilization by shills such as Milo Yiannopoulos. That rebranding provided a convenient way of fighting the Left: If the Left is calling us alt-right, thats just because they hate that we stand for Western civilization!

Finally, theres political convenience.

Obamas repeated references to American racism werent his only sin. He repeatedly shunned opportunities to tamp down leftist racial radicalism. He made excuses for riots in Ferguson and Baltimore. He used the shooting of Dallas police officers by a radical black activist as an opportunity to lecture Americans about the evils of racist policing. He knew that his political support came in large measure from SJWs, and he cultivated them.

Meanwhile, on the right, Trump did the same. During the campaign, he ignored opportunity after opportunity to break with the alt-right. He refused to condemn the KKK on national television; he refused to condemn his supporters sending anti-Semitic messages to journalists; he hired as his campaign strategist Steve Bannon, a man who openly celebrated turning Breitbart into a platform for the alt-right. Trump saw the alt-right as convenient allies, his meme-making deplorable friends on the Internet. They reveled in both his unwillingness to condemn them and his willingness to share their work.

And so here we are. The mainstream Left has been increasingly suckered into walking hand-in-hand with the SJWs while ignoring the most egregious activities of Antifa; the mainstream Right has been increasingly seduced into footsie with alt-right associates while feigning ignorance at the alt-right itself.

Thats why Charlottesville matters: not only because we saw destruction and terror, but because if all Americans of good conscience wont do some soul-searching and move to excise the evil in their midst, that evil will metastasize. There is a cancer in the body politic. We must cut it out, or be destroyed.

READ MORE: Two Blocks from the Culture War The Roots of Left-Wing Violence Gangs of Berkeley: The Pathetic Delusions of the Antifa

Ben Shapiro is the editor in chief of the Daily Wire.

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Antifa and the Alt-Right, Growing in Opposition to One Another - National Review