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Last year around this time (and the year before that), I was arguing with some of my fellow conservatives about the insanity of finding any common cause whatsoever with the so-called alt-right. The issue wasnt that every avowed nationalist who claimed membership in the alt-right was a Nazi or Klansman. It was that the alt-right was open to Nazis and Klansmen. And why wouldnt these newly-minted white supremacists welcome such pioneering organizations to their cause?

Right-wing cynics, hucksters and opportunists deliberately blurred these distinctions in the name of a right-wing popular front. Steve Bannon, now a White House consigliere, is by most accounts not a bigot in his personal dealings. But when he ran Breitbart.com he had no problem making it a platform for the alt-right. Internet entertainer Milo Yiannopoulos was a Breitbart star for his defenses of the alt-right and its supposedly hilarious Holocaust jokes. He was only let go (and disinvited from the Conservative Political Action Conference) when it was revealed he was equally broadminded about some expressions of pedophilia as he was about some expressions of Nazism.

In Bannons case, and in the case of so many on the right who pulled their oars to the beat of Bannons drum, their motivation wasnt racism or anti-Semitism; it was the need to win at all costs (or to make a profit).

Win what? Well, that varied. At first it was the war on the establishment, including Fox News. Then one alleged civil war on the right or another. And, ultimately, the fight to get Donald Trump the nomination and the presidency.

Tasos Katopodis / Getty Images

As the primaries wound down, the imperative for unity intensified. Why look under rocks when you can use them as steppingstones to victory? Besides Trump was making it as clear as possible that he welcomed support and praise from any quarter.

The rights game of footsie with the alt-right ostensibly ended when Trump won. Bannon disavowed them once he made it to the White House. Like France after the liberation, it seemed everyone was suddenly a member of the resistance and nobody was a collaborator. At least, that is, until Saturday, when the president invited speculation that the old popular front is still operational.

Whatever its status at the White House, the alt-right thinks it will replace the traditional right. It wont, for the simple reason that the vast, overwhelming, majority of conservatives are patriotic and decent, just like Americans generally. They dont want anything to do with people who want to overthrow the Constitution and set up racial Bantustans.

No, the real threat to traditional conservatism is the mind-set that made it possible to form even a theoretical alliance with the alt-right in the first place: the idea that winning and fighting are self-justifying.

Over the last decade, many on the right have convinced themselves that the real problem with conservatism is a lack of will. They quote left-wing activist Saul Alinsky admiringly and claim that we have to be like them by doing whatever is necessary to win.

During the campaign, when Trump attacked the ethnicity of an American judge or the parents of a fallen Muslim U.S. soldier, the response from his defenders on the right was usually at least he fights!

Such amorality was warranted, many explained, because if Clinton had won, America would be over. The national security official Michael Anton, then writing from the safety of anonymity, dubbed it a Flight 93 election and argued that conservatives must do anything for victory or accept certain death. In an interview with New York magazine, he went further. If we must have Caesar, said Anton, who do you want him to be? One of theirs? Or one of yours (ours)?

The election is over. Yet that spirit not only endures, it has intensified. Trumps conservative critics, or apostates as Conrad Black calls us, face the same ultimatum. The choice, for sane conservatives, Black writes, is Trump or national disaster. Black is hardly alone in making this or similar cases. The upshot of them all is that the test for sane (or real or good or true conservatives) is loyalty to the president, not to any coherent body of ideas, ideals or party. Even truth takes a backseat

Id point out that such thinking could invite the worst and most opportunistic creatures to infiltrate the movement. Except they already have.

jgoldberg@latimescolumnists.com

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The alt-right has gained ground, thanks to a win-at-all-costs strategy - Los Angeles Times

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 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

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