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This article first appeared on the Just Security site.

On June 11, alt-right blogger Mike Cernovich published an article attacking an assistant to National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster, claiming the previously low-profile civil servant wanted to sabotage President Donald Trump.

The piece described Eric Ciaramella as pro-Ukraine and anti-Russia and alleged, with no evidence, that he was possibly responsible for high-level leaks.

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The response to the piece included online threats of violence against Ciaramella, which contributed to his decision to leave his job at the the National Security Council a few weeks early, according to two sources familiar with the situation.

Although the harassment was not the only factor, one of the two sources said they distinctly got the impression that the departure was premature, partially because of right-wing harassment.

Ciaramella is not alone. Cernovich, who claims his Twitter feed receives over 100 million views every month, has been relentless in his criticism of McMaster and those around him.

Cernovichs writings and tweets have included false information, but sometimes they include details that only someone on the inside could know. For example, his tweets about Ciaramella were so specific that they documented meetings and lunches the NSC staffer had with certain people.

After Ciaramella left the NSC, Cernovich turned his attacks on Twitter against his prospective successor, who has not been publicly announced.

National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster (left) and White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon arrive for a news conference with NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg and U.S. President Donald Trump hold a news conference in the East Room of the White House April 12, 2017 in Washington, DC. Chip Somodevilla/getty

Career civil servants often endure stressful working conditions, but in the Trump White House, some of them face online trolling from alt-right bloggers who seek to portray them as clandestine partisans plotting to sabotage the presidents agenda. The online attacks often cite information that appears to be provided by unnamed White House officials or Trump loyalists.

The trend has unnerved the career intelligence analysts, diplomats, security experts, and military officers who are accustomed to operating outside the political arena. Coupled with White House talking points accusing government employees of jeopardizing the countrys security through leaks to the media, the online abuse threatens to damage morale and politicize institutions long seen as impartial and above partisan combat.

Its singling people out and then publicly engaging in character assassination, said Bruce Riedel, a former career CIA officer who served in the agency for over 30 years and is now a fellow at the Brookings Institution. It will certainly send an intimidating effect throughout the bureaucracy.

Federal law is designed to shield career government employees from political or other retaliation unrelated to their performance on the job, but the administration has significant leeway to sideline them.

Some previous presidents, most notably Richard Nixon, sought to undercut perceived political opponents in and outside of government, but the public harassment of civil servants by the current White House or its allies is something new, according to former government officials.

Charles Kupchan, who served as senior director for European Affairs on the NSC during the Obama administration, and was Ciaramellas boss for two years there, said hes never seen a time of such attacks against civil servants. In my professional recollection, he said, its unprecedented.

There may have been times in the past when one person was singled out, but the systemic hostility to what the alt-right calls the deep state is misplaced, Kupchan said, and its dangerous.

Before the 2016 election, Cernovich wrote self-help books for men who wanted to discover their inner alpha male. He found a larger audience, however, with his fervent pro-Trump, Hillary Clinton-bashing online blogs, tweets, and memes.

Tweeting from his home in Southern California, he helped spread the Pizzagate conspiracy theory and has threatened to smear members of the Trump White House if Stephen Bannon is ever removed.

Those whom Cernovich targets often face a barrage of online threats and harassment from his followers. Last week, for example, he focused on Andrew Kaczynski, an investigative journalist at CNN. Kaczynski had written about the anonymous Reddit user who created a video of Trump wrestling a figure with CNNs logo superimposed on his head.

Cernovich doctored a photo so it appeared that Kaczynski was wearing a Nazi SS uniform. The Daily Beast reported that Kaczynskis parents and wife had received around 50 harassing phone calls each by Wednesday.

Still, members of Trumps inner circle, and even his family members, have endorsed Cernovichs posts. The White House has given him press credentials and he says he gets his information from West Wing officials, a claim supported by what hes able to report and when hes able to report it. For example, he warned his followers on April 6 that the White House had decided to launch military action against Syria, following the chemical weapons attack by Syrian President Bashar al-Assads regime, before the U.S. missile strikes occurred. We do have time to stop it, Cernovich told his audience at 7:40 p.m.

In June, Cernovich turned his attention to Ciaramella, the NSC staffer. Nothing in his rsum indicates that Ciaramella will put America First. His entire life arc indicates he will sabotage Trump and leak information to the press whenever possible, Cernovich wrote, in an unsubstantiated allegation.

Though he concedes its unproven, Cernovich said that some suspect Ciaramella leaked the details of Trumps Oval Office meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov. During the meeting, the president said firing FBI Director James Comey had relieved great pressure on him and that Comey was a real nut job.

Trump also reportedly disclosed to Lavrov classified intelligence about the Islamic State provided by Israel. Both stories sent the White House into a tailspin.

On Twitter, Cernovichs followers and Trump loyalists responded to the piece about Ciaramella by calling for Trump to fire McMaster. Cernovichs followers made death threats against Ciaramella, with calls for him to be shot between the eyes, as well as demands for his imprisonment.

Shortly after Cernovich made the allegations, Ciaramella gave notice at the NSC.

After his departure, Ciaramella, who was on loan to the White House, returned to his parent agency. Career civil servants from the Pentagon, the State Department, or one of the intelligence agencies routinely serve tours on the NSC.

Ciaramellas NSC stint started during the Obama administration. Following Trumps inauguration, he stayed on at the request of the Trump transition team, working as acting senior director for European and Russian affairs.

After McMaster picked Russia expert Fiona Hill to permanently fill that position, he asked Ciaramella to join the front office staff for the remainder of his NSC tour, which was scheduled to end in late June.

Officials who worked closely with Ciaramella adamantly defend his professionalism and nonpartisan stance. Hes a seasoned pro and one of the best that the civil service has, said Kupchan, his former boss at the NSC.

Now a professor at Georgetown University, Kupchan described civil servants, like Ciaramella, as the worker bees of the federal government. They want to serve the nation, and they care deeply about the issues theyre working on.

Kupchan said he brought Ciaramella on board in 2015 to work on Ukraine. He did such an impressive job, I asked him to help share the burden on the counter-ISIL [ISIS] portfolio, and specifically Turkeys role in that fight, he said.

Yet Cernovich falsely tweeted on June 14 that Ciaramella had been fired because it was revealed that he had been leaking to the press, a statement that colleagues deny and that Cernovich later corrected. On July 2, he tweeted that Ciaramella had quit because of his article.

NSC spokesman Michael Anton said Ciaramella did not leave earlier than planned. He left when his scheduled detail was up, he wrote in an email.

A senior administration official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the fact that Ciaramella was made acting director for European and Russian affairs and later brought up to serve as McMasters executive assistant demonstrates how well he performed in his job.

H.R. thought he did a good job. Everybody was happy with his performance, the official said. Referring to Ciaramellas stint in the sensitive post of executive assistant to McMaster, the official said, He wouldnt have been there if he werent trusted.

But the official said there was no evidence that someone in the White House was feeding material to online bloggers and that the information appearing online could easily have come from an array of sources outside the White House.

Numerous visitors to the White House pass through the West Wing, where the NSC is located and where the executive assistant to the national security advisor handles numerous phone calls, the official said. As a result, Ciaramellas arrival or departure from the NSC would have been known to probably hundreds if not thousands of people inside and outside the government, the administration official said.

Cernovich acknowledges that hes going after McMasters staff. Personnel is policy, he wrote in response to queries for this article.

The NSC and State are the most interesting beats to cover, because the hiring and firing decisions within State and NSC will determine whether America enters another disastrous ground war, as H.R. McMaster and his mentor David Petraeus desire, he wrote. McMaster has stacked the NSC with pro-war globalists, some of whom came from the Obama administration and others who were Never Trumpers.

In response to questions about some of his statements that have proven false, and whether he allows people to respond to his allegations, Cernovich responded by saying: You are a spokeswoman for globalist warmongers. You are the mouthpiece of death and destruction. Your fraudulent hit piece on me validates the strength of my work.

Cernovich is not alone in going after NSC and other government staffers. Outlets, including Breitbart News and the Conservative Review , went on a rampage against government employees and so-called Obama holdovers in the early months of the Trump administration, as first documented by Politico in March.

State Department officials took some of the hardest hits. Sahar Nowrouzzadeh, who started her career in the George W. Bush administration and who helped negotiate President Barack Obamas Iran nuclear deal, was moved from the NSC back to the State Department after critical right-wing media stories.

The Conservative Review also accused Alan Eyre, director of the Office of Middle East and Asia at the State Department and a career diplomat, of being a leftist who was anti-Trump.

In another article, the publication said Anne Patterson, former assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, fully embraced the policies of President Obama that aligned with radical Islamic actors and alienated Israel. Defense Secretary James Mattis wanted to nominate Patterson to be his undersecretary for policy but faced resistance from the White House.

Conservative outlets also attacked officials who guided the White Houses Israel policy, including NSC diplomat Yael Lempert and Michael Ratney, in charge of Israeli-Palestinian issues at the State Department.

Lempert was accused of undermining Trumps positions toward Israel, despite her negotiating a $38 billion deal to supply military hardware to Israel over 10 years. Pro-Israel conservatives slammed Ratney for his ties to former Secretary of State John Kerry. Lempert departed in April, less than a month after it was reported shed be staying.

The attacks dont stop with career civil servants or perceived Obama holdovers. They also include people hired as political appointees by the Trump administration. A common theme underlying the online attacks is a perceived alignment with McMaster.

Longtime Trump confidant and former campaign advisor Roger Stone, along with Alex Jones, who pushes conspiracy theories via his site Infowars, have attacked Hill, who was hired by McMaster to be senior director for European and Russian affairs on the NSC. Before joining the administration, Hill worked at the Brookings Institution, and earlier served as a national intelligence officer for Russia and Eurasia at the National Intelligence Council.

In their video, Stone and Jones castigated Hill as a mole for billionaire investor George Soros. She has been on the Soros payroll and the payroll of the Open Society Institute, Stone said on Joness show.

The online trolling fits within a broader idea pushed by Trump supporters in Washington and the media the threat of a deep state, or the idea that an unseen group of people inside government are working against civilian leaders. The term has often been used in countries such as Egypt or Turkey, where members of the military and others have orchestrated coups.

In Washington, the term deep state has been adopted in recent months to refer to the alleged threat from disloyal civil servants conspiring to harm the administration. We are talking about the emergence of a deep state led by Barack Obama, and that is something that we should prevent, Iowa Rep. Steve King said in March.

The online attacks on the reputations of particular civil servants has a very Nixonian quality to it, Riedel, of Brookings, said.

What strikes me is there is another deep state thats being fed information to wage war on the professional cadre.

A new target for online bashing is Megan Badasch, the NSCs deputy executive secretary. Cernovich has accused her of leaking to the press and working with McMaster to orchestrate the departure of Tera Dahl, who was serving as the NSCs deputy chief of staff. Dahl, a former Breitbart columnist, is taking a new job in the Trump administration, a move that was in the works for a while.

Badasch is no Obama holdover; she has spent her career working in Republican politics, on Capitol Hill, and on presidential campaign teams. She was hired by the Trump campaign and worked on Trumps transition team after the election. When the White House sought to clamp down on leaks early in the administration, Badasch implemented a policy to restrict the distribution of documents within the government.

One big mark against Badasch, according to Cernovich: She was seen eating lunch with her colleague, Ciaramella.

Kate Brannen is deputy managing editor of Just Security and a nonresident senior fellow at the Brent Scowcroft Center on International Security at the Atlantic Council.

Dan De Luce is Foreign Policys chief national security correspondent.

Jenna McLaughlin covers the intelligence community for Foreign Policy Magazine.

This article was published jointly with Foreign Policy.

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How Alt-Right Bloggers Are Driving Out Top Civil Servants - Newsweek

On June 26th, Richard Spencer, founder of the white nationalist National Policy Institute, and Laura Loomer, of Julius Caesar protest fame, presided over competing alt-right rallies in the capital. Spencer has little regard for Loomer and her ilk, whom he likes to call alt-light.

Loomer, who is Jewish, has called Spencer out for hating Jews.

The alt-right has no central leadership, and its self-styled figureheads have struggled to distance the movement from out-and-out neo-Nazis. The spat between Spencer and Loomer is the latest chapter in the ongoing confusion over what core beliefs define the alt-right, and which groups of people it excludes.

Loomer seems to represent the side of the alt-right that emphasizes memes and political provocation. Spencer is a straight-up white nationalist who advertises his northwestern European pedigree on Twitter.

Andrew Marantz recently reported in the New Yorker on how this branding war is pushing people in Loomers corner to rebrand as the New Right. Loomers circle, which includes the conservative blogger Lucian Wintrich, the conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec and the alt-rights meme mastermind Mike Cernovich, is embracing the term New Right to avoid being branded the alt-light by Spencers supporters.

As in D.C., public alt-right protests in Texas have given way to far-right infighting. Militiamen have attacked alt-right protesters for being too racist. Attempts to save Confederate icons have been exposed as pure delusion.

Earlier this month, on an overcast Saturday in a Houston park, nearly 1,000 people showed up to counter-protest a protest (and alleged destruction) of a statue of Sam Houston, the founder of Houston, Texas. Those in attendance believed themselves to be defending one of the great figures of the Confederacy. They brought Confederate flags, lots of guns, and plenty of meme posters.

Except that there were no plans to remove the statue. And Sam Houston wasnt a Confederate.

The destruction of the statue was a hoax perpetrated by what the Houston Press identified as an online alt-right collective. The collective was participating in a national operation to create fake anti-fascist (antifa) social media accounts in an attempt to mock anti-fascist activists.

Some Texas media outlets, however, believed the hoax, and reported on the impending removal of the statue. In response, alt-right and white supremacy groups organized a counter-protest to keep the statue from being removed. Police created designated protest and counter-protest areas that Saturday morning, but protest section remained empty.

(For the record: Sam Houston hated the Confederacy, and Jefferson Davis. He cursed it from his deathbed.)

This episode happened on the same day that anti-Muslim marchers at Austins edition of the national March Against Sharia found themselves outnumbered 10-to-1 by pro-Muslim counter-protesters. (The Austin marchers also did not have the proper permits.)

At the Houston protest, one pro-statue protester a member of the Oath Keepers militia ended up trying to put another pro-statue protester in a chokehold for bringing posters with racist memes.

I thought we were on the same side, the man holding the posters said. (At other March Against Sharia marches, armed Oath Keepers were protecting people in the March Against Sharia.)

These are good memes! the man added.

Contact Ari Feldman at feldman@forward.com or on Twitter @aefeldman.

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Female 'Alt-Right' Jew Takes On Richard Spencer The Forward - Forward

The Summer of Chaos just wont die. The widely debunked meme claiming Black Lives Matter activists were colluding with former Attorney General Loretta Lynch and billionaire George Soros resurfaced in a lawsuit filed by a policemanwounded in an ambush in Baton Rouge in 2016.

That suit, filed Friday by an unnamed police officer who was left permanently disabled after being shot in an ambush, claims the shooter, Gavin Eugene Long, was influenced by the anti-police rhetoric of Black Lives Matter.

The lawsuit alleges that the defendants five prominent Black Lives Matter activists orchestrated the so-called Summer of Chaos, cultivating an atmosphere that encouraged others to harm police in retaliation for the death of black men killed by police.

This, according to the lawsuit, was part of a grander plan to engage in violence calculated to lead to the imposition of martial law.

One problem: The so-called Summer of Chaos is a conspiracy theory created by the alt-right blogosphere. The news site Intellihub first published a story alleging Black Lives Matter protests were part of an elaborate scheme to disrupt key election events, trigger the implementation of martial law, and ultimately allow President Barack Obama to seize a third term in office.

The lawsuit references the meme as it attempts to blame Black Lives Matter forLongs actions. According to the complaint, Long went to Baton Rouge to exact revenge for killing and acting out in violence, as [Black Lives Matter] had directed its followers as to how to react to the killing of black men by police, and that retaliation against police was proper behavior in warfare and revolution.

The suit names as defendants key figures associated with the Black Lives Matter movement, including DeRay McKesson, Johnetta Netta Elzie, and founders Patrisse Cullors, Alicia Garza and Opal Tometi, as well as the movement as a whole.

The leaders of [Black Lives Matter] not only incited the violence against police in retaliation for the death of black men shot by police but also did nothing to dissuade the ongoing violence and injury to police, alleges Officer John Doe, age 42, father of two and an 18-year veteran of the force, who was shot in his head, abdomen, and shoulder. In fact, they justified the violence as necessary to the movement and war.

Referencing The Summer of Chaos added a layer to the conspiracy, and connects it to a theme that has simmered in the alt-right blogosphere for the past year.

It began when when Intellihub published allegedly hacked private correspondence between Black Lives Matter activists including McKesson, Elzie, and Samuel Sinyangwe in which they appeared to speak broadly and openly about their plot to destabilize the United States with a little help from the Obama Administration.

McKesson confirmed to fact-checking site Snopes that his account was hacked and the correspondence was fabricated.

The Summer of Chaos term gained traction the month after two officer-involved deaths of black men (Philando Castile in Minnesota and Alton Sterling in Baton Rouge) triggered nationwide protests, and culminated in two separate ambushes of police officers: one in Dallas, andthe Gavin Long shooting in Baton Rouge.

Donna Grodner, the attorney representing the officer, was not available for comment.

Long, a former Marine who served in Iraq and who died during a shootout with police, touted himself as a life coach and produced rambling videos and writings where he discussed spirituality, masculinity, fitness, police shootings, and race. He identified himself as a member of the anti-government sovereign citizen movement, but in a video manifesto recorded before he traveled to Baton Rouge, he asserted that he was not affiliated with any group.

McKesson and other prominent figures associated with the Black Lives Matter movement condemned the tragedy and said the movement did not condone violence against police officers, reiterating calls for peaceful protest.

The officer is seeking $75,000 in damages.

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Cop uses debunked alt-right meme in Black Lives Matter lawsuit - VICE News

Many people were alarmed by the National Rifle Association video that gained wide circulation on social media last week. The official spokesperson of the NRA, talk-show host Dana Loesch, rails against all sorts of contemporary dangers criticizing the U.S. President, protesting in the streets and stops just short of a call to armed insurrection.

Much has been said about the content of the speech, but I was also intrigued by the choice of images that flickered rapidly as the speech unfolded. The montage was of all sorts of apparently random things. Ordinary building were intercut with footage of political demonstrations. Some of the photos were of contemporary art and architecture. One brief image was of a swirly Frank Gehry building (the Walt Disney Concert Hall, home to the Los Angeles Philharmonic orchestra); one was of Anish Kapoors shining egg sculpture in Chicago, Cloud Gate.

So they are not random after all. Art, particularly avant-gardist art, has long been the target of conservatives in all countries. Art is part of the great fraud that is being perpetrated on ordinary people: It is an extension of the media and therefore always fake news. The speech is explicit about the role of art in the hoax: They use their singers and comedy stars and award shows to repeat their narrative over and over again, Loesch says.

A less widely circulated alt-right (a U.S.-based white nationalist movement) video lecture also appeared at the end of June, this one specifically about the role of architecture in the fraudulent liberal conspiracy. This one, made and promoted by the far-right site Infowars, is an anti-architecture narrative spoken by British-born activist Paul Joseph Watson. It is titled Why Modern Architecture Sucks. It has, so far, more than 300,000 views. The 35-year-old Watson is an Infowars editor-at-large and a contributor to The Alex Jones Show, the radio branch of Infowars. Alex Jones is a conspiracy theorist who believes that the Sandy Hook elementary-school shooting was, as with the moon landing, staged by the U.S. government.

Watsons polemic against modern architecture (which includes all trends in postwar architecture, including postmodernism) is a familiar one. We heard it from Prince Charles in the 1980s. Architecture that respects the form follows function dictum, as well as the more ornate experiments of recent years, is stark and ugly and inhuman. The grand old cities of Britain have been disfigured by monstrous concrete housing projects and public buildings. This ugliness leads to alienation and social problems. People dont want to live in high-rises. Concrete, glass and steel are cold building materials. People lost cozy neighbourhoods when row-house slums were torn down.

And he makes well-known charges of totalitarian tendencies against the most famous of idealistic modernists, especially Le Corbusier. In this, he is not at all wrong. Le Corbusier did hold quite a few alarming beliefs. He did see architecture as a form of social engineering and he did have links to fascism and if his rigid planned cities had ever been constructed, they would have been a social nightmare.

Nor is Watson wrong that the famous failed housing projects of the sixties and seventies, and the most unpopular of brutalist buildings, were designed by left-wing idealists. Brutalism was the product of a heady optimistic time that envisioned classless equality in what was probably a naive way.

Watson goes farther. Modernist architecture is not just socialistic, but inherently totalitarian. It aims to take away our freedoms. It represents globalism itself. The globalist goal is to make the whole planet identical. If we revere the local and reject the global, we retain architectural idiosyncrasies and charm.

This echoes the nationalism of the right: National differences are valuable; we must protect our national identity from foreign influences and religions. This is why free trade and open borders are bad. (By the way, the supposed enemies of this local/national culture are not just Muslim. The comments that follow this video quickly turn to overt anti-Semitism, with many posters embedding artists and architects names in triple parentheses, code for Jewish identity. A comment such as (((Whos))) behind modern art? is a veiled suggestion that art is Jewish.)

Watson singles out one particularly daring recent building, the art museum in Graz, Austria, built in 2003 by Colin Fournier and Peter Cook to look like a giant blob with sucker-like protrusions. Watson hates it of course, but its particularly gleeful about its being an art museum. Of course it is! Contemporary art is just as decadent.

What is the problem with new art and architecture? The word postmodernist comes up here not to describe actual postmodernism (in architecture, that category would actually include nostalgic pastiches of the kind that Watson seems to favour) but to mean everything that is new and bad. In some conservative circles right now, the word is used interchangeably with politically correct and Marxist. Watson rails against the relativist, collectivist, postmodernist lie that objective standards of beauty dont exist.

He is not the first political thinker to deride the cosmopolitan tendencies of avant-gardist art, nor to think of it as degenerate (though he carefully avoids using that word). He is wrong about a number of things. Postmodernism doesnt mean what he thinks it does and it is explicitly opposed to the modernism he so despises. Furthermore, the authoritarian tendencies of utopists such as le Corbusier, as well as the failures of mid-century social-housing plans, have been critiqued to death by the very artists he thinks are complicit. But he is right about one thing: There is a very strong link between contemporary artists and left-wing political thought, even radical leftist thought. He is not wrong to see impulses toward equality and cultural internationalism in all this odd stuff; he is not wrong to see it influenced by academic political theory.

The alt-rightists are not very clear, however, on what they would like to see replace contemporary art and architecture. Right now, they hate Shakespeare just as much as they hate Renzo Piano, just as much as they hate Saturday Night Live. What kind of art is left? Are they going to be brave enough to say that they despise the idea of art itself?

Follow us on Twitter: @GlobeArts

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Russell Smith: The alt-right vs. the avant-garde - The Globe and Mail

A few weeks ago, Colton Merwin, a nineteen-year-old from Maryland who recently dropped out of college, decided to organize a rally on the National Mall. I got all the permits and stuff myself, he said. It was pretty easy, actually. He called his event the Rally for Free Speech. It was intended as a kind of rebuttal to a series of events that took place in Berkeley, California, earlier this year. In February, on the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, a violent group of left-wing protesters prevented the right-wing provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos from speaking; in April, anarchists and anti-Fascists interrupted a right-wing event in a Berkeley park, sparking a day of street clashes that came to be known as the Battle of Berkeley. I got tired of seeing the far left smashing people instead of letting them speak, Merwin said. My idea was that everyones voice deserves to be heard.

He didnt invite everyone to speak at his rally. Instead, via Facebook message, he invited some of his favorite right-wing Internet personalities. Most were young and new to politics; most were critics of mainstream conservatism, often on libertarian or nationalist grounds; most had gained attention during last years Presidential campaign, primarily through social media or alternative media; many had espoused anti-Muslim or anti-feminist views while accusing the left of incivility. In other words, they embodied a new wave of political protest and social commentary that is often calledby the outside world, if not by the commentators themselvesthe alt-right.

On June 16th, nine days before the rally, Merwin announced a surprise addition to his lineup: the white nationalist and anti-Semite Richard Spencer. Spencer believes that white Americans need their own homelanda sort of white Zionism, he calls it. For years, he had been a marginal figure on the far right; last year, when the alt-right became an object of popular fascination, Spencer used the notoriety to his advantage. After the election, he experienced two moments of viral fame: one shortly after Trumps victory, when Spencer cried Hail Trump during a speech and appeared to lead a crowd in a Nazi-esque salute; and the other on Inauguration Day, when a masked stranger punched him in the face. Spencer is a deliberately divisive figure, and, during the past few months, many on the right have worked to distance themselves from him and his views. Lucian Wintrich, of the pro-Trump tabloid the Gateway Pundit, told me that, last year, the term alt-right was adopted by libertarians, anti-globalists, classical conservatives, and pretty much everyone else who was sick of what had become of establishment conservatism. Wintrich counted himself among that group. Then Richard Spencer came along, throwing up Nazi salutes and claiming that he was the leader of the alt-right, Wintrich went on. He effectively made the term toxic and then claimed it for himself. We all abandoned using it in droves.

As soon as Spencer was announced as a participant in the Rally for Free Speech, Jack Posobiec and Laura Loomer , two advocate-journalists who were also scheduled to speak, backed out. Its pretty simple, Loomer, who is Jewish, told me at the time. Im not sharing the stage with an anti-Semite. The next day, Posobiec announced that he would host a competing event, the Rally Against Political Violence, in front of the White House. This rally would feature a new slate of speakers, including Wintrich ; Cassandra Fairbanks , of the pro-Trump Web site Big League Politics; the political consultant and Periscope pundit Ali Akbar; and the social-media star and InfoWars contributor Mike Cernovich . The events would be held at the same time, to draw a clear distinction between people who would stand with Spencer and those who would not. In effect, the Rally for Free Speech became an alt-right event, and the Rally Against Political Violence became a right-wing event organized in opposition to the alt-right. The two factions spent the intervening week talking trash, on Twitter and YouTube, about which rally would draw a bigger crowd. To the outside world, the schism might have seemed sudden, even inexplicable. In fact, it had been developing for months.

The phrase alternative right has been critiqued on several grounds: that its too vague; that it obscures the extent to which the movement is coterminous with the rest of the Republican base; that its a euphemism for white supremacy. The definition has shifted over time, both inside and outside the movement, such that, for a while, it was impossible to tell whether any two people who referred to the alt-right were referring to the same thing. During the Presidential campaign, the term came to denote several intersecting phenomena: anti-feminism, opposition to political correctness, online abuse, belligerent nihilism, conspiracy theories, inflammatory Internet memes. Some pro-Trump activists adopted this big-tent definition, allowing any youthful, edgy critique of establishment conservatism to be considered alt-right. But a core within the movement always insisted on a narrower conception of the alt-right, one that was inextricably linked with white separatism, and with Spencer specifically.

Now the boundaries are set. Spencer and his allies have won the branding war. They own the alt-right label; their right-wing opponents are aligning themselves against it, working to establish a parallel brand. It has become increasingly clear that this is not a mere rhetorical ploy but a distinction with a difference.

As far as anyone can tell, the phrase alternative right was invented in 2008. That November, Paul Gottfried, a cantankerous intellectual who calls himself a paleoconservative, gave a speech at the first annual meeting of the H. L. Mencken Club, a society for the independent Right. We have attracted, beside old-timers like me . . . well-educated young professionals, who consider themselves to be on the right, but not of the current conservative movement, he said. Gottfried did not utter the phrase alternative right in the speechhe used the term post-paleo insteadbut his remarks were later published on the Web site Takis Magazine, under the headline The Decline and Rise of the Alternative Right. The headline was written by Spencer, who was then an acolyte of Gottfrieds and an editor at Takis. (Gottfried later told the journalist Jacob Siegel that he and Spencer co-created the phrase.) In 2010, Spencer registered alternativeright.com, which now redirects to altright.com, and he has since endeavored to position himself as the face of the movement.

When I profiled Mike Cernovich , in October of last year, I wrote that Cernovich prefers to call himself an American nationalist, but he often uses we when discussing the alt-right movement. This was during the Presidential campaign, when the definition of alt-right was still in flux, and when the various pro-Trump factions were united against a common enemy. (It was also prior to Spencers Hail Trump debacle, in November*.) Two months earlier, Cernovich had written a blog post in which he explained that, although he differed with the alt-right on ethno-nationalism and other issues, he refused to disavow the movement. I have my disagreements with the alt-right, but lets get a win for the right in America before hashing it all out, Cernovich wrote. Once the right has some actual power, then it will be time to have an ideological civil war. A few months later, Republicans won the White House and both houses of Congress, and the civil war emerged into the open. What does Richard do other than sit in a home his mom pays for and send out press releases? Cernovich said recently, in a text message to me. He fancies himself an outlaw intellectual when he's a soft-faced fame whore whod be performing in off-Broadway shows if he had the musical talent. (Spencer, for his part, has called Cernovich and his cohort liars and freaks.)

By the beginning of 2017, the divisions were becoming clear, at least to those within the pro-Trump movement. In January, when I met Gavin McInnes, the founder of a pro-Western fraternal organization called the Proud Boys , I asked whether I should refer to him as alt-right. Nope, he said, swigging from a can of Budweiser. They care about the white race. We care about Western values. This is a view that has come to be known as civic nationalism, as opposed to white nationalismor alt-light, as opposed to alt-right. In April, when I interviewed Lucian Wintrich on The New Yorker Radio Hour , the producers asked me whether he should be identified as a member of alt-right in the introduction. I said no, in part because Wintrich has Jewish ancestry and a Latino boyfriend, and in part because Id been with him during the weekend of the Inauguration, when he shared Spencer-gets-punched memes with as much glee as any slap-happy liberal. Neither McInnes nor Wintrich would be mistaken for old-school conservatives; and yet they, along with many of their peers, have made a clean break with the alt-right.

Last year, before Richard Spencers burst of viral fame, it was still possible to align oneself with the alt-right without ever having encountered Spencer or his ideas. Consider Steve Bannons interview with Mother Jones , last summer, in which he proudly identified with the alt-right and then, in the same conversation, denied any particular connection between the alt-right and white nationalism. Bannon is crafty, and he may have been trying to dog whistle while maintaining plausible deniability. Or maybe this was an accurate reflection of how he understood the term. Either way, the sanitized definition of alt-right that he proffered then seems far less plausible now. Most of the activists who agreed to speak at the Rally Against Political Violence now identify themselves with the alt-light, or the New Right, or civic nationalism, or American nationalism, or one of a few other variations. All of these labels are attempts to leave behind the baggage of the Republican Party without taking on the baggage of white separatism. For a while, alt-right was the perfect catchall for anti-establishment conservatism, Wintrich told me. A lot of us are still frustrated that Richard Spencer ruined the term for the rest of us.

On June 25th, a few dozen people stood in a loose semicircle facing the White House. A man with dyed-green hair, a green shirt, green pants, and a cane stepped onto a portable riser and sang the National Anthem. I stood in the shade of an oak tree and watched a few of the speeches. Kyle Prescott, a member of the Proud Boys who had been scheduled to speak at the Rally for Free Speech before deciding to switch stages, said, Im happy to spend my day here, at the abode of our glorious revered President Donald Trump, rather than at certain rallies where speakers are kept under wraps until the absolute last minute. He spent the rest of his speech condemning Hollywood liberals, university S.J.W.s, fervent race-baiters, and the medias clear left-wing bias. For a while, a man who goes by Red Pill Ken (Twitter bio: BLACK TRUMP SUPPORTER) stood onstage, uninvited, interrupting the speakers with shouted expressions of encouragement. Johnny Rice, a Messianic Jew wearing a menorah pendant and a Trump T-shirt, stood behind the riser, blowing a shofar.

Standing near me were Jack Murphy, who is at work on a book called Democrat to Deplorable, and Jeff Giesea, one of the organizers of a group called MAGA Meetups. They decided to walk to the National Mall to observe the alt-right rally. I tagged along. I dont expect any drama, Murphy said. I just want to see what the vibe is like. The last time Id been with him, after a pre-Inauguration party called the DeploraBall, he and Spencer had nearly come to blows. If Cernovich hadnt broken it up, I would have beaten the shit out of him, Murphy told me. I kept asking him simple questions, and he wouldnt answer. He wants to create a white ethno-state. O.K., how does he propose to make that happen, exactly? Forced expulsions? I wanted to make him admit either that he doesnt have a plan or that his plan is too fucking unpalatable to even speak about in public.

When we reached the Rally for Free Speech, Chris Cantwell, a thick-necked man with a hoarse voice, was in the middle of a speech. At what point do we begin physically removing Democrats and Communists to establish and maintain the libertarian social order necessary for our desired meritocracy? he shouted into a microphone. We are losing massive ground each moment. Nonwhite immigration and breeding alone are rapidly diminishing what electoral majorities we have remaining. Jewish influence disarms us.

Murphy raised his eyebrows. Looks like weve found their rally, he said.

It seems like the crowds are about the same size, Giesea said, before drifting away to talk to a friend in the audience. Murphy stood quietly, watching the speakers and shaking his head. So much of this could be solved if these guys just got girlfriends, he said.

We returned to the Rally Against Political Violence just as it ended. Murphy, Cernovich, Loomer, and about a dozen others walked to a rooftop bar and sat at a banquette with a view of the Washington Monument. The alt-right keeps labelling us alt-light, but I dont think we should give in to that, Loomer said.

Yeah, you dont want to define yourself as the absence of something, Cernovich said. Although there is precedent for it7UP, the un-cola. So it has worked at least once. He ordered a burger and a bottle of Riesling.

Will Chamberlain, the D.C. organizer of MAGA Meetups, said, I think New Right is the best of the ones Ive heard so far.

Cernovich nodded. New Right is my favorite, he said.

It makes clear that were not basing a movement on nastiness and resentment, like the alt-right, Chamberlain said. Were about appealing to what actual Americans want and need.

Exactly, Cernovich said. Thats why today was a success, optics-wise. A good, clean splitus over here, them over there.

The sun shifted so that it hit the back of Chamberlains neck. I should move before I burn up, he said. Then he added, How could white supremacy be true if I cant even sit in the sun for five minutes?

* This post has been corrected to reflect that Spencers speech occurred in November, not January.

Read more from the original source:
The Alt-Right Branding War Has Torn the Movement in Two - The New Yorker