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TAI staff writer Jason Willick is inNew York magazines newserieson theright-wingfringe in American politics thatlatched itself on to Donald Trumps presidential candidacy. With Park MacDougald of Foreign Affairs, he profilesSteve Sailer, the reclusive California-based blogger whohas been run out of mainstream discourse for his racial demagoguery, but who has also quietly built up a large but overlookedinfluence onthe American right, prefiguring many of the ideas that Trumpism would bring to the fore.

After Mitt Romneys 2012 loss to Barack Obama, the Republican establishment undertook a rigorous postmortem and, looking at demographic trends in the United States, determined that appealing to Hispanics was now a nuclear-level priority. And yet their successful candidate in the next election won by doing precisely the opposite. The Trump strategy looked an awful lot like the Sailer Strategy: the divisive but influential idea that the GOP could run up the electoral score by winning over working-class whites on issues like immigration, first proposed by the conservative writer Steve Sailer in 2000, and summarily rejected by establishment Republicans at the time. Now, 17 years and four presidential cycles later, Sailer, once made a pariah by mainstream conservatives, has quietly become one of the most influential thinkers on the American right. []

Sailers body of work points to a politics very much like the Trumpism of the campaign trail nationalistic, contemptuous of limitations on acceptable discourse, and laden with occasionally sinister racial undertones without directly challenging the principle of equality under the law. Sailer sees himself as having presented an intellectual justification for commonsense politics, which Donald Trump, by being ignorant of the (as Sailer put it in an email to us) Davos Man conventional wisdom, arrived at out of instinct.

As Andrew Sullivan arguesin hisleadpiece for the series,The Reactionary Temptation, far-right politicsis a major force in our political moment, and its better for all of usto understand its often-frightening appeal than to dismiss it out of hand or ritualistically bury it in epithets. So read the whole thing.

The rest is here:
An Overlooked Maven of the Alt-Right - The American Interest

Speaking out against the far right and threats to free speech at UC Berkeley

AN ONGOING controversy at the University of California-Berkeley over whether right-wing provocateur Ann Coulter would speak on campus following the cancellation of her event by the university administration came to a head on April 27 when "alt-right" groups targeted Berkeley for the third time in recent months and confronted left-wing, anti-fascist protesters while claiming to defend free speech.

Coulter, who was originally invited to speak on April 27, but whose speech was cancelled and then rescheduled due to security concerns, waffled about whether she would appear on campus anyway. Her supporters rallied, using the cancellation to their advantage to claim that the right's free speech rights were under attack.

Meanwhile, the media speculated that there would be another round of violent clashes.

Anticipating this, Berkeley city officials and UC Berkeley administrators mobilized hundreds of officers from every police department in the area, both on and off campus, which had a chilling effect on protest. There were at least five arrests on Thursday, including one incident of racial profiling in which police detained a Latino member of the Underground Scholars Initiative, a group of formerly incarcerated students at UC Berkeley.

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TWO SEPARATE rallies were planned for Thursday, regardless of whether Coulter showed up or not.

Alt-right and anti-fascist protesters faced off at Martin Luther King Civic Center Park in downtown Berkeley. Dozens of right-wingers turned out, clearly emboldened by their rampage in April, when they mobilized at least several hundred from up and down the West Coast, ready to inflict violence on the outnumbered counterdemonstrators.

This time, the police operation kept the two sides apart, and the right didn't get to attack those who stood and chanted against them in the park.

There was another gathering on Sproul Plaza on the UC Berkeley campus, where the International Socialist Organization (ISO) announced its "Alt Right Delete" initiative in opposition to the right-wingers and in defense of free speech.

Alt Right Delete is an effort to build a larger mobilization capable of confronting the racists and reactionary in Berkeley. It also aims to reclaim the ideals of the Berkeley Free Speech Movement of the 1960s from the right-wing's distortions and reinvigorate its radical, socialist and anti-racist roots.

As Mukund Rathi, a law student at UC Berkeley and member of the ISO, explained at the demonstration:

The Berkeley Free Speech Movement arose out of the struggles of civil rights activists and socialists against segregation and anti-Black racism in California. These activists, many of them students, were engaging in militant demonstrations and sit-ins to win equal rights for Black people...

It is absurd for the far-right provocateurs, white supremacists and the College Republicans to claim this legacy...

The greatest threat to free speech, on college campuses and elsewhere, comes from these right-wing forces. They will use violence against those who wish to speak and assemble freely. And this should not surprise us--we can't possibly believe that white supremacists and neo Nazis have anything but violent hostility towards their opponents.

Due to the massive police presence and the threat of far-right violence, many people were discouraged from turning out to the rally on campus. Among the 30 to 40 who did, some held signs reading "Fascist-Free Campus" and "Immigrants Are Welcome Here," and chants rang out in defense of immigrant students, refugees and workers.

Coulter's racist and xenophobic views are abhorrent, but it does not benefit the left if the university denies her a venue, giving her and the bigots who celebrate her a chance to play the victim.

We believe it is important to distinguish between the right of students to protest Coulter's speech and the university canceling a forum where she was to appear. A defense of free speech from the left needs to oppose the state and other authorities exercising their power to censor speakers, because this will inevitably be used against left-wing speakers and activists. Our power lies in mobilizing the largest number of people possible to confront the right.

UC Berkeley, along with many other universities, has a record of shutting down speakers in solidarity with Palestine, repressing student workers and silencing sexual assault survivors. Protecting the right of the oppressed to fight back against these attacks means defending free speech rights.

Effective opposition to Coulter and alt-right speakers can take shape without relying on the university officials to intervene, which will ultimately jeopardize the left. The goal of Alt Right Delete is to build a movement that protests right-wingers like Coulter effectively, through a mass mobilization of students and members of the Berkeley community, without curtailing our right to speak freely.

Read more here:
Organizing for an alt-right delete at Berkeley - Socialist Worker Online

Right-wing US and UK media and social media users have tried to start an online war to stop Emmanuel Macron being elected, but with little success.

The Atlantic Council, a think tank in Washington, and Buzzfeed, a US online publication, highlighted the new campaign in the run-up to the second round of the French presidential vote on Sunday (7 May).

With Russia already in the spotlight for anti-Macron fake news and cyber attacks, the Atlantic Council said the English-language alt-right was also trying to sway EU politics.

It described the alt-right movement as being marked by nationalist, anti-Islam, and anti-globalisation sentiment and said its supporters had in the past focused on national issues, such as the US election or the Brexit referendum.

These [anti-Macron] efforts appear to mark a further stage in the evolution of the alt-right from a collection of largely national actors to a would-be international one, it said.

It said the efforts began with a post on 4chan.org, an online message board, on 25 April, two days after Macron beat Marine Le Pen, a far-right candidate, in the first round of the election.

The 4chan.org post called for a total meme war against Macron.

We must bombard French social media with pro-Le Pen propaganda, to remind the French who is on their side, it said.

A meme is a catchy image or idea designed to go viral on the internet.

The post said one anti-Macron meme should be designed to appeal to centre-right French voters by suggesting he was weak on immigration and security. It said a second meme should appeal to the left by showing him as a banker capitalist pig.

The post linked to a UK far-right YouTube channel, The Thinkery, which gave meme-making tips.

The same day, a US alt-right publication, Liberty Blitzkrieg, ran a story that called Macron a banker puppet and that was replicated by seven other alt-right media.

The following day, on 26 April, alt-right accounts linked to Britain, Germany, and the Netherlands called for the creation of a Macron Antoinette meme on the reddit.com online message board.

The idea was to both emasculate Macron and to make him look elitist by reference to the old French aristocracy.

The Thinkerys video had been viewed 144,000 times by Monday (29 April), but the #MacronAntoinette hash tag had attracted just a handful of posts.

These memes are unlikely to have a significant impact on the French election, the Atlantic Council said.

Buzzfeed, in an article last week, said alt-right users of 4chan.org also tried to spread the unsubstantiated accusation that Macron was having an affair with his step-daughter, Tiphaine Auziere, but that it failed to catch on.

The alt-right memes echoed anti-Macron fake news in Russian state media in recent months.

Russian media claimed he was an agent of US bankers, that he was funded by Saudi Arabia, and that he had a gay love affair in stories spread online by Russian trolls and bots.

Some social media users who spread the 4chan.org anti-Macron memes had in the past also reposted Kremlin content.

East Stratcom, a counter-propaganda unit in the EU foreign service, has started to include stories by Breitbart, the leading US alt-right publication, in its review of Russian disinformation.

A European diplomat, who asked not to be named, also told EUobserver that US sleuths, the FBI, were investigating potential links between Breitbart and the Kremlin.

Stratcom has included Breitbart stories due to their similarity to Kremlin anti-migrant material, but did not claim they worked together.

The European diplomat said right-wing online media often echoed Russian propaganda because they had the same ideology rather than due to shady ties.

Breitbarts London office could not be reached for comment.

See the article here:
US alt-right joins Russia in anti-Macron attack - EUobserver

Media Matters for America (blog)

Here's What Happened When The Trump White House Gave An Alt ... Media Matters for America (blog) Mike Cernovich is an internet troll, conspiracy theorist, and leading figure in the alt-right's assemblage of modern-day white nationalists and misogynists who ... Was a Russian reporter flashing Alt Right hand-signs in the White ...AMERICAblog (blog) New Controversy Involving Two Journalists Dropping White Supremacist Hand Sign SurfacesSillyid.com - International Daily Magazine all 5 news articles »

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Here's What Happened When The Trump White House Gave An Alt ... - Media Matters for America (blog)

The controversy surrounding Dear White People,Netflixs new satirical race-relations comedy series inspired by the 2014 movie of the same name, isnt going away.

Referring to Trumps election victory, the shows creator Justin Simien toldCollider : Theres no way to talk about race in America and not acknowledge whats happenedThat puts people in power that ought not be. I think a lot of folks that were not necessarily aware of that are now not only aware, but energized and actualized.

Thats gonna absolutely be in the DNA of every season to come. We can never change this. This is our history now. America is a different country, and it will forever be a different country, after the election of Donald Trump.

As my colleague Will Hicks astutely observed last February, the opposition and mooted Netflix boycott by some white conservatives over the perception that Dear White People was anti-white itself marked a form of right-wing political correctness.

But now Simien claims he was the target of an orchestrated Alt-right campaign out to get liberals.

Asked about the shows fierce opponents, Dear White Peoples creator said: I was more surprised at how organized theyve gotten with their harassment. They totally organized a campaign against us, which was shocking. But at the end of the day, its the same vocal minority. They were never gonna watch the show, anyway.

He added: As a storyteller, its fascinating because it really, for me, peeled away a layer on this really strange alt-right subculture, and I cant wait to mine that for future episodes. And now that I have all of these like and dislike robots, its really weird.

It opened my eyes to people who sit around and have meetings to talk about targeting certain liberals to try to take them down. Some peoples lives are defined by it. Its really weird.

Read more from the original source:
'Dear White People' Creator Vows to Take on Trump and 'Alt-Right Campaign' Against His Show - Heat Street