Mediaboss Marketing

White supremacist Richard Spencer.

Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

If the alt-rights core ethos could be reduced to a single maxim, it would be this: to each his own. This is the attitude that undergirds the support for racial and cultural separation and white nationalism that the movement is most closely associated with. It is also the attitude that undergirds the movements less widely discussed isolationism, which was brought into the spotlight Thursday night as President Trump ordered a strike against Bashar al-Assads forces in Syria.

Richard Spencer, whose support for Trump has dimmed as Trumps stances on immigration have, according to Spencers harsh measure, softened, issued what is perhaps his most forceful rebuke of the president so far in a video titled The Trump Betrayal. I have to be brutally honest, he said. I am deeply disappointed in Donald Trump. Im shocked, and Im angry. And I am ready to condemn Donald Trump. He was far from alone. The #AltRight is now totally independent of Trump, and this anti-West, pro-terrorist foreign policy, the white nationalist publication VDare tweeted. Organize, organize, organize. So Trump's first forceful action as President was supposedly to defend the same people that mow down white children with trucks, the Right Stuff founder Mike Enoch wrote disgustedly.

This was a reaction foretold by the alt-rights very origins. The split between the mainstream conservative movement and the paleoconserativesthat is, those fixated on maintaining traditional cultural and religious identity who would become the alt-rights intellectual progenitors in the United Statescame into being over not only racism but also opposition to American intervention in the Middle East, including the Iraq war.

9/11 was a direct consequence of the United States meddling in an area of the world where we do not belong and where we are not wanted, paleoconservative Pat Buchanan said in a 2002 appearance on Hardball. We were attacked because we were on Saudi sacred soil and we are so-called repressing the Iraqis and were supporting Israel and all the rest of it.

This sentiment and the larger divide within the movement was the subject of an essay called Unpatriotic Conservatives, published by the conservative writer David Frum in National Review less than 24 hours before the invasion of Iraq began. In opposing the Iraq war and interventionism, he wrote, paleoconservatives had made common cause with the left-wing and Islamist antiwar movements in this country and in Europe and included among their ranks some who yearned for the victory of their nations enemies. Peter Brimelow, founder of VDare, responded with a post arguing that defeating terrorism would be a matter of keeping unassimilable would-be terrorists out of the country. Instead, America's establishment is committed to seeking a foreign policy answer to terrorism, of vast ambition and indefinite scope, on the other side of the globe, he wrote. Whatever the merits of this answer, it cannot be denied that a fraction of the resources devoted to it would have sealed the borders and ended the illegal immigration crisis.

Some of the far rights opposition to Middle East intervention was driven by anti-Semitic theories about the role of shadowy Jewish globalists in setting American foreign policy. But overall, the stance of what would become the alt-right on the Iraq war, nation-building, and interventionist foreign policy was motivated by opposition to the idea that Western-style democracy could be delivered by force to people seen as backwardsand also by the desire, voiced by Brimelow, to see resources devoted to making the country whiter and more prosperous. Does anyone want to consider what our aims are in all this? Spencer asked of the Iraq war in 2008. What might actually be accomplished by democratization? If the Baghdad parliament were running efficiently, would anything change?

Those concerns remain Friday with Syria, along with some added panic about the flow of Muslim nonwhite refugees into the West that the conflict has produced. A large and underrated part of the promise the alt-right saw in Trump was his repeated (albeit frequently contradicted) commitment to keeping America out of not only Syria but foreign conflict more broadly. That commitment is now dead and the shockwaves felt in the movement have been huge. No more wag the dog, no more 4D chess, no more decisive leadership, Spencer tweeted Friday afternoon. The Syria strikes must end now.

More:
Why the alt-right hates Trump's Syria strike. - Slate - Slate Magazine (blog)

Left, by Ron Sach/Pool; Right, by Joseph Eid/AFP, both from Getty Images.

The speed with which Donald Trump flipped from promising to leave Bashar al-Assad alone to launching a missile strike against the Syrian dictator sent heads spinning across the globe, turning hawkish critics into his grudging supporters. But no heads spun more than those on the far-right fringe who had spent years blasting Barack Obama for suggesting military action against the Syrian regime, and who'd supported Trump passionately. Trump, they believed, would keep the country out of any unnecessary wars, and the Trump administration promised to do so as recently as last week. The longer-term status of President Assad will be decided by the Syrian people, said Secretary of State Rex Tillerson last Thursday on a trip to Turkey. The same day, U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley declared that Americas priority is no longer to sit and focus on getting Assad out.

Reassured by the presence of America-Firsters like Steve Bannon in the West Wing and Trumps own rhetoric on the campaign trail, the alt-right, ignoring the evidence of his waffling about the Iraq war, quickly bought the idea that Trump had drunk their isolationist Kool-Aid.

In fact, Trump imbibed the pro-war Kool-Aid that is the drink of choice in elite circles even faster, to the alt-rights disappointment. When Trump condemned Assads chemical weapons attack on his own people, which killed dozens of children and emergency workers, several of his fringe supporters screamed that he was being duped into a war by a false flag operation. The Syrian gas attack was done by deep state agents, tweeted alt-right agitator and the Trump administrations favorite blogger Mike Cernovich. The fake news media (which works for them) wants you to ignore basic logic and 101-level game theory and strategic thinking to reach an illogical conclusion. Stay vigilant! Infowars, the site run by extreme conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, took it a step further and blamed the attack on Democrat billionaire George Soros.

The Breitbart front page was less frothy-mouthed but ominously hinted its disapproval by noting how Republican Hawksa neologism for the pro-war neoconservatives the site loatheswere praising Trump. Ann Coulter, once the high priestess of Trumpism, slammed Trump for abandoning his campaign principles, suggesting he had only acted because he saw upsetting images on TV.

Coincidentally, the missile strike came only hours after Bannon, the de facto representative of the alt-right in the White House, had been removed from the National Security Council Principals Committee, cutting off his access to military decision-making. His supporters quickly, and not without logic, blamed the Syria situation on the same people they believed were responsible for Bannons ouster and diminishing stature in the West Wing: Jared Kushner, Trumps son-in-law and the leader of what a White House source described to Politico as the West Wing Democrats. Breitbart Londons editor-in-chief, Raheem Kassam, spent most of his Friday radio show tearing into the Trump administration. Unrest? Im apoplectic! he tweeted angrily to a reporter wondering if there were signs of unrest from the far-right news outlet. Call [Kushner ally] Dina Powell. Ask us why she wants to drag us into a proxy war with Russia.

Read more from the original source:
Alt Right Goes Apoplectic Over Trump's Decision to Bomb Syria - Vanity Fair

To understand how the political sands have shifted since U.S. President Donald Trump ordered Thursday'smilitary strike in Syria, don't just pay attention to therare praise he's getting from Capitol Hill.

Watch the outrage he's stirring up among his former fans in the alt-right, the anti-immigrant fringe movementthat embraceswhite supremacy and isolationism.

While lawmakers best known for challenging the president gushed about his decision-making, prominent white nationalist Kevin MacDonald was at home fuming.

"It's a betrayal," the editor of the "white identity" journal The Occidental Observer said from California on the morning after Trump's decision to launch dozens of Tomahawk missiles at a Syrian airbase.

The alt-righthas beenalienated, MacDonald said in a phone interview.

"I'm concerned now this whole administration is going the way of the neocons. The whole nine yards," he said. "I'm very disappointed; very agitated."

The swift American military offensive was intended to punish Syrian President Bashar al-Assad's regime for unleashing deadly chemical weapons on scores of women and children earlier in the week. But the U.S. attackoffended the anti-globalist principles of the far-right elements drawn to Trump's "America First" rhetoric.

Some of Trump's staunchest anti-war allies in the libertarian and far-right communities have now spurned him. They say the military intervention in Syria showed Trump was never the true isolationistthey hoped he'd be.

As some alt-right online commentators saw it, their anti-establishment candidate caved to status-quo political pressures.

"That's it. I'm done. Trump is a cuckservative now," wrote one user on the 4chan "Politically incorrect" message board, using the derogatory alt-right epithet for an effete, moderate conservative.

"Trump is a puppet now," another 4chan user wrote on the same thread discussing the missile strike. "Swamp drowned him."

A screengrab from the 4Chan message board's 'Politically Incorrect' forum shows users complaining about Trump's missile strike.

As with MacDonald, who has been described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as "the neo-Nazi movement's favourite academic," some of Trump's most dedicated admirers in the alt-right were stunned by the news. Trump's missile strike aligned with what his former Democratic rival for president, Hillary Clinton, had suggested Thursday, when she told a women's forum she would "take out" Assad's airfields.

The president, MacDonald thought, was supposed to be an "America First" leader focused on a non-interventionist foreign policy.

"That was one of the things we in the alt-right liked," he said.

Richard Spencer, who coined the "alt-right" term, expressed his displeasure in a video he titled "The Trump Betrayal." Alex Jones, the conspiracy theory pedlarand host of InfoWars, said on his show Trump was "disintegrating in my eyes."

And Milo Yiannopoulos, the former Breitbart editor and political agitator who once co-authored a manifesto on the alt-right, wrote on Facebook: "There comes a day in every child's life when his Daddy bitterly disappoints him."

MacDonald said he would consider "jumping off the Trump train," but plans to hang on despite his "faith being on shaky ground."

Beyond the Syrian intervention, MacDonald said the past week has troubled him because ofreports about former Breitbart chairman Steve Bannon being booted from Trump's National Security Council. It sounded to him like a demotion for Bannon, an alt-right godfather of sorts, in favour of Trump's more moderate-leaning son-in-law, Jared Kushner.

"Bannon's being pushed aside a little bit [by] Jared Kushner," MacDonald said, slamming Kushner as "a globalist."

"Meanwhile, Trump kept the neocons out of this administration, but he's being applauded now by the neocons for what he's doing in Syria."

A Syrian child receives treatment at a small hospital in the town of Maaret al-Noman following a suspected toxic gas attack in Khan Sheikhun, a nearby rebel-held town in Syria's northwestern Idlib province, on April 4. (Mohamed Al-Bakour/AFP/Getty Images)

Matthew Lyons, who has researched the origins of the alt-right and co-authored the book Ctrl-Alt-Delete: An Antifascist Report on the Alternative Right, said far-right groups will see Trump's Syria strike as a "dramatic abandonment" of his stated foreign policy doctrine.

"If Trump continues in the same vein, I think it probably will mean a pretty definitive break," Lyons said.

Whatever divisions the Syria development has caused may also just be temporary, suggested Julian Zelizer, a professor of American political history at Princeton University. Military conflict often has the potential"of shaking up entrenched political alignment and alliances," he said.

"So friends become enemies, and vice versa. That's what you're seeing with the far-right getting angry with Trump."

There wascertainly some jarring messaging coming from ordinarily cantankerous senators who have made a habit of criticizing the president. There was a new tone, for instance, from Republican senators Lindsey Graham and John McCain following the strike against Assad's regime.

John McCain, a Republican senator who is often critical of Trump, spoke out in support of his missile strikes against Syria. (J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press)

"I was very proud of him," Graham said, before reportedly comparingTrump to a conservative presidential icon.

"I think there's a side to President Trump that's very much like Ronald Reagan," Graham said, according to the Washington Post's Dave Weigel.

Trump "took action" by striking Assad's airfield, McCain said. "For that, he deserves the support of the American people."

Bill Kristol, the conservative editor of The Weekly Standard and an avowed #NeverTrumper, joined the Trump love-in, tweeting that "a growth spurt" in the president's leadership appeared to be underway.

Democrats also endorsed the attack. House minority leader Nancy Pelosidid so publiclybut with a caveat: the use of military force, she argued, should have been authorized first by Congress.

"I'm supportive of the Trump administration's decision to launch airstrikes in response to Assad's assault on his own people," wrote Senator Jeanne Shaheen.

Chuck Schumer, the Democratic Senate minority leader,described the action as "the right thing to do" in his written statement.

Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer said the U.S. attack was 'the right thing to do.' (J. Scott Applewhite/Associated Press)

As for Trump's base?

"Wait for the polls. My instincts say they will be delighted," said congressional expertIlonaNickels. She said more moderate Trump conservatives may view himas a "man of action" versus "the cerebral paralysis of Obama," who was criticized in 2013 for apparently pulling back on a decision to launch a military strike against Syria.

Zelizer, the Princeton professor, expects traditional partisan divisions to settle once the battle lines are no longer fresh. After the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, for example, a period of goodwill and bipartisanship lasted about a month.

"As Congress started to think of key issues and people started thinking about elections, the divisions re-emerged," he said. "The question now is will these divisionscontinue? For how long? And do people go back to where they were before the missile strike?"

Trump takes on 'formidable coalition'0:43

Read more here:
'Friends become enemies': Trump's Syria strike stirs up alt-right outrage as lawmakers praise him - CBC.ca

President Trumps airstrike against Syria may cause him to lose his alt-right support.

I am ready to condemn Donald Trump, white nationalist Richard Spencer said in a YouTube video to his followers, but stopped just short of doing so. I certainly condemn these actions just taken in Syria.

The video, posted Friday morning, was titled The Trump Betrayal.

Support the best in independent Jewish media.

Make your gift to the Forward today.

Paste this HTML code on your site to embed this video.

Embed this video

Spencer helped popularize the term alt-right. Amidst constant jockeying for power and authority within the loosely organized and mostly-online alt-right, Spencer has positioned himself as a leader. He speaks for the most white nationalist camp within the fractured movement, with his vision involving the creation of a white ethnostate. Spencers ideological partners include neo-Nazi Andrew Anglin and former Ku Klux Klan head David Duke.

Spencer said that he supported Trump leading up to the election because he was the right way to avoid these kinds of wars and would instead focus on domestic issues.

The #AltRight is against a war in Syria. Period, Spencer tweeted Thursday night. He later added an emoji of the Syrian flag to his Twitter profile.

Email Sam Kestenbaum at kestenbaum@forward.com and follow him on Twitter at @skestenbaum

Original post:
Will The 'Alt-Right' Break Up With Trump Over Syria? The Forward - Forward

A man who just lost the Infobattle.

Donald Trumps rebrand of American conservatism was largely aesthetic. The mogul was far from the first Republican to dress up the one percents agenda in populist garb; or to pin blame for the middle classs decline on a conspiracy between rootless elites and an undeserving minority; or to shore up a fragile sense of national esteem and identity by defining it against an evil, foreign other.

Like most pop-culture phenoms, Trump added a few idiosyncratic touches to a tried-and-true formula, and, thus, generated a sound both reassuringly familiar and thrillingly new. Specifically, the candidate traded the partys decades-old racial dog whistles for foghorns, while revitalizing the genre of right-wing demagoguery by borrowing flourishes from the domains of professional wrestling and reality television.

Still, Trumps innovations werent entirely stylistic. Nor were they all merely amplifications of inherited themes. His anti-trade diatribes were genuinely new for a Republican nominee, at least for the past half-century. And, occasionally, he directed his populist fury past the bureaucrats and cultural elites whom Nixon so reviled, and up to the owners of capital (albeit, strictly the international, implicitly Jewish sort).

But Trumps most radical and persistent break with convention came on foreign policy. No candidate, in either major party, spewed venom more acidic on the subject of the Iraq War. And Trump shot it straight into the face of George W. Bushs brother, in a South Carolina auditorium packed with Jebs well-wishers.

Over 18 months of campaigning, the geriatric demagogue maintained a consistent line on very few things. But the hypocritical horrors of humanitarian intervention was one of them. The Trump doctrine on the Middle East was, in many respects, evil, impractical, and illegal. But it offered coherence, and a cathartic acknowledgment of the oft-ignored trauma of Iraq: If we drop bombs over there, lets do it kill terrorists and their families, or to confiscate natural resources, but not to save a bunch of Muslims from a secular dictator who kills jihadists.

Of course, this posture was not Trumps own invention. It was broadly similar to the brand of isolationism preached by Pat Buchanan and the long-marginalized, paleoconservative wing of the Republican Party. Which made Trumps primary victory its own kind of regime change: The foreign-policy elite was the one segment of the GOP coalition to abandon its standard-bearer in large numbers and loud tones. When Trump won anyway, the neo-paleocons (a.k.a. the alt-right) collected the keys to the kingdom.

Or so they thought.

On Tuesday, heartrending images of children murdered by toxic gas emerged from Syria. Two days later, Trump was excoriating Bashar al-Assad for murdering beautiful babies the very babies he spent his entire campaign vowing to keep out of our country.

No child of God should have to suffer such horror, the president said, shortly after American planes dropped 59 Tomahawk missiles on a Syrian airfield.

Less than four years earlier, after an apparent chemical attack by the Assad regime killed 1,400 Syrians, Trump implored the president to save his powder.

Now, following a chemical attack that killed 70 people, Trump had committed an act of war against the secular dictator whose terrorist-killing skills he had previously praised all in the name of human rights. While both he and other members of his administration were already making noises about regime change.

And all this came one day after the Buchananites champion in the West Wing Breitbart mastermind Steve Bannon was evicted from the National Security Councils principals committee, a demotion that his allies attributed to Jared Kushner, the White Houses most powerful Jewish lifelong Democrat.

As of Friday morning, the alt-right was not alright.

Mike Cernovich the reactionary blogger and nootropics evangelist who recently won Donald Trump Jr.s praise for breaking the Susan Rice story started the hashtag #SyriaHoax Thursday afternoon, claiming that the chemical attack was a false-flag operation by jihadist rebels hoping to attract American air support.

When it became clear that Trump did not accept this alternative fact, Cernovich tweeted his grief.

Infowarss Paul Joseph Watson broke with Trump more decisively.

Alt-right Twitter personality, and self-described good Christian boy, Baked Alaska offered similar sentiments:

Ann Coulter, a longtime fixture in far-right media, who has tightly aligned herself with her partys populist-nationalist wing, asked, in so many words, Wont somebody please think of the Christians?

Alex Jones dipped into his emergency stash of dank Voltaire memes.

It seems doubtful that principled isolationists make up a large portion of Trumps voting base. While the mogul did win new voters to his party in a few critical regions, the overwhelming majority of his coalition were the same people who pulled the lever for two terms of Bush, McCain, and Romney. Its quite possible that the president will gain more supporters by diverting focus to a display of American military might than hell lose by betraying the foreign-policy vision he campaigned on.

But if committed opponents of neoconservatism make up a small part of the conservative electorate, they make up a good portion of the audience for niche right-wing media enterprises like Infowars and Breitbart. And both those outlets built their brands, in no small part, by cultivating the paranoid rage of conservatives who felt betrayed by elites in both parties. Trumps win was an enormous boon to these sites, but it was also a challenge. Maintaining an antiestablishment ethos and an adulatory attitude to the president of the United States is no easy task. Ambivalence makes for much weaker copy than unadulterated outrage.

So, alt-right media has something to gain from reassuming its role as the reactionary opposition. But it also has plenty to lose. The far-right fever swamp has never enjoyed such intimate access to the halls of power. And its various news outlets and media personalities have supplemented their core audiences with devotees of the Trump personality cult.

For now, expect most on the alt-right to try to square this circle by blaming the presidents treachery on Jared Kushners nefarious influence and calling on all red-blooded patriots to take their White House back, and make Trump great again.

Sean Penn Confirms: Steve Bannon Was Just Another Bitter Hollywood Wannabe in the 90s

Dude Goes on Vacation With 9 Strangers Because Their Friend With the Same Name Bailed

David Lettermans Rock Hall Induction Speech for Pearl Jam Was the Best of the Night

The 39-year-old Uzbek man was known to authorities, but was not being actively monitored at the time of the attack.

The new strikes likely came from Syrian or Russian aircrafts, possibly launched from the same base targeted by the U.S. on Thursday.

The globalist wing wants to give Trumps working-class voters subsidized family leave and child care. Bannon tried to kick them off of Medicaid.

League commissioner Adam Silver said its not a done deal, but its his expectation.

U.S. warships fired missiles at a Syrian air base in response to the Assad regimes use of chemical weapons on civilians.

The medias laudatory reaction to Trumps Syria strike teaches our incompetent president that launching wars on gut instinct is cool and good.

The inmates have sued, calling the rapid pace of executions reckless and unconstitutional.

As Trumps infrastructure package struggles for life, California Democrats enacted theirs on a tight schedule with a few timely deals.

Big questions now include Gorsuchs impact on the Court, the fights impact on the Senate, and the possibility Trump will get to fill another vacancy.

Two sources close to Bannon say he argued against the strike, on the grounds it didnt serve Americas interests.

The latest in a line of truck attacks hits the Swedish capital.

You have to see it to believe it.

After predictions of a big month, the official jobs report for March showed growth slowing to 98,000 jobs, though the unemployment rate did drop.

Meanwhile, the battle between Steve Bannon and Jared Kushner rages.

Like Andrew Jackson, Trump believes in speedy, incredibly violent force, taken without consultation with Congress, to deter evildoers such as Assad.

I guess Trump wasnt Putins puppet after all, he was just another deep state/Neo-Con puppet.

An arms-control expert looks at how a 2013 U.N. deal failed, and how Trumps missile strike flips the calculus in a complex conflict.

Most over-70 senators join the upper chamber a bit earlier, so Mitt would be the oldest freshman to be popularly elected if he runs and wins in 2018.

With little notice, the candidate who promised to avoid military conflict in the Middle East has become an interventionist.

In his first public appearance since being fired, he mocked Trump and disappointed those who wanted him to seek higher office.

See the article here:
After Trump's Syria Air Strikes, Alt-Right Is Not Alright - New York Magazine