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Yesterday, I was pleased to speak at an event on the alt-right sponsored by the journal Millennial and the Institute for Policy Research & Catholic Studies. Here is the text of my remarks:

I have been asked to speak about the alt-right and, specifically, how we, as Catholics should respond to it. And, given that this is an academic setting, I would add that the question is how we who are in some sense engaged in the intellectual apostolate of the church should engage this movement. I should note, as well, that I do not normally engage in manifestoes, in "we musts" and "we shall," but the times are not normal, are they?

What is the alt-right, and why should we view responding to it differently from other social or political movements? Rosie Gray, now at The Atlantic but at the time at Buzzfeed, cites one of the movement's founders, Richard Spencer, and it is interesting to see how he views the year 2015 when Trump began his campaign. Gray has tracked the alt-right about as well as anyone. She writes:

Spencer himself can claim credit for coining the term "alt right"; in 2010, he founded AlternativeRight.com, which is now RadixJournal. But he says the term has gotten a second life in the past year due to a confluence of external factors. "I think it has a lot to do with Trump," he said. "I think the refugee crisis is also an inspiration. I just think things have gotten so real."

What Spencer terms the "refugee crisis" was always real for the refugees. But it was never "real" as a problem facing Americans, except and only insofar as we have done too little to help those poor suffering souls displaced by violence and poverty. This is one of the hallmarks of a propagandistic enterprise: The manipulation of information and fabrication of false crises to stir emotions. Think of the German-speaking Czechs in the Sudetenland.

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Another example of their manipulation of information is their belief that political correctness is a big problem. Mind you, anyone can abhor politically correct thinking. It was appalling to see Democratic presidential candidates unwilling to state that "all lives matter" for fear of being shout down by activists from the Black Lives Matter movement. The pattern of suppressing speech on college campuses is abhorrent, too. And, Lord help the person who can't keep track of the ever-expanding acronym LBTQIA, and Lord knows what other letters have been added.

But political correctness is silly, nothing more. It starts with a humane instinct, not to offend, and takes it too far. The response is to educate. For example, unless all lives matter, at any given time, any particular group's lives are in danger of not mattering. Put differently, unless all lives matter, black lives do not matter, and unless black lives matter, all lives do not matter. The response is not to create a political movement whose principal object is to be offensive.

Here, let me make a correction to the left. If you do not call out silliness in constructive ways, others, like those who subscribe to the alt-right, will find pernicious ways to call out that silliness. One of the prices of any fruitful dialogue is the willingness to call out your own side, and the left must be persistent in distancing itself from its own extremes if it does not want to be tagged as extreme.

If there had been no Black Lives Matter activism, the alt-right would have invented it. They are profoundly committed to a belief in the importance of the tribe, and they define tribe in racial terms. Reading some of their articles, I could not help thinking of the concern for purity of blood that characterized the Spanish Inquisition. Last week, at NCR, I reviewed a book about the CYO in Chicago and Bishop Bernard Sheil's insistence that the CYO be interracial. Sheil spoke bluntly about racism:

If there is any one thing which modern anthropology has utterly exploded by severely critical methods, it is the vain pretension of superior and inferior races. There are no superior races; there are only superior opportunities. Granted equal opportunities over a sufficient period of time, every race is equal to every other race. The Negro people are living, tangible refutation of the un-Christian, unscientific, philosophy of racism. In proportion to their numbers, and considering the grievous handicaps under which they have labored, they have contributed as much to the well-being and happiness of the [human] race as any other people whatsoever.

Sheil spoke those words in 1943, when the death camps were in operation in Europe and Jim Crow was alive and well. They are yet more obviously true today because of what we know about the Shoah and segregation. If there was nothing else reprehensible about the alt-right besides their racism, that would be enough for Catholic Christians to oppose them.

There are some who frequent the alt-right websites who claim they are not really white nationalists. They just say things to be provocative. Gray asked Ken White, a blogger at the happily named Popehat website, about this:

"It's really hard to tease out the genuine white nationalists from the trolls," White told BuzzFeed News, but, "at a certain point, the distinction isn't meaningful. If you spend all day saying white nationalist things online but you claim you're doing it ironically, it's not clear to me what the difference really is."

White is correct but incomplete. Those who claim not to be racists, but who nonetheless espouse racism, are in a certain sense more reprehensible. They help to normalize evil, in this case racism, or misogyny, or nativism, yet try to dodge the charge that they are racists, or sexists, or nativists. At the forefront of this group of fellow travelers is, of course, our president, which is another reason we cannot merely ignore the movement.

This also points to what is, for me, one of the most disturbing and significant characteristics about the alt-right movement: It is as much about a method as any particular content. Disruption is engaged for its own sake. Apart from the hideous, if amorphous, ideology they embrace, one gets the sense watching or listening to them that they are primarily interested in acting out. Last week, Bill Maher had Milo Yiannopoulos on his show. Yiannopoulos is a self-proclaimed leader of the alt-right movement. Watching him, I could not repress the sensation that he was, first and foremost, a spoiled brat, desperately trying to say anything that might shock his audience and, so, garner their attention. No thought came from his lips that would warrant such attention, to be sure. If he were a one-off, we could dismiss him, hopeful that the less attention paid to him, the sooner he would exit stage alt-right.

But Yiannopoulos is not a one-off. This is a movement we are talking about. It may be small. It may be known mostly for living on the internet. But it is trafficking in a set of ideas and attitudes that are deeply dangerous. It cannot be ignored.

They claim to be inspired by a set of ridiculous and meandering thoughts collected under the title "Dark Enlightenment." They believe democracy is hollow and should be replaced by an authoritarian state. They denounce egalitarianism as a false principle of social life. There is a lot of jargon about data-driven analysis and the great potentialities of the internet. But, at root, they are opposed to the Enlightenment and its most illustrious child, liberal democracy.

They are not the first, although it would be a slur to [Joseph] de Maistre to compare these intellectual dilettantes to him. But we in the Catholic intellectual world need to brush up our understanding of the Enlightenment, including a close study of its critics, its real critics. I would submit that the first book on everyone's reading list should be Isaiah Berlin's Three Critics of the Enlightenment. Your copy of it should be well dog-eared. Berlin looked at Hamann, Herder and Vico, who were genuine scholars with important reservations about the Enlightenment. Berlin deals with those reservations sympathetically, but not uncritically, and fashions a defense of liberal democracy which has its limits from the standpoint of Catholic social doctrine. But, if nothing else, familiarity with their work will show what a real critic of the Enlightenment looks and sounds like, instead of these ingnues pretending to hold serious ideas.

I need not recapitulate for this learned audience the developments in Catholic social doctrine in the past 50 years, in which we see an ever greater appreciation for the value of democracy. At Vatican II, with both Dignitatis humanae and Gaudium et spes, the church's commitment to human rights and democracy was worked out in terms of doctrine.

This development began at the practical level even before it took root at the doctrinal level. At the website of our archives here at Catholic University, you will find issues of the "Treasure Chest," a comic book series begun in 1946 and developed by the U.S. bishops at the behest of the Vatican, which was concerned that young Catholics come to appreciate the value of democracy. I especially commend a series of strips from the early 1960s called "Pettigrew for President" in which there was a groundswell of opposition, none of it openly stated, about this candidate. In the final strip, it was revealed that Pettigrew was black. My colleague, the late Joe Feuerherd, did a wonderful story about that series when Barack Obama was running in 2008.

The church's commitment to egalitarianism is even older and more basic: The common brotherhood of humankind is a necessary consequence of the common fatherhood of God. Of course, in the long history of the church, we have observed that commitment as often in the breach as not, though it should also be noted that the church lives in history, and in those historical moments we now view as inhumane, the church was less inhumane than the ambient culture.

We must confront this anti-democratic commitment and anti-egalitarianism of the alt-right head-on. It is often joked that Catholic social doctrine is the "best kept secret" in the Catholic church. Let it be secret no more. The most sophisticated response to both these alt-right haters, and to the ever-present difficulties of democracy, is found in that doctrine. I often say and shall say again: There is no problem facing the political life of this country that is not leavened by an encounter with Catholic social doctrine.

The main difficulty in engaging the alt-right as if it were just another political movement is found precisely in its anti-democratic stance. Normally, when we as Catholics engage those with whom we disagree, both sides accept democratic norms to shape that engagement. The alt-right derides democracy and openly states its desire to undermine democracy. How then to engage?

Pope Francis likes to say that in the political and social realms, and even in the ecclesiastical, we need dialogue, dialogue, dialogue. But, as if he knew I had to give this talk, two weeks back the Holy Father issued a warning. Citing the biblical story of the fall, he said, "The serpent, the devil, is astute, but you cannot dialogue with the devil."

I believe that there is real evil in the beliefs espoused by the alt-right, but I also believe that we cannot allow them to frighten us out of our commitment to free and open debate, just as we cannot let terrorists frighten us into abandoning our commitment to privacy rights. We certainly can't ignore them nor minimize the threat they pose. I have been reading The Dark Valley by Piers Brendon, a history of the 1930s, and it is frightening to see how well-intentioned politicians, acting on the basis of sound values and respectful of democratic norms, failed to perceive the threat posed by the rise of fascism, and by the time they decided to take action, it was too late.

In confronting the alt-right, then, we must stipulate each and every time that there is an imbalance in the discussion, that they do not share our commitment to democratic processes or values, and that this imbalance is the frame in which each and every particular discussion takes place. We must state, clearly, and each and every time, that debate presumes equal partners to the debate, and that we are committed to the belief in the essential equality of all, even while our interlocutors from the alt-right are not. When they traffic in lies, we must state, "That's a lie" and demand evidence for the claim. We must beware of the tricky way they fabricate evidence. We must, each and every time, make sure that we do nothing to normalize their views, but identify just how hateful and beneath contempt those views are. We must, in short, be on our guard. Engage, but do so warily, and only when repeatedly noting the fact that the positions the alt-right espouses are not just wrong, but contemptuous of the means by which a liberal democracy sorts out the complexities of public policy, means that we value and celebrate, and which we accord to these provocateurs even if they wish not to accord them to anyone else.

In the Buzzfeed article I cited previously, Rosie Gray also makes an important point about the group, one that cannot be overlooked when thinking about how to respond. "The alt-right's real objective, if one can be identified, is to challenge and dismantle mainstream conservatism," she notes. It is especially incumbent upon our conservative Catholic friends to stand up to these racist, misogynist nativists. There is precedent, and conservatives like precedents: In 1962, William Buckley denounced the John Birch Society and convinced most mainstream conservatives to do likewise. He was willing to confront this part of the conservative base because he knew it was a cancer on the conservative movement. Today's conservatives, especially Catholic conservatives, can do no less. If they do not excise this group, if they pander to it and coddle it and refuse to risk alienating it, they will be consumed by its cancer.

So let those of us who are charged with exercising the Catholic intellectual apostolate get to work. Let's study not only the church's teachings to the point of fluency, but study, too, the Enlightenment and the real critics of the Enlightenment. Let us pay attention to our words and our actions lest we allow this cancer to grow. Let us make sure we never, ever do anything that normalizes the alt-right or its positions. Let us call out falsehood when we find and refute fabrications with facts. Let those of us in the Catholic left help some of our more extreme colleagues on the left see how their antics provide kindling for the alt-right and let our conservative Catholic friends do their best to take away the alt-right's matches. Let us all, in a word, prove ourselves to be good citizens of both the City of God and the City of Man at this critical moment in the history of our nation which needs such citizens today more than ever.

[Michael Sean Winters isNCRWashington columnist and a visiting fellow at Catholic University's Institute for Policy Research and Catholic Studies.]

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The alt-right: Engage, but do so warily - National Catholic Reporter (blog)

White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus and White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon arrive onstage during the Conservative Political Action Conference on Thursday.

Alex Wong/Getty Images

NATIONAL HARBOR, Md.On Thursday, white nationalist Richard Spencer was thrown out of the Conservative Political Action Conference. As security escorted him to the door, a college junior in a blue blazer and fashy haircut followed him. Im representing the alt-right club at Penn State, said James OMailia, who then invited Spencer to come and speak. Please come! he said. Well host you and everything.

Michelle Goldberg is a columnist for Slate and the author, most recently, of The Goddess Pose.

OMailias club, the Bull-Moose Party, was formed to support Donald Trumps presidential campaign; it made news last year for building a pro-Trump plywood wall around an American flag on campus. He says he grew up as a George W. Bush conservative and got into the alt-right, in part, through Breitbart. Its the new punk rock, he said, meaning its edgy and subversive.

OMailia was resentful that people on campus had called his group racist. In this new social justice warriordominated society, people will look at someone waving the American flag as being a white supremacist, he said. That may be, I replied, but he just invited Spencer, an actual white supremacist, to speak at his school. I just think its a good idea to bring his opinion into it, he shrugged.

CPAC, the countrys largest annual conservative gathering, has long drawn energy from young people who are resentful about liberal hegemony on college campuses. Now, however, its flailing as it tries to establish its own moral boundaries on right-wing speech. Its trouble started when Matt Schlapp, CPACs chairman, invited professional troll Milo Yiannopoulos to give a keynote address, sparking a furious backlash from traditional conservatives, who dug up statements by Yiannopoulos justifying man-boy sex. That ultimately led to Yiannopoulos losing his book deal, as well as his CPAC slot, and resigning from his job at Breitbart. In the aftermath, CPAC is trying to distance itself from the alt-right. Yet top Trump aide Steve Bannon, who once boasted that his website, Breitbart, was the platform of the alt-right, still had a prime Thursday afternoon speaking slot. And many young people in attendance reveled in the alt-rights rebellious frisson of fascism.

Shortly after the conference began on Thursday, Dan Schneider, executive director of the American Conservative Unionthe group that puts on CPACgave a speech denouncing the alt-right as left-wing infiltrators. There is a sinister organization that is trying to worm its way into our ranks, he said, arguing that the term alt-right had been hijacked by a hate-filled left-wing fascist group.

Schneider referred specifically to the conference in November where Spencer, standing before a giddy crowd of clean-cut racists, gave a Nazi salute and said, Heil Trump, heil our people, heil victory! Schneiders argument was similar to the one Jonah Goldberg made in his risible book Liberal Fascism: Fascists are inherently left-wing because they believe in government power. (Apparently this is true even when theyre hailing the government power to crush the left.) Hateful left-wing fascists are not like anybody here, Schneider said.

Even if you accept his absurd framing, what he said was wrong. Spencer himselfwho, far from hijacking the term alt-right, actually coined itwas there watching from a seat near the stage. And it was clear that there were fellow travelers in the crowd. There are lots of people here that I know, Spencer told me after Schneiders speech. Soon he was mobbed by journalists as well as by eager young conference goers who wanted to pose with him for selfies. One young man called out Praise Kek!an alt-right in-joke. A guy named J.P. Sheehan pulled a T-shirt saying RADIXthe name of Spencers online journalout of his bag, happily flashing it toward Spencer. I know a lot of people are afraid of him, but Richard Spencer is like, the coolest guy, he said.

Sheehan, who wore a black MAGA hat, told me that hes president of the College Republicans at a state school in New England. (I agreed not to name it.) Schneiders speech denouncing the alt-right had not impressed him. It kind of reminded me of those 80s teen comedies with the assistant principal whos likehere Sheehan did a parody of a stern, hectoring voice Rules and regulations! You crazy kids!

Sheehan, 26, says he voted for Obama twice, but as Obamas presidency progressed, he came to feel like minorities had become emboldened at his expense. He realized, he said, This actually isnt in my best interest, and I can do better for myself. Eventually, Sheehan came to see his whiteness as a source of meaning. The thing about racial identity and ethnic heritage is that its like your shadow, he said. Its going to be with you everywhere you go, but it reminds you that the sun is shining on you. People think the alt-right is just simply about being mean to other people. Its really not. The alt-right is simply identity politics for white people.

This, he insisted, has great appeal among many of the young people at CPAC. Young people especially identify with the alt-right because the alt-right says: Youre right, Sheehan said. All that consumerist culture that you are being bombarded with, all of that stuff that the mainstream media or cultural Marxists or your Marxist professor says, they do hurt your spirit after a while. They do make you feel spiritually fatigued, and there is a way out of it, and its been under your nose the whole time.

A few moments later, with Spencer still thronged by reporters, conference honchos Schlapp and Schneider walked by. They seemed disconcerted by all the attention Spencer was getting. We made it very clear that we dont believe that the alt-right is a legitimate voice of the conservative movement, Schlapp said. We basically opened up our conference with that point of view. If thats the case, I asked, why did they invite Bannon, who described the website he used to run as the platform of the alt-right? He has not said that, said Schlapp. I insisted he has.

I think Schneider realized I was right, because he repeated the claim from his speech that alt-right used to mean something else. Theres this sinister group that has hijacked the term, he told me.

The term was coined by Richard Spencer, whos right there! I replied.

The term has been used for several years, Schneider insisted. It has indeed, as one could learn by reading a laudatory piece about the alt-right that Yiannopoulos wrote for Breitbart last yearwhen Bannon was still running it. The media empire of the modern-day alternative right coalesced around Richard Spencer during his editorship of TakisMagazine, wrote Yiannopoulos.In 2010, Spencer founded AlternativeRight.com, which would become a center of alt-right thought. Was Schneider arguing that the term predated that? He deflected, Do you know who Steve Bannon hired to run Breitbart? A Jewish man. And how about who he hired to run London Breitbart? A Muslim man.

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For a fun thought experiment, imagine that kid saying the alt-right is the new punk rock to, say, Henry Rollins. More...

Actually, Raheem Kassam, the editor-in-chief of Breitbart London, is a far-right ex-Muslim. Hes written that people who look like he does should be racially profiled: Why in heavens name should Israeli or American security be concerned with what John Smith is doing in their country, when the most virulent threat emerges from people who look and sound like me? Hes speaking at CPAC on Friday.

Not long after we spoke, Schneider and Schlapp evidently decided theyd had enough, and Spencer was tossed out. After OMailia followed Spencer to the door, I asked him if he thought there was an alt-right subculture at CPAC. Yeah, I think there is, he said. Definitely. Its kept hidden, because its not what the elites in the Republican Party want to talk about. At the end of the day, politics is about winning votes, and someone who talks about ethnic cleansing isnt exactly a person who would bring in the votes for a large group of people where we need it. You can say this for the alt-right: At least theyre honest.

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Alt-Right Facts - Slate Magazine

Milo Yiannopoulos announced his resignation from Breitbart News at a Feb. 21 press conference.

For a while, the future of tech-reviewer turned alt-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos was as bright as his roots were dark. Through his editorial post at Breitbart News, he had cultivated a sizable audience, scored a controversial book deal, indulged in unsettling photo spreads that tagged him a burgeoning cultural icon, and recently attracted Richard Spencer levels of public hostility, the promise of his presence inspiring violent protests at University of California, Berkeley; University of California, Davis; and University of Washington during his Dangerous [Expletive] tour.

Milos previous tour, which took place in the spring and summer, grabbed headlines across the country as panicked social justice warriors threw tantrums, stormed stages, and held therapy sessions, crowed a post on Breitbart.com announcing the tour, all because they couldnt handle the Dangerous [ahem].

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You can now add Breitbart to the list of panicked warriors unable to handle the palmful of fizzy water that is Yiannopoulos. On a 2016 episode of The Drunken Peasants podcast that began recirculating around the Internet over the past week, Yiannopoulos is heard defending relationships between older men and younger boys in a conversation that, contextually, seemed centered around discussion of 13-year-olds, but which Yiannopoulos would later attempt to clarify, was in reference to his own relationship at 17 with a 29-year old. The clip spread like fire, and the Yiannopocalypse was upon us.

In addition to losing his keynote speaking spot at the Conservative Political Action Conference and his book deal from Simon & Schuster, Yiannopoulos resigned from Breitbart in a decision that was mine alone," according to a statement he sullenly recited at a press conference. Former allies like white nationalist punching bag Spencer disavowed him, and the alt-right superstructure summarily spat him out.

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Meanwhile, the rest of gay America went back to whatever it was reading or whatever congressional representative it was calling.

Maher also asked, How can a woman rape a man?

In some ways, Yiannopouloss graduation from slightly sassy tech wonk to hypersassy political pundit made little sense. As political perspectives go, his had (oops there I go with the past tense again) all the nuance and depth of a squash court not much more than a flat surface meant for rebounding other peoples energy in predictable directions: Black Lives Matter is a hate group; trans women are confused men; youre the racist.

In a defensive apology video posted to (and deleted from) Facebook and at last Tuesdays press appearance, Yiannopoulos seemed to toggle erratically between identifying as a journalist (who exposes child abusers!) and a performer (who should be allowed to make child abuse jokes!) and struggled publicly to process the discrete expectations of either role. Most significantly, and perhaps for the first time, he identified himself as his sworn foe: a victim.

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Specifically, he identified as a victim (twice over) of sexual abuse as a teenager at the hands of older men. This, he offered, is why he so grossly misjudged his own approach to the subject in his signature sassy gay British way. Ultimately and swiftly, this revelation was employed as leverage for a head-scratching self-defense: To be a victim of child abuse, and at the same time be accused of being an apologist for child abuse, is absurd.

Thats actually exactly what he did. (And to mistake the absurd for the impossible is far more dangerous than any of Yiannopouloss more conscious utterances.)

More significantly, though, Yiannopoulos unwittingly identified himself as a victim of the alt-right, and really, conservatism at large, for whom he was as useful as a queen on a chess board able to move freely and take down anyone, as long as she remained on the game board.

Employing Yiannopoulos as a hot young mouthpiece for its tired old bigotry not only provided the alt-right with a human (read: gay) shield and a willing mascot for the happy home the right promises to free-thinking LGB folks (omissions intentional), he gave the movement a way to thrust beyond alt- and into the more ostensibly dangerous quarters of queer.

Careful, he might say the F-word! (The other one.)

Inviting Yiannopoulos to the party lent the alt-right some desperately needed edge that, without him, tapered off drastically like Spencers haircut. This extra dose of mall cred gave the movement confidence enough to osmose some gay, throw on some leather and pearls, and consider itself fierce. Its a tried and true technique that sometimes works. (It once rescued an entire cable network from James Liptons dungeon, for instance.) Yiannopoulos let the alt-right pat its own back and enjoy the implicit assurance that its over-the-top militarized masculinity was somehow not at odds with the outsider cool to which it daily aspires. It was probably awesome for a while.

But once Yiannopoulos stepped beyond the line (which, finally, we seem to have located) he was cast off with telling ease by the very movement that nurtured his nasal voice in the first place.

Yes, his comments were offensive, flip, disturbing, clumsy, wrong but more importantly, they signaled an outside-the-lines view of sexuality that freaked the right right out. Yiannopoulos was wrong to let his discussion of intragenerational relationships edge past clearly marked legal lines (and unwise to channel his own abuse into anecdote), but he wasnt wrong that many gay men start out with men who double as mentors. (Raises hand. Hi, W. Call me. Or get e-mail, already.)

But no explanation could wave away the ick factor that plagues the rights engagement with queer folks from every part of the acronym. Put in the position of weathering the ugly individual truths of its once Sassy Gay Friend, the alt-right said no thank you. But you can almost imagine the classified ad theyre drafting:

Curious fringe movement seeks safe/sane/masc GM for exploration, possible relationship. No freaks/femmes.

Some stereotypes are true: Most gays, for instance, harbor some treasured nostalgic niche of specialty be it 70s Pyrex patterns, or 80s sitcom moms, or 90s shoegaze bands. So I dont doubt that gays young enough to come of age in an America blessed with protease inhibitors might be more easily seduced into empty simulations of Reagan-era conservatism than their older counterparts perhaps as a kind of intellectual cosplay. Sometimes romanticizing abuse is a way of dealing with it.

Perhaps the real lesson of the Yiannopoulos debacle is that, angular haircuts and hunger for edge aside, the alt-right can never truly be queered. Yes, you can come to the party; yes, you can say all sorts of crazy stuff; yes, you can be rude and celebrated for it; but no, you can't crash here. Its just not that into you.

But how could any self-respecting gay feel at home in the alt-right, anyway? Its an empty bar all counter and no culture.

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The lesson of Milo Yiannopoulos? You can't queer the alt-right. - The Boston Globe

Steve Bannon

This years CPAC roster includes Steve Bannon, Donald Trumps white supremacist aide who, as head of Breitbart News, bragged that We're the platform for the alt-right. It included Milo Yiannopoulos until he was booted for saying gross things about something other than women andnon-white peopleeverything Yiannopoulos said up to the moment he advocated for pedophilia was fine by CPAC. So this smells like an entire stockyard full of bulls:

The annual Conservative Political Action Conference began Thursday morning outside Washington, DC, with a strange denunciation of the movement by the executive director of the organization behind the event. In a speech titled "The Alt Right Ain't Right at All," American Conservative Union executive director Dan Schneider said that the alt-right isn't really a conservative movement at all. Instead, he said, "a hate-filled, left-wing fascist group hijacked the very term 'alt-right.'" Schneider called the alt-right anti-Semitic, racist, and sexist.

That CPAC would take the trouble of trying to distance itself from the alt-right shows that the brand has become toxicpeople noticed that alt-right translates to white supremacist. But saying thats not us while featuring Bannon and seven current Breitbart stafferson your program is really not even trying.

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CPAC: To be or not to be alt-right. (It is.) - Daily Kos

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In the era of the so-called weaponized social media, internet trolls have taken form as a widely used political tool used by the influential parties in different parts of the world to push their agenda. Interestingly, observers are now pointing to the origin of these online armies being a group of neo-nationalists from Japan called the Netto uyoku.

With similar styles and operations to Americas alt-right movement, it is quite possible that these modern-era propagandists may have been shaped or at least inspired by Japans Net uyoku (literally the Japanese internet right-wingers).

The Netto uyoku movement reportedly first took shape in 2channel (2chan) during an economic crisis in Japan from the late 1990s to 2010s. It has evolved from an anonymous message board into a huge internet subculture which eventually birthed the Netto uyoku.In just a few years, an American version of the platform would emerge in the form of 4chan, but itsinfluence certainly did not stop there.

In an interview with The Guardian, White nationalist Jared Taylor, who speaks fluent Japanese, even attributes his sense of racial purity and far-right politics as somehow being inspired by his two-year stay in Tohoku, Japan. Its an ethnostate and its deeply nationalist, he said. And they have resisted the pressure to admit refugees. I say: God bless them!

Like the American far-right movement, Netto uyoku frequently post nationalistic and xenophobic articles on the Internet, the only difference is that they interact almost exclusively in their own cyber community. Similarly, though, they tend to express hostility towards immigrants from other countries, particularly ontheir part, against Zainichi Koreans.

Like the Philippine revisionists portraying its late dictator Marcos in a holier-than-thou light, the Netto uyoku are known for expressing their historically revisionist views. They always portray Japan in a positive light, to the point of defending Japans actions prior to and during World War II.

Furuya Tsunehira, a Japanese who has been studying the group, observes that although Netto uyoku is active online, they are hardly a political voice offline.Some of them may even have joined the group, solely out of boredom, as a former Netto uyoku confessed:

I was lonely and had nothing to do at that time. So I spent a lot of time on the Internet. This was just as matome meme aggregator websites were just becoming popular in Japan. After reading websites that focused on discrimination, I felt great because I thought I had gained knowledge that they did not teach in school nor you could not get by watching TV. I felt I was someone important. When I saw those comments making fun of the Koreans or even worse, they did not bother me at all. Perhaps it was partly because I didnt know anything about Korea and the Koreans. In any case, they were living in a different world from mine and frankly speaking it didnt matter to me at all.

The same may be said about white nationalist head Richard Spencer, who, according to Buzzfeed, spent most of his time on message boards like Reddit posting about anime, video games, and comic books. Hes also tweeted about his love of Japans conservative government and even did a video in August, while on vacation in Japan, lashing out against Hillary Clinton.

Ive always admired Japan and found it a fascinating place, he was quoted as saying. The aesthetics of the alt-right, I would say, could involve anime.

Spencer even made the connection between anime and the far right by attributing how images work well on the internet. Thats how you communicate, he said. Thats the kind of meme culture on Twitter and 4chan.

Now, theres even a far-right group who calls themselves as anime right, and anime girls photoshopped to be wearing Make America Great Again hats are flooding the internet.

On using meme as an effective recruitment tool:

You want to, like, reach people whose minds havent ossified yet. And I think the alt-right is doing that in a crazy way, through meme culture, he said. In a sense that, like, a kid whos 22 and just graduated from college and is working at Starbucks and hes kind of pissed off and alienated and he doesnt quite know why. You can reach him through a meme, whereas youre not going to reach him through a book about traditionalism.

The phenomenon is also currently seen in various parts of the world.While America has fake news mills, China similarly has the 50-centers, India has WhatsApp armies, Russia hastroll farms, the Philippines has keyboard warriors, Israel has the Hasbara and even North Korea has its so-called Cyber Warfare Army.

These paid, or at times, volunteer, trolls are pumping out fake social media posts daily by the hundreds, flooding the internet with stories, memes and video content in attempts to revise histories, sway public opinion or even win elections.

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Meet Japan's Version of Trump-Loving 'Alt-Right' Internet Trolls - NextShark