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

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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.

Top Comment

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.

See the article here:
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

Media Matters for America (blog)

CPAC Is Trying To Wash The Alt-Right Stench Off Breitbart Media Matters for America (blog) The term alt-right is toxic. It should be. The loose confederation of neo-Nazis, white nationalists, and misogynists have spent the last year spreading fear, hatred, and conspiracy theories. The problem for conservatives is that the movement is ...

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CPAC Is Trying To Wash The Alt-Right Stench Off Breitbart - Media Matters for America (blog)