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President Trump first asked reporters to define the "alt-right," before saying members of the "alt-left" were also to blame for violence in Charlottesville, while taking questions from reporters on Aug. 15 at Trump Tower in New York. (The Washington Post)

In a chilling Tuesday news conference, President Trump named one of the many sides he has said are to blame for the weekends violence in Charlottesville: the alt-left. But as much as white supremacists rejoiced at his use of the term, they did not invent it. Liberals did.

The term alt-left has become a recent favorite of neo-Nazis, and Trumps embrace of the phrase is likely to propel it into his broader bases vocabulary. Yet its unlikely anyone wearing a Make America Great Again hat saw the term where it first caught attention in the news media: in the March edition of Vanity Fair magazine, atop an essay by James Wolcott titled Why the Alt-Left Is a Problem, Too. Or where it had already been springing up with surprising frequency: on the Facebook pages and Twitter feedsof movers and shakers closely associated with Clintonworld.

The 2016 Democratic primary exposed a long-brewing schism in the liberal order. Supporters of Bernie Sanders were fed up with the status quo and sought to tear it apart, while Hillary Clintons cohort preached a more pragmatic progressivism. The best hope of the Clintonites was to cast Sanders supporters as not just unreasonably radical but also a bit sexist and racist too hence the Bernie bro, their caricature of a childish white man who just cant bear the thought of a female president.

The Bernie bros were exactly the people center-left Democrats were describing when they first said alt-left. They didnt just mean the antifa, or anti-fascists. Thats an amorphous enough term already, encompassing both the black bloc and other groups devoted to denying neo-Nazis a public platform but less inclined to set limousines on fire. They didnt even just mean those who fit the technical definition of socialist, communist or anarchist. They meant anyone who wanted to push the political conversation beyond the boundaries of the 2016 Democratic Party platform: anyone who advocated for universal health care, free college or a $15 minimum wage.

Heather Heyer, according to that definition, belonged to the alt-left.

Its easy to see why alt-left was the perfect phrase for the job Clinton Democrats set out to accomplish. Because it sounded so much like alt-right, it made Sanders fans seem too extreme to stomach even violent. It also made them seem more sexist (that explains their lack of enthusiasm for Clinton, those using the term might say), or racist (now we know why theyre disillusioned with Barack Obama, or why they wont come around to Kamala Harris, theyd argue).

And its not as though the far left doesnt do the same sort of labeling of Clintonite Democrats calling them centrists as a veiled insult even when their views are measurably more progressive than the average Americans, or deeming them neoliberal to establish distance between them and what hardcore leftists see as the true liberal cause.

The alt-left label, as it turns out, is much more insidious. It creates a false equivalence at the extremes and plays into racists hands. White supremacists want the far left to look more sexist and racist the same way center-left Democrats want them to it gives them a foil. Of course they greeted Trumps Tuesday proclamation with glee: While alt-right is designed to make neo-Nazis look more mainstream, alt-left is designed to make their enemies look less so. White nationalists had already pulled off a remarkable trick by bringing a moniker that obscured their hateful worldview into the national lexicon. And theyve achieved another coup by snatching alt-left away from the Democrats and pushing it so hard that it eventually made its way out of the presidents mouth.

This is far from the first time a clever center-left coinage has flipped sides remember when fake news was a cry of liberal outrage against the glut of online conspiracy theories that culminated in a gunman traveling to a D.C. pizzeria to take out a nonexistent Clinton-connected child sex ring?

The left is eating itself alive. Fake news at least was designed to delegitimize a dangerous enemy. The center-lefts use of alt-left demonizes people who, when it comes down to it, should be their allies. Theres a real debate to had about health care, free college and the $15 minimum wage. Its happening now, and it will continue to happen through 2018 and beyond. But the right way to have that debate has never been by playing semantic tricks to score points. Its by being honest about the policies both we and those we disagree with stand for. Weve just learned how perilous the alternative can be.

See the article here:
The alt-right didn't invent 'alt-left.' Liberals did. - Washington Post