Anti-Semitism in the White House: Stephen Bannon, Donald Trump and the
Alt-Right
Sunday, 20 November 2016 00:00 By Shane Burley, Truthout | News Analysis
Steve Bannon, the campaign's chief executive, watches as Donald Trump
campaigns at a cultural center in the Little Haiti neighborhood of Miami,
September 16, 2016. (Photo: Damon Winter / The New York Times)
In the aftermath of the election, independent media is more important than
ever. Can you make a donation to support the publication of more stories
like this one?
As Trump has started to assemble his administration, one non-establishment
pick has provoked a particular outcry around the country: the choice of
Stephen Bannon, the executive behind the far-right Breitbart media outlet,
as chief White House strategist and senior counselor.
Bannon, who took a hiatus from Breitbart to help run Trump's presidential
bid, has been known for taking the already deep-right Breitbart into the
territory of racist antagonisms, making it a prime platform for those going
after immigration, Muslims, refugees, feminists and everyone on the
alt-right's long hit list.
While Bannon's racialism has been on display on Breitbart's front page for
some time now, his anti-Semitism has started to bleed through in articles
that name "renegade Jews" and rest on anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.
Bannon's ex-wife even alleged that Bannon refused to send their child to a
school that had Jewish students in it, though he has denied those claims.
These anti-Semitic moves have enraged many, especially following the
president-elect's end-of-campaign speech in West Palm Beach, Florida, at
which Trump used a dog whistle to invoke an older anti-Semitic trope.
Trump's Anti-Semitic Dog Whistles
The crowd in West Palm Beach on October 13, 2016, had the collective buzz of
anger before the gates to the venue even opened. The resentment in many
sectors of the white, middle America had their fears put to language in the
Donald Trump campaign. While it was Trump's anger that ignited the crowd
into chants and boos, he was feeding off a palpable rage that many who have
seen their jobs shipped overseas have already felt. They were looking for
someone to blame.
"Workers in the United States are making less than they were almost 20 years
ago, and yet they are working harder.... It's a global power structure that
is responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working
class, stripped our country of its wealth, and put that money into the
pockets of a handful of large corporations and political entities," Trump
yelled with increasing venom. "We've seen this firsthand in the WikiLeaks
documents in which Hillary Clinton meets in secret with international banks
to plot the destruction of US sovereignty in order to enrich these global
financial powers, her special interest friends and her donors."
It was here that many turned their heads, noting that his dog whistle had
hit some familiar territory. While this part of his speech might appear to
convey anti-corporate sentiment, the curious pattern of his language picked
up on a theme that was older than recent issues over trade. His words
resurrected a caricature of the "international banker," which has often been
used as a code word for "Jew" in times of conspiratorial populism, in which
the crisis of capitalism is blamed on an ethnic minority scapegoat.
This was just as well for the alt-right component of the Trump base, an
ideological fascist movement that has used internet memes, social media and
new publishing platforms to rebrand the old ideas of white nationalism. For
them, the problem is not international capitalism and the crisis of the
"haves and the have-nots," but instead Jews supposedly acting in control of
a system. They want to join with Trump in agreement that there is a minority
"rigging the system" against him, just as they think the system is rigged
against whites in the modern multicultural world.
From the rising popularity of the National Front in France, to the victory
of Euro-skeptics in the June UK Brexit vote, the white world is returning to
the politics of "name and blame." In this way, Trump named the
"international banker" in the same way that David Duke, the former Ku Klux
Klan leader who almost won the Louisiana Governor's office in 1991, used to
cite "New York values" in his campaign materials, both drawing caricatures
of an enemy hidden in the midst of their imagined white public.
The alt-right itself has often been mislabeled as "fascist lite" or simply a
component of new conservatism: Breitbart with a few radicals around the
fringes. In truth, the alt-right and its dominant institutions have a direct
continuity to neo-fascist movements that have existed since World War II.
Their anti-Semitism is traditional in the most basic ways: It takes the
themes and myths important to the process of vilifying Jews and ports them
over to a new language. While many alt-right outlets like the Daily Shoah
and the Daily Stormer are clear with their drawings of sweaty-palmed
merchants, others have obscured their beliefs in academic jargon.
The Anti-Semitic Psychology Scholar at the Heart of the Alt-Right
In the world of contemporary anti-Semitism, no one has done more to support
pejorative canards about Jewish power and money than Dr. Kevin MacDonald. A
retired psychology professor from the University of California at Long
Beach, MacDonald was a pioneer of evolutionary psychology whose work on
biological subspecies, such as the behavioral development of wolves, was
impressive. He slowly began shifting his focus until in 1994, after having
become a staple academic in his field, he published the book The People That
Shall Dwell Alone. He went on to publish two subsequent books outlining a
conspiratorial view of Jews in the Western world.
As an anti-Semite, MacDonald sees Judaism as a "group evolutionary strategy"
that Jews use to compete with other ethnic groups for resources. He accuses
Jews of using what he sees as their "high verbal intelligence" to upend
"healthy" Western values. He also argues that Jews use false ideologies to
chip away at the nationalism of their countries, while leaving their own
Jewish nationalism intact. He blames Marxism, Freudianism, neoconservatism,
Boerian anthropology and many other movements for their "Jewish character,"
often for contradicting reasons. For example, he argues that Jews create
communism so that they can infect the West with the false idea of equality,
and that they falsify anthropology to create the destructive idea that all
races are created equal. There is no empirical evidence for these claims,
and they are not even based on a cursory understanding of the history of
social movements, the development of political ideas, or the actual role of
scholarship in society.
Within this discourse, MacDonald tries to explain away the Holocaust itself
as simply the consequence of Jews antagonizing Europeans. He argues that
Jews do not necessarily "conspire" to control investment banks and the
media, it is simply their cultural "in grouping," self-selection and desire
to cheat non-Jews that has allowed for their power structures.
In his follow-up book, Understanding Jewish Influence, MacDonald blames
Jewish activism for opening the borders to immigrants:
"The idea that any sort of exclusionary thinking on the part of Americans --
and especially European Americans as a majority group -- leads inexorably to
a Holocaust for Jews is not the only reason why Jewish organizations still
favor mass immigration," writes MacDonald, attempting to argue that
left-leaning social movements are driven by Jewish ethnic interests. "I have
identified two others as well: The belief that greater diversity makes Jews
safer and an intense sense of historical grievance against the traditional
peoples and culture of the United States and Europe."
MacDonald's theories require a sense of "ethnic determination," the idea
that genetic programming drives the national behavior. He argues that
non-Jewish whites are victims of this Jewish-controlled mass immigration and
"globalism" because of their "pathological altruism," which supposedly
forces them to be too trusting. Non-Jewish Europeans, he says, developed a
morality based on "high-trust societies" in which people in the community
had each other's best interests at heart.
These ideas all root themselves in complex arguments meant at maintaining
negative qualities for non-whites, usually at the cost of evidence and
consistency. Anti-Semitic theorists like MacDonald describe Jews as
conniving people who destroy cultures with their pernicious liberalism but
are also nationalist in the development of Israel (an inaccurate
representation of Jewish relations to Israel, which run the political
gamut). There is no denying the role of nationalism in stoking the state of
Israel's abuses against the Palestinian people. However, anti-Semitic
theorists tend to erase the plight of Palestinians and instead focus on
portraying acts of power-seeking as inherently Jewish. Many such
anti-Semites could be characterized as "Zionist" themselves, as they'd
rather see Jews in Israel than in the US or Europe.
This argument is at the heart of the alt-right: the idea that race and
ethnicity determine destiny. Whereas Karl Marx argued that history was the
story of class antagonisms, the alt-right professes that all politics are
ones of ethnic conflict and identity. Alt-right theorists like MacDonald see
Europe as a direct result of what they see as the evolutionary qualities of
white people. They believe that Jews are not of that history; they have
their own identity and genetic background. Of course, non-European Jews are
erased in this equation.
While for some members of the alt-right an adherence to Holocaust denial may
have been replaced with a theory of "Jewish power," the alt-right is
essentially split on revisionism. Mike Enoch, the loud host of the Daily
Shoah has said about the Holocaust and climate change that he's a "denier
either way." Many of these outlets joke about the poison gas Zyklon B and
the Buchenwald concentration camp, which is something that apologists like
Milo Yiannopoulos often say are just a joke meant at riling up the "social
justice warriors." Holocaust denial is growing in these circles, and where
it is absent, it has been replaced by pernicious views on Jewish suffering:
that it is justified, or that it doesn't matter.
While MacDonald's work may sound like the rantings of a discredited
academic, they have become the cornerstone for the alt-right's understanding
of the centrality of the "global Jew" in world affairs. What MacDonald did
was finally develop an academic narrative to explain what they have all been
screaming about for decades, consolidating various theories into a single
secular stream of "logic."
The Alt-Right's Rising Interest in Fascist Spirituality
Though pseudo-science has been the critical key to the alt-right's
ideological tool chest, the influx of new people and the rediscovery of
nationalist themes have allowed many of the more bizarre annals of 20th
century fascism to make a resurgence. Some Neoreactionaries, adherents of
one distinct branch of the alt-right, argue that contemporary Judaism should
be seen as a form of Kabbalistic Gnosticism in which "degeneracy" is
supposedly sacrosanct. They offer this explanation to back their
anti-Semitic conviction that all Jews are bent on destroying decency,
honesty and the family.
Meanwhile, the Italian reactionary Julius Evola has been resurrected as an
important philosopher to the alt-right. He believed that inequality was a
sacrament, that society needed to be stratified from the top down, and that
white Europeans had impulses toward Faustian greatness, whereas people in
the global South had impulses toward degraded femininity. Within this
framework, he depicted Jews as a pernicious force that was particularly
destructive when secularized. His work, especially his use of the Vedic
prophecies to argue that we are in a global "Dark Age," have become one of
the key understandings of the world for the alt-right and its hangers-on.
They argue that Jews have an evil soul that must be relegated out of white
society if Europeans are ever to achieve greatness.
The "Hindu-Nazi priestess" Savitri Devi and esoteric Hitlerist Miguel
Serrano have also seen a renewed importance within the alt-right. The Daily
Shoah has created an open forum for various takes on this anti-Semitism,
ranging from the biological to the spiritual. The joke that the God of the
Torah is a "Volcano demon" comes from the notion that Jehovah is a demiurgic
demon coming from an evil lesser race emerging from the desert. Here they
present Jews as perverting Western man with their despicable values in the
form of Christianity, which is simply the universalization of their "Jewish
God." While it is debatable whether more than a handful of hardcore
alt-right enthusiasts literally believes this, there is an effort to see
this as a real metaphor for the role of Jews in society.
Hatred That Echoes Through Time
After Hillary Clinton's campaign speech naming the alt-right, a slew of
articles tried to make sense of it and its links to people like Breitbart
provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos or Vice Magazine founder Gavin McInnes. The
Jewish news website Forward ran an article by Joshua Seidel, who claimed to
be both Jewish and a member of the alt-right, citing his support for Trump
and opposition to immigration as the reason. This led to an angry flurry
from the core of the alt-right, who were angry that a Jewish writer was
claiming to be one of them. The Right Stuff put out an article saying that
the key points of the alt-right are opposition to immigration, no globalist
elites, "natural" gender roles and anti-Semitism. Lawrence Murray from the
same blog again stated this opinion in his own outline of the alt-right,
saying, "Jewish elites are opposed to our entire program."
In article after article, interview after interview, the alt-right stated
that first and foremost, their movement was about the "reality of race" and
the "problem of Jews."
Unlike the neo-Nazis who have attempted to gun down children at Jewish
community centers, most of the alt-right's actual behavior has been
relegated to online trolling and endless blog rolls. In an attempt to put
their anti-Semitic theories into practice, they "name the Jew" by calling
out commentators with Jewish-sounding last names. The most well-known of
these attempts has been the "echo," where podcasters make echo sounds when
saying Jewish last names (or anything they think is Jewish in character),
and evoke echoes in text by using three parentheses around names to indicate
their possible Jewish origin. This culminated when a member of the Right
Stuff's elite message board created a Google Chrome plug-in that added the
parenthesis to names thought to be Jewish. This app, called the Coincidence
Detector, was supposed to show how prevalent Jews are among "elites."
Trump's Connection With the Alt-Right
Trump's connection with the alt-right has been covert yet ongoing, and his
appointment of Bannon as his chief White House strategist and senior
counselor has helped cement the alt-right's influence in his administration.
Bannon himself, who has said that he turned Breitbart into a platform for
the alt-right, seems more of the alt-lite variety, mainstreaming the
alt-right's fascist ideas without publically committing to every part of
their ideological platform. The alt-right simply makes up a vocal (and
possibly influential) part of Trump's base because his reactionary rhetoric
has turned his campaign into a de facto referendum on white identity, and
that is likely to continue as he takes power in January.
Donald Trump Jr., who has been one of his father's most committed
campaigners, was interviewed on the white nationalist radio show Political
Cesspool. He has retweeted alt-right leaders Vox Day and Kevin MacDonald on
Twitter, which may not be that surprising, since he ported over a Daily
Shoah joke by saying he was "warming up the gas chamber" for cheating
Republicans. Trump himself has retweeted the words of Twitter users like
White Genocide, whose name is a reference to the alt-right meme that there
is a genocide against Europeans taking place. The white nationalist American
Freedom Party was successful in sending in delegates for Trump in
California, as well as funding robocalls in Iowa, where American
Renaissance's Jared Taylor urged support for Trump.
Throughout his campaign, Trump has employed the loudest racially charged dog
whistle we have heard since the 1988 Willie Horton ads, and the alt-right is
able to hear loud and clear that it is their time to shine. Trump himself
may or may not actually agree with these points; real ideological positions
themselves seem irrelevant to him personally. Instead, his "talk radio"
style right-populism is just what the alt-right needs to make their message
of racial separatism and Semitic scapegoating palatable, and with Trump
laying the groundwork, the "shitlords" will take the public the rest of the
way.
The alt-right's anti-Semitism is not a new animal, but one that simply ports
over Nazi propaganda to sleek graphic design and snarky audio skits. This
rebranding has allowed the alt-right to be seen as iconoclastic, opposed to
"political correctness" and somewhat conservative, all of which is a
mischaracterization. It is not a situation in which a few extremists have
given the alt-right a "bad name," but rather a situation in which a few
moderates have added their name to a fascist movement. It is critical to see
the alt-right simply as the latest stage in a white nationalist project that
goes through various attempts at messaging, rhetoric and appearance.
Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.
SHANE BURLEY
Shane Burley is a writer, filmmaker and organizer based in Portland, Oregon.
His work has been featured in places like In These Times, Labor Notes,
Counterpunch, Waging Nonviolence and Roar Magazine. He contributed a chapter
on anti-foreclosure activism to the recent AK Press book The End of the
World as We Know It?, and his most recent documentary film is on the
intersection of Occupy Wall Street and the housing justice movement.
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________________________________________
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Anti-Semitism in the White House: Stephen Bannon, Donald Trump and the
Alt-Right
Sunday, 20 November 2016 00:00 By Shane Burley, Truthout | News Analysis
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reference not valid.
. Steve Bannon, the campaign's chief executive, watches as Donald
Trump campaigns at a cultural center in the Little Haiti neighborhood of
Miami, September 16, 2016. (Photo: Damon Winter / The New York Times)
. In the aftermath of the election, independent media is more
important than ever. Can you make a donation to support the publication of
more stories like this one?
As Trump has started to assemble his administration, one non-establishment
pick has provoked a particular outcry around the country: the choice of
Stephen Bannon, the executive behind the far-right Breitbart media outlet,
as chief White House strategist and senior counselor.
Bannon, who took a hiatus from Breitbart to help run Trump's presidential
bid, has been known for taking the already deep-right Breitbart into the
territory of racist antagonisms, making it a prime platform for those going
after immigration, Muslims, refugees, feminists and everyone on the
alt-right's long hit list.
While Bannon's racialism has been on display on Breitbart's front page for
some time now, his anti-Semitism has started to bleed through in articles
that name "renegade Jews" and rest on anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.
Bannon's ex-wife even alleged that Bannon refused to send their child to a
school that had Jewish students in it, though he has denied those claims.
These anti-Semitic moves have enraged many, especially following the
president-elect's end-of-campaign speech in West Palm Beach, Florida, at
which Trump used a dog whistle to invoke an older anti-Semitic trope.
Trump's Anti-Semitic Dog Whistles
The crowd in West Palm Beach on October 13, 2016, had the collective buzz of
anger before the gates to the venue even opened. The resentment in many
sectors of the white, middle America had their fears put to language in the
Donald Trump campaign. While it was Trump's anger that ignited the crowd
into chants and boos, he was feeding off a palpable rage that many who have
seen their jobs shipped overseas have already felt. They were looking for
someone to blame.
"Workers in the United States are making less than they were almost 20 years
ago, and yet they are working harder.... It's a global power structure that
is responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working
class, stripped our country of its wealth, and put that money into the
pockets of a handful of large corporations and political entities," Trump
yelled with increasing venom. "We've seen this firsthand in the WikiLeaks
documents in which Hillary Clinton meets in secret with international banks
to plot the destruction of US sovereignty in order to enrich these global
financial powers, her special interest friends and her donors."
It was here that many turned their heads, noting that his dog whistle had
hit some familiar territory. While this part of his speech might appear to
convey anti-corporate sentiment, the curious pattern of his language picked
up on a theme that was older than recent issues over trade. His words
resurrected a caricature of the "international banker," which has often been
used as a code word for "Jew" in times of conspiratorial populism, in which
the crisis of capitalism is blamed on an ethnic minority scapegoat.
This was just as well for the alt-right component of the Trump base, an
ideological fascist movement that has used internet memes, social media and
new publishing platforms to rebrand the old ideas of white nationalism. For
them, the problem is not international capitalism and the crisis of the
"haves and the have-nots," but instead Jews supposedly acting in control of
a system. They want to join with Trump in agreement that there is a minority
"rigging the system" against him, just as they think the system is rigged
against whites in the modern multicultural world.
From the rising popularity of the National Front in France, to the victory
of Euro-skeptics in the June UK Brexit vote, the white world is returning to
the politics of "name and blame." In this way, Trump named the
"international banker" in the same way that David Duke, the former Ku Klux
Klan leader who almost won the Louisiana Governor's office in 1991, used to
cite "New York values" in his campaign materials, both drawing caricatures
of an enemy hidden in the midst of their imagined white public.
The alt-right itself has often been mislabeled as "fascist lite" or simply a
component of new conservatism: Breitbart with a few radicals around the
fringes. In truth, the alt-right and its dominant institutions have a direct
continuity to neo-fascist movements that have existed since World War II.
Their anti-Semitism is traditional in the most basic ways: It takes the
themes and myths important to the process of vilifying Jews and ports them
over to a new language. While many alt-right outlets like the Daily Shoah
and the Daily Stormer are clear with their drawings of sweaty-palmed
merchants, others have obscured their beliefs in academic jargon.
The Anti-Semitic Psychology Scholar at the Heart of the Alt-Right
In the world of contemporary anti-Semitism, no one has done more to support
pejorative canards about Jewish power and money than Dr. Kevin MacDonald. A
retired psychology professor from the University of California at Long
Beach, MacDonald was a pioneer of evolutionary psychology whose work on
biological subspecies, such as the behavioral development of wolves, was
impressive. He slowly began shifting his focus until in 1994, after having
become a staple academic in his field, he published the book The People That
Shall Dwell Alone. He went on to publish two subsequent books outlining a
conspiratorial view of Jews in the Western world.
As an anti-Semite, MacDonald sees Judaism as a "group evolutionary strategy"
that Jews use to compete with other ethnic groups for resources. He accuses
Jews of using what he sees as their "high verbal intelligence" to upend
"healthy" Western values. He also argues that Jews use false ideologies to
chip away at the nationalism of their countries, while leaving their own
Jewish nationalism intact. He blames Marxism, Freudianism, neoconservatism,
Boerian anthropology and many other movements for their "Jewish character,"
often for contradicting reasons. For example, he argues that Jews create
communism so that they can infect the West with the false idea of equality,
and that they falsify anthropology to create the destructive idea that all
races are created equal. There is no empirical evidence for these claims,
and they are not even based on a cursory understanding of the history of
social movements, the development of political ideas, or the actual role of
scholarship in society.
Within this discourse, MacDonald tries to explain away the Holocaust itself
as simply the consequence of Jews antagonizing Europeans. He argues that
Jews do not necessarily "conspire" to control investment banks and the
media, it is simply their cultural "in grouping," self-selection and desire
to cheat non-Jews that has allowed for their power structures.
In his follow-up book, Understanding Jewish Influence, MacDonald blames
Jewish activism for opening the borders to immigrants:
"The idea that any sort of exclusionary thinking on the part of Americans --
and especially European Americans as a majority group -- leads inexorably to
a Holocaust for Jews is not the only reason why Jewish organizations still
favor mass immigration," writes MacDonald, attempting to argue that
left-leaning social movements are driven by Jewish ethnic interests. "I have
identified two others as well: The belief that greater diversity makes Jews
safer and an intense sense of historical grievance against the traditional
peoples and culture of the United States and Europe."
MacDonald's theories require a sense of "ethnic determination," the idea
that genetic programming drives the national behavior. He argues that
non-Jewish whites are victims of this Jewish-controlled mass immigration and
"globalism" because of their "pathological altruism," which supposedly
forces them to be too trusting. Non-Jewish Europeans, he says, developed a
morality based on "high-trust societies" in which people in the community
had each other's best interests at heart.
These ideas all root themselves in complex arguments meant at maintaining
negative qualities for non-whites, usually at the cost of evidence and
consistency. Anti-Semitic theorists like MacDonald describe Jews as
conniving people who destroy cultures with their pernicious liberalism but
are also nationalist in the development of Israel (an inaccurate
representation of Jewish relations to Israel, which run the political
gamut). There is no denying the role of nationalism in stoking the state of
Israel's abuses against the Palestinian people. However, anti-Semitic
theorists tend to erase the plight of Palestinians and instead focus on
portraying acts of power-seeking as inherently Jewish. Many such
anti-Semites could be characterized as "Zionist" themselves, as they'd
rather see Jews in Israel than in the US or Europe.
This argument is at the heart of the alt-right: the idea that race and
ethnicity determine destiny. Whereas Karl Marx argued that history was the
story of class antagonisms, the alt-right professes that all politics are
ones of ethnic conflict and identity. Alt-right theorists like MacDonald see
Europe as a direct result of what they see as the evolutionary qualities of
white people. They believe that Jews are not of that history; they have
their own identity and genetic background. Of course, non-European Jews are
erased in this equation.
While for some members of the alt-right an adherence to Holocaust denial may
have been replaced with a theory of "Jewish power," the alt-right is
essentially split on revisionism. Mike Enoch, the loud host of the Daily
Shoah has said about the Holocaust and climate change that he's a "denier
either way." Many of these outlets joke about the poison gas Zyklon B and
the Buchenwald concentration camp, which is something that apologists like
Milo Yiannopoulos often say are just a joke meant at riling up the "social
justice warriors." Holocaust denial is growing in these circles, and where
it is absent, it has been replaced by pernicious views on Jewish suffering:
that it is justified, or that it doesn't matter.
While MacDonald's work may sound like the rantings of a discredited
academic, they have become the cornerstone for the alt-right's understanding
of the centrality of the "global Jew" in world affairs. What MacDonald did
was finally develop an academic narrative to explain what they have all been
screaming about for decades, consolidating various theories into a single
secular stream of "logic."
The Alt-Right's Rising Interest in Fascist Spirituality
Though pseudo-science has been the critical key to the alt-right's
ideological tool chest, the influx of new people and the rediscovery of
nationalist themes have allowed many of the more bizarre annals of 20th
century fascism to make a resurgence. Some Neoreactionaries, adherents of
one distinct branch of the alt-right, argue that contemporary Judaism should
be seen as a form of Kabbalistic Gnosticism in which "degeneracy" is
supposedly sacrosanct. They offer this explanation to back their
anti-Semitic conviction that all Jews are bent on destroying decency,
honesty and the family.
Meanwhile, the Italian reactionary Julius Evola has been resurrected as an
important philosopher to the alt-right. He believed that inequality was a
sacrament, that society needed to be stratified from the top down, and that
white Europeans had impulses toward Faustian greatness, whereas people in
the global South had impulses toward degraded femininity. Within this
framework, he depicted Jews as a pernicious force that was particularly
destructive when secularized. His work, especially his use of the Vedic
prophecies to argue that we are in a global "Dark Age," have become one of
the key understandings of the world for the alt-right and its hangers-on.
They argue that Jews have an evil soul that must be relegated out of white
society if Europeans are ever to achieve greatness.
The "Hindu-Nazi priestess" Savitri Devi and esoteric Hitlerist Miguel
Serrano have also seen a renewed importance within the alt-right. The Daily
Shoah has created an open forum for various takes on this anti-Semitism,
ranging from the biological to the spiritual. The joke that the God of the
Torah is a "Volcano demon" comes from the notion that Jehovah is a demiurgic
demon coming from an evil lesser race emerging from the desert. Here they
present Jews as perverting Western man with their despicable values in the
form of Christianity, which is simply the universalization of their "Jewish
God." While it is debatable whether more than a handful of hardcore
alt-right enthusiasts literally believes this, there is an effort to see
this as a real metaphor for the role of Jews in society.
Hatred That Echoes Through Time
After Hillary Clinton's campaign speech naming the alt-right, a slew of
articles tried to make sense of it and its links to people like Breitbart
provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos or Vice Magazine founder Gavin McInnes. The
Jewish news website Forward ran an article by Joshua Seidel, who claimed to
be both Jewish and a member of the alt-right, citing his support for Trump
and opposition to immigration as the reason. This led to an angry flurry
from the core of the alt-right, who were angry that a Jewish writer was
claiming to be one of them. The Right Stuff put out an article saying that
the key points of the alt-right are opposition to immigration, no globalist
elites, "natural" gender roles and anti-Semitism. Lawrence Murray from the
same blog again stated this opinion in his own outline of the alt-right,
saying, "Jewish elites are opposed to our entire program."
In article after article, interview after interview, the alt-right stated
that first and foremost, their movement was about the "reality of race" and
the "problem of Jews."
Unlike the neo-Nazis who have attempted to gun down children at Jewish
community centers, most of the alt-right's actual behavior has been
relegated to online trolling and endless blog rolls. In an attempt to put
their anti-Semitic theories into practice, they "name the Jew" by calling
out commentators with Jewish-sounding last names. The most well-known of
these attempts has been the "echo," where podcasters make echo sounds when
saying Jewish last names (or anything they think is Jewish in character),
and evoke echoes in text by using three parentheses around names to indicate
their possible Jewish origin. This culminated when a member of the Right
Stuff's elite message board created a Google Chrome plug-in that added the
parenthesis to names thought to be Jewish. This app, called the Coincidence
Detector, was supposed to show how prevalent Jews are among "elites."
Trump's Connection With the Alt-Right
Trump's connection with the alt-right has been covert yet ongoing, and his
appointment of Bannon as his chief White House strategist and senior
counselor has helped cement the alt-right's influence in his administration.
Bannon himself, who has said that he turned Breitbart into a platform for
the alt-right, seems more of the alt-lite variety, mainstreaming the
alt-right's fascist ideas without publically committing to every part of
their ideological platform. The alt-right simply makes up a vocal (and
possibly influential) part of Trump's base because his reactionary rhetoric
has turned his campaign into a de facto referendum on white identity, and
that is likely to continue as he takes power in January.
Donald Trump Jr., who has been one of his father's most committed
campaigners, was interviewed on the white nationalist radio show Political
Cesspool. He has retweeted alt-right leaders Vox Day and Kevin MacDonald on
Twitter, which may not be that surprising, since he ported over a Daily
Shoah joke by saying he was "warming up the gas chamber" for cheating
Republicans. Trump himself has retweeted the words of Twitter users like
White Genocide, whose name is a reference to the alt-right meme that there
is a genocide against Europeans taking place. The white nationalist American
Freedom Party was successful in sending in delegates for Trump in
California, as well as funding robocalls in Iowa, where American
Renaissance's Jared Taylor urged support for Trump.
Throughout his campaign, Trump has employed the loudest racially charged dog
whistle we have heard since the 1988 Willie Horton ads, and the alt-right is
able to hear loud and clear that it is their time to shine. Trump himself
may or may not actually agree with these points; real ideological positions
themselves seem irrelevant to him personally. Instead, his "talk radio"
style right-populism is just what the alt-right needs to make their message
of racial separatism and Semitic scapegoating palatable, and with Trump
laying the groundwork, the "shitlords" will take the public the rest of the
way.
The alt-right's anti-Semitism is not a new animal, but one that simply ports
over Nazi propaganda to sleek graphic design and snarky audio skits. This
rebranding has allowed the alt-right to be seen as iconoclastic, opposed to
"political correctness" and somewhat conservative, all of which is a
mischaracterization. It is not a situation in which a few extremists have
given the alt-right a "bad name," but rather a situation in which a few
moderates have added their name to a fascist movement. It is critical to see
the alt-right simply as the latest stage in a white nationalist project that
goes through various attempts at messaging, rhetoric and appearance.
Copyright, Truthout. May not be reprinted without permission.
Shane Burley
Shane Burley is a writer, filmmaker and organizer based in Portland, Oregon.
His work has been featured in places like In These Times, Labor Notes,
Counterpunch, Waging Nonviolence and Roar Magazine. He contributed a chapter
on anti-foreclosure activism to the recent AK Press book The End of the
World as We Know It?, and his most recent documentary film is on the
intersection of Occupy Wall Street and the housing justice movement.
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