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Did the alt-right ever even exist? I remember when Trump first came on the scene and people were freaking out, there were articles everywhere and people making tons of YouTube videos about the alt-right and how they were recruiting people. Nobody ever asked the question recruiting them to what? Could you even join the alt-right?
Seriously, from what I can gather, the alt-right was basically some podcast networks (TRS) and then Richard Spencer's tiny organization. His NPI conferences had maybe 500 people. Other so called members of the alt-right like Jared Taylor had already been around for decades with American Renaissance. Even when they got together at their biggest event with Unite the Right in Charlottesville, there were barely 1,000 of them and they were vastly outnumbered by counter-protesters. And a bunch of these were old school white nationalists like David Duke who came on the scene over 30 years before that.
As far as I can tell, nobody has ever seen or heard of a gathering of more than 1,000 of them together at one time. There is no alt-right to join or be recruited to and is not an organization. It has no leader or leaders. It basically doesn't exist. The mainstream media and Democrats basically made it up either as a psyop or just convinced themselves that it exists. It's probably a mix of both. This wasn't like recruiters online targeting vulnerable Muslim kids to go fight for ISIS where you could go literally join ISIS which was an organization that actually controlled land and had an army. You join the alt-right and do what exactly? Shitpost on 4chan and post edgy memes on Twitter?
Their strongest argument probably is that there were some lone wold terrorist attacks. But there were already lone wolf white nationalist attacks before Trump like the OKC bombing. And none of the closest things to leaders of the alt-right had ever committed and violence as far as I can tell. And I would argue that the mainstream media's reporting on this issue did much more to create lone wolf shooters who they gaslit into thinking we were on the cusp of a race war and gassing the Jews than any alt-right "recruiters" did.
Am I crazy here? My theory is that the Hillary Clinton campaign saw they were a good boogeyman to scare people about Trump and then the media ran with it and people convinced themselves of something on a societal level that never even existed. It's actually insane if you really think about it.
My memories circa 2015 was that the "alt-right" was huge. But it was also a big tent. It was everyone who ever complained about RINO's in congress. It was every conservative who found themselves alienated by the GOP's inability to actually move the football in their direction, no matter how much the voter's rewarded them with extra seats and positions. It was a large group of people self identifying, and proudly supporting Trump as an outside candidate, because "alt-right" sounded cool. Like alt-rock.
Then the reveal/hit pieces went out about how Jared Taylor coined the phrase and was trying to own the movement and claim it was all about white nationalism. And it all evaporated like a fart in the wind. Nobody changed their beliefs, or support, IMHO. But when the movement was explicitly made about white nationalism, people just wandered away from the label and never came back.
Even with the Unite the Right rally, I remember seeing a lot of chatter telling people to stay away. There was the element of it being a protest to preserve history, but also the much darker side of it being about white nationalism. A lot of influential conservative accounts told people not to go because of that. There were accusations even then it was a psy-op to tar and feather all conservatives as white nationalist.
Ironic that it happened regardless.
I don't know how much of this is backed up by any record. These are my personal recollections based on people I saw on social media, and memes getting flung around.
Except that he didn't. Paul Gottfried did.
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