What is the alt-right? What do they believe, and how did they take
center stage in the American social and political consciousness?
From a loose
movement that lurked in the shadows in the early 2000s, the alt-right
has achieved a level of visibility that has allowed it to expand
significantly throughout America’s cultural, political, and digital
landscapes. Racist, sexist, and homophobic beliefs that were
previously unspeakable have become commonplace, normalized, and
accepted—endangering American democracy and society as a whole. Yet
in order to dismantle the destructive movement that has invaded our
public consciousness, we must first understand the core beliefs that
drive the alt-right.
To help guide us
through the contemporary moment, historian Alexandra Minna Stern
excavates the alt-right memes and tropes that have erupted online and
explores the alt-right’s central texts, narratives, constructs, and
insider language. She digs to the root of the alt-right’s
motivations: their deep-seated fear of an oncoming “white genocide”
that can only be remedied through swift and aggressive action to
reclaim white power. As the group makes concerted efforts to cast off
the vestiges of neo-Nazism and normalize their appearance and their
beliefs, the alt-right and their ideas can be hard to recognize.
Through careful analysis, Stern brings awareness to the underlying
concepts that guide the alt-right and animate its overlapping forms
of racism, xenophobia, transphobia, and anti-egalitarianism. She
explains the key ideas of “red-pilling,” strategic trolling,
gender essentialism, and the alt-right’s ultimate fantasy: a future
where minorities have been removed and “cleansed” from the body
politic and a white ethnostate is established in the United States.
By unearthing the hidden mechanisms that power white nationalism,
Stern reveals just how pervasive this movement truly is.