by George Hawley
If knowing your enemy is an important tactic for mainstream political parties to follow, then George Hawley’s Making Sense of the Alt-Right is an important book for anyone hoping to defeat them at the ballot box. The author by no means endorses the alt-right. But as a professor of political science deep in the Bible Belt, he was in an ideal position to observe their influence over the last several years. Hawley correctly predicted Donald Trump’s 2016 upset victory and even called the electoral college results in 48 out of 50 states.
In the book, Hawley reviews that long-shot prediction, writing that it was not widely shared by his fellow professors in the political science department at the University of Alabama, and then deftly turns to the origins, groups, goals, and tactics used by the alt-right to push old-school white supremacy under a shiny, new, media-savvy banner aimed at disaffected whites of all ages and particularly tailored to millennials in the U.S. and Europe.
Right off the bat some of the methods used and observations made quickly dispel many stereotypes found in other articles on the subject. Note that in the review below, the names and websites of these racist groups have been intentionally withheld, but those important details are readily available in the book.
Early on the author defines important terms for later use. For example, paleo-conservatives vs. neo-conservatives are neatly classified with examples of each, and the book notes how the rift between them grew independently from what we now call the alt-right. But white nationalism is here now, ubiquitous all over the internet. In fact, if you read mainstream media articles about politics that have a comments section, odds are you’ve almost certainly seen their handiwork. What sets the alt-right apart from its conservative cohorts is white identity politics, i.e., racism, and this brand of racism includes a heaping helping of sexism, too. Trump is their man, he and his coterie the standard bearers of racism. They don’t care if he’s religious, or a moron, or about the past fealty and conservative cred of any stalwart Republican who gets in his crosshairs, as long as he’s riffing on minorities.
An example of tactics: whereas a traditional white supremacist might deny the Holocaust ever happened and throw out the usual, widely debunked nuggets of misinformation, a trained alt-right troll—and they are indeed carefully trained—might make jokes about it, use exaggerations, put in smiley faces, and otherwise downplay the more vile, controversial elements. Indeed, effective trolling and a robust presence outside of the usual creepy online haunts are a big part of what the alt-right eagerly encourages.
The author touches on Europe, where some of the groups fitting under the sprawling alt-right banner are actually hostile to religion. And it is there, Hawley writes, where a more traditional, less rational and more aristocratic alt-right—completely disconnected from U.S. conservatism at first—quietly flourished and soon provided guidance by example to its new American counterpart.
One thing old and new supremacists agree on, with a growing degree of traction across much of the traditional conservative caucus in the U.S. and abroad, is an open hostility toward immigration in general, with a focus on people of color and Muslim immigrants, specifically. For decades, U.S. conservatives had different and often mutually exclusive views on immigration. But after 9/11, with rising terrorist attacks abroad and an influx of Muslims into western Europe, the stage was set for immigration to become a pressure point on both sides of the Atlantic. Despite the small numbers of Muslims in the U.S., this was one of the festering sores Trump successfully inflamed during the run-up to the 2016 election.
Throughout the book, readers are introduced to various groups that have taken the lead in bending public discourse toward their goals. One of the most visible provides a sort of trolling boot camp, where they pass on the craft of trolling to to sympathetic acolytes. These creeps know exactly what they’re doing, as the book explains using their own sordid words:
“You should assume that you will never manage to convince your ideological enemies of the merit of your positions. Rather, the purpose of trolling is to convince people reading your comments of the merit … On many different web forums, lurkers out number posters by 10 to 1. The purpose of trolling is to convince those anonymous people, not the person you disagree with …” — page 74
These organizations teach how to troll with the best of them, alone or as a team, always with the primary goal of causing other readers to move on to less divisive threads and topics; convincing a lurker to consider the ideology seriously is secondary. Getting a forum shut down, or slowly dying from inactivity, is considered the important victory.
Another interesting insider point is that one of the biggest enemies of the alt-right is traditional, established conservatism. Alas, lacking modern-day William Buckleys and with mainstream pundits like George Will aging out of the discourse, the GOP has failed miserably to address this insurgency. Many rank-and-file conservatives are barely conscious that that battle is being waged, and find themselves caught up in the anti-establishment pushback so profitably leveraged by Trump and his many alt-right cronies. They are often defending the indefensible, while completely unaware—or willfully ignorant—of its unseemly, racist origins.
But make no mistake, a big part of hating on the GOP “establishment” is about getting rid of the old subtle dog whistles and platitudes of equality, and instead wearing the mark of white-identity politics openly and proudly. It’s not unlike the struggle that frayed the Democratic Party years ago during the civil rights era. Except in this case, they have the internet as their vector, and their George Wallace-type candidate, aka Donald Trump, went on to win the primary and the general election.
How will this ugly turn of events end? Clearly, that remains to be seen. The movement was already growing, and it’s now greatly emboldened by Trump’s victory. The idea that they will somehow be appeased, even by extreme measures like criminalizing Islam or locking up Black Lives Matter demonstrators, is naive at best. The book recognizes that policing internet platforms like Twitter or Facebook could deal these groups a blow. But such actions come with unintended consequences for the rest of us: hampering free speech in general, creating alt-right Constitutional martyrs to rally behind, and the ever-present risk that tightening up what’s said online is a fight that could end up in court. And, in the event the alt-right’s side prevails anywhere in any court, they will quickly promote the victory as support for their movement by the nation’s most prestigious legal institutions.
Hawley concludes that the movement has “historically suffered from a persistent problem: various chiefs with small followings have been at the throats of their (equally marginalized) competitors.” They are divided on a host of issues such as gay rights, anti-Semitism, and the role of religion within their movement. Those divisions may yield a weak spot.
But for now, there are two institutions in our democracy that can put the white-identity genie back in the bottle. One, as ably described in the book, is the mainstream right, the paleo and neo conservatives who count among their members many who are genuinely repulsed by the racist views of conservative white supremacists. Sadly, so far, GOP politicians appear to be unable or unwilling to do much about controlling the monster some of us would argue they helped jolt to life in the first place. With a few exceptions (like feuds with Sens. Bob Corker or John McCain), fear of primary challengers, fear of Trump’s base of support, and fear of how big conservative fundraisers might react has paralyzed much of that so-called establishment.
Reading between the lines and using some common sense on the problem, it seems another tried and true method for knocking these guys back down into the murky abyss they came from is the American voter. If we assume most Americans don’t secretly harbor extreme racist sentiment, and a critical mass are turned off by the hateful ideology of the alt-right regardless of prior party affiliation, there is hope in every election that this latest recursion into a racist past stalls, falls, and dies.
It’s depressing to recognize that the alt-right will probably remain a force to be reckoned with in the 2018 mid-terms, and almost certainly the 2020 presidential election to follow. Plenty of conservative wannabes will be lured into emulating Trump’s tactics. Steve Bannon is reportedly busy as a bee recruiting those kinds of clowns as fast as he can for the mid-term primaries. It’s up to the rest of us to stop them, and one way to prepare for that battle is to read a book on the topic that’s relatively short, comprehensive, and very well-written. George Hawley’s Making Sense of the Alt-Right accomplishes all of that and more.