With all things Trump, the Republican Party sowed the seeds for his coming. Whether it was buying into conspiracy theories about climate change, eroding trust in government for fun and profit, or turning Benghazi and emails into industries, Republicans laid out a table ready for someone who was ready to take the next step. Most of all, they pulled out a chair for someone who was willing to take advantage of all they had done to create the idea that minorities—both racial and religious—were somehow eroding Americas status as a very special snowflake.
All Donald Trump did was sit down … and invite a few friends.
"I urge all readers of this site to do whatever they can to make Donald Trump President," wrote Andrew Anglin, publisher of the neo-Nazi site Daily Stormer, 12 days later. Anglin, a 32-year-old skinhead who wears an Aryan "Black Sun" tattoo on his chest and riffs about the inferior "biological nature" of black people, hailed Trump as "the only candidate who is even talking about anything at all that matters."
Anglin took an early seat at the table, but the rest of the alt-right wasn’t far behind. Leaders of anti-immigrant sites, white nationalist sites, sites dedicated to religious bigotry, they all heard Trump’s call.
Trump "may be the last hope for a president who would be good for white people," remarked Jared Taylor, who runs a white nationalist website called American Renaissance and once founded a think tank dedicated to "scientifically" proving white superiority. Taylor told us that Trump was the first presidential candidate from a major party ever to earn his support because Trump "is talking about policies that would slow the dispossession of whites. That is something that is very important to me and to all racially conscious white people."
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There is no longer a fringe on the right. There’s just … the right. Republicans have gotten away previously with passively accepting the support of the most extreme, but that’s not going to cut it from now on. David Duke is no longer an outsider. He’s their core.
Trump fever quickly spread: Other extremists new to presidential politics openly endorsed Trump, including Don Black, a former grand dragon of the Knights of the Ku Klux Klan and founder of the neo-Nazi site Stormfront; Rocky Suhayda, chair of the American Nazi Party; and Rachel Pendergraft, a national organizer for the Knights Party, the successor to David Duke's Knights of the Ku Klux Klan. Richard Spencer, an emerging leader among a new generation of white nationalists known as the "alt right," declared that Trump "loves white people."
The excitement on the alt-right is still rising as every speech he delivers proves that Trump is one of them, especially after his Thursday speech.
Racist Radio Host David Duke Praises Trump's "Incredible Speech," Rails Against "Jewish Supremacists" And "Jewish Radicals" Who Are Waging A “Vicious Attack Against Trump.” Duke, a former leader of the Klu Klux Klan and current Republican Louisiana Senate candidate, used his radio show to call Trump’s speech “maybe the strongest, most all out speech concerning the war that is being waged against us and the war that is being waged by the oligarchs who control the international banks and the globalists” before claiming “Jewish supremacists” are using their control of the media and other institutions to attack Trump:
Trump picked up every thread that Republicans had already been using, and used them to drag the alt-right to the center of the Republican Party. Now the most extreme among that group are anticipating their time in the sun.
"The success of the Trump campaign just proves that our views resonate with millions," Pendergraft told us. "They may not be ready for the Ku Klux Klan yet, but as anti-white hatred escalates, they will."