There’s no small irony in the fact that the alt-right—the online-bred version of 21st-century white nationalism that plagues modern politics, especially in its violent terrorist manifestations—has become a global phenomenon, connected by a massive network of international rightists with a common political objective. Because its entire raison d’être is a paranoiac worldview fanatically opposed to globalism.
With The International Alt-Right: Fascism for the 21st Century? the seasoned researchers at the London-based anti-far-right organization Hope Not Hate—Patrik Hermansson, David Lawrence, Joe Mulhall, and Simon Murdoch—have compiled one of those rarities: an academic-quality text that could easily serve in a poli-sci classroom, as well as a compelling, insightful analysis of the worldwide reach of the most worrisome political development of the new millennium that is accessible to ordinary readers.
The subject couldn’t be any more urgent or compelling. Among the chief effects of the internationalization of far-right ideology is the spread of its always-attendant violence and terrorism to every corner of the world: from Halle, Germany, to El Paso, Texas, to Christchurch, New Zealand—and seemingly all parts in between.
The International Alt-Right details how the alt-right spread from its mostly online origins in the United States through its powerful ideological affinities with the European New Right and its related Identitarians, all of whom began borrowing ideas and agendas from one other, focused mainly on opposing immigration and enforcing ethnic “purity.” It also details how these movements coalesced despite core differences—the European far right is also devotedly anti-American, unlike the U.S. alt-right—and successfully fueled nationalist political movements throughout Europe, and then spread to Asia and Australia.
In addition to exploring how and by what means it has spread so widely, the text tries to grapple with aspects of the motivating psychology of the alt-right that make it so uniquely appealing to young white males in an internet/social media age. An entire chapter is devoted to the misogynist component of the alt-right, and its accompanying “incel” (involuntary celibate) culture, showing how the psychosexual components of this worldview fold neatly into the precepts of white nationalism and its toxic mentality.
There are also some surprising and useful explorations of the alt-right’s spread into Asia, particularly in Japan, where the movement has been able to exploit deep historical strands of nativism as well as a very modern kind of misogyny that gets its inspiration from anime and pornography.
And yes, the book also devotes a final chapter to Russia and its key role in all of this, a product, as the authors explain, of “the far right’s rejection of liberalism, globalism, and egalitarian and progressive ideals.” For the alt-right, Russia is the bastion of traditionalism to which they aspire. For Russia, authoritarian far-right movements elsewhere—which have received ideological, tactical, and fiduciary support from Russian interests—have been a gateway for expanding its global influence.
The International Alt-Right is part of Routledge’s Studies in Fascism and the Far Right series, and is intended primarily for an academic audience. But anyone who wants to gain an understanding of the dark waters in which we are all swimming will find the book both accessible and riveting—not to mention a bit frightening.