The alt-right in America has dropped off many peoples’ radars during the 2024 election cycle. Many important issues on the ballot—such as the conflict between Israel and Palestine, abortion, and democracy as a whole—have taken precedent, but the alt-right hasn’t disappeared. As defined by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), “the Alternative Right, commonly known as the ‘alt-right,’ is a set of far-right ideologies, groups and individuals whose core belief is that ‘white identity’ is under attack by multicultural forces using ‘political correctness’ and ‘social justice’ to undermine white people and ‘their’ civilization.” The movement, which has become a popular force in the past decade, is also characterized by its anti-immigrant sentiments, as well as reactionary views on gender and race. It’s important to be aware of the alt-right due to their influence on the American political climate; the public specifically needs to be aware of the tactics they use to legitimize their bigotry.
To understand the modern alt-right, understanding the their foundations is important. The movement was founded in 2013 when the Nazis went online. By this, I’m talking about the shift from formal hate organizations to online communities and forums, which created a different path towards radicalization for many people. Before this shift, hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan often held public rallies, marches, as well as cross-burnings to encourage recruitment tools demonstrate their ideology. Recruitment also happened in person through family, friends, or other social circles. Events, local meetings, or informal social networks were vital for expanding their groups. This was historically how the alt-right grew, but the internet completely changed their strategy.
According to Mark Weitzman, the director of the task force against hate and terrorism at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, “Hate groups began using the Web from the very beginning, even before most people had access to the Web in their homes.” This shift came into full effect during the early 2010s, specifically in 2013. Hate groups dropped from 1,007 in 2012 to 784 in 2014 (22%), and Patriot groups dropped from 1,360 in 2012 to 874 in 2014 (36%). Meanwhile, hate crimes dropped from 5,796 in 2012 to 5,479 in 2014, only a 5% decrease. It is clear that these bigoted views were not shrinking in popularity, but rather decentralizing—a direct result of the alt-right decentralizing the delivery of their messaging and recruitment.
A primary strategy by the alt-right is to create online communities where vulnerable people—primarily straight, cis white men who feel victimized by society or are in a transitional period in their life—were likely to stumble into due to said communities’ proximity to bases popular among target demographics, such as video gaming or anime (Gamergate). This came with several advantages to hate groups and their leaders, as it protected hate groups from the cycle of getting public attention, making allies in conservative media, growing their numbers, and then disgracing themselves in the public eye by committing violence or other unbecoming actions against minority groups. Consequently, this insulated figureheads from their audience, ensuring less responsibility was accorded to leaders if members committed violence. The alt-right did, however, lose the control that a formal organization typically has over its members.
In the process of online radicalization, the alt-right gained significant attention, most notably from events like the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville. After this surge of popularity, the movement tried to establish a more formal organization process, one that mirrored the structure of far-right movements in the past. However, this was a massive failure in the eyes of the public. In the case of Charlottesville, Spencer and Yiannapolis’ college circuits, and January 6th, we saw a decline in hate groups from 2019-2021 again. Their mainstream savior, Donald Trump, had lost, and a lot of prominent alt-right leaders involved were facing legal trouble after their attempted insurrection.
Still, this was not an indication of alt-right ideas fading from the mainstream. Arguably, the alt-right was largely successful in its mission. Despite its collapse at the end of the 2010s, the movement had accomplished its goal of shifting the American Overton Window, or the “political possibility in the range of ideas the public is willing to consider and accept.” Now, more than ever, white supremacy, anti-LGBTQ+, and antisemitist sentiments have become normalized—especially compared to what was considered unacceptable in 2018. This was accomplished mainly online through exploiting the algorithm of platforms like YouTube and, more recently, TikTok. While a user might start with pretty tame videos about “political correctness” or critiques of feminism, they are quickly fed incrementally radical content through the platforms’ algorithms. The apps, designed to maximize engagement and watch time, inadvertently create a process known as the “alt-right pipeline.” The phrase, as well as its ideas, are encompassed very well in the abstract of “Alt-right pipeline: Individual Journeys to Extremism Online”: “Alt-righters are not instantly converted, but rather incrementally nudged along a particular medial pathway…It suggests three overlapping cognitive phases in this journey: normalization, acclimation, and dehumanization.”
Because a growing number of Americans get their news from social media, this decentralized alt-right propaganda machine is dangerously effective. A good example of the normalization that comes from such popularization is the “great replacement theory,” a conspiracy theory that claims there is a deliberate effort to replace the white population in Western countries with non-white immigrants. Large conservative media corporations such as Fox News have been actively pushing this idea through talking heads like Tucker Carlson. Studies show that these ideas have staying power in a significant portion of Republican voters, shifting ideas of what is considered normal and acceptable in our political climate. It seems that the removal and rejection of white nationalist figures on public platforms has not led to a rejection of their ideas, but rather a rebranding of them into more acceptable forms of populism, anti-immigration sentiment, and nationalism.
While the alt-right may have seen a decline in formal membership, its decentralized nature has allowed its ideas to become the norm in mainstream discourse and form a new front for the right. Fighting disorganized and spread-out ideologies requires new strategies that address their adaptability and infiltration into mainstream culture. With an increasingly radical Donald Trump running as the Republican Party’s nominee, the 2024 election may represent a climax for the alt-right’s influence in politics, as many of its core issues and talking points—immigration, “wokeism,” and the culture wars—have become central to right-wing platforms. Candidates with more moderate views face pressure from their own base to adopt these hardline stances, and the rhetoric around these issues continues to escalate. Even if some alt-right figures themselves deplatformed or sidelined, their ideas remain potent, and 2024 could be the moment when they fully manifest in electoral success. This is why it is so important to still have dialogue about the alt-right, especially in the midst of the coming election.
***
This article was edited by Alexa Davidson and Angeline Wu.
