Influences The alt-right had various ideological forebears. The idea of
white supremacy had been dominant across U.S. political discourse throughout the 19th and early 20th centuries. After
World War II, it was increasingly repudiated and relegated to the far-right of the country's political spectrum. Far-right groups retaining such ideas—such as
George Lincoln Rockwell's American Nazi Party and
William Luther Pierce's
National Alliance—remained marginal. By the 1990s, white supremacism was largely confined to
neo-Nazi and
Ku Klux Klan (KKK) groups, although its ideologues wanted to return it to the mainstream. That decade, several white supremacists reformulated their ideas as
white nationalism, through which they presented themselves not as seeking to dominate non-white racial groups but rather as lobbying for the interests of
European Americans in a similar way to how civil rights groups lobbied for the rights of
African Americans and
Hispanic Americans. Although white nationalists often distanced themselves from white supremacism, white supremacist sentiment remained prevalent in white nationalist writings. became a revered figure among the alt-right; events organized by his American Renaissance group were attended by many alt-right members. American white nationalists believed that the United States had been created as a nation explicitly for white people of European descent and that it should remain that way. Many called for the formation of an explicitly
white ethnostate. Seeking to distance themselves from the violent,
skinhead image of neo-Nazi and KKK groups, several white nationalist ideologues—namely
Jared Taylor,
Peter Brimelow, and
Kevin B. MacDonald—sought to cultivate an image of respectability and intellectualism through which to promote their views. Hawley later termed their ideology "highbrow white nationalism", and noted its particular influence on the alt-right. Taylor, for instance, became a revered figure in alt-right circles. Under the
Republican presidency of George W. Bush in the 2000s, the white nationalist movement focused largely on criticizing
conservatives rather than
liberals, accusing them of betraying white Americans. In that period, they drew increasingly on the
conspiracy theories that had been generated by the
Patriot movement since the 1990s; online, the white nationalist and Patriot movements increasingly converged. Following the
election of
Democratic Party candidate
Barack Obama to the
presidency in 2008—making him the first black president of the country—the world-views of various right-wing movements, including white supremacists, Patriots, and
Tea Partiers, increasingly began to coalesce, in part due to a shared racial animus against Obama. According to Tait, during the rise of the Tea Party movement and
Mitt Romney's
2012 presidential campaign, there were "cultural and economic shifts that created the conditions for a parallel shift in right-wing politics.", including
changing demographics, the rise of the Internet and social media giving a significant platform to more extreme right-wing voices that were previously marginalized by "responsible conservative gatekeepers", the perceived failure of the
war on terror led by
neoconservatives, the
Obergefell v. Hodges Supreme Court decision that legalized
same-sex marriage and undermined
social conservatism, the
2008 Great Recession that undermined conservatives' support of the free market, and men with certain beliefs about gender roles "feeling traditionally male spaces were being eroded." and facing competition in the economy from "highly educated women". All of these factors also lead to "the collapse of intellectual and political guardrails on the right. The alt-right drew upon several older currents of right-wing thought. One was the
Nouvelle Droite, a far-right movement that originated in 1960s France before spreading elsewhere in Europe. Many alt-rightists adopted the Nouvelle Droite's views on pursuing long-term cultural change through "
metapolitical" strategies; it thereby shares similarities with European
identitarianism, which also draws upon the Nouvelle Droite. The alt-right also exhibited similarities with the
paleoconservative movement which emerged in the U.S. during the 1980s. Both opposed
neoconservatism and expressed similar positions on restricting immigration and supporting an openly nationalistic foreign policy; however, unlike the alt-right, the paleoconservatives were typically closely aligned to Christianity and wanted to reform the conservative movement rather than destroy it. Certain paleoconservatives, such as
Samuel T. Francis, became especially close to white nationalism. There were also links between the
American right-libertarian movement and the alt-right, despite libertarianism's general condemnation of
identity politics and
collectivism. Many senior alt-rightists previously considered themselves libertarians, and
right-libertarian theorist
Murray Rothbard has been cited as a particular link between the two movements due to his staunch anti-egalitarianism and support for ideas about differing IQ levels among racial groups. Also cited in connection with the alt-right was the
Dark Enlightenment, or neo-
reactionary movement, which emerged online in the 2000s, pursuing an anti-egalitarian message. This movement intersected with the alt-right; many individuals identified with both movements. The Dark Enlightenment however was not white nationalist, deeming the latter insufficiently elitist. According to Dean, in the 1990s, there were "alt-right"
Usenet groups that consisted of fringe libertarians,
anarcho-capitalists, and fans of American writer and philosopher
Ayn Rand, who advocated for the abolition of the state in favor of
private property and markets.
2008–2014: Origins According to Hawley, the alt-right began in 2008. In November of that year, the paleoconservative ideologue and academic
Paul Gottfried gave a talk at his H. L. Mencken Club in
Baltimore. Although the talk was titled "The Decline and Rise of the Alternative Right", it did not contain the phrase "alternative right" itself. Gottfried observed that, as the paleoconservative movement declined, a new cohort of young right-wingers were rising to take its place in challenging the neoconservative ideology then dominant in the Republican Party and broader U.S. conservative movement. claimed to have coined the term "alternative right" in 2008. One of those endorsing Gottfried's idea was fellow paleoconservative
Richard B. Spencer. Born in 1978 to a wealthy family and raised in
Dallas,
Texas, in 2007, Spencer had dropped out of his PhD programme at
Duke University to take up a position at
The American Conservative magazine. Spencer claimed he coined the term "alternative right" for the lecture's title, although Gottfried maintained that they were its joint creators. As "alternative right" became associated increasingly with white nationalism in subsequent years, Gottfried distanced himself from it. After
The American Conservative fired Spencer, in 2008 he became managing director of
Taki Theodoracopulos's right-wing website ''
Taki's Magazine. The website initially contained contributions largely from paleoconservatives and right-libertarians, but under Spencer also gave space to white nationalists like Taylor. In 2009, Spencer used the term "alternative right" in the title of an article by white nationalist Kevin DeAnna. By 2010, Spencer had moved fully from paleoconservatism to white nationalism, although various later press sources instead called him a white supremacist. Leaving Taki's Magazine
, in March 2010, Spencer launched The Alternative Right
webzine. Early issues featured articles by white nationalists like Taylor and MacDonald as well as the Heathen Stephen McNallen. Spencer noted that "if you look at the initial articles for AlternativeRight.com'', that was the first stage of the Alt-Right really coming into its own".
AlternativeRight.com consisted primarily of short essays, covering a range of political and cultural issues. Many of these reflected the influence of the French Nouvelle Droite, although this declined as the alt-right grew. Spencer later stated that he wanted to create a movement distinct from the
white power image of neo-Nazi and KKK groups, noting that their approach to white nationalism was "a total nonstarter. No one outside a hardcore coterie would identify with it". In 2011, Spencer became the head of the white nationalist
National Policy Institute and launched the
Radix Journal to promote his views; in 2012, he stepped down from the
AlternativeRight website and took it offline in December 2013. By that year, Spencer was expressing ambivalence about the "alternative right" label; he preferred to be called an "identitarian". According to Hawley, the alt-right was "an outgrowth of Internet troll culture", with Hermansson et al observing that "Online Antagonistic Communities" were key to the formation of the alt-right as a distinct movement. The alt-right's emergence was marked by the online
gamergate controversy of 2014, in which some gamers harassed those promoting
feminism within the gaming scene and voiced opposition towards progressivism in the video game industry. According to the journalist
David Neiwert, Gamergate "heralded the rise of the alt-right and provided an early sketch of its primary features: an Internet presence beset by digital trolls, unbridled conspiracism, angry-white-male-identity victimization culture, and, ultimately, open racism, antisemitism, ethnic hatred, misogyny, and sexual and gender paranoia". Gamergate politicized many young people, especially males, in opposition to the perceived
culture war being waged by leftists. Through their shared opposition to political correctness, feminism, and multiculturalism,
chan culture built a link to the alt-right. By 2015, the alt-right had gained significant momentum as an online movement, attracting support on
social media and
internet forums. Notable promoters of the alt-right included Spencer,
Vox Day, and
Brittany Pettibone. Earlier white nationalist thinkers were also characterized as alt-right thinkers, among them Taylor, and MacDonald. and the journalist Mike Wendling termed
Breitbart "the chief popular media amplifier of alt-right ideas". In March 2016, the writers Allum Bokhari and
Milo Yiannopoulos published an article in
Breitbart discussing the alt-right. They downplayed its most extreme elements and championed its counter-cultural value. Bokhari and Yiannopoulos' piece was subsequently widely cited in the mainstream press, with Hawley describing it as "the most sympathetic portrayal of the movement to appear in a major media venue to date". Many alt-rightists responded negatively to Bokhari and Yiannopoulos' article;
The Daily Stormer referred to it as "the Product of a Degenerate Homosexual and an Ethnic Mongrel". Many press sources subsequently termed Yiannopoulos "alt-right". This was rejected both by Hawley, and by alt-rightists; on
Occidental Dissent, Griffin asked: "What the hell does Milo Yiannopoulos—a Jewish homosexual who boasts about carrying on interracial relationships with black men—have to do with us?" Other observers instead labeled Yiannopoulos "alt-light" or "alt-lite", a term also applied to rightists like
Mike Cernovich and
Gavin McInnes. McInnes clarified his understanding of the difference between the alt-right and alt-lite by explaining that while the former focused on the white race, the latter welcomed individuals of any racial background who shared its belief in the superiority of
Western culture.
Donald Trump 2016 presidential campaign and election , although he distanced himself from the movement. In June 2015, billionaire businessman
Donald Trump announced plans to campaign to become the Republican nominee for the
2016 presidential election, attracting the interest of alt-rightists as well as from white nationalists more broadly, neo-Nazis, KKK groups, and the Patriot movement. Vocal in their support for
Trump's campaign, this cause energized the alt-right and gave them the opportunity for a broader audience. Niewert observed that "Trump was the gateway drug for the alt-right", with many individuals learning of the movement through their interest in Trump. Ideologically, the alt-right remained "far to Trump's right", and Trump himself had little understanding of the movement. Tait argued that the mainstream media largely "overstate[d] the connection" between Trump and the alt-right. The alt-righter
RamZPaul rejoiced, retweeting Trump's piece with the comment: "Trump watches and is influenced by the Alt Right". Over coming months, Trump retweeted a second tweet that had "#WhiteGenocide" as a hashtag as well as sharing other tweets issued by white supremacists. The alt-right saw this as further evidence that Trump was their champion. In August 2016, Trump appointed Bannon to lead his election campaign. This was swiftly condemned in a
Reno, Nevada speech given by the Democratic Party's nominee for the presidency,
Hillary Clinton. She highlighted Bannon's claim that
Breitbart was "the platform for the alt-right", describing the movement as "an emerging racist ideology" and warning that "a fringe element has effectively taken over the Republican Party". Attacking the alt-right as "racist ideas[...] anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, anti-women ideas", she accused Trump of taking them "mainstream". Many Trump supporters adopted the moniker of "deplorables", and the term was widely used on memes that the alt-right promoted online. In September, Spencer, Taylor, and Peter Brimelow held a press conference in Washington DC to explain their goals. When Trump won the election in November, the alt-right's response was generally triumphalist and self-congratulatory. Anglin stated: "Make no mistake about it: we did this. If it were not for us, it wouldn't have been possible"; Spencer tweeted that "The Alt-Right has been declared the winner... We're the establishment now". Alt-rightists were generally supportive of Trump's decision to appoint Bannon his chief strategist, and
Jeff Sessions his
attorney general. While aware that Trump would not pursue a white nationalist agenda, the alt-right hoped to pull him further to the right, taking hardline positions that made him look more moderate, and thus shifting mainstream discourse rightward.
After Trump's election Wendling suggested that Trump's election signaled "the beginning of the end" for the alt-right, with the movement's growth stalling from that point. Celebrating Trump's victory, Spencer held a November meeting in Washington D.C. in which he stated that he thought that he had "a psychic connection, a deeper connection with Donald Trump, in a way we simply do not have with most Republicans". He ended the conference by declaring "Hail Trump! Hail our people! Hail victory!", to which various attendees responded with
Nazi salutes and chanting. This attracted significant press attention. When questioned on the incident, Spencer stated that the salutes were given "in a spirit of irony and exuberance". Later that month, Trump was asked about the alt-right in an interview with
The New York Times. He responded: "I don't want to energize the group, and I disavow the group". This rejection angered many alt-rightists. In April 2017, many alt-rightists criticized Trump's order to launch the
Shayrat missile strike against Syrian military targets; like many of those who had supported him, they believed he was going back on his promise of a more non-interventionist foreign policy in the Middle East. Hawley noted that the alt-right's influence on the Trump administration was "negligible". However, press sources alleged that several appointments within the
Trump administration were linked to the alt-right, including Senior Advisor to the President
Stephen Miller, National Security Advisor
Michael Flynn, Deputy Assistant to the President
Sebastian Gorka, Special Assistant to the President
Julia Hahn, and speechwriter
Darren Beattie. After Trump's election, the alt-right also supported the unsuccessful campaigns of several other Republicans, including
Roy Moore. Some Republican candidates who were alleged to have alt-right links also ran for office, among them
Paul Nehlen,
Corey Stewart,
Josh Mandel, and
Joe Arpaio. In 2016, Twitter began closing alt-right accounts it regarded as engaging in abuse or harassment; among those closed were the accounts of Spencer and his NPI. In February 2017, Reddit then closed down the "r/altright" subreddit after its participants were found to have breached its policy prohibiting
doxing.
Facebook followed by shutting down Spencer's pages on its platform in April 2018. In January 2017, Spencer launched a new website,
Altright.com, which combined the efforts of the
Arktos publishing company and the
Red Ice video and radio network.
Unite the Right rally and its aftermath In August 2017, the
Unite the Right rally took place in
Charlottesville, Virginia, bringing together alt-rightists with members of other far-right movements. Many alt-rightists thought that the rally would mark a turning point in the transformation of their movement from an online phenomenon into a street-based one. At altright.com, editor Vincent Law for instance predicted before the event took place that "People will talk about Charlottesville as a turning point". However, the event and its aftermath proved demoralizing for many in the movement. Various violent acts took place at the rally. An African-American man,
DeAndre Harris, was assaulted by demonstrators, while Richard W. Preston, an
Imperial Wizard for the
Maryland-based Confederate White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, fired a gun towards counter-protesters. One participant in the rally, a 20-year-old from
Ohio named
James Alex Fields Jr.,
rammed his car into counter-protesters, killing 32-year old Heather D. Heyer and injuring 35 others. Although Spencer condemned the killing, other alt-rightists celebrated it. Fields was arrested and later sentenced to life in prison. The car ramming incident brought much negative publicity to the event and its participants, earning the alt-right a reputation for violence. which killed one person and injured 35 Various commentators and politicians, including Sessions, labelled Fields' ramming attack "
domestic terrorism". Trump claimed that there were "some very fine people on both sides" of the Charlottesville protests, stating that what he called the "alt-left" bore some responsibility for the violence. Spencer stated that he was "really proud" of the president for those comments. Amid criticism of his comments, Trump added his view that "racism is evil" and that "those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs". Various alt-rightists who attended the rally experienced personal and legal repercussions for their involvement; one attendee, the U.S. Marine Vasillios Pistolis, was for instance court-martialled. Internet service providers and social media websites subsequently terminated many alt-right accounts and sites. Prominent figures like Spencer became reticent about organizing further public protests. He experimented with the use of flash demonstrations, returning to Charlottesville with a much smaller group for an unannounced protest in October. Unite the Right exacerbated tensions between the alt-right and the alt-lite;
Breitbart distanced itself from the alt-right, as did Yiannopoulos, who insisted he had "nothing in common" with Spencer.
2017–2018: decline The alt-right significantly declined in 2017 and 2018. This happened for multiple reasons, including the backlash of the Unite the Right rally, the fracturing of the movement, more effective banishment of
hate speech and harassment from major social media websites and widespread opposition by the American population. In 2018, Heidi Beirich of the Southern Poverty Law Center described it as "imploding", while Marilyn Mayo of the Anti-Defamation League stated that the alt-right was in "a downward spiral, but it doesn't mean they're going to disappear". That year, Heimbach was arrested for the battery of his wife and father-in-law, resulting in the dissolution of his Traditionalist Workers Party, Tait stated that after the Unite the Right rally, "it was clear that the alt-right brand had been oversaturated, diluted, and damaged.", but added that the alt-right "managed to reintroduce racist and antisemitic discourse into the mainstream of the right via the overlapping circles of the hardcore alt-right, the alt-lite, and the nebulous world of online anti-progressivism. The story of the alt-right, then, is one of how the American right, or any modern ideological movement, can—and cannot—police itself without guardrails. Zack Beauchamp of
Vox suggested that "other, more nakedly violent far-right movements have risen in its wake". Several alt-right candidates ran as Republican candidates in the 2018 elections. The neo-Nazi and
Holocaust denier Arthur Jones ran for an Illinois congressional seat, the white supremacist Paul Nehlen for the Wisconsin seat of
Paul Ryan, the Republican Speaker of the House, and the neo-Nazi
Patrick Little for the
United States Senate election in California, 2018. According to Tait, "Leading figures associated with the alt-right have disappeared into obscurity, self-immolated, and reinvented themselves as centrists. Meanwhile, the ideology's ideas have diffused across the political landscape." New groups were also former in the aftermath, like the
Patriot Front and the
National Socialist Legion, which both split from
Vanguard America. The
accelerationist tome
Siege spread rapidly in the post-Unite the Right landscape as radicalized alt-right adherents pushed one another to commit violence and "read Siege" was posted on
/pol/ over 5,500 times between 2017 and 2022. During October and November 2019,
Turning Point USA's "Culture War" college tour was frequently targeted by a group known as "
the Groyper army", led by
Nick Fuentes, who consider some groups to be not sufficiently conservative on issues of race and ethnicity, immigration, and LGBTQ rights. In 2020, several alt-right organizations were formed outside of the United States including the Australian
National Socialist Network, and the Canadian
Diagolon group. Diagolon would go on to participate in the
Canada convoy protest in 2022. In 2024, the Canadian alt-right organization
Second Sons was founded by Canadian podcaster and military veteran
Jeremy MacKenzie, the same person who founded Diagolon. On 16 November 2024, 11 days after
Trump had been re-elected as president, the alt-right neo-Nazi group Hate Club 1488 marched through
Columbus, Ohio while multiple groups held roadside demonstration in
Decatur, Alabama. American magazine
Wired compiled all reported instances of similar neo-Nazi demonstrations and found that alt-right neo-Nazi rallies were on the rise with 4 demonstrations in 2021, 22 in 2022, 30 in 2023, and 34 in 2024. == Beliefs ==