Stories to watch: The alt-right’s next move
Donald Trump is in the White House, and Yahoo News is taking a look at the top stories to watch in his first 100 days. From the unusual role family members will play as White House advisers, to his promises to aggressively transform U.S. trade policy, and from investigations into Russian interference in the election to his relationship with Paul Ryan, we’ll be rolling out 15 stories over five days — signposts for the road ahead.
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THE STAKES
For members of the white nationalist movement known as the “alt-right,” the election of Donald Trump as president was hailed as a “significant victory” that provided a stamp of legitimacy. Their ideology had long been relegated to dark corners of the Internet and the farthest reaches of the political fringe. Now, leaders of this movement seek to seize Trump’s presidency as an opportunity to promote their controversial ideology through real political action.
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THE STORY
In interviews with Yahoo News and elsewhere, key “alt-right” leaders Richard Spencer, who runs a white nationalist think tank called the National Policy Institute, and Jared Taylor, editor of American Renaissance magazine and an outspoken advocate of the unfounded theory of racial superiority, have denied having direct contact with any members of Trump’s team.
However, as Spencer told reporters at NPI’s conference in Washington, D.C., last November, “We don’t need a direct connection to influence policy.”
After all, it was Trump’s own policy proposals — particularly those related to immigration — that attracted the likes of Spencer and Taylor to his presidential campaign in the first place.
In an interview with Yahoo News after the election, Taylor listed some of the campaign promises he most wished to see carried out by the Trump administration, including, “Building a wall to keep out illegals, sending home all illegals, taking a very hard look at Muslims, ending sanctuary cities, putting an end to birthright citizenship.”
Trump may not be motivated by their same desire to establish and safeguard a white national identity against the perceived threat of multiculturalism, but Taylor, Spencer and Co. recognize such policies as building a wall on the Mexico border or a temporary ban on immigrants from some majority-Muslim countries as opportunities to limit the flow of nonwhite immigrants into the country.
Alt-right leaders would like to see Trump take his proposals even further.
According to ThinkProgress, during a press conference at NPI’s November gathering, Spencer outlined a few of the six policy proposals his think tank plans to release over the next year, which, he said, “we hope will directly impact a Trump administration.”
Among the policies Spencer reportedly has in mind are a 50-year “break on all immigration, particularly non-European immigration” to the United States, as well as a plan to dissolve NATO and replace it with a new military alliance between the U.S., Europe and Russia.
After the election, Taylor outlined his own vision for the future of the country in an interview with WNYC’s Bob Garfield. Deporting undocumented Mexicans and banning Muslim immigration, as Trump has proposed, are just the first steps, he explained.
“The ultimate goal is to have at least a portion of the United States where whites are the recognized majority and in which their culture is recognized as the dominant culture and where they can live free from the embrace of people unlike themselves,” Taylor said. “And I believe that that can be achieved through voluntary separation.”
Pressed on how, exactly, such a scenario would navigate the equal protection clause guaranteed by the 14th Amendment of the Constitution, as well as the several other federal anti-discrimination laws, Taylor seemed to suggest that the latter, at least, could be subject to change.
“The Civil Rights Act of 1964 is not part of the Constitution,” he said, noting that before the landmark legislation was passed, “it was perfectly legal for a private operator to discriminate in his place of business, in his choice of associates.”
Taylor expressed a desire to return the country to its pre-civil rights state, arguing that “private individuals should have the right to discriminate for good reasons, bad reasons or no reasons at all.”
Meanwhile, Spencer is already looking for ways to influence policy beyond the White House. Last month, he kicked off a “college tour” to drum up support for the alt-right on campuses with a speech at Texas A&M University. And he publicly mulled running to fill the seat of Montana Rep. Ryan Zinke, who has been tapped by Trump to be secretary of the interior. If Zinke is confirmed, a special election would be called to fill his House seat within the following 85 to 100 days.
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THE PLAYERS
In the past year, Richard Spencer, the previously little-known head of a white nationalist think tank called the National Policy Institute, has become the public face of the alt-right. His media profile exploded in the wake of the election when a video surfaced from his speech at the annual NPI conference in D.C., showing attendees giving Nazi salutes in celebration of Trump’s presidential win.
Like Spencer, self-described “race realist” Jared Taylor has long sought to influence policy from the political fringe. Since the 1990s, Taylor has used American Renaissance, now AmRen.com, to advocate on behalf of the unfounded theory that there is a biological hierarchy between the races, periodically holding his own conferences in addition to speaking at others, like the NPI.
In an August 2015 essay posted on AmRen.com, Taylor argued that “Donald Trump may be the last hope for a president who would be good for white people,” citing Trump’s own positions on immigration, as outlined on his campaign website.
Steve Bannon is chief strategist and senior counselor to the president, and many on the alt-right see him as their bridge to the Trump White House. Though the former Breitbart Media chairman-turned-Trump campaign CEO once claimed to have transformed the conservative Breitbart News site into the “platform of the alt-right,” Bannon has more recently denied accusations that he is himself a white nationalist.
In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter after the election, Bannon insisted he was “an economic nationalist,” and pledged to use his position within the Trump administration to push an America-centric “trillion-dollar infrastructure plan” that, he claimed, “will be as exciting as the 1930s, greater than the Reagan revolution — conservatives, plus populists, in an economic nationalist movement.”
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