A Swedish student went undercover to learn about the inner workings of the would-be "alt right." Among the things he learned was that the leaders of the supposed "alt" movement wore their white supremacy quite openly—as in his recorded conversation with a founder of the "AltRight Corporation," a group promoting the ideology in America and Europe.
Mr. Hermansson and Mr. Jorjani met at an Irish pub near the Empire State Building, where the baby-faced Mr. Jorjani imagined a near future in which, thanks to liberal complacency over the migration crisis, Europe re-embraces fascism: “We will have a Europe, in 2050, where the bank notes have Adolf Hitler, Napoleon Bonaparte, Alexander the Great. And Hitler will be seen like that: like Napoleon, like Alexander, not like some weird monster who is unique in his own category — no, he is just going to be seen as a great European leader.”
More shockingly, Mr. Jorjani bragged about his contacts in the American government. “We had connections in the Trump administration — we were going to do things!” he said at one point. “I had contacts with the Trump administration,” he said at another.
“Our original vision was the alt-right would become like a policy group for the Trump administration,” he explained, and the administration figure “who was the interface was Steve Bannon.”
So this “alt-right”-promoting little sewer rat both eagerly awaits a Europe united under the banner of Hitler-glorifying fascism and bragged about his contacts within the Donald Trump White House. Alas, he is disheartened now because Steve Bannon is gone and the rest of it just didn't work out like he thought it would. The poor child.
It's a good read for other reasons, such as the insight as to just how sites like Breitbart act as recruiters for the deeper white supremacist movement, and why far-right groups are so keenly interested in becoming a visible, in-your-face part of—for example—college campus life.
According to researchers, the key to hooking new recruits into any movement, and to getting them increasingly involved over time, is to simply give them activities to participate in. This often precedes any deep ideological commitment on the recruits’ part and, especially early on, is more about offering them a sense of meaning and community than anything else.
Indeed.