annabenedetti
like marbles on glass
Stormers and the Alt-Right
Long before it adopted the motto describing itself as “America’s #1 Most-Trusted Republican News Source,” The Daily Stormer billed itself as “The Most Visited Alt-Right Web Site.” That was a reference to the so-called “alternative right,” a sort of kinder, gentler rebranding of white supremacy for public relations purposes that has picked up a great deal of steam in the last year.
The Alt-Right is fundamentally about the idea that societies and nations should be based on race, an old mainstay of the radical right. But most of its self-described activists tend to avoid neo-Nazi imagery and Klan robes, preferring to paint themselves as real intellectuals seeking to solve real problems.
Not Andrew Anglin. He specializes in a kind of sophomoric and repulsive humor about topics like the Holocaust. He styles himself a “general,” ordering his Stormer Troll Army into dirty campaigns meant to frighten enemies with threats and insults, often accompanied by publication of their personal information.
But he also sees himself as a guardian of the Alt-Right name. In March 2016, Breitbart published “An Establishment Conservative’s Guide to the Alt-Right,” by Breitbart tech editors Allum Bokhari and Milo Yiannopoulos. The story whitewashed the racism at the core of the movement, enraging Anglin.
“Basically, they claim that everything the alt-right says it believes they don’t actually believe, but simply say they believe as part of a joke to [tick] off feminists and Black Lives activists,” he wrote in response. “This is not the exact opposite of what’s actually happening, but it is close enough.”
Regardless of these internecine squabbles, the Alt-Right received enormous publicity last year, especially after an August speech by Clinton that lambasted Trump for failing to disavow his support in that movement. One result of Trump’s apparent sympathy for the Alt-Right and Anglin’s adoption of the label was that The Daily Stormer got even more mainstream attention.
Three days before the election, Anglin tried to repay the debt. Announcing “Operation No Survivors,” he implored readers to vote for Trump. The goal was for each of his alleged 100,000 readers from the United States to convince five other people to vote for the man Anglin calls “Glorious Leader.” The comment section of Anglin’s Election Day story detailing followers’ efforts to get out the vote reached a total of some 3,000 posts, thick with racist and anti-Semitic memes.
On July 18, 2016, The Daily Stormer officially surpassed Stormfront’s traffic totals, making it the most popular English-language radical right website in the world. Andrew Anglin had successfully used computer and communications savvy, rising right-wing populism, the Trump phenomenon, and his own signature vulgarity and aggressiveness to displace Don Black, for years arguably the radical right’s most longstanding and respected cyber-leader. Few had seen it coming.
The Alt-Right is fundamentally about the idea that societies and nations should be based on race, an old mainstay of the radical right. But most of its self-described activists tend to avoid neo-Nazi imagery and Klan robes, preferring to paint themselves as real intellectuals seeking to solve real problems.
Not Andrew Anglin. He specializes in a kind of sophomoric and repulsive humor about topics like the Holocaust. He styles himself a “general,” ordering his Stormer Troll Army into dirty campaigns meant to frighten enemies with threats and insults, often accompanied by publication of their personal information.
But he also sees himself as a guardian of the Alt-Right name. In March 2016, Breitbart published “An Establishment Conservative’s Guide to the Alt-Right,” by Breitbart tech editors Allum Bokhari and Milo Yiannopoulos. The story whitewashed the racism at the core of the movement, enraging Anglin.
“Basically, they claim that everything the alt-right says it believes they don’t actually believe, but simply say they believe as part of a joke to [tick] off feminists and Black Lives activists,” he wrote in response. “This is not the exact opposite of what’s actually happening, but it is close enough.”
Regardless of these internecine squabbles, the Alt-Right received enormous publicity last year, especially after an August speech by Clinton that lambasted Trump for failing to disavow his support in that movement. One result of Trump’s apparent sympathy for the Alt-Right and Anglin’s adoption of the label was that The Daily Stormer got even more mainstream attention.
Three days before the election, Anglin tried to repay the debt. Announcing “Operation No Survivors,” he implored readers to vote for Trump. The goal was for each of his alleged 100,000 readers from the United States to convince five other people to vote for the man Anglin calls “Glorious Leader.” The comment section of Anglin’s Election Day story detailing followers’ efforts to get out the vote reached a total of some 3,000 posts, thick with racist and anti-Semitic memes.
On July 18, 2016, The Daily Stormer officially surpassed Stormfront’s traffic totals, making it the most popular English-language radical right website in the world. Andrew Anglin had successfully used computer and communications savvy, rising right-wing populism, the Trump phenomenon, and his own signature vulgarity and aggressiveness to displace Don Black, for years arguably the radical right’s most longstanding and respected cyber-leader. Few had seen it coming.
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