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Conspiracy theories are not new to American political life. I could find you a dozen people who think Bush is an alien, Obama is a Muslim, and Mrs. Obama is a man before tea time and its already mid- afternoon. What is new, though, is the mainstreaming of an extreme fringe group that hold the most base, reptilian-brained understanding of reality. And if the popularity of that group, the alt-right, wasnt bad enough, then what is worse is that they will have the ear of the man running the most powerful nation ever to exist at a time of global panic, no less and a time where low-information demagogues will easily have the power to march civilisation itself off a cliff if they become the power brokers, as Sam Harris has warned.

Donald Trump, the yet to be coronated leader of the free world and his future puppet master, Steve Bannon an intellectually lacking and morally gutted basket of something crude and infectious have brought a novel species of uncritical and barmy conjecture to the White House and will have it conveyed to a large public audience for the first time. Along with alternative views about Jews, women, Asian CEOs and other minorities, the alt-right have a unique relationship with language, evidence, and the simplest constituents of normality.

Bannons ventures in crude right-wing propaganda were not a lone enterprise. As a founding member of Breitbart, he collaborated with the websites namesake, Andrew Breitbart, who, unfortunately (for some) died on March 1, 2012. Before his timely death itself subject to conspiracy theories within alt- right circles of thought Andrew, with the help of Steve, pioneered the genre of fake news and trafficked in the most repellent, fact-free smears.

Andrew had the unparalleled ability to make the most outrageous claims, and yet provided the most menial, unconvincing evidence. Recently, a resurrected tweet from this prophet of deplorables surfaced. Breitbart spoke from the dead, his old tweet (dated February 4th 2011) read: How prog-guru John Podesta isnt household name as world class underage sex slave op cover-upper defending unspeakable dregs escapes me. because what is political discourse without accusations that your opponent is a kingpin devoted to globalising paedophillia and hiding criminals? Breitbarts comments, though, come in the wake of another wave of demented conspiracy theories.

PizzaGate was a conspiracy forged with the help of Russian hackers, alt-right buffoons, and internet culture a triad that has come to define an entire election, it seems: Step 1) The Russians leaked the Podesta emails, Step 2) alt-right reddit, 8Chan boards made up a story based on the content of some email exchanges, and Step 3) they pumped out the story as if it were fact using social media. That is the practical side of how one makes a conspiracy.

The content of the conspiracy itself offers speculation that an innocuous-sounding email exchange between John Podesta and the owner of a California-based Pizzeria really hides a deep, dark meaning. The emails, it is alleged, are coded: Pizza means girl or potential human trafficking, Hotdog means boy, Cheese means little girl, pasta means little boy, and so on. Podesta, therefore, is accused of operating a child-sex ring along with several of his democratic operatives, because of the fact Clinton held fundraisers at the pizzeria.

It would be alarming but overall harmless, If the conspiracy died in the circles of internet paranoia. It didnt.The PizzaGate conspiracy and related child-sex conspiracies linking to Podesta and the Clintons have been shared by the likes of General Michael Flynn, the new National Security advisor to President-Elect Trump, his son, Michael Flynn Jr, who is also part of the Presidential transition team, and popular cultural leader of the alt-right and big Trump fan, Milo Yiannopoulos.

Only the most fantastical material gets widespread attention among Trumpets, it seems. And it riles them to the point where some of them want to take action: a North Carolina nut-job journeyed to Comet Ping Pong, the pizzeria where the alleged scandals took place armed with an assault rifle, ready to investigate, and firing at least 1 round of an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, urging evacuations from nearby businesses. Lunacy that penetrates the White House, gets circulated by popular figures in angry anti-establishment circles, and seems manufactured to provoke an armed response does that not make a good democracy?

The PizzaGate conspiracy found a home in the news reports of Alex Joness Infowars and Prison Planet TV, as well as the ravings of less popular fringe figures like Mike Cernovich. Alex Jones has been a staple of fringe politics for over a decade, using his platform to peddle end of the world economic necessities like gold, health essentials like fluoride filters, and go-to vitamin powders like Tangy Tangerine. However, dear Donald the man with the tangerine complexion has done his best to legitimise Alex and his whack pack, introducing them to a mainstream audience by giving them interviews and nauseating praise.

How can we stop a witless narcissist who seems to have every intention of making the United States a cheap franchise of the Trump brand from promoting dangerous, extremist propaganda? And how do we channel the White House in any moderate direction when extremist conspiracy theory seems to have a stamp of approval from his own cabinet? The standards of evidence are so low in these alt-right communities and yet the cost of people believing these delusions are so high. Lives can potentially be lost because of misinformed idiots, and their Kool-Aid vendors, whose goal seems to be to make a quick buck off a hot story, are having their businesses boom in the post-truth world of Trump and his Trumpets. Liars, idiots, and the weak-willed wrote the story of 2016, and they will no-doubt feature heavily in the stories yet to be written. Lets do our best to counteract these armies of deluded fanboys and compel them with the power of reason and genuine critical thinking.

Excerpt from:
Alt-Right, Alt-Reality: Conspiracy Theorists In the White House - Conatus News

New York Times

London Gallery LD50's Alt-Right Show Should Be Its Last, Critics Say New York Times As the British Parliament debated the proposed visit of President Trump to Britain, protesters gathered outside. A post-Trump election exhibition at the LD50 ... and more »

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London Gallery LD50's Alt-Right Show Should Be Its Last, Critics Say - New York Times

CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference, an annual prom of sorts for Americas right wing, kicked off Thursday in a conference center just south of Washington D.C. Hundreds have gathered tolisten to speakers like Ted Cruz, Kellyanne Conway, Mike Pence and the president himself, along with dozens of others.

One of the first wasDan Schneider, the executive director of the American Conservative Union, which hosts the event. Unlike the other speakers, Schneider wasnt there to talk about the future of conservatism, he was there to distance his movementfrom the alt-right, the anti-Semitic, anti-feminist, and racist arm of conservatism that slithered its way into the mainstream during the 2016 presidential election.

In an address Thursday morning titled The Alt Right Aint Right At All, Schneider attempted to claim that the alt-right isnt conservative at all rather, a ruse by liberals to hijack a wing of the right-wing movement under the guise of conservatism.

There is a sinister organ trying to worm its way into our ranks and we must not be duped,Schneider told the crowd, as many poured out of the ballroom as if to not pick a side in the growing rift between the oft-blended political movements. He described the alt-right as garden-varietyleft-wing fascists and went on to describe members of movement in a way that some of the more fringe alt-righters describe themselves.

They are anti-Semites, he said. They are racists. They are sexists. They hate the Constitution they despise everything we believe in. They are not an extension of conservatism.

Just outside, in the lobby of the conference center, a man with a different perspective waited. White supremacist Richard Spencer the punchable face of the alt-right movement milled about, talking to press. He called the speech a pathetic attempt to cast his budding movement as liberal in any way.

[Schneider] denounced me in totally stupid ways, Spencer said, adding that the alt-rightwas always about a right-wing that was against the conservative movement.

The split between traditional conservatives and the alt-right and even those who buy into the alt-rights rhetoric about nationalism and identity but dont necessarily want to admit it is clear at CPAC; as I was talking with Spencer, a man who appeared to be in his early 20s walked up to him and asked for a photo. He then thanked him and said praise Pepe, a nod to a cartoon frog that has become the symbol of the alt-right. Another similarly aged man was overheard saying, If [Spencer] can piss off antifa hes OK by me, a reference to the growing number of left-wing anti-fascist activists like those who rioted in D.C. on inauguration day.

On the other side of the split, other conservatives are echoing Schneiders insistence that the alt-right is not conservatism. Just feet away from Spencer stood a group of men and women who were outraged that Spencer was even in the same hemisphere as conservatives, let alone at the same conference.

Its bullshit that they try to categorize him as [conservative], said Laura Lightstone, a Maryland conservative who wants nothing to do with people like Spencer and his cartoon frog. [The media] isgonna categorize us as being accepting of him being here[his beliefs are] not conservative. Theyre not Republicanhe doesnt represent Trump votersthe conservatives I know and live around down here, nobody believes in that shit.

To try and say the alt-right isnt a wing of conservatism today is a tall tale to tell, particularly given President Trumps choice of Steve Bannon as his chief adviser. Bannon is the former head of Breitbart News, which he described as the platform for the alt-right.' Bannon is also pegged to speak at CPAC on Thursday. Not to mention, alt-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos, a now-former editor at Brietbart who was slated to speak at CPAC until video surfaced of him advocating for pedophilia.

Despite Schneiders and many other conservatives hopes of distancing themselves from Spencers explicitly racist alt right, Spencer and his cohort see opportunity, believing that Trump and his teamare more aligned with his movement than traditional conservatism.

The way to think about it is Donald Trump is stumbling towards a sort of nationalism a nationalist ideology, and in that way he has a connection with the alt-right,' Spencer said. He has a deeper connection with us that he has with conservativesbecause we are about the nation, too.

Of his conservative critics, Spencer said an old adage applies.

First they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win, he said. I think right now theyre fighting us. The fact is they werent talking about the alt-right a year ago, or two years ago. They now feel the need to talk about us so theyre objectively fighting us.

A little while later, Spencer was escorted out of the hall by conference security.

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War Between Conservatives And 'Alt Right' Dominates CPAC - Vocativ

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Others blamed Allen for the stillbirth. One said Allen "miscarried" because she'd "pumped [her] body full of drugs."

Allen responded to that tweet, saying "I didn't miscarry. I went into early labour and by [sic] son died from his chord wrapped around his neck."

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Alt-right launches barbed personal attacks on Lily Allen - Newshub

Late the night before the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, Richard Spencer, the de facto leader of the white nationalist movement calling itself the Alt-Right, texts me to say he'll be there not to disrupt, he insists, but to ask questions after the "Anti-Alt-Right speeches on [the] main stage." The next day, at the Gaylord Convention Center just outside of Washington, D.C., there is no Q&A, but Spencer, who gleefully attracts a throng of reporters everywhere he goes, holds forth outside the hotel ballroom. Dan Schneider, the executive director of the American Conservative Union, which hosts the conference, has just decried the Alt-Right as a "sinister organization that is trying to worm its way into our ranks." Spencer denounces the speech as "stupid" and "pathetic."

Inside the ballroom, four Republican governors are speaking about how they are "reclaiming America's promise," something reporters might have covered in years past to glean glimmers of presidential ambitions. But Trump and his success at electrifying the Alt-Right has changed all that. Instead, dozens of reporters cluster around Spencer, who most recently made headlines for eliciting Nazi salutesat a conference he hosted in November, and becoming the butt of a meme about whether it is acceptable to punch Nazis.

Surrounded by media, Spencer persists for so long that organizers eject him from the conference. No matter: His mission is accomplished.

Schneider, rather than provoking a serious discussion of the conservative movement's relationship with the Alt-Right, has thrown up a straw man. The Alt-Right, he says (correctly) are "anti-Semites," "racists" and "sexists." But, he adds (incorrectly), they do not emerge out of conservatism's own trenches. Instead, he maintains, "they are garden variety left-wing fascists."

That is, as one of the morning's other speakers, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway, has said, an "alternative fact." The origin story of the Alt-Rightis one of far-right, authoritarian white nationalists who broke with movement conservatism, and toiled in relative obscurity until Trump's campaign elevated them to the national stage.

Schneider insists to Rolling Stone that the term Alt-Right originated with "a Jewish man" who sought a break from George W. Bush's foreign policy, but that the racists have "wormed their way in, stolen the term intentionally so they could deceive people about who they are." (Schneider did not name the Jewish man, but Paul Gottfried, who is credited with coming up with the term "Alt-Right" with Spencer, claims that "America is no longer a republic or a liberal democracy," a view for which he "was banished from the mainstream of political discourse," according to a profile in Tablet.)

Spencer says the Alt-Right "was always about a right wing that was against the conservative movement, it was against George W. Bush in its origins." In other words, the Alt-Right's opposition to conservatism was not confined to foreign policy. Spencer mocks Schneider, derisively saying he is unaware that "garden variety left-wing fascists were so numerous," and insists that the ranks of the Alt-Right are. As if on cue, a CPAC attendee pops in to ask Spencer for selfie while saying, "Praise kek," the Alt-Right's homage to its "god" of "meme magic."

Like conservatives' baseless claims that protesters at marches or town halls are paid leftist protesters, Schneider's effort to depict the Alt-Right as a creature of the left is a denigration of anything that disrupts their mirage that Trumpism is a spectacularly successful restoration of America's greatness. But even attendees at CPAC see through Schneider's characterization. Nick Gricus, a student at DePaul University, calls it a "deflection mechanism." The Alt-Right, Gricus says, "is bigotry. That's not a partisan definition."

The dissonance between Schneider's speech and a series of events leading up to it show how his effort to peg the movement as left-wing is a sign of deep anxiety of how Trumpism, fueled by the Alt-Right, is altering conservatism, and how the movement may have lost control over defining itself. (Why else would the ACU have opened its conference with a series of speeches intended to explain what conservatism stands for?)

Last summer, Steve Bannon, the former Breitbart executive who is now chief strategist to Trump, boasted that his publicationis "the platform for the Alt-Right." Just days ago, the ACU was forced to disinvite Milo Yiannopoulos, a (now former) Breitbart editor with a long history of racism, sexism, Islamophobia and xenophobia. He was poised to be toasted at CPAC until an anonymous conservative group called the Reagan Battalion exposed radio interviews in which he praised pedophilia and the world finally discovered ACU's bridge too far. Although Yiannopoulos was ultimately shunned, Bannon is given the rock-star treatment in an interview with ACU Chairman Matt Schlapp, conducted on the main stage, and without a single mention of the Alt-Right.

Schneider has little to say about Bannon's characterization of Breitbart, saying only that the definition is "fuzzy" and he gave his speech so people could "have clarity on this." The Alt-Right, he adds, has "nothing to do with the American tradition" and is "inconsistent with the very idea of conservatism."

Yet the Alt-Right sees in Trump and Bannon signs that conservatism is being abandoned for nationalism. "Trump is stumbling toward a nationalist ideology," Spencer tells reporters. "In that way, he has a connection with the Alt-Right, he has a deeper connection with us than he has with conservatives." Bannon, too, while not Alt-Right, Spencer says, "seems to be open to other ideas besides just the conservative pabulum." He cites Bannon's own references to Alexandr Dugin, the far-right Russian writer, and the Italian fascist Julian Evola, both deeply influential to the Alt-Right.

Spencer also praises Bannon's deputy, Stephen Miller, whom he knew while they were both students at Duke, as someone who appears "very committed ... toward nationalism, and that we have a sovereign right to determine our future."

Bannon signals his and the Trump administration's break with movement conservatism in the interview with the ACU's Schlapp. "There's a new political order being formed out of this," he says. He repeatedly extols Trump's "economic nationalist agenda." The "center core of what we believe, that we are a nation with an economy, not an economy just in some global marketplace with open borders," says Bannon. "We are a nation with a culture and a reason for being," he adds, with words redolent of Spencer's self-described "identitarianism." Bannon pitches the CPAC crowd: "I think that's what unites us."

Regardless of whether they understand what the Alt-Right is, or how it is altering conservatism, Trump has already drawn new devotees to CPAC. Devon Hunter, a University of California-Merced student, sporting a Make America Great Again hat, says Trump made him more interested in the gathering. As for the Alt-Right, Hunter says its "a monster that the left points to and that the right doesn't want anything to do with."

Thomas Melvin, a retired school principal from Charleston, South Carolina, also has come to his first CPAC, though he had followed it on television in the past. He says Trump is the reason he's here. "People are happy because he's doing what he said he'd do," says Melvin. Even "Republicans who were against him are supporting him now," he says. "They know he's got a heart for America."

Watch Donald Trump's Speech at CPAC 2017.

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CPAC's Flirtation With the Alt-Right Is Turning Awkward - RollingStone.com