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What explains the strange pathologies of the alt-right?

It was announced this week that Milo Yiannapoulos will appear on Bill Mahers Real Time. The conjunction of two prominent Islamophobes mugging for the camera under the unblinking eyes of studio light announces the alt-rights planet is now bathed in the full, flagrant glare of our new Orange Sun. The signs are everywhere. Alt-right leader Richard Spencer, even after being humiliated by crowds at Berkeley, is still abroad in the land, peddling his story.

According to an article in The Algemeiner, Spencer,

who garnered national attention with his controversial appearance at Texas A&M University last December, plans to sow his white nationalism on college campuses across the country in 2017. Known for using phrases like Hail victory (the literal translation of the Nazi phrase Sieg Heil) and mimicking the Nazi salute, Spencer traffics in far-right ideas that center around the preservation of the white race and Western civilization. He peddles his message through a think tank known as the National Policy Institute, an online publication called Radix and, now, a planned college speaking tour.

These are fat times for the nationalist set, and even if you strike out Milo as a wagon-hopping unbeliever, the talking headsof the Trump front are doing fairly well for themselves. Not in the sense of being successful; more in the sense that a man with two arms and no legs is doing better than a man with a single leg and no arms.

Which raises a question. There have always been bizarre cranks in any political ecosystem. But a resentful river of victimology runs the length of the alt-rights belief structure, and is hardly attributable to their social statusmiddle classor their privileged demographic position in the world. Where does it come from?

HOW THE ALT-RIGHT IS DIFFERENT FROM CONSERVATISM

The alt-right claims to be the inheritors of a movement which they style the natural conservative coalition. Even allowing for conservatisms tendency to play dog-whistle politics, the two are very different. Cathy Young, writing for The Federalist, notes that Indeed, the irony is that Trump is almost certainly the least socially conservative candidate to come within reach of the Republican nomination in recent years. If the Trumpian rebels were disaffected traditionalists, theyd have flocked to Rick Santorum.

What is demonstrably not happening is a huge popular upsurge in alt-right beliefs. Trump got roughly the same number of votes as Romney. Therefore, if the alt-right cannot offer strength, numbers, or continuity, what can it give to its believers?

Let us consider its founder. Arguably, Spencers greatest contribution to modern political discourse was getting clocked in the face. This innovation was his, and his alone. It made him famous. If he could trademark the many remixes of him being punched which are now spread on the intra-webs, he would never have to call collect to Pinochets old generals again.

However, Spencers second greatest contribution was to name the movement he is a leader of. Per the Southern Poverty Law Center, the phrase alt-right refers to

a set of far-right ideologies, groups and individuals whose core belief is that white identity is under attack by multicultural forces using political correctness and social justice to undermine white people and their civilization. Characterized by heavy use of social media and online memes, Alt-Righters eschew establishment conservatism, skew young, and embrace white ethno-nationalism as a fundamental value. In 2010, Spencer, who had done stints as an editor of The American Conservative and Takis Magazine, launched the Alternative Right blog, where he worked to refine the movements ideological tenets.

What this actually means is a bunch of weird dudesand they are almost all dudeswho hang out online. If I have a complaint about the Law Centers description, it is the phrase heavy use of social media, which implies the alt-right is a real-world movement which uses a lot of social media. This is backwards: it is an online movement which occasionally appears in the real world. Where it gets punched.

In truth, the alt-right is wholly a creature of the Internet. Older journalists, who grew up with a more sedate view of politics, see the rancor of Spencers followers online and imagine they possess a genius for bile. But this is the character of the Net. If you were born in the late eighties or afterwards, youve never known a world without all-caps comments. Were all part of this magic circle. The alt-right is born from, and of, this online world.

CALAMITY SONG

The Net explains much (but not all) of Spencerism. The major difference between the alt-right and old conservatism is one of temperament.

Most conservatives know how the game is played, and will muddle through this Orange Presidency, taking what they can, bargaining when they will, dealing with the Presidential train-wreck, staring winsomely at pictures of Lincoln and Reagan. George Wills squad knows how to sigh. The conservative worldview makes its peace with tragedy. This may explain why so many of their intellectual class are fond of the Lord of the Rings: the series is about an autumnal land, where everyone is sort of bungling through lapsed days. Conservatives generally see the same world as everyone else. As a group, they are typically dissatisfied with the Earth, but satisfied with themselves. You can easily imagine a happy conservative.

By contrast, nothing pleases the alt-right. They treat this Earth as an alien prison, full of people engaged in actions they dont understand. Their effect on the world is grotesque, but their pathologies are consistent, and priceless from a clinical point of view.

For instance, what are we to make of the alt-right and their insistence on this term, virtue-signaling? They seem to seriously believe that people commit good acts only because others are watching. They dont understand how being nice works. They are befuddled at why Meryl Streepwould throw shade at the President for making fun of handicapped people. It is a mystery to them why anyone famous would cast scorn on the powerful for oppressing the weak. It confuses them that the rich would ever, in a million years, have a care for the poor.

In the world of the alt-right, an intellectually lazy place, the culturewhich does not agree with them and never willassumes a monstrous, shadowy shape. To them, Streep isnt a successful character actor and Vassar grad who decided to sympathize with a reporter on her own dime; she must be the spear point of a gigantic Soros ploy.

Charlton Heston was wrong when it came to firearms, but few of us doubted that he was sincere. Hollywoodis a collection of theater kids and business-people. Some of them are noble, some are clueless, some generous, some greedy, some selfless, some outlandish, some boring. Knowing this, what conclusions can we make? About the only thing that connects them is that they want to be seen by the public. Show-people lean left, just as bankers tilt conservative. None of this is surprising.

How could the alt-right get it so wrong? The answer is simple.

They believe in the world of the tribe. It explains everything about them. Like most shut-ins, they are convinced the outside universe is obsessed with them. This may account for their insistence that anything they do is aimed at trolling liberals and traditional conservatives. Which is precious. The alt-right is trolling us in the same way a lonely sophomore doing basement bong rips on Prom Night is trolling everyone with a date.

They are incapable of seeing the world in a non-tribal way. Every person only exists as an extension of an identity. Yes, this is the absurd extension of the identity politics they pretend to despise. Which is why they can label a billion Muslims as part of a terror network; why they can look at Mexicans and see them as a plot to invade America; why they burble out anti-Semitic screeds. The alt-right doesnt see the world, they see their idea of the world. They gaze through spectacles which are tinted.

Most prejudiced persons who distrust Muslims will still admit there are good ones. Not so with our friends on the alt-right. By their lights, one cannot be a Muslim or a Mexican who is the exception; by being part of that group, ones complicity in the group is unbreakable. All politics is sinister, coordinated, tribal politics. This also explains why conspiracy theories have such a truck with them. If you already believe in massive inside-group coordination, then whats a few 9/11s or Pearl Harbors or Pizzagates?

How do I put it gently? The tragedy of the alt-right is that their beliefs are not merely incorrect or mean, but castrating. Their philosophy isnt just offensive and based on bad data: its a humiliating set of positions to hold. It disappoints them not merely on the level of rationality and effectiveness, but on taste. It succeeds nowhere: there is no evidence for it; it cannot secure a majority for Trump; it only offends the most anxiety-ridden of the liberals; it will not win allies among conservatives; it is not beautiful in itself; its principles are question-begging and scientifically hollow.

The alt-right is like a guy who wears a belt made of spikes that dig into his flesh, and shouts out that everyone else is offended to see his blood. Yes, its gross. So what? Imagine a man who is convinced his ugliness offends everyone, when all it does is make them pity him.

The poor alt-right. How very sad it must be, to be deluded into seeing the world as a patchwork of armed camps, and knowing in the very same instant, deep in your soul, where no trolling success can ever reach, that you will never be a chosen people, of any kind. Feels bad, man.

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Milo & POTUS: What Exactly is Wrong With the Alt-Right? - Paste Magazine

Attendees of an alt-right conference in Washington, D.C., perform the Nazi salute to celebrate Trump's election

DONALD TRUMP likes to think that he has not only won an election, but "built a movement." And to judge by his first week in the White House, he has--just not in the way he thinks.

One day after the smallest public attendance at a presidential inauguration that anyone can remember, roughly a half million people turned out for the Women's March on Washington to denounce Trump's agenda of immigrant-bashing, misogyny and attacks on reproductive rights. It was perhaps the largest protest since the antiwar rallies during George W. Bush's second term, and a number of speakers expressed solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement against racist police violence. On the same day as the march, hundreds of "sister" events were held at the same time in cities throughout the U.S. and around the world (including Berlin, Munich and Frankfurt) with estimates of up to 3 million participants in total.

In short, Donald Trump may well be on the way to inspiring a new mass radicalization on a scale that American leftists have only dreamt of in recent decades. In 2016, millions of first-time voters came out in support of Bernie Sanders, a Democratic Party candidate who identifies himself as a socialist and has called for "political revolution"--a concept left vaguely defined, to be sure, but one that resonates with a generation that has grown up with no reason to think that either the world's economy or its environment can take much more of capitalism's "invisible hand."

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JUST TWO months ago, the movement most associated with Trump's name was the so-called "alt-right" of extreme reactionaries, including the neo-fascists who joined Richard Spencer in chanting "Hail Trump!" during a meeting of the National Policy Institute, a white supremacist "think tank." Another leading alt-right figure, Trump's campaign manager Steve Bannon, now serves as the president's chief strategist and senior counselor, and has undoubtedly been the adviser urging Trump to think of his electoral success as proof that he is at the leader of a mass movement.

It is something Trump himself quite desperately wants to believe. Anyone paying attention to his campaign could see how deeply he craved the adulation of crowds that laughed, cheered and expressed rage in time to his moods. Someone once called politics "show business for ugly people." By that standard, Trump is a star ne plus ultra.

But he is far from knowledgeable about affairs of state, much less about the complex ideological terrain of American conservatism. He enters office with a Congress dominated by a Republican Party that--as one of its leading strategists put it--only needs the president to have enough fingers to sign the legislation it gives him. Trump qualifies in that regard, so the Republican establishment thinks it can work with him. They can all agree on dismantling Obama's health-care reform, cutting taxes, privatizing public education, restricting the rights of women and LGBT people and removing or preventing government regulation of the economy (especially of anything based on a recognition of man-made climate change), for example.

Most of this has been central to the Republican agenda for decades, along with support for military spending and an aggressive imperialist foreign policy. Carefully avoided, for the most part, is any explicit reference to race. The late Lee Atwater, an influential Republican figure, once explained that the old-fashioned race-baiting had become unpopular and ineffective, so the trick was to be more subtle. "So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states' rights, and all that stuff," he told a political scientist, "and you're getting so abstract. Now, you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, Blacks get hurt worse than whites...'We want to cut this' is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than 'Nigger, nigger.'"

Trump's political ascent began with a variant on this tactic: he promoted the idea that Barack Obama could not prove that he was actually a U.S. citizen. But his campaign rhetoric against Mexican and Muslim immigrants was less "abstract" (to borrow Atwater's term) about appealing to racist sentiments. This proved embarrassing to Republican leaders, but they were hardly in the position of taking a principled stand against it. At the same time, a tension within the American right had intensified under the impact of the world economic crisis: Republican propaganda might celebrate the wealthy as "job creators," proclaim the virtues of small business ownership, and declare rural towns to be "the real America." But the policies they actually advanced (and that the Democratic party under Clinton and Obama largely supported) have heightened economic uncertainty and inequality to extremes not seen since the Great Depression.

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SPENCER, BANNON and other alt-rightists understand their role as building up mechanisms of political and social authority over a population that will only grow more ethnically and cultural heterogeneous in the next two decades--while also being unlikely to recover its standard of living through the pure magic of the free market. They reject both neoliberalism and Atwater-style coyness about channeling racial hostilities.

Insofar as the conservative establishment has a body of ideas to shore it up, the influences come from a blend of Ayn Rand's celebration of "the virtue of selfishness" with a belief that God dictated the Constitution, or at least had a hand in the outline. By contrast, the more sophisticated of the alt-right strategists are acquainted with Alain de Benoist's ethnic communitarianism and Carl Schmitt's understanding of politics as defined by the sovereign's combat with an enemy. And they see most of the Republican leadership as being an enemy.

Donald Trump is no doubt entirely innocent of such esoteric concepts. He spent his first week in a simmering rage over slights by the media and fuming from an awareness that he entered office with the lowest level of public confidence of any incoming president (only to lose another three points since then). But he sits astride the fault line between members of Congress who see themselves as Ronald Reagan's political heirs, on the one side, and those who share Bannon's aspiration to destroy the Republican Party and replace it with something more vicious and brutal.

It is, in other words, a precarious and unstable conjuncture and one that can only grow more volatile as far-right campaigns mobilize elsewhere in the world. One thing that Marxists bring to the situation is an understanding that capitalism's crises are always international--throwing down to us the challenge of finding ways to learn from and unify the forces from below that resist them. Millions of people in the United States are thinking about how to shut down Trump's assaults on vulnerable segments of the population. And seeing millions more around the world take to the street in solidarity can only help as we relearn the truth of the old Wobbly slogan: An Injury to One is an Injury to All.

First published in German at Marx21 and in English at New Politics.

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Trump and the alt-right - Socialist Worker Online

Far right bigots are retooling anti-Semitic conspiracy theories against the Muslim community while adopting a vocal defense of Israel. Sadly, a handful of Jewish individuals are buying it.

Our political environment is now one where fact becomes fiction and fiction becomes fact. The election of Donald Trump has inaugurated a new age of anxiety for many within diverse communities in the United States, and also globally.

Hand-in-hand with these changes has been the rise of so-called 'alt-right' movements with strong online presences who have repeatedly and openly denigrated Muslims and refugee communities as part of their antagonism towards diversity within our societies.

Read more:Analaysis // With Trump and Bannon, the racist al-right moves into the White House|White supremacist Richard Spencer hails Trump's 'de-Judaification' of Holocaust|The European far right's charm offensive in Israel

At the center of this far-right thinking is the trope of Muslims as sexual predators: the contention that Muslims constitute a horde of marauding rapists who seek to wage war on Europe and take it over. These websites actively promote terms such as rape jihad to perpetuate the notion that Muslim men as a whole cannot be trusted and that they are fueled by a desire to spread Islam through rape and insemination. Subverting womens bodies, for political gain or personal gratification, is attributed solely to Muslims, rather than recognizing the sad truth that such abuse is clearly not the domain of one set of communities, let alone one faith group.

For those who consume toxic material like this, such extreme thinking about Muslims has further been confirmed through recent scandals in the United Kingdom, where males of Pakistani heritage were found to have been grooming young girls for sexual exploitation. Rather than seeing this detestable behavior through the lens of criminal gangs of men preying on vulnerable young girls, the focus of the extremist far right narrative has been on the idea that Islam itself indoctrinated young men to rape white women.

The spread of similar ideas, that Muslim men cannot control their sexual urges for white women, has been a key tool for 'alt-right' sites to radicalize young, vulnerable white men who find it hard to adapt to a changing global environment and are being left behind socially and educationally.

However, these corrosive, extremist narratives have also spread further online past the darkest corners of the web, to be adopted by more mainstream hard right social media activists and journalists. When White House news site favorite Breitbart and other more respectable 'alt-right' sites push this same rape Jihad narrative they not only exponentially grow the audience for these accusations (not least because of those sites popularity with the 16-40 white male demographic) but spawn an ever-wider web of individual blog posts and cross-posted articles on them.

But the 'alt-right' has gone one step further in its search to legitimize anti-Muslim bigotry. That step is the adoption of what they see as an ethno-state of kindred interests: Israel. Far right extremists (including alt-rightists and ultra-nationalists), have appropriated Israel as a country and identity that they vocally defend, as a means of agitating against Muslims and with the intention of defusing, even co-opting, support from Jews in Israel or abroad.

Yet, these same sites downplay or deny key elements of Jewish history, most glaringly the Holocaust, and simply use Israel as a symbolic firewall to cover their inherent hatred of diversity and pluralism within society.

Sadly, a handful of Jewish community members support such sites, narratives and groups, buying into the narrative that hostility to Muslims proves commitment to Israel's security: a version of my enemys enemy. Such alliances are poisonous not only in themselves but because of their consequences for Jewish: Muslim relations.

The involvement of a handful of Jewish individuals in hateful anti-Muslim tropes play to small groups within Muslim communities who are already partial to anti-Semitic positions, from subtle to extreme views, and who exploit these alliances to prop up an idea of eternal enmity between Jews and Muslims with the Holy Land as proof text. This tit for tat, or cumulative extremism, feeds itself.

I have had recent personal experience with this. For the past three years, I have been a trustee of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust. The charity works diligently throughout the year in raising awareness across the U.K. about the Holocaust, and educates about other genocides, culminating in the Holocaust Memorial Day held on 27th January, the day that Auschwitz was liberated. This year, the Trust produced a video showcasing a survivor of the Holocaust; the script reflected on the need for all of us to stand up against the hatred, intolerance and prejudice targeting many communities in the U.K., including Muslim communities. A Muslim woman wearing hijab was pictured; she wore a yellow flower that some took to be in the shape of a star.

You can guess the rest, really. Responses from anti-Muslim bloggers and alt-right sites was swift, blaming two Muslim trustees, myself included, of manipulating the video to equate the Holocaust with anti-Muslim hate crimes, a charge so bizarre as to be laughable. However, this accusation was far from being an isolated incident; thanks to social media, this prejudice and bigotry, not to mention the aspersions cast on me, circulated wider and wider with no regard for the truth.

What at first seemed a claim too marginal to challenge, had become a libel that had gained far more traction. This has pushed me to set out the facts, once and for all. Firstly, I was not personally involved with producing or scripting the video, but I stand squarely with its intention to reach out to other communities, by demonstrating an empathy with them. I believe this is a welcome approach - to widen the circle of minority communities exposed to understanding the genocide of Jews in the Holocaust.

Secondly, I have never and would never equate the Holocaust with other genocides, let alone hate crimes, given the unique, mechanized and meticulously planned horrors of the Holocaust.

Thirdly, we should recognize how anti-Muslim conspiracist thinking is on a constant alert for any news or media hook, and it has a well-oiled mechanism for provoking antagonism specifically between the Muslim and Jewish communities. That conspiracist view even co-opts some of the tactics and accusations used by the far-right against Jews for centuries.

In this case, and in many others, alt-right extremist sites saw an opportunity to create a them vs us narrative out of a simple visual, to play to anti-Muslim tropes that manipulative Muslims are secretly promoting their own agenda. The transposed language of manipulative Muslims versus the well-wishing but nave Jews narrative is indeed familiar to all of us with even a passing understanding of the language of anti-Semitic conspiracy thinking. The core of the far-right's bigotry targets both Jewish and Muslim communities.

Let us be in no doubt that far-right and alt-right groups, especially online, will continue to try and drive a wedge between the Muslim and Jewish communities here in the U.K. and around the world. Spurious stories and articles based on pure conjecture and bigotry will continue to erupt from these websites, co-opting the fear of terrorism to collectively anathematize all Muslims. On the other side, Islamist extremist websites play up the card of religious war and a victimization narrative that they have co-opted deeply into the worldview of some.

It would indeed be a tragedy, if not a disaster, for coverage of the Middle East and of our minority communities at home to be appropriated by the alt-right with their message that Jews and Muslims are incapable of coexistence. That, not least in my experience as an activist for the Muslim community with years of experience of working with U.K. Jewish communities, is simply not true and frankly, the most dangerous form of fake news.

Fiyaz Mughal is the Director of Faith Matters http://www.faith-matters.org and the Founder of Tell MAMA. http://www.tellmamauk.org. He is also a trustee of the National Holocaust Memorial Day Trust.

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The Alt Right Is Playing Jews to Join Its anti-Muslim Campaign. Don't Let Them Succeed - Haaretz

CHARLOTTESVILLE After defending Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee and calling for the ouster of an African-American official who had posted offensive tweets about women and white people, Republican gubernatorial candidate Corey Stewart sat and listened Thursday as his newfound allies explained their belief that America should welcome immigrants from Western countries but keep out people from the Middle East.

Stewarts host for the event in downtown Charlottesville was Unity & Security for America, a newly formed right-wing group that describes its mission as defending Western Civilization including its history, culture and peoples while utterly dismantling Cultural Marxism.

Next to that credo on the groups website is an image of a frog and the phrase Kek is with us, a reference to a frog-headed Egyptian deity of chaos and darkness thats become a satirical godhead for devotees of the alt-right, the loosely defined far-right movement linked to white nationalism and the idea that white identity is under attack by liberals and multiculturalism.

For Jason Kessler, the 33-year-old writer and journalist behind the group, the chief liberal offender in Charlottesville is Wes Bellamy, the citys black vice mayor who has pushed for the removal of a Confederate statute from a prominent city park.

Last year, Kessler, who denies the alt-right label, revealed on his blog that Bellamy had posted a litany of misogynistic and homophobic slurs and anti-white comments on Twitter before being elected to the Charlottesville City Council in 2015. In one tweet, Bellamy called white women the devil. In another, he retweeted a different user who said if she moan it aint rape while describing a sexual act on a sleeping woman.

Though Bellamy apologized, the scandal cost him his post on the Virginia Board of Education and his teaching job at Albemarle High School.

Stewart, chairman of the Prince William Board of County Supervisors and known for his tough stance against illegal immigration, has put the racially charged controversy in Charlottesville at the forefront of his campaign.

After the City Council voted to remove a statue of Lee from a prominent city park, Stewart President Donald Trumps former Virginia campaign chairman went to the city last weekend to rally in support of the monument and was thronged by protesters who attempted to shout him down. He plans to go back next week for another rally, this time on the steps of City Hall.

As he tries to climb the polls in the Republican primary against former Republican National Committee Chairman Ed Gillespie; state Sen. Frank W. Wagner, R-Virginia Beach; and distillery owner Denver Riggleman, Stewart has tried several attention-grabbing tactics, including giving away an assault rifle to a supporter in a Christmas raffle.

But by getting involved so eagerly with the Charlottesville unrest, Stewart runs the risk, much like Trump did in his populist campaign, of associating himself with ideas well outside the Republican mainstream.

With Stewart by his side, Kessler delivered petition signatures Thursday to the local courthouse in an attempt to have a judge kick Bellamy off the City Council.

He and his ilk have targeted all the Founding Fathers, philosophers, artists and other leaders of our glorious Western civilization for abuse and smears, Kessler said of Bellamy. The Lee statue, he said, is a cultural artifact of ethnic significance to Southern white people.

A few days after Nazi salutes were raised last November at a D.C. conference hosted by the National Policy Institute, a group led by prominent alt-right figure Richard Spencer, Kessler suggested on Twitter that whites had adopted the Nazi label as a term of endearment.

In an interview, Kessler said he doesnt support white nationalism. The frog images, he said, are an allusion to youth culture that can be appropriated by anyone, not just the alt-right. Strong borders, patriotism and nationalism, he said, increase diversity by creating distinct peoples and countries with unique ethnic character.

I do think that the Democrats are explicitly trying to flood white countries with nonwhite people, Kessler said.

Charlottesville City Council member Kristin Szakos, a Democrat who voted to remove the statue, said Kesslers online writings are very clearly aligned with the white nationalist movement.

I think its a mistake for a gubernatorial candidate who would want to be elected to represent the entire state to side with that political organization, Szakos said. She said she finds it a little bizarre that a candidate for governor would spend so much time on a local matter to begin with.

At Thursdays news conference, Stewart distanced himself from Kesslers groups views on immigration, saying he was only there to endorse removing Bellamy and keeping the Lee statue. In an interview, Stewart said hes not sure what the term alt-right means, but said he wont refuse support from people who hold views he disagrees with.

I dont expect that all my supporters are going to agree with everything that I believe. And I dont think that my supporters expect that Im going to support everything that they believe, Stewart said. Thats just the way it is. If you want a candidate who believes in everything you do, youve got to run for office yourself.

As he spoke to Kessler and his supporters, Stewart praised the group for what he called a courageous stand against real racism.

Were going to get this guy, this lunatic out of office, Stewart said. Were going to take our state back.

Bellamy did not respond to a request for comment.

When a man in the crowd called out to Stewart to ask if hed undo Gov. Terry McAuliffes decision to stop issuing specialty license plates with the Confederate flag for Sons of Confederate Veterans members, Stewart said he would.

If somebody wants to put the Confederate flag on their license plate, so be it. Thats their First Amendment freedom, Stewart said. I dont see it as a symbol of hate at all. I think its a symbol of our heritage.

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In Charlottesville, GOP candidate for governor Corey Stewart allies ... - Richmond.com

We asked ad agency Lucky Generals how it would tackle online extremism. It came up with the concept of BULLSH!TMAN who can swoop on to any website or social media platform in the blink of an eye. He doesnt care about left or right, he simply cares about true or false. Illustration: Lucky Generals

Earlier this week, a neo-Nazi teenager who built a homemade pipebomb was sentenced to a three-year youth rehabilitation order. The 17-year-old, from Bradford, had posted a message to Facebook on the day MP Jo Cox was murdered, praising her killer. Tommy Mair is a HERO, he wrote. Theres one less race traitor in Britain thanks to this man.

Court hearings revealed that the teenager had been recruited online by the secretive neo-Nazi group National Action, which was banned by the government in December 2016, becoming the first rightwing group in the UK to be proscribed under terrorism laws. In a chatgroup found on the boys phone, members discussed blowing up mosques and mimicking the methods of the IRA. The charity Hope not Hate warns that National Action has been emboldened by the ban and continues to be active, while the government anti-radicalisation group Prevent reports that one in 10 cases referred to it involve far-right extremism, rising to one in four in some parts of the country.

Nationalist propaganda has moved into the mainstream. Breitbart News, the far-right outlet once led by Donald Trumps chief strategist Steve Bannon, is launching new sites in Germany and France. Breitbart London has already launched, and a cursory glance at its front page shows stories pushing three simple messages: migrants are bad; Muslims are bad; the EU is bad.

In light of the spread of far-right bigotry and misinformation, Theresa Mays government has launched a campaign to fight back. As part of a 60m government project, the advertising group M&C Saatchi will be tasked with combating the increasingly widespread influence and propaganda of the so-called alt-right. The Home Office put out a statement on the day the new campaign was reported: This government is determined to challenge extremism in all its forms including the evil of far-right extremism and the terrible damage it can cause to individuals, families and communities.

Taking on the alt-right is not the usual sort of ad agency brief, but M&C Saatchi has run many successful political campaigns. Its mantra when it comes to political communications has always been: Hit first, hit hard and keep on hitting. Its work has courted controversy for its ruthless and often negative tone. In 1997, it caused controversy with its New Labour, New Danger poster, depicting Tony Blair with a menacing set of demon eyes, an image so shocking that even the church complained about its satanic undertones. But its methods usually work.

The Saatchi team are past masters at taking complex political ideas and boiling them down to bold, concise messages. Maurice Saatchi calls it a brutal simplicity of thought. It has served the agency, and the Tories, extremely well. Posters such as 1978s Labour Isnt Working, 1992s Double Whammy and 2015s image of a subservient Ed Miliband tucked into Alex Salmonds breast pocket shaped debate and defined campaigns.

But the landscape the agency is now operating in is very different from the cleanly polarised battlefield of electoral politics. M&C Saatchi is not being asked to attack the Labour party or promote the merits of the Tories; it is being asked to combat an enemy that is altogether more abstract, in a contest where there is no clear finishing line. In the complex, confusing and ceaseless battle of ideas that takes place every second of every day across the internet, what role can a traditional ad agency possibly play?

The agency is reticent about discussing the details of its government brief. It says its role is not to deliver a national ad campaign, but rather to support the work of civic groups around the country that are already working in communities to steer people away from extremist ideas. It is assisting in various ways, from straightforward logistics, such as helping small organisations to build websites, to strategic advice on how to identify and engage with particular audiences. Its job is not to define the message, but to offer creative advice to others where needed. It might be as simple as helping with how to word a headline on a leaflet or a post on Facebook.

It will be under-the-radar stuff, says Benedict Pringle, editor of the website PoliticalAdvertising.co.uk, who has studied in detail M&C Saatchis past political work. If we see their work, then they will probably be doing something wrong. In other words, the agency will be an invisible hand, guiding the communications of various other groups involved in the fight against extremism.

What they will be good at is to help get into the mindset of the audience, and identify the strings they can pull to make them think again, says Pringle. They will be able to advise on media strategy: finding the best channels through which to communicate with the right sort of people. So they might monitor conversations on social media platforms and intervene in them in ways that might help change behaviour.

The facts will need to be wrapped up in powerful images, memorable phrases and striking metaphors

This is something the agency gained experience of during the 2015 general election campaign, much of which was fought by micro-targeting small groups of floating voters online using bespoke messages. We had a single message that proved successful in 2015 about a long-term economic plan, says Tom Edmonds, who ran the Conservatives digital operation in 2015 before founding the consultancy Edmonds Elder. It was about knowing how that same message relates in different ways to a housewife in Devon or a mechanic in Derby.

Edmonds says that the ad agency will be trying to find the equivalent of the fabled floating voter in the fight against extremism. There is no point trying to convert the hardcore extremist, he says. I think they will try to run a very tightly targeted campaign aimed at people who have expressed casual interest in certain far-right ideas or shown some sort of intent to get involved. They will then have to find ways of running messages that resonate with them and relate to their lives and values.

Danny Brooke-Taylor, founder of the ad agency Lucky Generals, who worked on Labours 2015 campaign, says strategic targeting is one of the main skills the ad industry can bring to politics. Theres a risk that this kind of campaign is simply circulated among liberals and fails to reach, let alone engage, people with extreme views, he says. Obviously, some of these will be immune to any communication but there are always less committed types, who hold the views less strongly, and simply circulate what they genuinely believe is true, without interrogating it too much.

He says that once the audience is identified, the creative techniques of traditional advertising could still have a role to play. The obvious strategy is to correct false news using the true facts. And no doubt that should be part of the approach, he says. But simply trading statistics in tit-for-tat style doesnt actually get you very far. Theres loads of evidence that human beings make most of their decisions based on emotions. So, contrary to what politicians often say, the facts wont speak for themselves. They will need to be wrapped up in powerful images, memorable turns of phrase, striking metaphors, shareable infographics, and so on.

Approaching the subject-matter with humour might be the best way to diffuse the anger and vitriol of the right, says Brooke-Taylor. Sometimes, the best way to demolish myths is to make fun of them, he says. Ridicule can be a really powerful weapon to put bullies back in their place or to point out the flaws in an argument. An additional benefit of humour is that its more likely to be shared. This shouldnt be mistaken for advocating a flippant approach sometimes a smile can be used to make a devastatingly serious and effective point. Or, as Robin Williams once said: Satire isnt dead its alive and living in the White House.

Brooke-Taylor agrees that M&C Saatchi would be wise to keep its involvement and that of the government as low-key as possible. Ultimately, this campaigns from the government, he says. But part of the far rights rise is precisely because of a distrust of the authorities. So the branding will be important, if the message isnt to be rejected because of the messenger. Maybe influencers will have a role to play here? People who dont conform to the usual snowflake stereotype (whether we like it or not) and have more credibility with this audience?

The Saatchi team have always had a sharp eye for the close relationship between advertising and public relations. In 1992, they handed out easy-to-use tax calculators to the press, allowing individuals to quickly determine how much more tax they would pay under a Labour government depending on their profession. It was a rudimentary sliding scale made from cardboard that hammered home their key campaign message in a way that voters could understand and relate to. It got a lot of press coverage, and the public strove to get their hands on the calculators. It was as close to viral content as it got in the early 90s.

That sort of creativity is about treating the audience with respect and intelligence, says Dave Trott, creative director and author of the books Creative Mischief and Predatory Thinking. That means not simply trying to shout down the opposition by contradicting what they say and calling them stupid. People were very quick to brand everyone who voted leave as racist during the Brexit debate, which only drove people further the other way.

All the best creative thinking, says Trott, goes back to the work of Bill Bernbach, the legendary US adman who created iconic 60s campaigns for Volkswagen and Avis. He was brutally honest about both the failures and the merits of the brands. He celebrated that Avis was second in the car hire market to Hertz by conjuring the slogan: We try harder. His poster for the Volkswagen Beetle urged consumers to Think small. He wasnt trying to tell people that the Beetle was the sexiest car around, says Trott. He was appealing to their rational minds by telling them it was the practical and reliable choice. Audiences respond well when you give them the right information with which to make their own smart decisions. They do not like being lectured. And that is particularly true in politics.

But it might be that the government is fighting the wrong enemy. The far right is actually in decline in this country, says Matthew Collins, author of Hate: My Life in the British Far Right. Their numbers are dwindling. The real problem is the way that some of their ideas have already been absorbed by the mainstream. Some of the stuff that the BNP was saying in 2010 about immigration and so on is now considered quite acceptable in the mainstream media. Whats more, Collins suggests, the government might be looking to do battle in the wrong place. Attacking the fringes is no longer the issue. Why arent the government looking at the fact that some voices in the mainstream think it is acceptable to say deeply offensive stuff with no concern for the feelings of others?

In any case, Collins is unconvinced that advertising is capable of changing anyones minds on extremism. No ad can convince people that their lives are better than they actually are, he argues. Do M&C Saatchi understand exactly why some of these ideas are actually attractive to a lot of people? Probably not. My concern is that they are trying to counter an idea that cant be countered by spin alone. It takes hard work. The only way to stop people being vulnerable to far-right ideas is to meaningfully change the circumstances of their lives.

The team at M&C Saatchi say their job is to help community groups; that they will help those groups identify and engage with those most vulnerable to extremist ideas. Posters and cardboard handouts might no longer be the means of communication, but the same principles still apply.

Sam Delaney will be in conversation with M&C Saatchis political team at Mad Men and Bad Men on 12 March, a live event that is part of the IPA Festival of British Advertising. For more information, go to adfest100.co.uk

Original post:
Think different: can advertising defeat 'alt-right' propaganda? - The Guardian