Hateland

by Daryl Johnson

  In fact, Trump's steadfast repetition of ridiculous falsehoods served to normalize a certain plasticity of fact around him while satisfying his base's emotional needs. Take his dogged insistence that thousands of people in a largely Arab part of Jersey City, New Jersey, were cheering as the World Trade Center came down across the river. He initially made the claim at a rally in November 2015. He doubled down a few days later on ABC's This Week, claiming, “I saw it. It was on television.” He then pointedly added, “I know it might not be politically correct for you to talk about it.” On NBC's Meet the Press, Trump again repeated: “I saw it. So many people saw it.”11

  First, by mentioning that something wasn't “politically correct,” Trump automatically got a free pass from tens of millions of Americans who felt like they were also victims of a left-wing conspiracy to limit what they could say and think. Second, Trump knew better than most that, by 2015, the truth was as much a byproduct of individual emotional needs as anything else. By giving his supporters what they wanted to believe—that Muslims were a hateful threat to the nation—Trump validated their anger and fears.

  In the end, Trump never walked the false claim back, and eventually, the flummoxed media stopped questioning him about it or mentioning it at all. Trump: 1. Media: 0.

  The same month that the Times article analyzed Trump's surprising success, he became the only presidential candidate to appear on Alex Jones's online show. Trump told Jones, who had claimed that the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, the 9/11 attacks, and the 2012 Sandy Hook elementary school shooting were faked by the government, “Your reputation is amazing. I will not let you down.”12

  Jones later claimed he was responsible for advising Trump to label the media the “true enemy” of the American people. Regardless of its origin, Trump was able to foment and leverage the widespread hatred of the media to put them on trial for being “unfair” to him. His cries of “fake news” allowed Trump to claim he was a victim of attacks from the liberal media elite, earning him the sympathy and support of conservatives who had spent years immersed in right-wing cable news and blogs.

  What's more, in a conspiratorial extremist universe, it's a given that everyone you don't agree with is lying to you. Their belief is that the more that the media disagrees with and attacks you, the more correct you are.

  Trump was a master of attention-hacking. Like Identity Evropa postering a college campus with white supremacist messages, Trump just wanted publicity. He calculated his tweets and pronouncements to dominate news cycles. Major TV networks and news websites gladly complied, providing him the equivalent of $5 billion in free earned media time in the year leading up to the election, more than twice what the Democratic candidate for presidency, Hillary Clinton, received.

  And despite being repeatedly attacked by Trump both rhetorically and, at his rallies, physically, the establishment media continued to play the role it had taken on in the new media ecosystem: amplifying rumors that emerged on Facebook, reporting what searches were trending on Google, and analyzing and rebroadcasting outrageous tweets sent out by Trump. The media was also well rewarded financially for its nonstop coverage of Trump. All three major cable news networks showed huge returns in 2016, with CNN—a frequent Trump target—posting record profits.

  Establishment media were, of course, aware that the previous few years had been full of extremist strife. In June 2014, Sovereign Citizens Jerad and Amanda Miller had murdered two police officers in a Las Vegas pizza restaurant. That September, survivalist Eric Frein shot two policemen, killing one. In June of 2015, Dylann Roof killed nine people in a church in Charleston, South Carolina. The next month, Muhammad Abdulazeez, an “all-American” young man, killed five members of the military in Chattanooga, Tennessee. In November 2015, Robert Dear, Jr., had opened fire on a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood center, killing two civilians and a police officer. In December 2015, fourteen people were killed at an office party by Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik, both adherents to ISIS.

  But while many believed that the United States was an angry, unsettled place, the extremist attacks were considered just that: the acts of people at the margins of society. In a country where Barack Obama had been re-elected in 2012, it was hard to imagine that the support of a coalition of white nationalists, internet trolls, academic racists, KKK leaders, and opponents of multiculturalism and feminism would have much upside for a presidential candidate. Despite the New York Times’s insight into some of Trump's successes to date, establishment pundits didn't realize how radical the national political climate as a whole had become since 2008.

  The dissolution of the mainstream was also evident, if somewhat less immediate, in the Democratic primaries. Instead of waltzing to the nomination as had been expected, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton faced a surprisingly strong challenge from a self-declared socialist—a term that had been used primarily as an insult in the past hundred or so years of American politics. By January 2016, socialism was preferred over capitalism by voters under thirty and, among self-identified Democrats, ran about even with capitalism.13 Ideas that were formerly untouchably extreme were rapidly going mainstream.

  Clinton operatives saw that Trump's antics—for example, his insults toward members of the military and his embrace of historic rival Russia—had left a huge gap in the political center. It was fine if Trump's positive comments about Russia played well with white nationalists—who regard it as the whitest country on earth—and his coarse, inflammatory rhetoric won over some rural, blue-collar Democrats who were sick of the system's hypocrisy. The Democrats would gladly trade those fringe constituencies in exchange for suburban independents and moderate Republicans. But the mainstream was a rapidly shrinking place and only one candidate was actively recruiting and borrowing from the extremists.

  Over the course of 2016, Trump's links with most of the major players in right-wing extremism only tightened.

  In January, he retweeted from the account @WhiteGenocideTm.14

  In February, asked about robocalls supporting him voiced by academic white supremacist Jared Taylor, Trump responded with a weak non-endorsement, saying that he disapproved of the calls, but that the anger over violence being committed by illegal immigrants was legitimate. Trump's comments echoed the Council of Conservative Citizen's 2015 response that, while Dylann Roof shouldn't have murdered nine people in a prayer circle, he did have some legitimate grievances about black-on-white crime.

  Trump also got the support of Jerry DeLemus, a former marine who founded New Hampshire Veterans for Trump. DeLemus had also played a major role in organizing the armed militias in the 2014 armed standoff at Cliven Bundy's ranch. Bundy himself voiced support for Trump as well.

  In February, Trump retweeted a quote by Italian fascist Benito Mussolini: “It is better to live one day as a lion than 100 years as a sheep.”15 But that incident was overshadowed by one of the biggest scandal of Trump's candidacy.

  On CNN, Trump was asked about the strong endorsement he received from former grand wizard David Duke. Trump claimed, “I don't know anything about David Duke, ok?”16

  The next day, after media uproar, Trump blamed a bad earpiece, saying he didn't understand the question. The less-than-believable excuse did not stem the furor. A few days later, his spokesperson—not Trump himself—directly disavowed Duke.

  Trump winked at white supremacists by not disavowing Duke immediately. To his more mainstream supporters, Trump's subsequent dubious claim of technical issues put a little distance between him and the KKK, while essentially calling the media stupid. All along, Trump trolled his opponents, reveling in the angry attacks leveled at him, while getting millions in free publicity as the episode played out over a week. Trump even earned the endorsement of the most successful propagator of pseudo-ironic racist bombast: the neo-Nazi Daily Stormer.17

  In July, Trump delivered a dour acceptance speech for the GOP nomination. He ticked off the complaints of many “alt-righters,” taking shots at globalism, the establishment
, and immigration. He also reached out to Patriot groups and militias, claiming that his opponent in the general election, former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, would abolish the Second Amendment.

  His continual bashing on Clinton and her alleged criminal activities were met by chants of “Lock Her Up!” Trump agreed, frequently saying that Clinton “has to go to jail”18—even though the FBI had already said there was no criminal case against her.

  Trump wasn't running a big-tent operation. He pinned his hopes on rallying a hardcore base while turning the whole electoral process into entertaining but policy-devoid mudslinging. In the end, the election wasn't decided by who voted for the major-party candidates but by who didn't. In 2008, 1.4 percent of Americans cast their ballots for someone other than the two major party presidential candidates. In 2012, 1.7 percent did. In 2016, that number shot up to 5.7 percent.19

  Trump's viability was also the result of maps that both parties had allowed to become extremely partisan in recent years. Up until 2000, much of the United States could be contested. Ronald Reagan won forty-nine states in 1984. In 1992, Bill Clinton won thirty-two states, including Arkansas, Georgia, and Louisiana. By 2016, only about a quarter of the country was contested by both parties. As a result, Trump didn't need to win a majority; he needed just enough people in a few swing states to get a victory.

  Nonetheless, the morning of Election Day, Clinton was considered a 5–1 favorite over Trump.20 The past two Republican presidents refused to support Trump. Just one major publication, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, supported him. He did, however, have the full-throated endorsement of The Crusader, a KKK newspaper, as well as that of Cliven Bundy, Jared Taylor, David Duke, Daily Stormer, and a whole host of other right-wing extremists.

  Following Trump's shocking victory, the establishment media and political pundits churned out reasons for it—Bernie Sanders voters, Jill Stein voters, Russian interference, racism, sexism. Victorious white supremacists also chimed in. Richard Spencer claimed, “Trump's victory was, at its root, a victory of identity politics.”21 Jared Taylor said, “Make no mistake about it: we did this. If it were not for us, it wouldn't have been possible.”22

  On one hand, this was a ridiculous claim. Trump received nearly sixty-three million votes. The fact that, say, tens of thousands of white supremacists—most of them in safely red states—finally went to the polls didn't move the needle. But both extremists were correct in a different sense. Trump's election was only possible because it gave the salesman something seemingly unique to hawk: the successful alt-right project of mainstreaming extremism.

  In May of 2017, Richard Spencer led a nighttime protest against the planned removal of a prominent statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee from a park in Charlottesville, Virginia. In July, a Klan-led protest in Charlottesville was met by large numbers of counter-protestors. After that, Spencer and another University of Virginia graduate named Jason Kessler planned a much larger rally. When Kessler applied for the permit, he described the so-to-be-infamous event's purpose as a “Free speech rally in support of the Lee Monument.”

  Compared to David Duke's all-but-canceled 2008 white nationalist conference in Memphis, the Unite the Right rally was a massive success, bringing together nearly one thousand people with white supremacist, white nationalist, anti-Semitic, and related hate-based ideologies. Duke told reporters covering the event that the protesters were “going to fulfill the promises of Trump” to “take our country back.”1

  But the rally was less a vindication of Duke than a sign that his run as the face of far-right racism was over. Richard Spencer, who had led several groups shouting anti-Semitic chants, saw his profile rise tremendously. The massive event had been promoted—largely online—by the innumerable websites in the “alt-right” universe. Most prominent among them was the Daily Stormer, the bombastic neo-Nazi news site created and maintained by two millennials—Andrew Anglin and Andrew “weev” Auernheimer—who had emerged from the troll subterranean web of comments boards typified by 4chan. In attendance were other new faces like Identity Evropa leader Nathan Damigo and Traditionalist Worker's Party leader Matthew Heimbach.

  Protestors there also echoed the central theme of the alt-right and, later, Donald Trump's campaign: victimization. One of the participants, who gave his name only as Ted because he said he might want to run for political office someday, said he was from Missouri, and added, “I'm tired of seeing white people pushed around.”2 Though Klan-related groups attended, Unite the Right felt more like a coming out party for the alt-right.

  Because Unite the Right belonged to the “alt-right,” it definitively revealed the movement's fundamental ugliness. The alt-right had emerged as a political curiosity in 2016—a project that represented itself as the work of ironic, web-savvy millennials and well-spoken academic racists. While their rally included clean-cut young men from Vanguard America and Identity Evropa, it also attracted an ugly collection of neo-Confederates, neo-Nazis, and Klan supporters chanting racist and anti-Semitic slogans.

  Still, despite the frightening images of men marching with Confederate T-shirts, neo-Nazi flags, and assault rifles, the worst damage was done by the sort of less threatening attendee associated with the alt-right. The day before the rally began, a twenty-year-old avid Trump supporter named James Fields, Jr., dropped off his cat at his mom's house and told her he was going to an alt-right rally. His mother, who tried not to discuss politics with him, said she thought it was a Trump—not a white supremacist—rally. She was surprised his views had gone that far right, claiming that her son had an African American friend.

  Fields was photographed the next day with close-cropped hair, wearing a white polo shirt, and holding a shield—the de facto uniform of Vanguard America, a group associated with the alt-right and “white identity” that had hardened around neo-Nazism.

  After the rally descended into mayhem and was declared illegal by local police, Fields drove his Dodge Challenger into a crowd of counter-protestors, injuring twenty-eight people and killing thirty-two-year-old Heather Heyer. The event's only fatality was committed not by grizzled-looking white-supremacist men toting semi-automatics, but by a clean-cut twenty-year-old with no known links to hate groups.

  While it would be specious to say that Fields's violent extremist act was the result of online radicalization—he had exhibited violent and hateful behavior for years—it would likewise be disingenuous to claim that the alt-right universe that developed between 2008 and 2016 was marginal to his crime. Fields had spent years immersed in hateful online alt-right propaganda, which encouraged and focused his anger. This alt-right rally was the catalyst that pushed him to act out his impulses.

  As a result of the fatal street violence in Charlottesville, the alt-right began to face a concerted pushback. Alt-right leaders were more likely to find themselves banned from the social media platforms that had been so critical to their rise, including Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube, as well as payment sites like PayPal. Just as importantly, media covering the alt-right was suddenly much more reluctant to use the movement's preferred terms (like identitarian, white advocate, and racial realist) in ways that distinguished the people and ideas from white nationalism or neo-Nazis.

  Trump's election and the ascendant alt-right faced other types of backlash. Antifascists, or Antifa, are direct-action groups that trace their lineage back to Nazi-era Germany, although their most recent American relations are the anti-racist skinheads that began appearing in the 1980s. Today's Antifa exists as a hybrid between most modern extremists and nonviolent protest movements, such as Black Lives Matter. They are not a defined group but are a leaderless ideology that spawned a movement. In order to maintain anonymity, members of the group often wear black and cover their faces with bandanas or masks.

  Antifa's goal—as its name suggests—is oppositional (i.e., antifascism). Antifa protest what they see as fascism—including racist, sexist, and homophobic behavior and politics—by “de-platforming” its practition
ers. These efforts are both online, such as doxing right-wing extremists or hundreds of ICE employees by, for example, taking pictures of extremists at rallies and posting them online to identify them. Efforts are also done offline, by directly confronting attendees at right-wing rallies. While the group has traditionally been comprised of anarchists, Communists, socialists, and anti-racist skinheads, they have increasingly attracted members with more mainstream politics following Trump's election.

  There is some disagreement exactly where Antifa fits into the world of extremist hate and terrorism. According to an article on Politico, Antifa is considered a domestic terrorist group by the Department of Homeland Security. However, the SPLC, while criticizing their violent tactics, has said they don't consider Antifa a hate group, an opinion for which the organization was vilified by some Republicans and right-wing websites as politically influenced.3

  Perhaps surprisingly, Antifa shares its origin story and some of its techniques in common with groups like the Oath Keepers. Antifascists are motivated by the idea that if Nazis were more ferociously confronted in the 1920s and 30s, they would never have been able take over Germany. Stewart Rhodes, founder of the Oath Keepers, has long been convinced that if law enforcement and the military refused Hitler's orders, his power would have collapsed.

  Likewise, both operate under the principle that law enforcement may not be up to the job of protecting Americans’ freedoms. As a result, they carry weapons with them in the event of direct clashes. But while Oath Keepers carry assault rifles and wear bulletproof vests, Antifa typically have nothing more offensive than flag poles or homemade shields with bolts sticking out.

  Both groups also played critical roles as unofficial police forces at the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. Despite the presence of hundreds of local and state police officers and members of the Virginia National Guard, the main rally on August 12 quickly devolved into widespread violence, with people hurling water bottles and spraying tear and pepper gas, while hundreds of others engaged in street fights.