{"id":24,"date":"2020-04-21T18:25:28","date_gmt":"2020-04-21T22:25:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst490li\/?page_id=24"},"modified":"2020-05-04T16:35:20","modified_gmt":"2020-05-04T20:35:20","slug":"section-i-the-alt-right-and-the-internet","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/blog.richmond.edu\/ldst490li\/section-i-the-alt-right-and-the-internet\/","title":{"rendered":"The Alt-Right and the Internet"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo Courtesy of Wikimedia Commons<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The term \u201calt-right\u201d was coined by Richard Spencer in 2010. He described it as \u201c<\/span>identity politics for white Americans and for Europeans around the world.<\/span><\/a>\u201d<\/span> In fewer words, the alt-right is a white supremecist movement, however, Spencer\u2019s definition of the movement is vague as a way to exist. Spencer denies that the alt-right is white suprecist; instead, he refers to the movement as \u201cidentitarianist,\u201d for it holds \u201c<\/span>the belief that identity is the most fundamental aspect of political life.<\/span><\/a>\u201d Alt-right leaders frame the alt-right\u2019s narrative in a way that allows Americans who believe in white supremecist ideals to come together in a more acceptable fashion than a group of people who explicitly identify as white supremecists.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Some alt-right supporters claim that their more extremist sentiments are \u201c<\/span>not truly meant<\/span><\/a>;\u201d rather, they\u2019re a way to go against the grain of mainstream society. In a society that has come to accept diversity and multiculturalism, the alt-right believes that white Americans have lost their status somewhere along the way. Two alt-right leaders, Allum Bokhari and Milo Yiannopoulos, say that the only way for a culture to be preserved is \u201c<\/span>some degree of separation between peoples.<\/span><\/a>\u201d The alt-right claims that their opposition to racial integration is different from white supremacy.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The alt-right\u2019s online presence helps the movement survive, for the internet is the perfect arena for the use of its tactics. The alt-right\u2019s preferred language is ridden with \u201c<\/span>memes, irony, and ambiguity.<\/span><\/a>\u201d Popular memes created by members of the alt-right spread quickly, even in the dark corners of the internet that many Americans do not know exist. By communicating in this way, their posts are more difficult for the average viewer to come across, to understand, or for the site to flag their content. Further, by speaking in language that is often sarcastic or ambiguous, the alt-right is able to \u201c<\/span>wrongfoot critics<\/span><\/a>,\u201d or confuse, embarass or catch them off-guard in its response.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The history of the alt-right mirrors the history of the internet: both were created by white men. Since the alt-right owes much of its recent success in building its base to the internet, the history of the internet is where the story of the alt-right must begin in order to create a comprehensive picture of how the alt-right grew to influence mainstream culture and politics in the United States.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The widely-accepted creators of the first digital computer are <\/span>J. Presper Eckert and John W. Mauchly<\/span><\/a>, who invented a machine called the ENIAC <\/span>at the University of Pennsylvania<\/span><\/a> in 1945. By 1962, there were around <\/span>10,000 computers in existence<\/span><\/a>. They were primitive, yet expensive. The first users of the internet, in 1969, were researchers at The University of California at Los Angeles, the Stanford Research Institute, the University of California at Santa Barbara, and the University of Utah. They were \u201c<\/span>connected on the ARPANET, the technical foundation for the internet.<\/span><\/a>\u201d As the internet grew, the \u201c<\/span>the issue of the constant change in the currency of information and the turn-over of people on projects<\/span><\/a>\u201d arose. In 1989 at the European Organization for Nuclear Research, or CERN, Tim Berners-Lee proposed a solution: \u201c<\/span>a hypertext system that will run across the Internet on different operating systems.<\/span><\/a>\u201d This solution is better known as the World Wide Web. From there, the internet rapidly grew in scope and popularity. Within years, it had become a hallmark of communication in twenty-first century society.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A commonality between most of the internet\u2019s most popular sites today is that they are led by white men. For example, Facebook, Twitter and Reddit have always had white male CEOs. Only YouTube has had a female CEO, Susan Wojcicki. Without diversity in the leadership of most of the largest social media platforms on the internet, the internet remains a white, male-dominated space. <\/span><\/p>\n

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The term \u201calt-right\u201d was coined by Richard Spencer in 2010. He described it as \u201cidentity politics for white Americans and for Europeans around the world.\u201d…<\/p>\n

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