Far-Right Media Think Isolating Richard Spencer Will Erase Their Alt-Right Pasts
Far-Right Media Think Isolating Richard Spencer Will Erase Their Alt-Right Pasts
By Jared Holt | August 17, 2017 4:27 pm
Following the white supremacist violence in Virginia this week, far-right social media superstars began disavowing and smearing Alt-Right leader Richard Spencer as part of a reignited attempt to sanitize their prior relationships to the white nationalist Alt-Right.
Spencer first began to be seen as toxic by the movement he helped to launch after journalists filmed him giving a Nazi salute and making the declaration “Hail Trump” at a post-election event. Since that moment, many online social media personalities who achieved fame by pandering to the Alt-Right and its followers have attempted to distance themselves from Spencer and claim that they are part of the “New Right” rather than the Alt-Right—attempting to hide the fact that they achieved fame by effectively acting as spokespeople for the Alt-Right’s signature ideologies.
Presidential advisor and former CEO of Breitbart News Steve Bannon, despite the fact that he once called Breitbart “the platform for the Alt-Right” and allowed the publication of an article that praised Spencer, told The American Prospect yesterday that “ethno-nationalism” such as that promoted by Spencer at Unite the Right is “a fringe element” of “losers” and “a collection of clowns” and “the media plays it up too much, and we gotta help crush it, you know, uh, help crush it more.”
The seemingly synchronized condemnation of Spencer is only happening now as “formerly” Alt-Right media figures realize that it has become increasingly toxic to be identified as members of the Alt-Right, especially in the aftermath of violent events at the Unite the Right rally.
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/far-right-media-think-isolating-richard-spencer-will-erase-their-alt-right-pasts/
