Steve Bannon and the Alt-Right: A Primer
Gonna be a tough ride.
What is there left to say about the alt-right? Let’s just start with the basics.
Their numbers are hard to quantify, but they have a large social media presence, particularly on Twitter, which they use to harass journalists and conservatives, particularly Jewish ones. They’re fond of internet memes, have their own little shibboleths (such as their tactic of putting parenthesis around the names of Jewish users), and are generally young, white, and male.
They also have a presidential candidate they love, Donald Trump, and a conservative news site of their own: Breitbart, which up until a couple days ago was run by new Trump consigliere SteveBannon.
Bannon’s Breitbart distinguished itself from the rest of the conservative media in two significant ways this cycle. The first was becoming a mouthpiece for Trump while other, older conservative periodicals were declaring war on him. The second was through their embrace of the alt-right, which mainstream conservatives tend to abhor.