You probably have a good idea of who the so-called “alt-right” are: a group of white supremacists and nationalists, bound up by a fiery loathing of “political correctness,” “cultural Marxism,” and those pesky “social-justice warriors.” You might have also seen the articles that tell us to stop using that term and call them out for the fascist, neo-Nazis they are. In the wake of the “Unite the Right” protests in Charlottesville last weekend, these calls have only become more urgent.
The phrase has become a catch-all for people like Richard Spencer, the head of the white supremacist National Policy Institute, and Milo Yiannopoulos, the online troll and provocateur who recently fell from mainstream conservative grace.