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White Nationalists' Enthusiasm For Trump Cools
NPR ^ | January 13, 2017 | Frank Morris

Posted on 01/14/2017 4:52:14 PM PST by nickcarraway

Next week, white nationalists like Jared Taylor will celebrate a moment they've been waiting decades to see, when Donald Trump is inaugurated as the 45th president of the United States. Members of the white nationalist movement were among the first to embrace Trump's candidacy, and they celebrated after his election.

"Jan. 20 reflects a significant defeat for egalitarian orthodoxy," Taylor says.

Taylor promotes a very different orthodoxy, one in which race is central to innate abilities and national success. He is working to build a United States explicitly for white people. Trump arguably helps this by telling supporters that they're the victims of a system rigged against them.

"I see Donald Trump as a kind of steppingstone. He is a step in the right direction in terms of understanding America and history and the world in essentially racial terms," Taylor says.

But white nationalist enthusiasm for Trump has fallen off substantially. Since the election, the so-called alt-right has splintered, and the movement now looks a lot less potent than it once appeared.

Energized By Trump's Win, White Nationalists Gather To 'Change The World' POLITICS Energized By Trump's Win, White Nationalists Gather To 'Change The World' To understand that, it helps to go back to the heady days just after the election.

"It's too much winning! Could someone please just stop winning, I don't want to win anymore," Richard Spencer, who coined the term alt-right, told a room full of fellow radicals in November. Spencer said that Trump's victory had just slingshot white nationalism into the mainstream.

"And even if we're not quite in power yet we should act like it," he said.

Richard Spencer, who coined the term alt-right, said that Trump's victory had just slingshot white nationalism into the mainstream. Ariel Zambelich/NPR But later that day, Spencer gave another speech, a fiery one that ended with some of the audience casting off any pretense of being mainstream.

"Hail Trump! Hail our people! Hail victory!" Spencer shouted, raising his glass in a straight-arm toast to the audience.

Some in the crowd responded with enthusiastic Nazi salutes, which captured media attention.

Ex-Breitbart Executive Brings Alt-Right Ties To The White House ANALYSIS Ex-Breitbart Executive Brings Alt-Right Ties To The White House "Right after the election, I think it was euphoria," says Kevin MacDonald, a retired evolutionary psychology professor at California State, Long Beach and another white nationalist mainstay. "But as we get into it now, there's more trepidation."

MacDonald says Trump's appointments also have rattled the movement, especially his propensity for tapping rich Wall Street bankers.

"These are globalists in general. They love free trade, they love immigration — big red flags for us," he says.

And MacDonald says he is concerned about the reliance on generals and hawkish policy leading America into another Middle East war.

"Lot of trepidation, but the big silver lining is Jeff Sessions," he says.

MacDonald hopes Sessions, Trump's nominee for attorney general, will clamp down on immigration. White nationalists also like the nominee for secretary of state, Rex Tillerson, who is seen as being close to Russian leader Vladimir Putin, a darling of the alt-right.

"Right after the election, I think it was euphoria," says Kevin MacDonald, a retired evolutionary psychology professor, about the rise of the white nationalists. "But as we get into it now, there's more trepidation." Ariel Zambelich/NPR But despite its high hopes for the Trump administration, the radical right has largely gone to war with itself. Mark Potok, with the Southern Poverty Law Center, says much of what was once called the alt-right has peeled away.

"I mean look, we are talking about a movement which spends literally more time attacking one another than they do attacking their enemies," Potok says.

No one has taken more fire from his ideological kinsmen than Spencer. Like-minded radicals have disavowed the alt-right, even called Spencer an operative bent on the movement's destruction. In the media, he is always tied to those Nazi salutes.

"I think it's good to be the person talked about, even when it's negative," Spencer tells NPR. "Our ideas are entering the discourse."

But Marilyn Mayo with the Anti-Defamation League argues that the alt-right is watching its illusion of real world influence whither.

"At some point, they may have felt that they could influence policy in some way, but I think that was really a pipe dream for them because they really are a fringe movement, and they're still a fringe movement," Mayo says.

A movement that sprang from obscurity with Trump's election seems to be dropping back into the shadows even before Trump takes power.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Extended News; Politics/Elections; US: New York
KEYWORDS: nationalists; npr; trumptransition
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1 posted on 01/14/2017 4:52:14 PM PST by nickcarraway
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To: nickcarraway

More fake news, this time from NPR.


2 posted on 01/14/2017 4:53:00 PM PST by caver (Obama: Home of the Whopper)
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To: nickcarraway

Abolish NPR

Seriously


3 posted on 01/14/2017 4:53:20 PM PST by A_Former_Democrat ("Liberalism is a mental disorder" On FULL Display NOW BOYCOTT PepsiCO Kellogg's)
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To: nickcarraway

NPR has been a joke for some time.

For me, it was when I actually started looking at other sources and realizing what a collection O’clowns (seemingly serious, but not really worthy of anything important) clowns.


4 posted on 01/14/2017 4:56:07 PM PST by Da Coyote
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To: nickcarraway

What, did the count go down from 5 to 3?


5 posted on 01/14/2017 4:56:19 PM PST by Kickass Conservative ( Democracy, two Wolves and one Sheep deciding what's for Dinner.)
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To: nickcarraway

The Alt-Left and NeoCons looking for new ways to attack Trump


6 posted on 01/14/2017 4:57:55 PM PST by stocksthatgoup (Imagine that)
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To: nickcarraway

If Trump is successful at taking out the left, the White Nationalists will dwindle. It will be the worst thing for them. Continued racial strife will make them grow.


7 posted on 01/14/2017 4:59:32 PM PST by ichabod1 (Make America Normal Again)
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To: nickcarraway

We paid for this “news”.


8 posted on 01/14/2017 5:00:05 PM PST by The Toll
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To: nickcarraway

“Next week, white nationalists like Jared Taylor will celebrate a moment they’ve been waiting decades to see, when Donald Trump is inaugurated”

How could anyone be waiting decades for Trump’s inauguration?

And, Taylor is an idiot and the alt-right so-called was never that strong. The media pumped it up.

Yeah, we’ve got a bunch of these cretins here, I know.


9 posted on 01/14/2017 5:00:42 PM PST by ifinnegan (Democrats kill babies and harvest their organs to sell)
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To: nickcarraway

This is bullsh*t and we are getting effing sick of it!


10 posted on 01/14/2017 5:01:24 PM PST by ilovesarah2012
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To: nickcarraway

More Winning!


11 posted on 01/14/2017 5:01:55 PM PST by dfwgator
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To: nickcarraway
Naively
Puerile
Radio
12 posted on 01/14/2017 5:03:58 PM PST by tomkat
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To: ifinnegan
I believe that Taylor was vilified and called a racist for his book, The Color Of Crime, that used the crime statistics that revealed the overwhelming evidence that blacks commit most of the crime in the US. When it was released the black community and the MSM did all they could to label the book racist and it stuck.
13 posted on 01/14/2017 5:07:14 PM PST by vetvetdoug
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To: nickcarraway

Only NPR would give a PoS like Richard Spencer any attention.


14 posted on 01/14/2017 5:10:18 PM PST by Timpanagos1
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To: nickcarraway
NPR is playing chicken w/ Trump.

Not a good move.

15 posted on 01/14/2017 5:10:20 PM PST by Pietro
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To: caver

They just keep throwing bullshit hoping some of it will stick.


16 posted on 01/14/2017 5:21:59 PM PST by wjcsux (MAGA, I'm not tired of winning or gloating!)
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To: vetvetdoug

Well, yes and no.

Going way back, around 1990/1 he did have a controversial book.

But he himself began saying there are genetic differences in intelligence.

I actually spoke personally with him and was addressing problems of genetically defining race etc...which are real questions. By saying it is genetic, if one were to take him seriously, he would be a bit weak on the science, almost in to pseudo-science.

But he didn’t actually care about real questions. He just wanted to say blacks were inferior.

I felt he had a fair amount of legitimacy at the time, before this interaction, and even after I didn’t think he was straight out NAZI White Supremist separatist type.

I’m surprised where he’s gone and what he’s done.


17 posted on 01/14/2017 5:26:11 PM PST by ifinnegan (Democrats kill babies and harvest their organs to sell)
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To: nickcarraway

Fake News.

Anyone who takes this bs seriously, is not a real Freeper!


18 posted on 01/14/2017 5:27:53 PM PST by Grampa Dave (The deadliest Islamic terror cell America has ever faced is leaving office, 20 Jan 2017!)
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To: nickcarraway

NPR will soon be denied any taxpayer funds, as they well should be!

Trump/Pence = Make America Great Again!


19 posted on 01/14/2017 5:27:58 PM PST by heterosupremacist (Resistance to tyrants is obedience to God ~ Thomas Jefferson)
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To: nickcarraway

N O . M O R E . P U B L I C . F U N D I N G

ever


20 posted on 01/14/2017 5:30:22 PM PST by DoughtyOne (John McStain. The friend of those who hate our nation.)
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