The Alt-Right

In recent years, the so-called Alt-Right, a white nationalist movement, has grown at an alarming rate. Taking advantage of high levels of racial polarization, the Alt-Right seeks to normalize explicit white identity politics. Growing from a marginalized and disorganized group of Internet
trolls and propagandists, the Alt-Right became one of the major news stories of the 2016 presidential election, and exploded into public consciousness after its march through Charlottesville in summer 2017. Discussions of the Alt-Right are now a regular part of political discourse in the United
States and beyond. In The Alt-Right: What Everyone Needs to Know(R), George Hawley, one of the world's leading experts on the conservative movement and right-wing radicalism, provides a clear explanation of the ideas, tactics, history, and prominent figures of one of the most disturbing movements in
America today. Although it presents itself as a new phenomenon, the Alt-Right is just the latest iteration of a longstanding radical right-wing political tradition. Throughout, Hawley discusses the other primary ideological influences on the Alt-Right: libertarianism, paleoconservatism,
neo-reaction, and the Men's Rights Movement. The Alt-Right represents a genuine challenge to pluralistic liberal democracy, but its size and influence are often exaggerated. Whether intentionally or not, President Donald Trump energized the Alt-Right in 2016, yet conflating Trump's variety of
right-wing politics with the Alt-Right causes many observers to both overestimate the Alt-Right's size and downplay its radicalism. Hawley provides a tour of the contemporary radical right, and explains how it differs from more mainstream varieties of conservatism. Dispassionate and accessible, this
is an essential overview for anyone seeking to understand to this disruptive and dangerous political movement.

This book explains the ideas, tactics, history, and prominent figures of the so-called Alt-Right, a white nationalist movement that first gained national and international prominence during the 2016 presidential election. It describes this movement's place in contemporary American life, and how the Alt-Right relates to Donald Trump's much larger right-wing populist movement. In clear and dispassionate terms, the book explains the degree to which the Alt-Right and other elements of the modern white supremacist movement threaten American democracy.

"The Alt-Right: What Everyone Needs to Know should be read by anyone curious about the genesis and growth of the movement it examines. Comprehensive and approachable, it provides the reader opposed to fascism but uncertain as to why with information and knowledge certain to enhance one's
understanding of the movement and, importantly, why it must be fought."--CounterPunch

"Structured like a primer - part glossary, part who's who - [The Alt-Right] situates the loose-knit tendency known as the "alternative right" within the broader context of American conservatism."--The Guardian