After rallying behind him throughout his whole campaign, the alt-right (as they like to call themselves as it carries less guilt) have decided against President-elect Donald Trump. This decision came to a head on the eve of the alt-right inauguration party, the DeploraBall (a play on Hillary Clinton’s “basket of deplorables” quote.
White nationalist leader Richard Spencer explains
White nationalist figurehead Richard Spencer, who coined the term “alt-right,” runs the white supremacy group National Policy Institute, and, shortly after Trump was elected, stood on a podium in a viral video and yelled out “Hail Trump!” while a crowd of white supremacists did Nazi salutes, now explains that was just “the morning after period,” and that now they’re having a change of heart about Trump.
He says that after his victory, white nationalists were “a little drunk on success” but have since come to reconsider. Spencer personally is “worried that he won’t work on really big important issues like immigration” and will instead “get caught up on little things like making fun of people on Twitter.”
The alt-right followers have been against Trump’s Cabinet choices and his dirty work with Russia. Spencer tweeted to announce that the time in which white nationalists were behind Trump’s decisions is “over.” He describes the current state of the alt-right group as “a major division going on” from an “overreaction” to his viral video.
Spencer is a ‘peaceful’ Nazi
Spencer believes that the United States should undergo “peaceful ethnic cleansing” whereby anyone who isn’t descended from Europe should be kindly asked to leave until eventually they do.
He won’t be running for a House seat (an idea he previously entertained) to have his alt-right political voice heard under President Trump. Some of them are disagreeing with the actions of others, like DeploraBall co-planner Jack Posobiec going to anti-Trump rallies to create bad press for the protesters by holding up “Rape Melania” signs, a kind of hands-on real-world trolling.
White supremacists besides Spencer have spoken out about their change of heart against the incoming commander-in-chief Trump, although they do support his choice for Attorney General: known racist Jeff Sessions. Sessions denies he is a racist, but he called a black staffer “boy” and joked about disagreeing with nothing about the KKK but their marijuana use.
“Trump is not ideologically on board with us,” says one white nationalist podcaster. They also disagree with the Russia hacking news: “whites need to ally together against their enemies.” They said that a significant factor in their choice to vote for him was “to form a good relationship with Russia.” Trump campaigning white nationalist Jared Taylor says that “if they ever thought that Donald Trump was a racially conscious advocate for white people, they were wrong.” He said of white nationalists’ new disappointment in comparison to their hopefulness for Trump’s White House, “if it gives them a clearer view, then they’ll have to be disappointed.”
