Ellie Reeve
Appearances
Today, Explained
"Happy Sixthmas"
An absorption of the Great Replacement. In the alt-right, it's the idea that Jews are importing... people of color, encouraging them to have children and discouraging white people from having kids in order to maintain control. In more normie conservatism, you see the version of the great replacement is Democrats are importing immigrants to depress white voters.
Today, Explained
"Happy Sixthmas"
Another thing you saw with the controversy over the Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, and Trump saying that they were eating cats and dogs, there were many people in the sort of MAGA world who said a version of the phrase, import the third world, become the third world. Now, that was like a white nationalist eugenicist talking point 20 years ago, like line for line. Donald Trump Jr.
Today, Explained
"Happy Sixthmas"
And that people who come to America can't just say, you know, they believe in capitalism and freedom and freedom of the press, that there's something within them that prevents them from truly embodying our culture. So alt-right is a very useful term in defining this era of white nationalism that's like 2012, 2014 through about 2018.
Today, Explained
"Happy Sixthmas"
Richard Spencer coined the term in 2008, but then trolls on 4chan embraced this term and created a whole culture around it, all this slang, slang that has completely embedded our language now. Based, cringe, cuck, cuck-servative incels. There's just so much of that language that has become part of the mainstream.
Today, Explained
"Happy Sixthmas"
It was this rising wave that got behind Trump when Trump ran for president and really felt like they were growing, they had cultural power. In 2017, they started stepping into the real world. Having big brawls with leftists.
Today, Explained
"Happy Sixthmas"
All of that culminating in these escalating street fights at Charlottesville.
Today, Explained
"Happy Sixthmas"
Charlottesville was supposed to be the capstone on what they called the summer of hate. This was the moment they were going to show the world that they were real, they had numbers, and they had power. But what came along with that is they were filmed chanting things like, Jews will not replace us.
Today, Explained
"Happy Sixthmas"
At the time, there had been this confusion over whether they really meant it. Maybe they were being ironically racist. Maybe the alt-right wasn't defined by anti-Semitism. But once they were all on camera sort of maniacally chanting that, carrying torches, that made the alt-right brand poison. So those guys get marginalized. They got kicked off financial services platforms.
Today, Explained
"Happy Sixthmas"
They kicked off social media platforms. They got sued. There was a federal civil lawsuit called Sines v. Kessler that went to trial in 2021. And the discovery process, which revealed how they had organized it, how they had been glib about violence going into Charlottesville, that really crushed all of the people who were named to that lawsuit.
Today, Explained
"Happy Sixthmas"
So, in a way, they won, right? In a way, like, you don't need this menacing outside force, like, trawling mainstream conservatism into believing what they want, because now they believe it. Like, they've won. It's pro-Russia, like... Roe v. Wade has fallen. Like, Richard Spencer used to talk about peaceful ethnic cleansing.
Today, Explained
"Happy Sixthmas"
That was the number one thing people said to point to, like, what a monster he was. Now Trump has floated deporting as many as 20 million people, right? Like, all that stuff has gone mainstream. So there's two main figures that I see as having some numbers and some strength.
Today, Explained
"Happy Sixthmas"
So they have these unannounced surprise, like, 20-minute little demonstrations where they all wear the same outfit. They're dressed in red, white, and blue. They've wrapped themselves in the flag. They learned from Charlottesville associating themselves with swastikas and Hitler and all that. That's weird and creepy. Instead, you wrap yourself in the flag and in Christianity.
Today, Explained
"Happy Sixthmas"
The other figure I watch is Nick Fuentes. Nick Fuentes went viral for saying, your body, our choice.
Today, Explained
"Happy Sixthmas"
absolute celebration of a rollback of women's rights. He's part of the sort of incel-influenced section of white nationalism.
Today, Explained
"Happy Sixthmas"
I think it is a fantastic question. Thank you, Ellie. That is a fantastic... I think about that all the time. But my first reaction is to go back to what something Fred Brennan said. Fred Brennan, he... created 8chan, that became the platform for mass shooters to post their manifestos. It became the platform for QAnon.
Today, Explained
"Happy Sixthmas"
He eventually realized he'd created a monster and set about trying to destroy it. And what he says is we need to stop separating the online and the real world. Like everything that is happening online is real and it is happening in the real world. Like sometimes there's different laws of physics that apply. But this stuff is real. So for QAnon, for example, it was like a curiosity. It was bizarre.
Today, Explained
"Happy Sixthmas"
It was outrageous. I was once on a beach and saw these people nude, sunbathing, painting a big letter Q on a boulder. I was like, oh, that's so ridiculous. But only a few years later... Like, I'm at January 6th while they're storming the Capitol, right? So it's very easy online to misrepresent your numbers, to misrepresent who you are, to seem much bigger than you actually are.
Today, Explained
"Happy Sixthmas"
But on the other hand, it is this very powerful tool for showing what ideas can become powerful. So the first person I ever heard about Drag Queen Story Hour from was a teenage fascist troll in 2017. Huh. Yeah. And this becomes a huge issue starting in 2022 in the mainstream. Same thing with critical race theory, right?
Today, Explained
"Happy Sixthmas"
Again, I didn't hear anyone talking about critical race theory except for this person on 4chan until... That one was a lot quicker. That was like six months. Suddenly it was everywhere. It's like, you know on a website you do A-B testing of a headline to see what sticks? Like, 4chan is that, but this is a much more powerful level.
Today, Explained
"Happy Sixthmas"
Now that Elon Musk has taken over Twitter, there's not a sense that you have to be anonymous to promote these ideas. So a lot of these people are saying it... with their real name on Twitter. These kinds of ideas are able to get mainstream adoption more quickly now because there's less shame attached to it.
Today, Explained
"Happy Sixthmas"
The thing that's been most interesting to me is that a lot of the old alt-right guys have been complaining that normie conservatives, the MAGA movement, stole all their ideas. And they didn't get to be part of this triumphant Trump movement. They were pushed to the side, and yet Elon Musk is reposting their memes from 10 years ago.