Charlottesville and the alt-right: a turning point?

This article argues that education and exposure are essential tools in the fight against the alt-right movement. While the alt-right has flourished by disguising its core racist ideology, the August 2017 "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville VA revealed the movement's white supremacist leanings and affiliations. Building on this public unmasking, I outline what I see as the eight central white supremacist concepts that animate alt-right thinking: the Jewish Question, the 14 words, white genocide, white nationalism, identitarianism, race realism, misogyny, and the ethno-state. These concepts connect the alt-right to more traditional white power groups and organizations, and it is essential that educators, parents, students, and administrators understand and publicize those connections. The tragedy and chaos of the Charlottesville rally certainly forced alt-right leaders to make strategic and tactical modifications: public exposure intensified existing schisms and led to doubts about the efficacy of large-scale public rallies. But the central white supremacist tenets that emboldened far-right advocates to march through Charlottesville continue to motivate the movement, and anti-racist activists must understand and fight those ideas in both the real and virtual worlds.