How You Can Identify A White Nationalist

Complicating these distinctions even further, white nationalist groups often use euphemisms to make their ideas appear less repugnant. Jared Taylor, publisher of American Renaissance, a website that regularly features racist screeds, says that he is not a white supremacist, a Nazi or a racist. A racist... is always considered to be a moral inferior, he wrote in an email. I totally reject that view.

Terms that Taylor and others who hold similar views prefer: race realist or white advocate. They may also refer to themselves as advocating for Western civilization or European heritage, or say they are merely combating white dispossession or the administrative removal of Americans of European extraction.

They also love the term alt-right, which SPLC defines as a set of far-right ideologies, groups and individuals who believe white identity is under attack. The term is merely a relabeling of white nationalism for the digital age, Potok said. Its a little more pitched to young people. (Millennials may be well aware that being seen as a racist is a bad thing, even if they embrace racist viewpoints.)

Breitbart has published a glowing guide to the alt-right, suggesting its members are different from old-school racist skinheads because they are a much smarter group. In one post, a headline described political analyst Bill Kristol as a renegade Jew. Another article published last year, weeks after the mass shooting at a black church in South Carolina, celebrated the Confederate flag, a symbol embraced by racists. 

I am very frustrated by the normalization of these ideas and the notion that they are finding acceptability in mainstream discourse, said Ted Shaw, a law professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law at Chapel Hill. Last year, the Trump campaign denied allegations that now-White House chief strategist Steve Bannon is a white nationalist or a part of the so-called alt-right, the movements latest preferred moniker. Nothing could be further from the truth, and its irresponsible for anyone to even make such a baseless accusation, Jason Miller, communications director for Trumps transition team, said in a statement provided to HuffPost.

But at the time, anti-extremist groups, such as the SPLC and the Anti-Defamation League, disagreed with the Trump camps characterization of Bannon. [He] was the main driver behind Breitbart becoming a white ethno-nationalist propaganda mill, the SPLC said on Twitter. Breitbart News is the premier website of the alt-right, a loose-knit group of white nationalists and unabashed anti-Semites and racists, the ADL said.

As David Pilgrim, founder and curator of the Jim Crow Museum at Ferris State University in Michigan, said, its useful to look at an individuals statements, associations and sentiments. It becomes one of those if it walks like a duck, looks like a duck and quacks like a duck kind of things, he said.

Last year, Pilgrim also said he had no doubt that as time goes on, alt-right adherents would be seen as promoting white nationalism, even if theyre not dressed up like neo-Nazis or wearing KKK hoods. Weve allowed someone, and Im not sure whom, to restrict the use of the term white supremacist to only the guy in the racist uniform.

But in light of the violence in Charlottesville, Republican lawmakers, including Trump supporters, have not backed away from immediately condemning the racist movements by name. Calling out people for their acts of evil lets do it today. White nationalist. White supremacist, Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), who also tweeted condemnation of white supremacists on Saturday, told CNN.