The crossfire in the blooming internecine war between the white nationalist alt-right and its more staid “alt lite” and mainstream-conservative counterparts just claimed its first victim: Michelle Malkin.
Malkin, a Filipina-American pundit whose involvement in white nationalism dates back to her appearances in 2002 in the white-nationalist webzine VDare, was fired by Young America’s Foundation (where she had been one of the organization’s mainstays in its campus lecture program) this weekend due to her ongoing support for Nicholas Fuentes, the overt white nationalist primarily responsible for fueling the so-called “Groyper War” between hardcore alt-right followers and other less radicalized conservative activists.
“There is no room in mainstream conservatism or at YAF for holocaust deniers, white nationalists, street brawlers, or racists,” the YAF tweeted as its official statement.
Malkin fired back that the “Keepers of the Gate” have spoken, adding: “My defense of unjustly prosecuted Proud Boys, patriotic young nationalists/groypers & demographic truth-tellers must not be tolerated. SPLC is cheering.”
Most of the war is focused on the insistence by more mainstream players on denying and expelling elements within the right that are openly anti-Semitic and anti-gay, as Talking Points USA’s Charlie Kirk and others have attempted—with only a modicum of success, considering that the white-nationalist elements from which they drew so much of their original recruiting energieshave, if anything, become more radicalized over time.
The unrepentant alt-right—which insists on embracing open anti-Semitism and homophobia, not to mention an underlying ethos of violence—has organized an ongoing series of personal confrontations with “alt lite” speakers at their public events by disrupting question-and-answer sessions with trolling and racist questions. The army of alt-right trolls—who call themselves “Groypers,” named after an alt-right mascot who’s a hybrid of Pepe the frog and a rainbow-loving clown—are largely marching to the beat of white nationalist podcaster Nicholas Fuentes, who has been calling for confrontations and questions exactly along these lines.
This war reached something of a zenith last week when Donald Trump Jr. was forced to cut short a public appearance for his book Triggered, sponsored by TPUSA, when confronted by the “Groyper Army” in Los Angeles. The event devolved into a shouting match, with Trump eventually walking off the stage.
Audience: We want to ask questions
TPUSA: Have sex incel
This will end well. pic.twitter.com/DrXlVyjIsk— Mister AntiBully (@MisterAntiBully) November 10, 2019
A similar TPUSA event in Tempe, Arizona, featuring Republican Rep. Dan Crenshaw also attracted the army of “Groypers,” and it similarly turned into a shouting match and was cut short.
Crenshaw asked the trolls: “What do you guys call yourselves? There’s a name for your group, right?”
His interlocutors responded with a series of sarcastic names. Eventually they started chanting: “America First! America First!”
As the battle lines in the war have been drawn, Malkin has consistently supported Fuentes and the Groypers. As Will Sommer at The Daily Beastobserves, she has praised both Fuentes and his fans as “New Right leaders,” and has called on establishment conservatives to engage with them. She’s labeled their critics “cringe.”
Fuentes, whose “America First” YouTube show has 67,000 subscribers, is a former ally of white nationalist Richard Spencer and a friend of white nationalists like Patrick Casey (who turned up at a TPUSA event to troll Kirk) and Vincent Foxx. He has achieved near-viral status on Twitter with videos in which he defended racial segregation; called for the hanging of CNN reporters; and denied the Holocaust.
“Enough with the Jim Crow stuff,” he told his audience in one video. “Who cares? ‘Oh, I had to drink out of a different water fountain.’ Big f—ing deal … oh no, they had to go to a different school … And even if it was bad, who cares? … it was better for them, it’s better for us.”
Malkin has a lengthy history of associations with white nationalists, however, including her long VDare contributorship. She also published a book in 2004 titled In Defense of Internment that was a farrago of skewed historical revisionism and outright racial bigotry that essentially attempted to make a case for legalizing depriving an entire class of citizens of their civil rights on the basis of race or religion.
Most of all, Malkin’s slash-and-burn style of politics was always a significant precursor of what eventually became Trump-style far-right populism. She has consistently fearmongered about immigration, including up to her most recent YAF appearance, at which she told the audience that even legal immigration is a threat to the Republican Party: “We’re the majority in this room, and we’re the majority in this country.”
Malkin in her YAF talk at UCLA: "They want me to disavow Nick Fuentes and VDARE and Peter Brimelow... No, I don't agree with every last thing that all the people I've listed have ever said or written... But I will not disavow any of them..." pic.twitter.com/CmX6Cg01gV
— Adrenochrome Harvester (@ClenchedFisk) November 16, 2019
In the same talk, she promoted the white nationalist “Great Replacement” theory: "By 2045, we will be a majority-minority nation. We're losing it ... I talk about that so-called Great Replacement theory that all of the Open Borders Inc. are trying to scare people away from contemplating. Think about it and realize it. Do the math."
This conspiracy theory, of course, was invented by white nationalists in 2012 as an outgrowth of the same theories about “cultural Marxism” that inspired 2011 Norwegian mass killer Anders Breivik. More recent white nationalist mass killers, including the Christchurch, New Zealand, shooter and the El Paso, Texas, Walmart killer have cited the same theory as the inspiration for their acts.
Published with permission of Daily Kos
