Abstract
This chapter explores the nexus of the Trump presidency and the new “Alt-Right”. It argues that Trump and the Alt-Right are part and product of America’s own past and persisting structures of racism, not outliers in some essentially inclusive, tolerant, and colour-blind way of life. To show how, the chapter’s first section historicizes the white nationalist structures, ideologies, parties, presidencies, and campaign strategies that preceded Trump’s 2016 election and which made a Trump presidency seem “common sense” to so many millions of white people, including the “Alt-Right”. The second section contends Donald Trump is a poster boy for white nationalist class power and privilege, and probes his “new racist” presidential campaign and White House. The third section interrogates the Trump presidency’s convergence with and eventual divergence from the Alt-Right. Overall, the chapter assesses the mainstream politics of Trump and the Alt-Right with regard to continuity and change in American racial capitalism, white nationalist presidencies, the Republican Party’s Southern Strategy, and conservativism’s “reactionary mind”.
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Mirrlees, T. (2022). Trump and the Alt Right: The Mainstreaming of White Nationalism. In: Perry, B., Gruenewald, J., Scrivens, R. (eds) Right-Wing Extremism in Canada and the United States . Palgrave Hate Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-99804-2_4
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