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The Alt-Right Can’t Agree on How to View the 2020 Election
The “alt-right” celebrated when audio was released of former Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg openly justifying his stop-and-frisk policing policy in starkly racial terms. In the audio, former New York City Mayor Bloomberg says clearly that he flooded Black and Brown neighborhoods with police because “that’s where the crime is,” playing on white nationalist talking points connecting race and crime.
White supremacist leader Richard Spencer reshared the audio on Twitter and asked why Bloomberg wasn’t running as an openly fascist candidate. “If you define your outlook with terms like ‘race realism’ or express concern over ‘demographics,’ then I must ask, unironically, is Mike Bloomberg not your man?” Spencer tweeted, pointing out that Bloomberg repeated, almost verbatim, the kind of canards used by white nationalist institutions like American Renaissance to argue that people of color are disproportionately criminals.
As we get closer to the 2020 presidential election, it seems that some members of the alt-right have evolved from initially supporting the Trumpian right to increasingly reflecting a more anti-capitalist version of fascist politics heading into the new decade.
