Neo-Nazis want your short, stupid attention, youth of America. And in this equation, any attention you pay them, good or bad, is giving them exactly what they want.
That’s according to both reality and a style guide for white nationalist site The Daily Stormer that The Huffington Post published this week. The document presents an almost humorous juxtaposition of basic format instructions with strategies to mask the “raging vitriol” of white supremacy with sarcasm and humor. The ultimate goals are to entice the “ADHD demographic” and circumvent social media restrictions.
Take this window into Nazi humor: “The unindoctrinated should not be able to tell if we are joking or not. There should also be a conscious awareness of mocking stereotypes of hateful racists. I usually think of this as self deprecating humor – I am a racist making fun of stereotype of racists, because I don’t take myself super-seriously. This is obviously a ploy and I actually do want to gas kikes. But that’s neither here nor there.”
The guide also states explicitly what anyone who has spent more than 15 minutes on social media sites already knows – linking “enemy” social media accounts is an implicit call for violence or harassment. That’s here in this aside: “Note: If you’re writing about some enemy Jew/feminist/etc., link their social media accounts. Twitter especially. We’ve gotten press attention before when I didn’t even call for someone to be trolled but just linked them and people went and did it.”
This document, paired with The Huffington Post’s commentary, paints a picture of white supremacists infiltrating every corner of online media – an army of racist trolls waiting to snatch up young idiots with poor attention spans.
What the alt-right’s grab bag of online guerilla tactics, borrowed from the collective experiences of internet trolls, really suggests is a small and disjointed community that hits below the belt, because it’s the only way to win. This fact still eludes the media.
Journalists can’t decide if white supremacists are a burgeoning insurgency with their lips to President Donald Trump’s ear or the disenfranchised, blue-collar boy next door.
The neo-Nazi next door pieces are at best superficial and are no more illuminating than articles about unsuspected serial killers and child molesters. White supremacy is socially unacceptable and doesn’t pay the bills for most, so they have to blend in to get by. Mystery solved.
In contrast, the coverage representing the alt-right as a powerful revolutionary force with connections to the White House has probably done more to embolden them than anything The Daily Stormer could have published.
Whether or not Trump truly understood what the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia represented back in August, his initial silence was viewed as support by the alt-right and considered a huge victory. Political backlash from both parties, followed by Trump’s lackluster condemnation of white supremacists did not discourage the alt-right, which perceived Trump’s actions as a political necessity and nothing more. Former Trump strategist Steve Bannon, the alleged connection between the White House and the alt-right, was quickly ousted from the White House following Trump’s Unite the Right response, though Bannon referred to white supremacists as “a collection of clowns.”
Both images – the inept clown and the harmless boy next door – are met with pride by the white supremacists themselves and give them exactly what they were looking for. From the style guide: “We should always be on the lookout for any opportunity to grab media attention. It’s all good. No matter what. The most obvious way to do this is to troll public figures and get them to whine about it. I keep thinking this will stop working eventually, but it just never does.”
As The Huffington Post pointed out, The Daily Stormer style guide implores its neo-Nazi authors to always claim victory and “celebrate any wins with extreme exaggeration.” This is a basic principle of propagandists and internet trolls alike. You make every condition a win. The Huffington Post article will be viewed as a win. This article will be viewed as a win.
Bryon Rogers is a freelance writer based in Texas.
