Targeting a common enemy against a community.
Via KXLH:
Members of the alternative right may be few in number, but their ideology has outsized influence and disturbing similarities to fascism, a Montana State University Billings professor said this week.
Paul Pope, a political science professor, spoke on “American Democracy and the Rise of the Alternative Right” in the “Frontiers in Democracy” lecture series at MSU Billings, according to Last Best News. He drew parallels between the ascendance of Donald Trump in American politics and the spread of alt-right ideology around the world.
Pope did not charge that Trump thinks of himself as a member of the alt-right, but he said that some of Trump’s policies appeal to alt-right adherents.
Pope noted that Trump managed to win the Republican nomination for president over more than a dozen opponents with longer political resumes and more conventional Republican beliefs.
“He went after Republicans as much as he did Democrats,” Pope said.
Trump swept into office with broad support from the older white male working class, the Americans who are the subject of sociologist Michael Kimmel’s “Angry White Men: American Masculinity at the End of an Era.” Kimmel’s book, published in 2015, did not mention Trump, Kimmel said in an interview with the Guardian last month.
“Essentially, I wrote a book about his followers – for whom the leader hadn’t showed up yet,” Kimmel said. An updated edition is due out next year.[…]
Generally, Pope said, members of the alt-right favor creation of an ethno-state for Europeans, economic and social nationalism based on white heritage, racial segregation, and a fanatical attraction to conflict, including violence. They oppose immigration, the Enlightenment, traditional conservatism, homosexuality and drug use.
Taken together, the alt-right’s beliefs resemble those of fascism, the ideology adopted by Adolph Hitler in Germany and Benito Mussolini in Italy in the 1930s. Characteristics of fascism, he said, include belief in a strong leader, subordination of the individual, an emphasis on military strength, sexism, censorship, violence and a one-party state with religion, industry and government closely intertwined. Fascists typically favor traditional gender roles, run fraudulent elections and show disdain for intellectuals, the arts and academia.
While Trump’s ideology is difficult to nail down, Pope said, he has an authoritarian style, and he has adopted positions that appeal to the alt-right, including building a border wall, restricting Muslim integration and altering the federal budget to increase spending on security and cut spending on administration, education and the arts. Trump also has taken positions that violate human rights, such as calling for torture and for attacks on family members of terrorists.