THE RED HAT IS THE RED FLAG:

The extreme right-wing internet is a small place. The rise of neoreaction inevitably led it to cross paths with another online fringe movement of the mid-2010s: the alt-right.

Members of the two movements didn't agree on everything: While Land and Moldbug valorize capitalism and see democracy as the major barrier to a better future, alt-right ideologues like Richard Spencer and Jared Taylor valorize whiteness and see Jews and non-whites as the problem. Nonetheless, the two shared core ideas, like an emphasis on the role of genetics in creating human hierarchies, that make them comfortable coexisting in the same online spaces. "Although I am not a white nationalist, I am not exactly allergic to the stuff," as Moldbug once put it. (Land is somewhat more critical, writing in The Dark Enlightenment that "the opportunity for viable ethno-supremacist politics disappears into a logical abyss.")

The result is considerable cross-pollination between neoreactionaries and the alt-right. Ideas and terminology crossed the different group lines; some fringe influencers, such as the YouTuber Colin "Millennial Woes" Robertson, have described themselves as being both neoreactionaries and members of the alt-right. A 2018 Southern Poverty Law Center investigation found that several posters on The Right Stuff , an alt-right website, were heavily influenced by neoreaction.

"Many of the ideological seeds that would make me open to Hitlerism started with Dark Enlightenment," one of the posters quoted in the study wrote.

This is the most likely means through which the racist movement became introduced to the term "accelerationism." There's no meaningful use of the term or attention paid to Land among American racists prior to the alt-right's encounter with The Dark Enlightenment -- and why would there have been? An abstruse techno-capitalist philosophy seems to have little in common with the herrenvolk hatred of the KKK. It wasn't until the rise of neoreaction and the alt-right -- two very online movements that shared members in common -- that the encounter would have happened.

It's somewhat ironic, then, that "accelerationism" has displaced the alt-right in the eyes of many internet racists.

In popular usage, the "alt-right" is generally taken to refer to racists on the internet. That's actually a bit imprecise: The alt-right is a specific subset of online racists, one that believes white nationalism can triumph by trolling journalists and staging real-life demonstrations like Charlottesville. The basic model is Hitler and the Nazi party: Win power through democratic elections, then enact your goals.

This has long been a controversial strategy in the neo-Nazi community. It had been tried before in the 1950s and 1960s by the American Nazi Party, whose charismatic leader, George Lincoln Rockwell, attempted to turn it into a legitimate force. Rockwell staged a rally on the National Mall, demonstrated against civil rights, and planned marches through Jewish neighborhoods on Jewish holidays. This amounted to very little politically and, in 1967, Rockwell was assassinated by a former member of his own party.

The alt-right's leaders believed the time was right for another try, in large part thanks to Donald Trump and the internet.

Trump is seen by the alt-right not as a crypto-Nazi, but as an outsider sympathetic to white nationalist goals. He served as a figurehead, a rallying point that could help them convert larger numbers of Americans to their cause. The internet allowed them to try out their message with a mass audience: memes and trolling and message boards allowed them to bypass media gatekeepers and reach Trump fans who might be receptive to white nationalist ideas directly. Indeed, the combination of Trump's rise and alt-right online activity did swell the movement's ranks considerably.

The 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, was supposed to be proof of concept, a demonstration that the pro-Trump shitposters could be turned into a real-world political movement. What actually happened was a wave of national revulsion and backlash, particularly after the murder of counterprotester Heather Heyer by a white nationalist. The alt-right lost access to social media platforms, was hounded out of public demonstrations by Antifa, and unequivocally denounced by virtually everyone in American politics (except Trump). The second Unite the Right rally, held in DC in 2018, was a pathetically low-turnout affair.

Neo-Nazis, alt-right, and white supremacists take part in the night before the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, on August 11, 2017. Christina Animashaun/Vox; Zach D. Roberts/NurPhoto via Getty Images

The silver lining for the alt-right -- the president's "very fine people" comment -- wasn't enough to salvage things. Trump, despite all his vicious rhetoric and anti-immigrant policies, had failed to stop what white supremacists see as the existential threat to America: the country's long-term movement toward becoming a majority-minority country. The alt-right's theory of change through elections lost favor with others on the white supremacist fringe.

"From 2015, when Trump announced and attacked Mexicans that first day, through around Charlottesville, these people really thought they were going to be victorious in the electoral [process] and be able to take a peaceful route back to power," says Heidi Beirich, the director of the Southern Poverty Law Center's Intelligence Project. "That has been completely given up on."

This was the moment that neo-Nazi accelerationism really began its rise to prominence -- and promote its new and more violent theory of change to supplant the ideas of the "alt-cucks," as accelerationists derisively termed their white nationalist opponents.

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