The alt-right: reactionary rehabilitation for white masculinity: US alt-right extremism is a logical consequence of mainstream neo-conservatism

After the 2016 presidential election, as the US media scrambled for ways to understand the sources of Trump’s support, there was a dramatic proliferation on news sites of profiles of figures from the alt-right such as Milo Yiannopolous and Richard Spencer – many of them alarmingly deferential in tone. Almost immediately, however, there was an understandable backlash from liberal commentators and activists, urging journalists to stop using the euphemistic ‘alt-right’ moniker and to instead refer to the loosely defined digital subculture to which the label was attached as ‘neo-Nazi’.