What are the alt-right and how does technology polarize them

1. What are the alt-right

a. “people with extremely right-wing political views, often including extreme views
on race, who reject normal political processes and often use the internet to
promote their beliefs” (OED
b. “The Alternative Right is characterized by heavy use of social media and online
memes. Alt-righters eschew “establishment” conservatism, skew young, and
embrace white ethnonationalism as a fundamental value.”
(https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideology/alt-right)
i. “Immigration is a kind of proxy war—and maybe a last stand—for White
Americans, who are undergoing a painful recognition that, unless dramatic
action is taken, their grandchildren will live in a country that is alien and
hostile.” —National Policy Institute column, February 2014
c. Some main traits
i. Reactionary:
1. a reaction to the conservative establishment
2. “Spencer describes alt-right adherents as younger people, often
recent college graduates, who recognize the “uselessness of
mainstream conservatism” in what he describes as a
“hyper-racialized” world. “ (SPL)
3. Reaction to the current left-wing ideologies on race
a. Spencer insists that the alt-right is “a liberation from a
left-right dialectic.”
ii. Diverse
1. “The movement is not monolithic. The diversity of far-right
ideologies that it includes has resulted in some disagreement with
regard to Jews, and whether to blame them for the perceived plight
of white culture—a belief that has undergirded many sectors of
white nationalism for decades. While some alt-right leaders are
unquestionably anti-Semitic, others, like Jared Taylor, are not,
seeing Jews simply as white people. For his part, Spencer has
repeatedly brought in anti-Semites to speak at his events.” (SPL)
2. Consists of neo-reactionaries, archeofuturists, and race-idealists
3. “libertarian thought as exemplified by former U.S. Rep. Ron Paul
(R-Texas); anarcho-capitalism, which advocates individual
sovereignty and open markets in place of an organized state;
Catholic traditionalism, which seeks a return to Roman
Catholicism before the liberalizing reforms of the Second Vatican
Council; and other ideologies.”
 iii.
Racially motivated
1. “The alt-right is intimately connected with American
Identitarianism, a version of an ideology popular in Europe that
emphasizes cultural and racial homogeneity within different
countries.” (SPL)
2. Strongly connect to white supremacy and nationalist beliefs
3. Antisemitic
a. “In March 2016, for instance, Spencer invited former
California State University-Long Beach professor Kevin
MacDonald, the author of a trilogy purporting to show that
Jews seek to undermine the host Christian societies in
which they often live, to speak at an event titled “Identity
Politics.” After the event, Spencer stopped just short of
questioning the Holocaust, telling a Huffington Post
reporter that if it “really happened, then of course it wasn’t
justified. If it happened differently than what the story
we’ve been told [is], then I think that needs to be let out.”
4. Anti-immigration
a. Trump rhetoric
iv. Internet-driven
1. “Social media have been instrumental to the growth of the
alt-right. Legions of anonymous Twitter users have used the
hashtag #AltRight to proliferate their ideas, sometimes
successfully pushing them into the political mainstream.”
2. “The best example of that is probably the term “ c---servative” — a
combination of “cuckold” and “conservative,” coined to castigate
Republican politicians who are seen as traitors to their people who
are selling out conservatives with their support for globalism and
certain liberal ideas. The phrase has a racist undertone, as some of
its backers have suggested, implying that establishment
conservatives are like white men who allow black men to sleep
with their wives. It received widespread media attention, including,
to the delight of Spencer and others, in The Washington Post.”
3. Runs rampant on platforms such as twitter, Reddit, 4Chan
2. How and why are the alt-right easily agitated
a. Biological basis
i. In a peer-reviewed study published in the Cambridge University Press by
researchers
1. Justin Robert Keene,Texas Tech University
2. Heather Shoenberger, University of Oregon
 3. Collin K. Berke, University of Nebraska–Lincoln
4. Paul D. Bolls,Texas Tech University
ii. Research abstract
1. “Recent research has revealed the complex origins of political
identification and the possible effects of this identification on
social and political behavior. This article reports the results of a
structural equation analysis of national survey data that attempts to
replicate the finding that an individual’s negativity bias predicts
conservative ideology. The analysis employs the Motivational
Activation Measure (MAM) as an index of an individual’s
positivity offset and negativity bias. In addition,
information-seeking behavior is assessed in relation to traditional
and interactive media sources of political information. Results
show that although MAM does not consistently predict political
identification, it can be used to predict extremeness of political
views. Specifically, high negativity bias was associated with
extreme conservatism, whereas low negativity bias was associated
with extreme liberalism. In addition, political identification was
found to moderate the relationship between motivational traits and
information-seeking behavior.”
2. “These results offer some support for the initial assumption
underlying this study: that trait-level activation in the appetitive
and aversive systems predicts political ideology. The regression
analysis results indicate that trait-level activation of the aversive
system is predictive of polarized political ideology but not
trait-level activation of the appetitive system. Higher trait-level
activation of the aversive system appears to lead to more extreme
conservatism among conservatives by predicting a small amount of
variance in the strength of conservatism. The opposite, however, is
true for liberals. “
iii. Scientific American Study
1. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/conservative-and-libera
l-brains-might-have-some-real-differences/
2. “On the whole, the research shows, conservatives desire security,
predictability and authority more than liberals do, and liberals are
more comfortable with novelty, nuance and complexity. “
3. “While these findings are remarkably consistent, they are
probabilities, not certainties—meaning there is plenty of individual
variability. The political landscape includes lefties who own guns,
right-wingers who drive Priuses and everything in between. There
 is also an unresolved chicken-and-egg problem: Do brains start out
processing the world differently or do they become increasingly
different as our politics evolve? Furthermore, it is still not entirely
clear how useful it is to know that a Republican’s brain lights up
over X while a Democrat’s responds to Y.”
4. Right-wing prefers security
a. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11211-017-0295-
0
b. “Results suggest that neural activity in brain regions
previously implicated in both evaluative processing and
work on ideological differences (insula and anterior
cingulate cortex) differed as a function of the interaction
between incongruence, candidate type (ingroup versus
outgroup), and political ideology. More liberal participants
showed greater activation to incongruent versus congruent
trials in insula and ACC, primarily when viewing ingroup
candidates. “
c. “Most statements were what you would expect:
Republicans, for instance, usually favor increasing defense
spending, and Democrats generally support expanding
Medicare. But some statements were surprising, such as a
conservative expressing a pro-choice position or a liberal
arguing for invading Iran.” (Scientific American)
5. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-017-0248-5.epdf?sharing_
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a. Nature Article on Amygdala structure and the tendency to
regard the social system as legitimate and desirable
b. “In two independent neuroimaging studies, we observed
that larger bilateral amygdala volume was positively
correlated with the tendency to believe that the existing
social order was legitimate and desirable.
3. Why is tech platforms so effective at exacerbating alt-right extremism
 a. Combining details from the part 1 and 2
i. Polarization on Facebook → more extreme alt-right
ii. Usage of fear
1. “The far-right uses conspiracy theories to feed on people’s fears.
Among these conspiracy theories, three stand out; “QAnon”,
“Pizzagate” and “the great replacement”. QAnon theory presents a
gruesome allegation that a “Satan-worshipping pedophile ring led
by prominent Democrats”, Hollywood actors and Jewish financiers
rule the world, and this group plot against President Donald
Trump since he fights against this group. The theory has been
linked to various violent acts including kidnapping and murder.
The FBI has identified QAnon as “domestic extremism” in 2019.
Although the theory is American-centric, it is also thriving in
Europe. For example, German followers of the theory once
claimed that the maneuvers of American soldiers within NATO in
Germany were not actually an ongoing exercise, but a secret
operation against Chancellor Angela Merkel planned by Trump to
“liberate” Germany.”
(https://www.e-ir.info/2020/11/17/post-truth-and-far-right-politics-
on-social-media/)
iii. Biologically rooted
1. Larger amygdala

Sources:
https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/ideology/alt-right
Keene, Justin Robert, et al. "The biological roots of political extremism: Negativity bias, political ideology,
and preferences for political news." Politics and the Life Sciences 36.2 (2017): 37-48.