Hillary Clinton takes aim at Donald Trump’s ties to ‘alt right’ world of radical conservative
No major presidential nominee in recent history has been as openly adored by white nationalists, neo-Nazis and other right-wing extremists as Donald Trump, and on Thursday, Hillary Clinton will make the case that he should be held accountable for their embrace.
In a speech in Reno, Clinton will seek to define the insurgent breed of ideology that has fueled Trump’s rise as a dangerous cancer on the nation’s political discourse. She is taking aim at the so-called alt-right movement, a loosely defined and relatively new network of anti-establishment activists on the right that extends from mere outside-the-box protectionist thinkers to flagrantly racist and anti-Semitic hatemongers.
Trump’s alliance with the alt-right crowd is as nebulous as the movement itself. Its most extreme factions have no affiliation with the campaign, even as they praise Trump’s agenda and compare him favorably with Adolf Hitler. The more mainstream elements — including those demanding the deportation of immigrants in the U.S. illegally, an end to free-trade agreements, and the repudiation of Wall Street — are the lifeblood of the Trump campaign, amplifying its message on social media and driving turnout at his rallies.
But certain actions Trump has taken during the course of the campaign have been cheered by the more racist corners of the alt-right, and Trump’s disavowal of them has been tepid. And Trump has given Clinton an opening to tar him with some of the more extreme elements of the movement by recruiting Stephen K. Bannon, who formerly ran Breitbart News, to help run his campaign. The media organization is the closest thing there is to a voice of the alt-right, even if what it publishes is far tamer than the screeds and memes adherents to the Internet-driven movement regularly post on Reddit and 4chan. Read more:
latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-clinton-alt-right-20160825-snap-story.html