The Los Angeles Times is highlighting how Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump’s candidacy continues to draw “white supremacists into" the "political mainstream.”
Trump and his campaign have engaged in an ongoing and unprecedented courtship with the white nationalist movement. White nationalists have donated to Trump’s campaign, endorsed him, and repeatedly cheered his policy proposals and racist comments. The candidate has on multiple occasions retweeted white supremacists on Twitter, and Trump surrogates -- including his son, Donald Jr., who has become a hero to neo-Nazis -- have given interviews to white nationalist media. In turn, the white nationalist movement has used Trump’s candidacy to fundraise and boost their organizations and media outlets.
In a September 29 article, LA Times reporter Lisa Mascaro highlights how “Trump’s surprise rise to become the GOP presidential nominee, built largely on a willingness to openly criticize minority groups and tap into long-simmering racial divisions, has reenergized white supremacist groups and drawn them into mainstream American politics like nothing seen in decades.”
In addition to Trump’s candidacy leading to “a sharp rise in traffic and visitors” for white nationalist websites, Mascaro writes that members of the movement have been “showing up at his rallies, knocking on doors to get out the vote and organizing debate-watching parties.”
According to neo-Nazi writer Andrew Anglin, who heads the pro-Hitler and rabidly anti-Semitic and racist website Daily Stormer, “Trump had me at ‘build a wall’ … Virtually every alt-right Nazi I know is volunteering for the Trump campaign.”
From the LA Times:
White supremacists are active on social media and their websites report a sharp rise in traffic and visitors, particularly when posting stories and chat forums about the New York businessman.
Stormfront, already one of the oldest and largest white nationalist websites, reported a 600% increase in readership since President Obama’s election, and now has more than one in five threads devoted to Trump. It reportedly had to upgrade its servers recently due to the increased traffic.
“Before Trump, our identity ideas, national ideas, they had no place to go,” said Richard Spencer, president of the National Policy Institute, a white nationalist think tank based in Arlington, Va.
Not since Southern segregationist George Wallace’s failed presidential bids in 1968 and 1972 have white nationalists been so motivated to participate in a presidential election.
Andrew Anglin, editor of the Daily Stormer website and an emerging leader of a new generation of millennial extremists, said he had “zero interest” in the 2012 general election and viewed presidential politics as “pointless.” That is, until he heard Trump.
“Trump had me at ‘build a wall,’” Anglin said. “Virtually every alt-right Nazi I know is volunteering for the Trump campaign.”