Just what, exactly, is the “alt-right?” Farron Cousins with Ring of Fire defines them as the “hateful fringe” of the population of the United States who helped propel President-elect Donald Trump into power. In a recent video hosted with The Young Turks , the host described members of the group being left feeling that they may have been “conned” by the president-elect into believing that he holds white-supremacist views. Cousins spoke about “revolt” chatter within the alt-right if Trump does not stay true to the “white-supremacist” ideals he held up during his presidential campaign, emanating from people like Mark Weber and Jared Taylor, each of whom were named among “ 40 to watch ” radical right-wing leaders by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Mark Weber has been described as the embodiment of the Holocaust-denial movement by the American Defamation League. Jared Taylor is the founder of the New Century Foundation , responsible for the publication of American Renaissance , and said to conduct “pseudo-scientific studies and research that purport to show the inferiority of blacks to whites,” as reported by the SPLC.
In the wake of the June 2015, Charleston, South Carolina, massacre that left nine innocent people dead, Taylor spoke about anger among U.S. citizens over the “genuine facts of interracial crime in the United States,” but stopped short of approving violence, as reported by Time .
Farron Cousins held up the support of Weber and Taylor as a reason that Americans would be misguided in believing that Donald Trump’s presidential campaign “spoke to middle America” and genuinely “addressed their fears.” The Ring of Fire host stated that the overwhelming factor that led the president-elect to an election win was “racism” and that many of his supporters are angry because he isn’t acting “racist enough.”
Cousins allowed that Trump’s role as a populist that spoke to white, working-class Americans did contribute to his success, but that without the support of white supremacists, he would not have won. The host stated that President-elect Trump was “very clear” about his “hatred” of Muslims and people of color.
“That is who Donald Trump is,” Farron Cousins stated.
He went on to explain that this was what white supremacists “wanted” and why they “flocked” toward Trump in droves. Cousins was not willing to go so far as labeling all of Donald Trump’s followers as being racist, but professed a belief that “all racists are Trump supporters.” He described the two groups of the president-elect’s supporters as not being “mutually exclusive” of one another.
Peter Brimelow , described by the SPLC as a “leading anti-immigration activist,” concerned with the racial purity of the United States being compromised by “non-whites,” told the Guardian that if the president-elect does not deliver “important bones” to the alt-right that it could result in a “revolt.”
Brimelow referred to a group that chanted “Hail Trump” in Washington following the election as being “used to guerrilla warfare.” The group was led by Richard Spencer, who has been quoted by the SPLC, calling for a stop to the “ethnic deconstruction” of European heritage in the United States and a program of “peaceful ethnic cleansing.”
On top of naming the former head of the alt-right publication Breitbart , Steve Bannon, to his administration, Donald Trump has been accused of being “slow” to reject the endorsement of former Klansman David Duke. Trump began his campaign by stating that Mexican immigrants were “rapists and drug dealers,” promising to build a wall along the entire border with Mexico, promising to deport all undocumented immigrants in the country, and proposing a complete ban on people of the Islamic faith from entering the United States.
The president-elect has, unequivocally, backpedaled on some of these promises, saying that he would be content with a fence along some areas of the border with Mexico, after comparing his proposed wall with the Great Wall of China, as previously featured by the Inquisitr . The Trump plan for a complete ban on Muslims entering the United States has, similarly, been scaled back to one of “ extreme vetting ” for people looking to enter the country from countries with known links to terrorism, as reported by the Inquisitr . President-elect Trump’s use of these promises to attract white supremacists and the appearance that his intent was not genuine appears not to be sitting well with some of his most vocal supporters.
Editor’s Note : A previous version of this article erroneously identified David Stein Cole as on the “40 to watch” list. It also named Ronald David Cole as well (his name was simply mentioned in the SPLC article). The Inquisitr staff would like to apologize to David Stein Cole for any duress this error may have caused.
[Featured Image by David J. Phillip/AP Images]