Goodbye, Pepe
The end of the alt-right
how many of these racist trolls are committed to the real-life violence and potential state repression that the movement’s goals will now summon forth? The standard online shtick for politically serious members of the alt-right has been to flirt with Nazism but then to laugh at anyone who took these gestures at face value. But in the wake of James Alex Fields’ alleged terrorist assault in Charlottesville, which claimed the life of antifa protestor Heather Heyer, ironic dodges are foreclosed to the alt-right. In addition to Fields’ usage of a car as a deadly weapon—a tactic borrowed, ironically enough, from ISIS sympathizers in Europe—the show of fascist strength in Charlottesville made it abundantly clear that the most vocal and committed leaders of the movement are not basement-dwelling geeks but heavily armed militiamen. This was no shambolic gathering of weedy LARPers or neckbeards with silly grins and Pepe signs but a uniformed procession of politically serious white nationalists prepared for violence and employing deadly serious chants of “blood and soil” and “you will not replace us.”
- Angela Nagle
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