The Alt-right: What Everyone Needs to Know
George Hawley
(Oxford University Press, $16.95)

THE EXTREME right poses all too evident threats in Britain and elsewhere, as the recent attacks on mosques in Christchurch so tragically demonstrate. So this book provides a welcome compilation of information mainly, but not exclusively, focused on the development of the alt-right.

This is a challenging task. As the introduction explains, it is hard to write accurately about fast-moving social movements, especially secretive ones with mostly anonymous supporters. Thus statements about them can transition from being perfectly accurate to woefully outdated with shocking speed as far-right groups emerge, disappear and then re-emerge in different guises at different points in time.

These movements are disparate as well as volatile, not that this provides any grounds for complacency. Even a splintering far right can be extremely dangerous.   

Stronger on description than analysis, George Hawley’s book provides a wealth of detail about the key individuals and groups involved in US white identity politics, along with some background comparisons with racist and fascist movements elsewhere.  

The opening chapters explain the movement’s origins in building upon the white nationalist ideas that had been developed in the US by the Klu Klux Klan, while subsequent chapters outline the connections between and differences from other influences and groupings on the far right, including some discussion of the alt-right’s varying attitudes towards Donald Trump.  

These have ranged from enthusiastic support during his election campaign through to more critical attitudes subsequently among more extreme activists.

The book concludes by reflecting on strategies to combat the alt-right and recognising the continuing threat that it poses, even in a weakened state. It may even disappear, the author contends, but this in no way implies the end of radical right ideas which may be subsequently expected to reappear in some other iteration.

The focus of Alt-Right: What Everyone Needs to Know is mainly, although not exclusively, on the extreme right in the US. In the British context, there have recently been excellent explorations of its rise, including by Daniel Trilling in his book Bloody Nasty People.

And the root causes of this toxic phenomenon is provided by critical analyses in the latest Socialist Register, including an investigation of the class basis for the rise of Trump and the new billionaire class by Ray Kielys and the authoritarian turn in neoliberal capitalism more generally by Marco Buffo, Alfredo Saad-Filho and Ben Fine.