Alternative Right

For the movement of right-wing ideologies that are an alternative to mainstream conservatism, see Alt-right.

Alternative Right refers to an Alternative Right online magazine created by Richard Spencer and Colin Liddell in 2010 and to the later "New Alternative Right" webzine, edited by Liddell and Andy Nowicki, that was created when the first website was shut down in 2013. Richard Spencer's Alternative Right was hosted at AlternativeRight.com and funded by NPI America before Spencer shut it down, saying it was too much work to manage.

The magazine addressed the need for an "alternative" to mainstream right-wing ideas that embraced ideas current in the European New Right and other post-war right wing writing. Its nationalist stance attracted criticism from left-wing groups such as the Anti-Defamation League and it has been accused by The Atlantic of being a "white supremacist" site.

In 2012, Alternative Right published an article entitled "Is Black Genocide Right?" The article stated that the black race "has contributed almost nothing to the pool of civilization" and asked "whether Black Genocide is something worth considering"; after drawing widespread criticism, the article was deleted from the site.

In May 2013, Yahoo! News reported that Jason Richwine, then a scholar at the Heritage Foundation and co-author of a controversial study on the costs of amnesty, had published an article and blog at AlternativeRight.com in 2010. The Rachel Maddow Show publicized these findings in a segment of the program on May 9, 2013.

Criticism

Alternative Right has been an object of criticism from both the political left and mainstream right. Examples of the former include the Southern Poverty Law Center, which has characterized the site as "yet another far-right magazine," as well as "loaded with contributors who...have long lamented the white man’s decline." Conservative critiques include E.D. Kain's contention at True/Slant, that "the far-right-wingers at Alternative Right represent the ugly – and yes racist – underbelly of 'alt' conservatism. This is white nationalism, folks, dressed up in faux-intellectualism."

In March 2010, Spencer was interviewed by Tim Mak of FrumForum, the online magazine of George W. Bush speechwriter David Frum. Mak concluded that Alternative Right's "ideas belong in some sort of padded room," and that its writers are "going to be white nationalists, but, by God, they’re going to be a little fancy about it."

There have also been many less politically correct criticisms of Spencer from other activists within the white nationalist movement, who have claimed that he is merely part of the controlled opposition. Notably, his support for Joe Biden in the 2020 presidential election was criticised.

See also

• Richard B. Spencer