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World

Don’t Blame the Nazis: The Alt-Right Has an American Past

DOOMED TO REPEAT HISTORY?

It has happened here before—and its most shameless voice was Charles Lindbergh.

Clive Irving

Updated Jun. 11, 2020 3:30PM ET / Published Dec. 03, 2016 12:02AM ET 
BEAST INSIDE

Photo Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast

If they raise their right arms and chant “Hail Trump” (carefully avoiding the Heil) are they really Nazis?

It’s springtime for people like Richard Spencer’s odious column of avowed alt-right racists, who felt that they could openly make the salute at a Washington, D.C., meeting. Although by any account they are at the outer limits of neo-fascist hate mongering they reflect a new energy as hate crimes flourish across America.

But we should exercise extreme care when invoking the Nazi connection. It’s just too simple to resort to German history when instead we should be looking at American history. This stuff has happened here before. Once put in the context of American rather than European history the comparisons are more instructive—and more alarming.

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