Defining the Alt Right

The NY Times attempts to define the alt-right:

These are exultant times for the alt-right movement, which was little known until this year, when it embraced Mr. Trump’s campaign and he appeared to embrace it back. ...

While many of its racist views are well known — that President Obama is, or may as well be, of foreign birth; that the Black Lives Matter movement is another name for black race rioters; that even the American-born children of undocumented Hispanic immigrants should be deported — the alt-right has been difficult to define. Is it a name for right-wing political provocateurs in the internet era? Or is it a political movement defined by xenophobia and a dislike for political correctness?

At the conference on Saturday, Mr. Spencer, who said he had coined the term, defined the alt-right as a movement with white identity as its core idea. ...

While many of its racist views are well known — that President Obama is, or may as well be, of foreign birth; that the Black Lives Matter movement is another name for black race rioters; that even the American-born children of undocumented Hispanic immigrants should be deported — the alt-right has been difficult to define. Is it a name for right-wing political provocateurs in the internet era? Or is it a political movement defined by xenophobia and a dislike for political correctness?

At the conference on Saturday, Mr. Spencer, who said he had coined the term, defined the alt-right as a movement with white identity as its core idea. ...

“Trump and Steve Bannon are not alt-right people,” Mr. Brimelow said, adding that they had opportunistically seized on two issues that the alt-right cares most about — stopping immigration and fighting political correctness — and used them to mobilize white voters.

Mr. Spencer said that while he did not think the president-elect should be considered alt-right, “I do think we have a psychic connection, or you can say a deeper connection, with Donald Trump in a way that we simply do not have with most Republicans.”

White identity, he said, is at the core of both the alt-right movement and the Trump movement, even if most voters for Mr. Trump “aren’t willing to articulate it as such.”

Richard B. Spencer may have coined the term, but the alt-right is much bigger than him now. There must be a better name for white identity anyway.

My favorite definition is that the alt-right is the opposite of the ctrl-left.

I think that the definition that is most likely to be accepted is that the alt-right is the set of beliefs that got Donald Trump elected.

The terms Republican and Conservative do not adequately describe Trump's message, because many Republicans and Conservatives joined the #NeverTrump movement and seemed to prefer Hillary Clinton. So we need a term for right-wingers who wish to disassociate themselves from the NeverTrumpers.

Trump is so vastly superior to Clinton on so many crucial issues that I do not want to be grouped with NeverTrumpers. So the term alt-right makes sense to me.