‘Alt right’ speech a blunder, some say

Clinton may have helped elevate fringe element of the GOP

Hillary Clinton’s highly touted address on the “alternative right” sparked debates in every corner of American politics. For some commentators on the left, such as the historian Rick Perlstein, Clinton’s decision to cleave “mainstream” conservatism from the alts was an unforced blunder.

“Republican congres- sional candidates have to be tied to a Trumpism that is understood as the apo- theosis of the recent history of the Republican Party,” Perlstein wrote. “Because if they are not, it would be oh so easy for the survivors to say, on November 9: It ain’t me, babe. I’m a Ryan conservative, not a Trumpite. We Ryanites are normal, respectable folk. After all, even Hillary Clinton says so.”

For the alt-right and its allies — a group that temporarily included Republi- cans who accused Clinton of a strange diversion — the speech helped elevate a fringe. Jared Taylor, the editor of American Renais- sance, told The Washington Post before the speech that his colleagues were taking bets on whether they’d be name-checked.

“She seems to be running against Nigel Farage and Alex Jones for president,” Taylor said. “And maybe Steve Bannon.”

Jones, the Texas-based radio host who has hitched his wagon to Donald Trump, derided Clinton as attacking free speech and trying to control what media was and wasn’t worth listening to. In videos, Jones and his colleagues at InfoWars portrayed her as a sickly, doddering figure of desperation.

“So, Trump is the conspiracy theorist for listening to Alex Jones,” InfoWars contributor Paul Joseph Watson said. “Yet, you just asserted that a former KGB officer under the Communist government of the Soviet Union is now the leader of conservatives in America.”