Prominent American white supremacists say that President-elect Donald Trump may face blowback if he fails to carry out some of his promises that energized racists during his campaign.
Speaking to the Guardian, a number of high-profile members of white supremacist movements—including the so-called “alt-right”—warned of a “revolt” should Trump fail to deliver once sworn into office. Classified as “extremists” by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), a handful of writers notable for their white-supremacist views claimed that Trump had already begun to backpedal on a number of controversial pledges.
During his campaign, Trump promised to expel from the United States some 11 million undocumented immigrants. “Now he is waffling on that,” said Jared Taylor, founder of the white-supremacist publication American Renaissance, which espouses an ideology that whites are superior to blacks.
Taylor denied to the Guardian that “racial nationalism” had triumphed in the election. “It will some day,” he said. “But to think it has done so (already) is delusive.” A speaker at the Washington D.C. event last month where Nazi salutes and shouts of “Hail Trump” were featured, Taylor said that “alt-right” leader Richard Spencer had overreached and become “an embarrassment to some of his own people.”
Mark Weber, whose California-based group Institute for Historical Review publishes pseudo-historical works concerning the Holocaust—typically books that question the well-documented extermination of Jews at German Nazi concentration camps—chided the “alt-right” for being unrealistic about their role in Trump administration.
“Their hearts are bigger than their brains,” Weber told the Guardian. “Saying they want to be the intellectual head of the Trump presidency is delusional.”
Peter Brimelow, founder of the VDARE Foundation, said the “right of the right” is “absolutely prepared to revolt” should Trump change course on issues such as immigration. Brimelow’s website hosts a number of white-supremacist writers, including Taylor, and has called for the repeal of all federal legislation involving race, including the Civil Rights Act.
