"The Political Danger Is Less the Alt-Right Than It Is Its Established Counterpart"

"For those who study the right, this attention to detail is indispensable and, at times, darkly amusing. But Neiwert's painstaking cataloging of these distinctions sometimes ends up undermining his overarching suggestion that far-right factions have come together in the age of Trump as a coherent political force. Ultimately, he depicts a far right that is deeply fragmented and often incompetent. By his account, these groups have rarely enjoyed a cozy relationship with one another, let alone with the majority of American conservatives. While right-wing extremists of all types undoubtedly congregate on some of the same internet forums, Neiwert offers little evidence that the various strains of Alt-America—rural sovereign-citizen militias, long-standing neo-Nazi and Klan chapters, and the new generation of college-educated alt-right media personalities—have begun building meaningful alliances with each other."

At the New Republic, J.C. Pan reviews David Neiwert's Alt-America: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump.