"Alt-Right"

Recently I listened to a course from the Teaching Company on the subject of English in America.  The professor emphasized that new words enter the language constantly.  Every year a group of linguists votes on a “word of the year.”  It would not surprise me if the word of the year for 2016 was “alt-right.”

Fortunately, some new words don’t last.  “Alt-right” is short for “alternative right,” and it is used to describe people like Trump’s White House strategist Stephen K. Bannon.  

Here’s is what Rich Lowry, editor of the National Review, a conservative magazine, said about the term.  He explained he was not opposed to using it as long as it was applied to a specific group.  In Lowry’s words, quoted in the New York Times, the term should be reserved for “people who are obsessed with race and, in one form or another, are white supremacists.”

In this blog I will not use the term “alt-right.”  I will use terms like “white supremacist” or “racist” or “neo-Nazi.”  Let’s call them what they are.