White nationalism might be creeping into the White House soon, and it’s apparently too late to stop that from happening, so you might as well learn now what it is – and how it slipped so slyly into the mainstream.

Read any articles about President-elect Donald Trump’s newly appointed chief strategist Stephen Bannon, or about Bannon’s former employer, Breitbart News, or about the “alt-right” audience that Breitbart serves, and you’re likely to see all connected to “white supremacy” and “white nationalism” in equal measure. This doesn’t quite get to the dark heart of it.

White supremacy is the basic belief that whites are superior to all other races, while white nationalism says that an entire nation – say, the United States of America – should be run based on that belief.

To put it some other ways: White supremacy is the means and white nationalism is the end. White supremacy is ideological and white nationalism is practical and political.

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And in 2016, white supremacy conjures images of hooded Klansmen and a Jim Crow America, while white nationalism is savvy and smooth enough to simply slip through the internet.

All of this comes up now mostly because of Bannon, whose White House appointment drew immediate revulsion from civil rights and anti-hate groups.

The Southern Poverty Law Center pegged him as a man who oversaw an alt-right movement that “is simply a rebranding of white nationalism and is the energy behind the avalanche of racist and anti-Semitic harassment that plagued social media platforms for the entire presidential campaign.”

Meanwhile, users on Stormfront – an extremist site that calls itself the “White Nationalist Community” – cheered Bannon’s appointment, writing, “It doesn’t get any better than this!”

Trump adviser Stephen Bannon boasts that ‘darkness is good’

Bannon, who was executive chair of Breitbart until August, has admitted he is a nationalist. He just publicly takes issue with the “white” part.

“I’m not a white nationalist, I’m a nationalist. I’m an economic nationalist,” Bannon told The Hollywood Reporter in some of his first comment as a White House worker-in-waiting.

A court case from Bannon’s ex-wife accused him of anti-Semitism, but there is little explicit proof he is, himself, a white nationalist. Meanwhile, until joining the Trump campaign three months ago, he ran a website that published pieces with headlines like, “Hoist It High And Proud: The Confederate Flag Proclaims A Glorious Heritage” and endless pieces accusing refugees of ravaging America.

None of this content comes out and declares itself as white nationalism. But that is the point. White nationalism is too clever for that.

One of the earliest scholars to study American white nationalism, Carol Swain, warned nearly 15 years ago that white nationalists were too smart to stay on the supremacist fringes. They wanted to go mainstream.

“Rejecting the kind of violence and intimidation once advocated by the older racist right, the new white nationalism seeks to expand its influence mainly through argument and rational discourage aimed at its target audience of white Americans who have become embittered or aggrieved over what they perceive to be a host of racial double standards,” she wrote in her 2002 book “The New White Nationalism in America: Its Challenge To Integration.”

She called white nationalism “a movement of discourage, persuasion, and ideas.”

Swain also listed seven factors that led to the rise of white nationalism since the 1990s. See if some of them sound familiar: “the growing presence of nonwhite immigrant,” “the growing acceptance of multiculturalism,” “the structural changes in the global economy that have led to a decline in high-wage production jobs for unskilled workers” and “the exponential growth in the number of households connected to the Internet.”

Breitbart itself knows better than to directly tie itself to white nationalism. But in one of the site’s most infamous pieces, “An Establishment Conservative’s Guide To The Alt-Right,” authors Allum Bokhari and Milo Yiannopoulos boasted about the alt-right’s appeal to intellect – the same thing Swain warned about.

“There are many things that separate the alternative right from old-school racist skinheads (to whom they are often idiotically compared), but one thing stands out above all else: intelligence,” the article said.

“Skinheads, by and large, are low-information, low-IQ thugs driven by the thrill of violence and tribal hatred. The alternative right are a much smarter group of people – which perhaps suggests why the Left hates them so much. They’re dangerously bright.”

So dangerously bright, we see, that when Trump needed an adviser to help him win the White House, he knew exactly where to look.

White nationalism might be creeping into the White House soon, and it’s apparently too late to stop that from happening, so you might as well learn now what it is – and how it slipped so slyly into the mainstream.

Read any articles about President-elect Donald Trump’s newly appointed chief strategist Stephen Bannon, or about Bannon’s former employer, Breitbart News, or about the “alt-right” audience that Breitbart serves, and you’re likely to see all connected to “white supremacy” and “white nationalism” in equal measure. This doesn’t quite get to the dark heart of it .

White supremacy is the basic belief that whites are superior to all other races, while white nationalism says that an entire nation – say, the United States of America – should be run based on that belief.

To put it some other ways: White supremacy is the means and white nationalism is the end. White supremacy is ideological and white nationalism is practical and political.

And in 2016, white supremacy conjures images of hooded Klansmen and a Jim Crow America, while white nationalism is savvy and smooth enough to simply slip through the internet.

All of this comes up now mostly because of Bannon, whose White House appointment drew immediate revulsion from civil rights and anti-hate groups.

The Southern Poverty Law Center pegged him as a man who oversaw an alt-right movement that “is simply a rebranding of white nationalism and is the energy behind the avalanche of racist and anti-Semitic harassment that plagued social media platforms for the entire presidential campaign.”

Meanwhile, users on Stormfront – an extremist site that calls itself the “White Nationalist Community” – cheered Bannon’s appointment, writing, “It doesn’t get any better than this!”

Bannon, who was executive chair of Breitbart until August, has admitted he is a nationalist. He just publicly takes issue with the “white” part.

“I’m not a white nationalist, I’m a nationalist. I’m an economic nationalist,” Bannon told The Hollywood Reporter in some of his first comment as a White House worker-in-waiting.

Bannon’s ex-wife accused him in a lawsuit of anti-Semitism, but there is little explicit proof he is, himself, a white nationalist. Meanwhile, until joining the Trump campaign three months ago, he ran a website that published pieces with headlines like, “Hoist It High And Proud: The Confederate Flag Proclaims A Glorious Heritage” and endless pieces accusing refugees of ravaging America.

Trump never denounced any of Breitbart’s content. And in his Hollywood Reporter interview, Bannon boasted about his plan to bring “darkness” to the White House, giving little hope that Breitbart vile won’t find its way in, too.

None of this content comes out and declares itself as white nationalism. But that is the point. White nationalism is too clever for that.

One of the earliest scholars to study American white nationalism, Carol Swain, warned nearly 15 years ago that white nationalists were too smart to stay on the supremacist fringes. They wanted to go mainstream.

“Rejecting the kind of violence and intimidation once advocated by the older racist right, the new white nationalism seeks to expand its influence mainly through argument and rational discourage aimed at its target audience of white Americans who have become embittered or aggrieved over what they perceive to be a host of racial double standards,” she wrote in her 2002 book “The New White Nationalism in America: Its Challenge To Integration.”

She called white nationalism “a movement of discourage, persuasion, and ideas.”

Swain also listed seven factors that led to the rise of white nationalism since the 1990s. See if some of them sound familiar: “the growing presence of nonwhite immigrant,” “the growing acceptance of multiculturalism,” “the structural changes in the global economy that have led to a decline in high-wage production jobs for unskilled workers” and “the exponential growth in the number of households connected to the Internet.”

Breitbart itself knows better than to directly tie itself to white nationalism. But in one of the site’s most infamous pieces, “An Establishment Conservative’s Guide To The Alt-Right,” authors Allum Bokhari and Milo Yiannopoulos boasted about the alt-right’s appeal to intellect – the same thing Swain warned about.

“There are many things that separate the alternative right from old-school racist skinheads (to whom they are often idiotically compared), but one thing stands out above all else: intelligence,” the article said.

“Skinheads, by and large, are low-information, low-IQ thugs driven by the thrill of violence and tribal hatred. The alternative right are a much smarter group of people – which perhaps suggests why the Left hates them so much. They’re dangerously bright.”

So dangerously bright, we see, that when Trump needed an adviser to help him win the White House, he knew exactly where to look.

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