Strange America of Alt Right

After the inauguration of United States President Donald Trump, a discriminative and white-supremacist movement called Alt Right is spreading in the undercurrent of U.S. society. For the Japanese who are familiar with tolerant culture of American democracy, their narrow-minded behavior looks extremely strange. News media in Japan are working hard for interpreting hidden sentiment of white majority.

Japan Broadcasting Corporation, or NHK, introduced the president of National Policy Institute, Richard Spencer, as the most noticed figure in Alt Right movement. In the program of Close-up Gendai in Tuesday night, Spencer was described as a leader who upheld clear separation of white Americans from ethnic minority, thought that the white had been disadvantaged by policies for equality, and admired by his supporters in a way pre-war Germans saluting “Heil Hitler.”

The program reported how that that movement harmed U.S. society. Emergence of apparent hate against minority intimidates peaceful life of colored citizens. Demonstrations against Alt Right depict deep division among the American people. While Spencer explained his activity as protecting rights for white people in the exclusive interview to NHK, a radical group of ethnic minority collected firearms to protect their lives.

Asahi Shimbun on Wednesday reported how Chief Strategist of Trump administration, Stephen Bannon, built up his influence to U.S. policy. After working for an investment bank and radio personality, Bannon joined the establishment of right-wing news site, Breitbart News. By sending discriminative messages through cyber space and being resonant with Trump’s intolerant policy against immigrants, Bannon made Breitbart closer to major media in U.S.

Breitbart raises sensational headlines on its site. Asahi introduced some of them: “Political Correctness Protects Muslim Rape Culture” or “The Solution to Online ‘Harassment’ Is Simple: Women Should Log Off.” That kind of extremism invited violence against far-right movement. Intolerant beliefs are eroding security of American society as a whole.

Even a right-wing Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe was not fully supportive for hate movement in Japan. Bipartisan efforts in the Diet passed Hate Speech Elimination Act last year, which declared intolerance to unjust discriminative speech against ethnic minorities including Korean-Japanese. Under the leadership of Abe, however, Japan has to keep relation with discriminative America of Trump.