Trump’s rise mainstreamed transgressive online far-right provocateurs unlike prior fringe conservatives

Evidence

During the campaign, Hillary Clinton faced sharp criticism for referring to Trump supporters as a “basket of deplorables”—weirdos flouting the basic norms of polite society. Yet Trump’s victory undeniably brought some of the most provocative and transgressive figures from the counter-counterculture into mainstream visibility. These men—and they were overwhelmingly men—represented a new breed of far-right actors distinct from the millenarian Christian sects, militia groups, and male-centric organizations like the Promise Keepers that had once occupied the fringes of conservative politics. They were hyper-online provocateurs who sought to reframe the right as culturally savvy and cool by weaponizing media literacy and internet culture. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 442

Categorization

• XREF: This new far-right breed weaponizing media literacy mirrors the counterculture’s earlier co-optation of mainstream media forms Marx discusses throughout — the counter-counterculture deploying the counterculture’s own tools. — connects to: The 2016 Trump era mainstreamed conspiracy-peddling anti-immigrant and white-supremacist groups — Anna Merlan, Republic of Lies, 30
• QUESTION: The ‘weaponizing media literacy’ mechanism recalls the role of satire/irony described for earlier eras — is the alt-right genuinely a new inversion, or the same ironic distance mechanism Marx credits for counterculture now deployed rightward?