Alt-Right ‘cultural purity’, ideology and mainstream social policy discourse:

A series of journalistic books and articles exploring the Alt-Right provide detailed empirical data critical to understanding the underpinning social networks of the Alt-Right. However, intensive media focus on young, working-class – usually American – white supremacists sharing extremist material over the internet masks incidences of closely related racist, conspiracist, misogynist, and ‘anti-elitist’ ideology in wider, often middle-class mainstream media, politics, and social policy discourse. This article problematises these narratives. Drawing partly on the work of Mary Douglas and Antonio Gramsci, we contribute to ongoing national and international ‘Alt-Right’ debates with an interdisciplinary, political-anthropological model of ‘mainstremeist’ belief and action. This approach highlights the links between ‘fringe’ and ‘centre’ into an entangled social network seeking to deploy social policy as a tool of misogynist, patriarchal, racist, and classist retrenchment.