#AltRightMeans

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About

#AltRightMeans is a Twitter hashtag accompanied by various jokes, critiques and defenses of the conservative political ideology known as the "alt-right". In late August 2016, the hashtag was launched in response to speech delivered by 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, in which she linked her Republican opponent Donald Trump to the fringe political movement.

Origin

On August 24th, Twitter user @kLodeserto^[1] launched the hashtag in a tweet saying "#AltRightMeans not being ashamed of being white" (shown below). Within 48 hours, the tweet gathered more than 140 likes and 70 retweets.

Spread

On August 25th, MSNBC television host Joy Reid tweeted a clip of herself denouncing the alt-right on the cable news network along with the hashtag "#AltRightMeans" (shown below). Within 24 hours, the tweet gained over 1,000 likes and 960 retweets.

Watch JoyAnnReid</a> explain what <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/AltRightMeans?src=hash">#AltRightMeans</a> on <a href="https://twitter.com/TamronMSNBC">TamronMSNBC: https://t.co/JCC2IgMoPJ #AMJoy
— AM Joy w/Joy Reid (@amjoyshow) August 25, 2016

That afternoon, Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton delivered a speech criticizing Donald Trump for embracing radical segments of the right-wing, while blasting the alt-right as an “emerging racist ideology.”

[This video has been removed]

“The de facto merger between Breitbart and the Trump campaign represents a landmark achievement for the alt-right. A fringe element has effectively taken over the Republican Party.”

Meanwhile, Redditor notevenmylastaccount submitted an animated GIF of comments left by Trump supporters for the live YouTube feed of Clinton's speech in a post titled "#AltRightMeans" on /r/EnoughTrumpSpam (shown below).

For much of the day, the hashtag was a top trending topic in the United States on the social networking platform. Also on August 25th, several #AltRightMeans tweets attacking Hillary Clinton posted by Infowars host Paul Joseph Watson^[3] reached the front page of the /r/The_Donald^[4]^[5] subreddit (shown below).

In the coming days, various news sites published articles about the hashtag, including The Daily Dot,^[6] Talking Points Memo,^[7] Raw Story,^[8] Blue Nation Review,^[9] Esquire,^[10] Inquisitr,^[11] Mediaite^[12] and Thought Catalog.^[13]