Would the rise of alt right terrorism occurred under Hillary

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It is a matter of orthodoxy for liberals and progressives as well as the never Trump right that his use of rhetoric that appeals to bigots has emboldened them thus leading to the frighting rise in bigotry motivated mass casualty attacks. How true is this theory?

I think in an alternate non-Trump world this would at most have been delayed but would have happened anyway. Assuming all other factors remained the same you still would have had a combination of social media, economic, cultural, social change/dislocation, copycat syndrome and available weaponry. We did have white nationalist terrorism and constant mass-casualty attacks by mostly angry white men during the Obama years. The difference was the direct bigotry motivated terrorism was less lethal and less often, the mass casualty attacks of that era were seemingly apolitical ascribed to mental health, bullying, toxic masculinity, etc. If Trump was the spark that ignited an existing flammable situation I find it hard to believe that sans Trump hate manifestos would not be in social media, somebody would not have been motivated by them to carry out an attack which killed a lot of people inspiring others to do the same.

Last edited by ASPartOfMe on 04 Aug 2019, 1:34 pm, edited 1 time in total.

The big widening of the gap between the haves and have-nots is something that may not have occurred under Hillary. Or at least it wouldn't be so blatantly obvious and less of a trigger to those being left behind.

I think Hillary would have accelerated it. She'd have just given them more reasons to be angry.

The idea that Trump emboldens them doesn't hold up for acts like this, Trump makes no difference. Trump won't save you. He won't reduce your sentence. He won't help you in any way. He changes nothing.

I think it wouldn’t have been any different than under any president before her.

I think that terrorism would have accelerated faster under the ruling of Hillary Clinton. She has no concept of the sanctity of human life. She wants to wipe all forms of autistic spectrum disorders off the face of both America and the rest of the world. She doesn't seem to have any love for people with disabilities. She's the modern day poster girl for Planned Parenthood. She's a modern-day reincarnation of Margret Sanger. The alt right would have someone to look up to and get their brand of learning from if Clinton would have won.

[citation needed]

As someone from outside the US (and so not having nay real interest in either side of the argument), this is an intriguing question.

From where I sit, the cause of the problems appear to be not so much who won the election, but more the political rhetoric and how it is published in news. When you have one side of the political debate continually trying to divide the population by any characteristic (education/wealth/race/disability/belief/political leaning/etc.) either through their own words or implying a non-existent meaning in other's words, rather than considering (and treating) people as equals, you will naturally breed discontent, which will eventually give rise to these sorts of actions by those who are made to feel excluded or unvalued.

Had Hillary won, it is likely that this still would have occurred, but the level of divisiveness in the political discourse is likely to have been lower, which may have prevented/lessened these occurrences.

Probably. Based on what I have observed it was going to happen anyways regardless of if we got Trump or Hillary, the narrative would have been a bit different instead of feeling empowered by Trump they would be angry and oppositional to Hillary and gone extreme anyways.

The role that Donald Trump has played in normalising racism is hard to overstate.

I do think that racist murders are a relatively small subset of overall murders, and even some of the racist murders would have happened anyway, but when you have the president tacitly approving the murder of immigrants and then someone goes and murders a load of immigrants, the president has to bear some responsibility. When you have murderers quoting the president or citing him as a positive inspiration, then the president has to bear some responsibility.

This is the opposite of the truth.

Hillary Clinton's autism policies can be found here. Note: nothing about "ending", "eliminating", or "curing" autism, but a lot about the actual issues we face. Very similar things on her page on disabilities.

On the other hand, Donald Trump has repeatedly tried to claim that autism is an epidemic, is "damage", and is caused by vaccines. He's repeatedly mocked the disabled.

The alt-right are generally opposed to abortion and certainly to Clinton.

We would probably be in WWIII if Clinton won. Blaming Trump is ignoring the route causes and reality. People crazy enough to go on a rampage like this would do it regardless.

What disturbed me most was when Hillary said she was for a no-fly zone in Syria. Yeah, she was definitely the greater of two evils.

https://twitter.com/BLignell/status/115 ... 55841?s=20

All we can do is speculate. Counterfactuals are impossible to prove. I feel like alt right activities were ramping up prior to Trump, and would have continued to do so under Hillary. Whether it would be worse, better, or the same is difficult to say.

Agreed. That is why I thought the topic is a good fit for this section of the board.

Antrax is a calm voice of reason, even if I don't agree with him on everything. He makes a lot of sense.

That's certainly an interesting view. Could I ask what sparks it? After all, it's fair to say that Clinton would have been unlikely to tear up the Iran nuclear agreement, which has clearly greatly undermined regional stability. Nor would she have threatened North Korea, ramping up the risk of nuclear war.

Given America's doveishness when Clinton was Secretary of State, it seems hard to imagine her being more hawkish than Trump.

Similarly, you're someone with a long history of extreme anti-war comments. It seems odd for you to be opposed to a negotiated no-fly zone in order to provide safe zones on the ground for Syrian civilians. Clinton's exact comments:
"This would not be done just on the first day. This would take a lot of negotiation. It would also take making it clear to the Russians and the Syrians that our purpose here was to provide safe zones on the ground."

And, of course, Trump has not only ramped up tensions with Iran and North Korea, but also launched much bigger attacks against the Syrian regime than Obama (actually one of the few things he's done right).