The other day, we noted how after years of helping to normalize the racist Alt-Right, the organizers of the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) are now trying to distance themselves from the movement. This is despite the fact that this year’s conference features a main stage interview with White House strategist Steve Bannon, who just last year bragged about turning Breitbart, a prominent CPAC sponsor, into “the platform for the Alt-Right.”
This morning, Dan Schneider of the American Conservative Union, which organizes CPAC, delivered a speech titled “The Alt Right Ain’t Right at All” in which he tried to claim that the Alt-Right has no place within the conservative movement because the term “Alt-Right” has been hijacked by “a hate-filled left wing fascist group” for the purpose of confusing people about what conservatism really represents.
“They stole the term specifically to confuse us,” Schneider stated. “They are anti-Semites, they are racists, they are sexists, they hate the Constitution, they hate free markets, they hate pluralism, they despise everything we believe in. They are not an extension of conservatism … They are nothing but garden variety left-wing fascists.”
Of course, blaming far-right racism on the left is nothing new for conservatives.
