The Alt-Right’s Optics Scam

‘Clean cut’ Neo-Nazis Identity Evropa hope to smuggle hate into the mainstream—the ‘Today Show’ is helping them

There’s a good litmus test for reporters covering the alt-right: If your subject is happy about their treatment, you messed up. The neo-Nazi group Identity Evropa was positively ecstatic about the Today Show’s recent interview with its leader Patrick Casey.

While the segment was greeted enthusiastically by the group and their allies, anti-racist activists condemned the show for platforming Casey, calling it a “recruitment video” and a “puff piece.”

The producers might be a bit confused by this reaction. Wasn’t the title “Hate on the Ballot” unambiguous about who the group is? They were portrayed in bad light, weren’t they?

It starts out well enough. The reporter Peter Alexander notes that the SPLC had designated them a hate group and touches briefly on their involvement in the deadly Unite the Right rally last year. But the piece starts to run into trouble while he’s introducing Casey. Alexander says that “the group’s image [is] clean cut—no visible tattoos, no criminal record—its message pro-white.”

He uses the phrase “clean cut” twice in the opening, and with the references to tattoos and criminal records, the implication is that they are not what normally comes to mind when one thinks of white supremacists. In other words, he’s doing exactly what they want.

From its inception, the alt-right has been obsessed with optics. Founding figures like Richard Spencer cultivated the image of a movement of well-dressed, “clean cut” intellectuals who look and sound nothing like the paunchy Klansmen and the methed-out skinheads of old.

Identity Evropa has embraced this strategy more than any other group. Their dress code is something like what one might see in a tech start-up in their native California: Oxford shirts tucked into khaki pants. The only thing that sets them apart is the…