There has been much hand-wringing in recent weeks over the term “alt-right.” While it is a concise name for a self-identifying group, and therefore useful, it’s also a new term that many readers are unfamiliar with, and masks the group’s shockingly retrograde, racist, nationalist politics. Also, the modifier “alt” makes it sound like a music genre, à la alt-rock, alt-country, alt-rap, and so on.
But what if it was just the shitty genre of music it sounds like? A new video infomercial for a fake collection of alt-right hits called White Noise imagines just that. In addition to talking over his female cohost and occasionally letting his true, neo-Nazi colors show, the alt-right host makes the case for such hits as “Fuck The Police” by M.R.A., “Breitbart’s Back, Alright” by The Breitbart Boys, and “Killary” by The Um Actuallys. His grim, Dark Knight Rises joker shirt is eerily apropos.
As goofy as a lot of the puns are, and as (intentionally) shitty as the music is, the video does a good job of capturing the tone and preoccupations of alt-right types. Back in the real world in which it is not a genre of music but a vocal force in the incoming administration, many in the press have suggested replacing “alt right” with “white nationalist”; here is a chrome extension that does just that for you automatically, if so inclined.