Undertone

I have wondered about how much of the commentary from the responsible right about neo-nazis was boilerplate, a stating of the obvious in a rather weary manner of "Do I really even have to say this?  Oh well then, if I'm to be routinely accused of being a secret supporter if I don't mention my abhorrence every time I put pen to paper, then here it goes again: their ideology is vile."

But I have detected in the Althouses and Powerlines and PJ Media and NRO's, and perhaps even more strongly in some of the wilder sites, an undertone of "This time we can really do it!  We can discredit this movement forever now that it has dared raise its head! One last push against all this nonsense and it will topple!"

Am I catching this undertone of right writers correctly? 

It doesn't work that way. Trump rose to power with very few wholehearted supporters, but a whole lot of people who thought his opposition (specific and general) must be stopped, who became even more certain they would vote for him every time he was attacked unfairly. Antifa, Black Lives Matter, and their related groups have grown out of the previously moribund romanticism of the old revolutionaries of Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, and farther back to the noble old lefties who were (wink, wink) really commies in the 30's-50's. They draw power from the growth of the nazis, which is why they seek them out.  They need to show that the alt-right is very big and very dangerous, which is what makes them necessary.  Admittedly, stunts like Obama having his picture taken in front of a Che memorial in Havana haven't helped that.*

Wait.  Have those groups grown up in that soil, or nursery? I just realised that is an assumption of mine for which I have only a narrative, not data.  Maybe they have sprung from somewhere and something else.



*Forgotten that one, hadn't you? How is that not much worse, much more inflammatory than anything Trump is doing?