Just a few months ago, very few people were talking about the alternative right, or even had any idea what it is. The movement, more commonly known as the alt-right, pretty much only existed on the fringes of the internet, mainly in youth-dominated message boards filled with white nationalist and anti-Semitic memes.
But that's quickly changing. Bolstered in part by the unexpected rise of Donald Trump and Britain's decision to leave the European Union, the anti-establishment political movement has received big headlines in recent months. No longer just a fringe subculture, its young supporters boast about their perceived new influence in the Republican Party.
"We won the meme war; now we've taken over the GOP," said Andre Anglin, who runs The Daily Stormer, which bills itself as the world's most visited alt-right website. "And we did this very, very quickly."
Anglin was referring to Trump's decision last week to promote media executive Steve Bannon as CEO of his presidential campaign. That's notable because Bannon ran the conservative news website Breitbart, considered a major platform for the alt-right.
The website was founded by Andrew Breitbart, who died in 2012. Under Bannon's leadership, the outlet has increasingly warmed to the alt-right movement, publishing a steady stream of anti-immigrant, anti-feminist articles.
Bannon's promotion was the biggest public relations boost yet for the alt-right. It also provided an opening for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton to link Trump to the movement.
In a Thursday speech on the alt-right, Clinton accused Trump of "taking hate groups mainstream and helping a radical fringe take over one of America's two major political parties."
Clinton said Bannon's appointment to CEO amounted to an unprecedented merger between white supremacists and the Republican Party.
"Donald Trump built his campaign on prejudice and paranoia. The de facto merger between Breitbart and the Trump campaign represents a landmark achievement for the alt-right. A fringe element has effectively taken over the Republican Party," Clinton said.
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Clinton also ran down the list of Trump's actions she said suggest discrimination, including: refusing to quickly disavow Klu Klux Klan leader David Duke; calling Mexican immigrants rapists, drug dealers and criminals; repeatedly retweeting white supremacist Twitter accounts; and proposing a temporary ban on Muslim immigration to the United States.
"A man with a long history of racial discrimination, who traffics in dark conspiracy theories drawn from the pages of supermarket tabloids and the far reaches of the internet, should never run our government or command our military," Clinton said.
The Trump campaign has rejected accusations of racism and shrugged off any reported links between it and the alt-right. Ahead of Clinton's speech Thursday, Trump told a rally in New Hampshire that neither he nor his supporters are racist.
"When Democratic policies fail, they are left with only this one tired argument. 'You're racist, you're racist, you're racist.' They keep saying it ... and it's a tired argument," Trump said. When Republicans are labeled as racist, Trump said they "have a tendency to be defensive, to back down, and feel bad. Not Donald Trump."
Trump did not mention the alt-right, and indeed he has not brought it up on the campaign trail.
But earlier, Trump's campaign manager, Kellyanne Conway, addressed the alt-right issue specifically, telling CBS News: "We've never even discussed it internally. It certainly isn't part of our strategy meetings."
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Asked whether the Trump campaign was providing a platform for the alt-right, Conway responded: "No, not at all."
But just weeks ago, Bannon was expressing a different message. The media executive proudly boasted of Breitbart's influence in the alt-right community.
"We're the platform for the alt-right," Bannon told journalist Sarah Posner at the Republican National Convention in Cleveland in July.
Bannon, who has largely stayed out of the spotlight since taking his new position, has acknowledged that the alt-right may contain a certain number of white nationalists, anti-Semites and homophobes.
"That's just like, there are certain elements of the progressive left and the hard left that attract certain elements," he told Posner.