There is no such thing as an "alt-left" movement.

The terms "alt-right" and "alternative right" first came into widespread use during last year's U.S. Presidential campaign, and most people know very little about where they came from, but it you remember nothing else about these terms, remember that they are not generic; "alt-right" is neither a media invention, nor an academic label. "Alt-right" is not some label that people outside the movement have coined to describe them; it is a term that white supremacists invented themselves, to describe themselves, as a safely euphemistic alternative to being called white supremacists. 

From Wikipedia:

White supremacist^[6] Richard Spencer coined the term in 2010 in reference to a movement centred on white nationalism, and has been accused by some media publications of doing so to excuse overt racism, white supremacism, and neo-Nazism.

Excusing overt racism is exactly what Spencer was doing, by the way. "Alt-right" pure branding, a PR exercise by white supremacists to hide the worst of their ugliness from public view, allowing Republican politicians to pander to them in stump speeches, and at campaign rallies, and in their legislative agenda. It is a convenient fiction, a fig leaf that has no left-leaning or progressive equivalent. There is no moral equivalent to neo-Nazism on the left. There is no practical equivalent to the "alt-right" on the centre/left of the political spectrum.

So when Donald Trump spoke today about how the "alt-left" was (somehow) also to blame for last week-end's lethal violence in C'Ville, he was talking right out of his asshole, and spewing nothing but shit.

From CBC News:

A combative U.S. President Donald Trump insisted Tuesday "there is blame on both sides" for the deadly violence last weekend in Charlottesville, Va., appearing to once again equate the actions of white nationalist groups and those protesting them.

The president's comments effectively wiped away the more conventional statement he delivered at the White House one day earlier when he branded members of the KKK, neo-Nazis and white supremacists who take part in violence as "criminals and thugs."

Trump's advisers had hoped those remarks might quell a crush of criticism from both Republicans and Democrats. But the president's retorts Tuesday suggested he had been a reluctant participant in that cleanup effort. 

Donald Trump is a morally bankrupt, intellectually impoverished, egomaniacal, pathological liar. If nothing he ever did before now served to convince you that he does not deserve to occupy the Oval Office, this should. Last November, when America's racists all supported Trump's presidential campaign at the polls, it could still be said that not everyone who voted for Trump was a racist. That is no longer true. Anyone still supporting Trump today, after this performance, is a racist. Period.

Continuing to support Trump is a racist act. The same applies for his presidency, or his businesses, or his reality TV career, or his family, or anything else that he touches. To stand with Trump is to stand with America's neo-Nazis. There is no morally equivalent opposing movement that you can point to and say, "they're just as bad." We're talking about literal Nazis; nobody else is as bad.

Every Republican candidate or office-holder who does not denounce Trump, now that his overt support of white supremacists and neo-Nazis can no longer be denied, is complicit in his racism, and all of them have blood on their hands. Most of them have been pandering to these same racists and bigots for years or decades, anyway, and most of them have blood on their hands already, but this is the Rubicon; beyond this point, there is no turning back.

Of those Republican politicians, I say this: Those gentlemen (and they are mostly men), are no longer merely flirting with neo-Nazis and the KKK; this is not merely the dog-whistles of the "Southern strategy;" they can no longer be coy about this. They are in bed with these people, in flagrante delicto, and the resulting violence is only happening because they've encouraged these racists to commit that violence. Trying to blame their political opponents for their own support of neo-Nazism is beyond the pale, and those of them who persist in following Trump down this path will never be forgiven. May they all burn in hell.

I'm not the only person who feels that way, incidentally. Some of Trump's former supporters have finally had enough, too, like Merck CEO Kenneth Frazier, Under Armour CEO Kevin Plank, Intel CEO Brian Krzanich, Alliance for American Manufacturing president Scott Paul, and AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka, as reported by Deadline Hollywood:

Add AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka to the list of bigwigs who have stepped down from President Donald Trump’s American Manufacturing Council to protest his much derided response to white supremacist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Trumka’s resignation came after Trump’s bonkers Tuesday news conference, in which he tossed out Monday’s do-over statement and returned to his original both-sides-at-fault position on the weekend of violence.

“We cannot sit on a council for a President who tolerates Bigotry and domestic terrorism,” Trumka said in his statement. “President Trump’s remarks today repudiate his forced remarks yesterday about the KKK and neo-Nazis. We must resign on behalf of America’s working people, who reject all notions of legitimacy of those bigoted groups.”

Michael Dell, however, who's condemning Trump but staying close to Trump anyway because, heck, there's maybe still some money to be made there? Dell will burn in hell. (And, yes, I did quote Deadline Hollywood's political news coverage. Everybody is covering this story.)

And now, a few pieces of (much better than my own, I promise) commentary about these events:

On a more personal note, let me just say that I still do not plan for this to become a blog about politics... but then, I didn't mean for this blog to become a tech blog, either, which didn't stop that from happening. I still don't intend this to be what I spent all my time writing about, but sometimes, you just have to say something when what you're seeing is literally Evil, with a capital "e." As Jimmy Fallon said, "it's [also] my responsibility to stand up against intolerance and extremism as a human being [...] Ignoring it is just as bad as supporting it."

You may also have noticed that I never once referred to Trump as President T_____ in this post. And I won't, ever again, on this blog or anywhere else. Trump stole that election with the help of Vladmir Putin's FSB, and has done nothing since to convince the world that he belongs in the office, regardless... and that was before he transitioned to overtly giving aid and comfort to America's neo-Nazi domestic terrorists. Trump is a crook, a fraud, a racist, and a supporter of terrorism, and I am done pretending to hold even a modicum of respect for the man, or for his collected sycophants and supporters. Fuck Trump.