Dissecting the Alt Right Online: Is the ‘Alt Left’ an Invention?

The ‘Alt Left’ is a term that could be thought to describe the loose movement of anti-fascists (Antifa) and others opposed to the rising ‘Alt Right’, especially in the US but also in Europe. Or does it?

My team of researchers and I studied the hashtag space in Twitter in order to determine the substance and the publics behind the Alt Left; is it related to Antifa? Or is it an Alt Right construct? We also studied its resonance in the news to establish whether the term has mainstreamed, and the identity of its carriers. Finally, we studied the Alt Left’s usage in Reddit, the website that pools together over a million online forums, adding the subreddits (the different communities) in which it predominantly appears, and the imagery associated with the term. What are the Alt Left’s most significant substantive and visual associations? Has it been associated with violence, too, thereby creating an equivalence with the Alt Right, and the violent Unite the Right ‘free speech’ rally it held in Charlottesville, Virginia, U.S., in August 2017?