Like the Communists and Anarchists, the White Nationalist movement in America has a strategy to recruit young people. Here’s what it is, and how parents can fight back.

The Nazi/White Nationalist/Alt Right movement in America has never been a simple one. From the beginning, in the early days of George Lincoln Rockwell and his American Nazi Party – the forerunner of David Duke’s organizations – had an intentional plan of action. They knew that after World War II, that America would reflectively reject any Nazi-like ideology. Now, they claimed it was a Jewish conspiracy to keep them down, but regardless, they felt it their primary goal to break through the national desire to black them out.

So they instituted what they called Phase One. The tactics they used in Phase One were designed to force media coverage of them. So they acted in the most ridiculous way possible, as parodied in the movie The Blues Brothers in fact. They dressed up in full Nazi regalia, and marched in the most open way possible. By being as repulsive as possible, they get media attention they’d otherwise never get.

Over the years, as technology and attitudes have changed, so have their strategies changed. The Internet in particular gives the fringe ideologues an opportunity break through the mainstream press and talk directly to anyone and everyone. So they’re talking to kids.

Education Week of all places has the latest warning. Erik Erikson (not that one) said that adolescence leads to rebellion, as an exploration and creation of identity. And well, in 2017 being a racist, ‘race realist,’ ‘red pilled,’ or whatever you want to call it, is a way to get instant reactions from folks.

The alt right leadership is taking advantage of this, too. They go onto forums like 4chan, an anonymous image posting board, and hijack ideas and “memes” posted there, to push their ideas. Pepe the Frog (pictured) is one of those. He got turned from a weird joke into a symbol of white nationalism, his sadness representing the failure of the movement in recent decades.

I’ve long said the Internet is no place for kids, as adults should not get unfettered access to manipulate children. I used to say that primarily with respect to scammers and sexual predators. It turns out though that ideological predators are just as great a threat. They start small, tempting kids to be “anti-PC.” They take the lunacy of the hard left, which kids see every day in schools, and use that as the wedge in.

Then they make that “anti-PC” message start to include Nazi messages. A big one repeated over and over, to try to get the kids dulled to the notion, is “Hitler did nothing wrong.” Trolls try to include that message on online votes (akin to the “Boaty McBoatface” incident) in a way that most kids think is just a prank, but is actually meant to inoculate the kids to accepting that concept later. Words mean things, folks.

Another example of this kind of “prank” or “social experiment” was Youtube star “Pewdiepie” posting a video that featured the repeated message “Death to all jews.” Just a prank, bro.

From there it gets more advanced. They post (often lying) images trying to portray the media as Jew-controlled. They post misleading accounts of news events. They pump up Donald Trump and other leaders as super men, tough guys to emulate. The messages go from pranks to intended, creating a new core cadre who then spread the same “memes” as a “joke” to the next generation. They are now “red pilled,” in a reference to the movie The Matrix.

That’s why it matters that Donald Trump doesn’t condemn them much. The fascists want to use him as a way to get kids to listen to them. But even if the President is a bad role model, it’s on parents to watch for this stuff. Even a kid’s jokes can have serious messages behind them.