ArcaMax

The feminist advances of the 1970s produced a similar reaction as described in the title of Susan Faludi's landmark 1991 book, "Backlash: The Undeclared War against American Women."

And we have President Barack Obama's election and very real backlash of tea party politics and congressional gridlock that followed, culminating with the thoroughly unexpected rise of candidate Trump.

The alt-right rose early in Obama's first term with a website founded by Richard B. Spencer that was described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as "loaded with contributors who ... have long lamented the white man's decline."

Spencer caused an uproar last weekend by celebrating Trump's victory with raised-arm Hitler-style salutes and "Hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory" at a gathering in Washington that went viral on the web. The conference of about 200 attendees was held by the National Policy Institute, which describes itself as "dedicated to the heritage, identity and future of people of European descent."

Earlier haters smeared non-whites as inferior. Post-1960s haters claim white guys can't catch a break, even when they want to have a little innocent fun by making fun of woman and other groups.

In a recent episode of public radio's "On the Media," Andrew Morantz, who has reported on the alt-right for The New Yorker, divided this political species into four subgroups. White nationalists are only one of them, with their war on immigration and multiculturalism.

The other three are web trolls with no specific agenda other than to make themselves an irritating nuisance, anti-feminists who delight in harassing women and, finally, the paranoid conspiracy theorists who weave an alternative reality on the Internet to explain every human disaster as part of a larger plot.

What I hear in their rhetoric is the latest version of an ancient narrative intended to divide the races against each other as we try to claim what every American should be looking for: a fair chance to work hard and earn a better future for ourselves and our families.

It would be much too simplistic to credit or blame the rise of Trump or the rejuvenation of the far right on racial issues alone. But we're not "post-racial" either. Not yet.

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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@tribune.com.)

(c) 2016 CLARENCE PAGE DISTRIBUTED BY TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.