Alt-right Women and the “White Baby Challenge”

If the alt-right is galvanized by one overarching narrative, it is that demographic change will reduce whites to a hated minority and eventually lead to white extinction. The alt-right frequently expounds on and alludes to the declining white birth rate and refers to concerning numbers of suicide among middle-aged white men, as well as the devastating opioid epidemic and its impact on white families. Recent surveys do show that American women of all backgrounds are having fewer babies, less than the replacement level of 2.1, mainly due to deep economic concerns like the high costs of childcare.  Depending on how race and ethnicity data in the US Census is interpreted, non-Hispanic whites will constitute less than 50 percent of the population around 2050. Alt-righters weaponize census projections relying on the narrowest percentages to count whites (as non-Hispanic whites with no mixed-race identity), and thereby hype their claims of impending white genocide. These problematic projections serve the alt-right well in whipping up demographic fear, which is propagated by mainstream right-wing pundits like Laura Ingraham, Ann Coulter, and Tucker Carlson. The alt-right twists... see more