Both liberals and conservatives have been worrying that Donald Trump has a significant amount of support from the “Alt-Right,” a faction of conservatives who are heavily tuned into racial differences to the point of sounding racist. But who are these supporters?

I have about 9,000 Facebook friends and followers, mostly political folks on the right, and cannot identify a single one who is Alt-Right. I posted a query on my Facebook page asking if anyone identifies as Alt-Right, and no one responded affirmatively. I have over 17,000 followers on Twitter and I have never seen even one borderline racist comment from them either.

The left is straining to make a connection between the Alt-Right and Trump, despite the fact that Trump has disclaimed white supremacists who support him. They are promptly kicked to the curb if discovered officially connected to his presidential run.

In one of the most publicized stories, Trump delegate Lori Gayne from Illinois, who goes by the Twitter handle “white pride,” lost her credentials after a post on Facebook praising “brave snipers just waiting for some n—– to try something” at the convention.

So Where Are All These So-Called Racists on the Right?

There are a handful of small Alt-Right entities, such as Taki Mag, American Renaissance, National Policy Institute, VDare and most recently, IdentityEvropa (sic), which appears to consist of barely more than one person. The left eagerly writes volumes about this small group’s support of Trump.

Yet the left leaves out Clinton’s similar problem. A faction of racists on the left support her, and they were particularly anti-Semitic toward Bernie Sanders during the primaries, brazenly tweeting from their real accounts. A Reuter/Ipsos poll found that one-fifth of Clinton supporters believe blacks are less intelligent than whites, and one-quarter said that blacks are lazier than whites, among other things. KKK Grand Dragon Will Quigg endorsed Clinton over Trump.

Since I can’t find any racist conservatives among my thousands of social media friends, I scanned Twitter for the hashtags the almost-always anonymous accounts use, like #cuckservative (a derogatory term used for establishment conservatives, playing on the word “cuckold” for a man with an adulterous wife). On Twitter, it is easy to create an anonymous account.

Making Pepe the Frog a Symbol of Alt-Right Racists Was Not Done by White Supremacists

Two anonymous guys made up a story that Pepe the frog is the symbol of the Alt-Right movement. Pepe is (or was) a harmless, almost meaningless character created from a comic drawing by the artist Matt Furie, which became popular in memes on sites like Tumblr and 4chan.

The man behind the account that first presented Pepe as an Alt-Right symbol, has said he is not a white supremacist, and according to Lifezette, “has even admitted publicly to being a left-winger.” He told The Daily Caller,

I interspersed various nuggets of truth and exaggerated a lot of things, and sometimes outright lied — in the interest of making a journalist believe that online Trump supporters are largely a group of meme-jihadis who use a cartoon frog to push Nazi propaganda. … The idea that every major Trump supporter online is secretly a neo-Nazi, for one. I mean, it’s just not true. But it’s the kind of thing that a journalist will readily believe.

When it was modified to look like Trump last year, Trump naturally included the image in a tweet. The false white supremacist association took place after that, and this past week the Anti-Defamation League added the cartoon character to its hate symbols database.

Despite the fact the creators who set up the false association admitted they did it for illegitimate reasons, not because they are white supremacists or part of the Alt-Right, Clinton’s campaign assigned the blame to a “white supremacist” in a post on her website.

The website Rational Wiki, which prides itself on debunking the right wing, refers to the fake alt-right accounts as “deep cover liberals,” and the description sounds very similar to the anonymous Alt-Right accounts:

• Subtle or not-so-subtle racist (often anti-Semitic) comments disguised as “Pro-Christian” statements.

• Extreme religious intolerance.

• Active persecution of minorities.

• Unquestioning support of former President Reagan and/or Bush and apparent hatred for anyone who disagrees with them.

• Making suggestions for policy that actively contradict the U.S. Constitution either literally or in intent.

• Frequently making outrageous and illogical statements which do more harm to the conservative cause than good (conservatives are sometimes oblivious to this).

Anonymous accounts like this and this fit the description quite accurately.

One combined the name of the pop singer Taylor Swift (there has been some strange effort to associate the pale white blonde with white supremacy) with the name of white supremacist Jared Taylor, creating a fake account named Jared Taylor Swift.

The fake accounts cleverly attack mainstream conservatives, such as columnists for National Review, in order to divide the right. The other half of their strategy is to to put conservatives on the defensive, so they waste extra time refuting claims that they are the party of racists. Instead of proactively getting things done, conservatives are being distracted by these attacks. Although Clinton has plenty of real racists supporting her too, the left-leaning media mostly ignores them — try googling “racist Hillary Clinton supporters,” (six results) then google “racist Donald Trump supporters” (14,800 results).

This is just another tool the left uses to make the right look bad. As I’ve previously covered, the left is actively creating fake news sites with articles that mix racism and other offensive views with riled up conservative talk in order to try and trick conservatives into sharing the articles.

This is only the beginning. As the internet grows and changes, the left will come up with more fakery. Conservatives don’t have to lower themselves to the level of these dishonest tactics to win, but they must stay on top of it, expose it and be informed.