Donald Trump’s tweets offered us an insight into the megalomaniacal playground that is his psyche. But his retweets revealed something even more sinister: his connections to the white nationalist far right.

During the presidential primaries, Trump retweeted @WhiteGenocideTM and another user called @CheesedBrit, which featured an avatar that looked like a modified swastika and a bio claiming that “we should have listened to the Austrian chap with the little mustache”.

After his election victory, footage of a roomful of young men chanting “Hail Trump!” went viral. These incidents, as well as the appointment of leading far right figure Steve Bannon to the position of chief strategist have put a spotlight on the murky world of the alt-right.

The term alt-right was coined by Richard Spencer, its self-styled intellectual leader. For Spencer, the movement is a break from traditional conservatism. It wants to rip up the status quo. According to Spencer, “The alt-right is in a way conservatives who don't have anything to conserve any more”.

The alt-right is primarily a loose-knit umbrella formation of online ideologues promoting extreme nativist, ultranationalist and white supremacist ideas. According to the Huffington Post, the rank and file of the alt-right “are mostly young white men who are angry about income inequality, poor job prospects, PC culture, crumbling social welfare programs and war. They come from Pat Buchanan’s nativist paleoconservatism, Ron Paul’s libertarianism, the rape-y Manosphere, the Gamergate underground, and other subcultures”.

Some of the leading figures in the movement are, however, blue blooded elites. Spencer, for instance, is from a wealthy family in Dallas, Texas. He attended an elite boys’ school and then Duke University, where he studied European history.

After a stint in experimental theatre, he discovered Nietzsche and fascist writers such as the Italian philosopher Julius Evola. While at university, Spencer made a name for himself as the defender of the white race against its enemies (which include all “non-Aryans” and Jews).

At a university appearance in Texas last year, he said: “We conquered this continent. Whether it’s nice to say or not, we won and we got to define what America means and we got to define what this continent means. America, at the end of the day, belongs to white men”. Spencer’s goal is to create a white ethno-state through what he calls “peaceful ethnic cleansing”.

Figures like Spencer are largely uninterested in the economic populism that was an important aspect of Trump’s campaign. At the same forum in Texas, Spencer said: “I believe in elites. I believe that culture and society, to a very large degree, not totally, but to a very large degree … come from the top down. I believe that elites set a tone for the country”.

Another alt-right website declares: “[W]e need to adopt a resolutely elitist strategy. We need to recognise that, culturally and politically speaking, some whites matter more than others. History is not made by the masses. It is made out of the masses. It is made by elites moulding the masses. Thus we need to direct our message to the educated, urban middle and professional classes and above”.

This general thrust helps distinguish the alt-right from other right populist or more plebeian proto-fascist movements.

Trump and Bannon’s boosting of the news site Breitbart has helped mainstream the movement. Breitbart is now the third most read news site in the USA, after CNN and the New York Times.

One white nationalist who is involved in establishing a militarised commune in Indiana said of the impact of Trump’s election on his group: “I can’t get over how rapidly this has come alive. We’re all growing and using this momentum”.

These are worrying trends. Far right movements in the US have been instrumental in cowing and terrorising migrant populations and have operated as shock troops against the left in the past. They must be resisted.