KANSAS CITY, Mo. _ It's been around for several years, gaining momentum and visibility in recent months as the presidential election drew near.
But it was the images of followers enthusiastically extending their arms in a Nazi salute at a conference in Washington, D.C., in celebration of President-elect Donald Trump's victory that shot the alt-right into the international spotlight.
Now, hardly a day goes by without new references to the alternative right, a loose network of white nationalists whose adherents have been emboldened by what they hope will soon be their pipeline to the White House.
Texas A&M University came under fire for allowing Richard Spencer, the man credited with coining the alt-right label, to speak on campus Tuesday, an event that drew thousands of protesters.
Media outlets are having discussions on what exactly to call the movement and how to describe it.
Trump _ whose newly appointed chief strategist, Steve Bannon, is the former executive chairman of a website that Bannon himself has described as a platform for the alt-right _ disavowed it recently in an interview with The New York Times.
And now, a rift that's developed within its ranks over whether the name has become too tainted leaves some wondering: Has the alt-right, which experienced an explosive surge over the past year, reached a plateau?
"When people thought that Trump was going to lose, the alt-right felt that they had won either way, because they felt that their views had come to the mainstream," said Marilyn Mayo, a research fellow with the Anti-Defamation League's Center on Extremism.
"And now they really feel empowered. I think it remains to be seen whether they attract more people and become a more real-world movement with growth as opposed to being mostly an online movement. But we need to be concerned because the alt-right is racist and anti-Semitic."
The controversy surfaced after the Nov. 19 annual conference of the National Policy Institute, a group led by Spencer that describes itself as "an independent organization dedicated to the heritage, identity and future of people of European descent in the United States, and around the world."
During his address to the more than 200 in attendance, Spencer raised a glass high in the air and proclaimed, "Hail Trump, hail our people, hail victory!"
Some in the crowd responded with a "Sieg Heil" salute, and video of the incident saturated social media. Twitter reacted by suspending the accounts of Spencer and some others associated with the alt-right.
Within days, alt-right figure Paul Ramsey, a video blogger who goes by the name Ramzpaul online, posted a video slamming those who saluted.
Because of their actions, Ramsey said, Trump was forced to disavow the alt-right.
"Nazism, it was 70 years ago, it's just a brand that doesn't translate well. It scares people," he said. "And if you're gonna do a Sieg Heil, it's over. It's really over. ... Whenever they think about the alt-right now, people are going to think about the Roman salute."
Nevertheless, Ramsey said, in the end it doesn't really matter.
"We won, we got Trump in, so that's fine," he said. "There's no need to have the 'alt' label anymore. We have Donald Trump."
Spencer said Ramsey's comments were "utterly stupid."
"To think that we've just won with the Donald Trump election, to think that this is all now over, and that we should give up politics, we've done it, Donald Trump's the man, this is just ridiculous," he said on a YouTube video. " ... We need to go harder, we need to go further and we need to be more radical than we've ever been."
Spencer acknowledged that the Nazi salute blemished the movement but said he wasn't sorry. He said his proclamation was "clearly a joke" and "an expression of exuberance." Those in the movement should be able to have some fun, he said.
"I do not think that other people should tell us what we can and cannot joke about," he said. "So no apologies from me, absolutely. But I also would be remiss not to recognize the fact that this can be a bad look. It can be bad optics. There is a truth to the notion that anything that's tainted by Nazism is just a nonstarter in reaching other people."
Spencer said, however, that it would be a bad strategy to drop the alt-right label, as Ramsey suggested.
"Alt-right has become more or less a household name. ... You can't just come up with another term and expect it to have the power and resonance that alt-right does," he said.
"You don't rebrand when you're making a huge impact everywhere."
