Reddit’s finally done it: It has banned /r/altright.
As you can read here, the move has been a long time coming. Reddit has banned problematic subreddits for much less. Alt right was an openly racist discussion of white nationalist ideas, something Reddit has grown increasingly intolerant of.
The subreddit had about 14,000 subscribers at the time of its demise, fairly small in subreddit terms. Reddit also banned /r/alternativeright and /r/rightyfriends, two much smaller communities.
It’s hard to say if /r/altright was banned for harassing other uses and moderators or simply for being racist. The mods at /r/altright were working closely with Reddit admins to prevent their community from getting banned and even tried to tone down some of the content shared.
But the subreddit was inherently racist and that might have been what led to the death sentence.
Here is how one of the moderators of the community explained the alt right to new users.
The Alt Right is a racial movement and has always been a racial movement. Race is at the very core of the alt right and there is absolutely no way to be alt right without discussing racial realism, especially from a white perspective. The mainstream media was not lying to you when they said we are full of white nationalists, racial realists, and fascists. That is what we are and we really do not give a shit about tax cuts or other policy issues.
The moderators even demanded that users read “The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem” before posting anything on the subreddit.
The alt right subreddit was clearly a toxic place, and by Reddit’s past standards it is not surprise the hammer fell. However, Reddit has grown increasingly bold in terms of censoring speech and banishing subreddits. There are plenty of other “problematic” subreddits, namely the_donald and KotakuInAction that could eventually be on the chopping block, as Reddit’s admins become increasingly censorious.