On Dec. 16, 2020, Paul Gottfried, the far-right figure responsible for coining the phrase “alternative right,” denounced women’s suffrage and the civil rights movement during a YouTube livestream. According to Gottfried, women in the early 1900s “had enough rights,” and the struggle for civil rights for Black Americans irreparably damaged the country.

The livestream was hosted by white supremacist and alleged sex pest Colin “Millennial Woes” Robertson as part of his yearly “Milleniyule” celebration.

During a discussion about America during the early 1900s Gottfried said there were certain aspects of the country he would have changed. “Women, I think, probably had enough rights,” he told Robertson. “I’m not quite sure I’m happy with the 19th Amendment and giving women the votes. I think it’s had a disastrous effect.”

“But I’m totally against the enfranchisement of women,” Gottfried said as Robertson listened and smiled. “I think it sort of led to everything else that’s been bad, that’s been horrible and destructive to the family.”

Gottfried was also nostalgic for the 1950s, a period of time during which, he said, things were “better socially” and “culturally.” For example, he praised the presence of “gender roles” and the way “women generally stayed home and raised kids.”

He added that, when he was growing up, people who went to college didn’t have their minds “poisoned by psychotic intellectuals who hated heterosexuals, who hated males, who were effeminate.”

When Robertson asked if “America was still a stable society” in the late 1960s, Gottfried replied that it was not, and cited the “violent antiwar movement” and the civil rights movement for African-Americans. Gottfried explained that while the civil rights movement did focus on “some real grievances,” it “destabilized” the country.

“Unfortunately the people who were behind [the civil rights movement] were quite radical, and destabilized the country,” Gottfried claimed. “They managed to destabilize it permanently.” He said that had Southerners been more “magnanimous” and “allowed whites to sit at the lunch counter or use a library maybe some of this would’ve been avoided.”

Gottfried also attacked civil rights era legislation that was passed to protect African-Americans — and other groups — from discrimination. He said that there has been a “continuing explosion in this country since the late 1960s,” and that such laws “made the government, the Deep State — whatever you want to call — public administration, and public education, into vehicles of radicalization.”

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed segregation in public schools. It also prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, and gender identity in public facilities and employment.

Photo of Paul Gottfried and Wayne Lutton attending event in honor of deceased white nationalist Sam Francis taken by Laura Sennett/One People’s Project.