After a brief honeymoon of solidarity between The Daily Stormer's Andrew Anglin and Richard Spencer's wing of the alt-right, it seems that Anglin is once again a negative nancy. Today Anglin published a blog post entitled "Official Daily Stormer Position: Don't Go to 'Unite the Right 2' - We Disavow" which self-explanatory as the title is, the reasoning is revealing.
Anglin give three major reasons: the doxxing is dangerous, the numbers are embarrassing, and the violence is off-putting. Rather than attempting to gather in public, Anglin advocates a retreat to the internet and underground organizing.
For his part, Anglin is at least practical. It's nearly impossible to build a political movement when most of your adherents are unable to get a job or an education. According to Anglin, this is the fallout from being doxxed as a nazi. Anglin would know better than me. Anglin has been doxxed, is unable to get a job or an education, and is currently on the run from a defamation lawsuit.
Drawing lines in the sand between himself and most of the rest of the far right had been a staple of The Daily Stormer until around the time Trump won the GOP primary. Rather than knocking Richard Spencer for running stodgy conferences, he began throwing his lot in with the rest of the broad white nationalist movement, even going so far as to self apply the term alt-right.
His alliance however did not spell a change in style to conform to the broader alt-right. Until November 2016, the broad alt-right leadership avoided overt allusions to nazism. Anglin, and to a lesser extent Matthew Heimbach, was a notable exception even getting in a feud with RamZPaul over the utility of 1488ers in the movement. At the time, Anglin was firmly with team 1488.
However, with this disavowal, Anglin makes a complete about-face. He abandons the alt-right, public militancy, and even "armband neo-Nazism" which he says "is never going to be that popular." He calls those who showed up with swastikas to Charlottesville "anti-social freaks."
In sum, Anglin has resumed his place as the unpopular person's popular person by making himself more unpopular with the unpopular people. It's largely the same game Matthew Heimbach did, except Heimbach interacted with people in real life.