THE Brexmess and the Trumpaggedon were bad enough, but the forces that they’ve unleashed and legitimised are even worse.

Since the English and Welsh parts of the UK voted to leave the EU there has been a surge in hate crimes as bigots interpreted the vote as a legitimisation of their discriminatory views.

In the USA there’s likewise been a reported rise in hate crimes since Trump’s victory. And on both sides of the Atlantic we have also seen a triumphalist and energised extreme right which is now being normalised by sections of the media, although to be honest you’d be hard-pressed to distinguish between certain right-wing newspapers in Britain and the views of Alf Garnett. They’re bigoted and intolerant, they’re stuck in the past, and they’re works of fiction.

We’ve been led to this sorry state of affairs by those parts of the traditional media which specialise in the demonisation of migrants and social security claimants, and something called political correctness. This last is a phrase that only ever occurs in right-wing commentary and which is inevitably followed by the words “gone mad”. Examples cited include the mythical abolition of Christmas so as not to offend non-Christians – although as we view Christmas adverts earlier and earlier every year and the piling up of Christmas merchandise in supermarkets from the end of summer the abolition of Christmas doesn’t seem like such a bad idea.

Then, having conjured up an entirely invented and fictitious left-wing enemy to rail against, an enemy existing purely in their own fevered imaginations, the same commentators complain about the rise of post-truth politics.

Many have suggested that the malign influence of Ukip on British politics is not unrelated to the fact its leader Nigel Farage is constantly indulged by the media and is rarely off our TV screens. By giving him publicity the media has legitimised and normalised his views, and that has in turn made it more acceptable for the public to embrace the intolerant views that so many in Ukip espouse. Over the past couple of weeks sections of the media have ceased to pretend that they’re challenging or arguing against the far right and have instead been giving it a platform.

A few days ago Sky News invited Milo Yiannopoulos to comment on its press review. Yiannopoulos is a far-right commentator and editor of Breitbart News, the “alt-right” commentary platform beloved of neo-racists.

After the Orlando attack on a gay club, he was suspended from Twitter for apparently being unable to distinguish between Muslims in general and psychopathic murderers. He was later permanently banned for allegedly inciting his followers to send racist and sexist tweets to African-American actress Leslie Jones. He enjoys being offensive and claims that he’s challenging elites, but his offence is in the service of the rich and the powerful. It’s all just a hilarious joke, he claims.

Twitter is a cesspit at the best of times, and getting banned from it requires a special kind of offensiveness. Yet there he was on Sky News, leafing through newspapers as a serious and respected commentator on current affairs. Next week on Scotland 2016, the Unionists’ favourite Twitter troll Brian Spanner will be giving us his opinion on global warming and political uncertainty in the Baltic states. It’s all the fault of the SNP, in case you were wondering. Mind you there are differences between North Britain’s very own Brian Spanner and Yiannopoulos. Yiannopoulos is brave enough to be offensive under his own name.

The week before Yiannopoulos appeared as a newspaper reviewer on Sky News, the French far-right leader Marine Le Pen was interviewed on the Andrew Marr Show. You could at least argue, as the Marr Show tried to, that Le Pen was being interviewed so that her extremist views could be challenged and countered, although the effect was to give her a platform to further spread her noxious hatred. That’s not the case with inviting someone like Yiannopoulos on to Sky News as a newspaper reviewer. That’s normalisation. That’s propagating extremism. That’s normalising hatred.

Yiannopoulos and the alt-right rail against so-called social justice warriors. For them the fight for social justice and equality ended when they got theirs. Yiannopoulos is gay, and the only reason he and other prominent right-wing lesbian and gay political types enjoy their positions and privilege is because older generations of LGBTI people were proud to come out as social justice warriors and upset established views in order to right injustice and challenge discrimination. That’s the generation I belong to myself. If it wasn’t for the ageing LGBTI social justice warriors that Yiannopoulos affects to despise, he might still be hiding in the closet leafing through a men’s underwear catalogue hoping to get his jollies. The modern generation of alt-right social injustice warriors delight in offensiveness in order to perpetuate inequality and entrench discrimination.

Now the champions of the alt-right are being appointed to positions of power and influence. Trump has given the post of attorney general to a man who was rejected as a federal judge during the Reagan era because of his offensive views. Senator Jeff Sessions’ appointment was applauded by the former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke. Sessions himself is on record as saying that he only had a problem with the KKK after he discovered that many of its members smoked marijuana. He also once stated that the highly-respected African-American civil rights organisation the NAACP was “un-American”.

In an attempt to defend themselves from their critics, the social injustice warriors of the alt-right invented the hashtag #AltRightMeans.

It backfired, as Twitter users decided that #AltRightMeans racism for potheads and fighting for a future where ghostbusters are white and male.

Basically, what alt-right means is an adolescent fascist who can’t get laid and who blames his unattractiveness on feminism. Alt-right means social inadequates banding together to blame black people for making them uncool. They’re white supremacists who can only reign supreme in a forum for gamers. Let’s call them what they are – and they have no business appearing as neutral commentators on newspaper review shows.