Less than a month after the violent, poorly attended white supremacist rally at Michigan State University, it appears the so-called “alt-right” movement is imploding.

After his disastrous March 5 appearance at MSU, the star of the alt-right, Richard Spencer, quickly cancelled his nationwide speaking tour at college campuses. Fewer people attended the Michigan State speech than were arrested outside the venue. Within this tumult, other leaders of the white nationalist parade in recent days have quit or turned against each other, as infighting has resulted in some prominent hate groups to promptly fold.

A hastily formed student protest organization, “Stop Spencer at Michigan State University,” in response to Spencer cancelling his highly controversial tour, responded on Facebook with this: “This is a huge win!!!!! We are powerful and can out-organize the fascists!!!!! We showed what our community stands for. Let’s keep building for the world we want, against white supremacy and all forms of domination.”

At the time, that sounded like a bit of hyperbole from hyped-up college kids, but it’s become increasingly clear that the MSU rally — and the days immediately before and after — may land a prominent spot in the history of hatred in the U.S. The Michigan State event certainly could mark the breaking point for the alt-right.

Spencer, left, and Bristow

Just days prior to the speech, amidst a swirl of negative publicity due to an expose by the Detroit Free Press, Spencer’s attorney, Kyle Bristow, broke all ties with Spencer, with the ultraright group he formed, the Foundation for the Marketplace of Ideas (FMI), and with the alt-right movement altogether. FMI collapsed with amazing speed following Bristow’s sudden resignation.

At the highly charged campus event, violent clashes between Spencer supporters and anti-fascist counter-protesters resulted in 25 arrests. In comparison, about 20 people attended the speech.

According to The Daily Beast, the “splintering in dramatic fashion” within the alt-right mostly occurred this month in just a 2-week period.

Another hate group that collapsed was the Traditionalist Worker Party (TWP), led by Matthew Heimbach (pictured above), who provided a “security force” to battle with protesters at the MSU rally.

About a week later, Heimbach was arrested on assault charges at a very different venue – in the Indiana trailer park that he calls home. At the same time that Heimbach was trying to assert superiority online over other alt-right leaders, he allegedly assaulted his TWP spokesman, Matthew Parrott, during a brawl when Parrott learned first-hand that Heimbach was sleeping with his wife. Heimbach’s wife was also involved in the trailer park altercation. It should be noted that Heimbach’s wife is Parrott’s stepdaughter.

Though one would assume neo-Nazis and white nationalists are shameless, Heimbach’s actions apparently left many alt-right folks embarrassed. Within days, the TWP had essentially imploded.

Twitter feuds ensued, with lots of finger-pointing and various alt-right disciples trying to elbow their way into leadership positions, The Daily Beast reported. Some have been outed. One was forced to admit he is an FBI informant. Another conceded that he had lied about serving in the Iraq War. A third activist is trying to fight off claims that he comes from Jewish ancestry.

So it goes in the weird world of racism, bigotry and hatred.

As for Bristow, he is a 31-year-old Michigan native who got his feet wet as an instigator of far-right politics at Chippewa Valley High School in Macomb County. As an MSU student he became such a destabilizing extremist on campus — engaging in racist and homophobic activities — that he was nearly run out of town by students and fellow conservatives.

Over the past year, Bristow has filed numerous lawsuits on Spencer’s behalf against universities that have tried to prevent the white nationalist from speaking on campus during his “Danger Zone Tour.” In the lead up to the MSU speech, Bristow suffered significant setbacks as two elaborate alt-right gatherings/parties he scheduled in Macomb County to coincide with the Michigan State spectacle were cancelled due to public opposition and police concerns about security.

Radical-right protesters for the Traditionalist Worker Party were allies with  with the Hatreon website. While not associated with the MSU rally, Hatreon, the top online fundraising outlet for white supremacists, has crashed over the past several weeks as their crowdfunding site has gone dormant.

The demise of the FMI, the self-proclaimed “sword and shield” of the alt-right movement, labeled a hate group by civil rights organizations, is significant because it represented an amalgamation of ugly politics.

In addition to Bristow and Spencer, the FMI board of directors included a Holocaust denier, the son of a former longtime Ku Klux Klan leader and a believer in gay conversion therapy, an anti-Semitic blogger, and advocates of making America a Euro-centric, “white ethno-state” where minorities would be kicked out of the country.

Yet, when Bristow bitterly resigned just two days after the Free Press story, he complained on Facebook that he quit due to “relentless and unjustifiable vilification of me, as well as … mischaracterizations of who I am as a person.”

The alt-right is not dead but their tactics may take a dramatic turn as a war over political “optics” dominates the prevailing internal debate — staging marches and prompting physical altercations vs. sticking to online activities that promote their white supremacist mantra.

Beyond the violence and arrests at Spencer’s events, the Michigan State rally made the alt-right movement look foolish.

To defuse a Bristow lawsuit, university officials agreed to a Spencer speech in a far-off, rural section of the sprawling campus during spring break, when most students were gone, at a livestock pavilion that teaches the raising and breeding of farm animals.

One website offered this snarky headline: “Richard Spencer Cancels ‘College Tour’ After Being Forced To Talk In A Barn,” and reported that the alt-right had desperately offered free tickets to the speech outside a local Macy’s department store.

Spencer’s tour cancellation announcement lamented that the speeches are not “fun” anymore. Though, I suspect that statement referred less to the controversies and clashes that he craves and more to the idea that a rich white guy was revolted by engaging the spotlight in a place surrounded by the shit and muck of pigs and cows.

Some would say that’s just the kind of atmosphere where he belongs.