In case I get kicked off these platforms, or if you just want to see the highlights, i have a quarterly-ish newsletter, the Sonnenschein Update, that has article announcements and the such. The platform that hosted it just shutdown, but you can shoot me a message and I will add you to the list when I get it up and running again.
Last, being a Far Right monitor is hard, dirty, and dangerous work. I receive no support from any think tanks, non-profits, universities, or anything else. So if you like my work, please consider supporting me at Patreon for as little as $2 a month, which includes access to new exclusive work!
After six years, my book Neo-Nazi Terrorism and Countercultural Fascism: The Origins and Afterlife of James Mason’s Siege will finally be released on Routledge on May 7!!
I’m getting a box so I’m selling signed copies of these out of my trunk right now. If you buy directly from me I’ll get 100% of the funds. (I’ll doubt I’ll get royalties due to the advance.)
The books are $27ppd in the U.S. Unfortunately, postage outside the country is now at least $25 a book, so it’s probably not worth it. (Instead, you can order directly through Routledge or Amazon.) However, you can also get a copy from me if you make it to my late May / June talks in Hamburg, Berlin, Leipzig, Oslo, or London.
I’m getting these earlier than expected so you should get it around the time of the release date. I can take Venmo, PayPal, check, or cash strapped to a carrier pigeon.
Recently, several scholars and organisational leaders, from anti-Zionists to Likud supporters, offered their opinions about how they see the changing landscape of the American Jewish community and what they expect in the future.
Prior to 7 October, divides widened among American Jews over Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s push for judicial reform.
But the Hamas attack ushered in a new sense of coming together among both the liberal and conservative mainstream.
Parallel to this, however, a newly energised Jewish anti-Zionism became very visible, especially in the San Francisco Bay Area and New York City. And it may be symbolic of coming political changes in the Jewish community.
After a six-month gestation, I have a new piece out with Hannah Gais at the SPLC. We reveal, for the first time, some of the behind-the-scenes connections between the terrorist and mainstream wings of the White Supremacist movement. This includes the role that Greg Johnson played in publishing the second edition of James Mason’s Siege in 2003. (Johnson is best-known for running the genteel white supremacist Counter-Currents – and as a side-note, once used a quote of mine for a fundraiser!) Here’s what Johnson told Mason in a letter:
I want to tell you how much I admire both you and your work…I have also read Siege and find myself in complete sympathy with your evaluation of Charles Manson & the world situation in general.
Siege‘s second edition was published in 2003 by Black Sun Publications, which Johnson was running with Ryan Schuster. But it gets even weirder, because Black Sun started out as an imprint of the Foundation for Human Understanding, an old-school racist academic think tank in Athens, Georgia (not uncoincidentally about 45 minutes from where I grew up). And they, in turn, received funding from the Pioneer Fund and were connected to the Charles Martel Society, who Richard Spencer would work with.
The line from racist academics to neo-Nazi mass murder is short.
Read “How a Mainstream Racist Group Revived the Terroristic Tome ‘Siege'”here.
In summer 2023, I co-authored a piece, along with Isaac from RASH, about people of color who are neo-Nazis. It was published on Unicorn Riot, where it is available in English and Spanish. (It was translated into German as well.) Since it’s a long piece and some people prefer audio/video, I did a reading and put it on YouTube. I’ve been threatening for a while to make videos, so hopefully I can do some more soon.
In May 2023, when Mauricio Garcia killed eight people in an outlet mall in Allen, Texas, it seemed like just another senseless mass murder similar to innumerable school shootings. But when it came out that he identified as a neo-Nazi, outrage spread: calling a Latino that was just too much for many. However, a person of color carrying out a mass shooting as a neo-Nazi came as less of a surprise to antifascist researchers and former members of the White Supremacist movement, where this phenomenon is not unknown. Outside of the U.S., it’s even more visible, with neo-Nazi groups existing throughout Latin America, as well as in the Pacific Islands and Asia.
I am not fairing well these days with the path to writing success being the production of quick, copious online content. That said, I do take pleasure in the fact that things I wrote years, even decades, ago continue to be read and, in some cases, translated. Although I had already been publishing stuff for a few years prior, my 2008 piece “Rebranding Fascism: National-Anarchists” was the first legitimately popular thing I wrote. It was translated into Russian and Greek, and reprinted by various anarchist websites. But apparently it still has legs and a Spanish translation has just popped up!
At the time I wrote it, “National Anarchism” and similar currents were a new phenomenon in the United States, although they had been percolating in Europe for a while. Basically, the British fascist Troy Southgate—who had previously been in the National Front, which endorsed racial separatism and anti-capitalism—had, over the years, taken these ideas to their logical extreme. Influenced by Continental thinkers like Alain de Benoist of the French New Right, Southgate reconceptualized this decentralized racial scheme as not about separate countries, but instead separate villages. And just like that, he rechristened himself an anarchist!
Nevermind that, decentralization aside, everything else about his ideas remained the same: racial homogeneity, homophobia, antisemitic conspiracy theories and Holocaust denial, etc. And so he went about trying to recruit, albeit with rather modest success, anarchists, radical ecologists, and others in the then-current anti-globalization movement.
When I published this, the idea of a “decentralized fascism” was too much for some people to accept. Today, this kind of approach barely raises more than a curious eyebrow. While some National Anarchists can still be found running round, I think that many read the article more as a cautionary tale about entryism; the inherent problems with certain anarchist ideas being taken to extremes without safeguards in place; and maybe a quick and dirty overview of French New Right and related ideas.
Regardless, I am happy that my previous work seems to still has meaning to people. Especially since it means that I don’t have to write something new all the time!
Since 2017, I’ve done annual wrap-ups of the U.S. Far Right, and they have migrated with me across different sites. The New Republic ran my 2023 review, which covers Trump, the MAGA movement, massacres and murders, militias, as well as things that start with other letters.
well, i’m gonna get ahead of the game and do my “best of 2023” list.
by far and wide, the favorite thing i released this year was “Nazis of Color,” which i co-authored with Isaac. It was well-received and translated into Spanish and German.
Mostly i concentrated on Patreon and did more in-depth stuff that is harder to place on platforms. My fav pieces inc “What Do We Mean by Red/Brown Politics?” as well as two practical guides: how to shut down fascist events and what to do when you are being harassed. (Patreon now has free 7-day trials if you want to check these out.)
oh course it wouldn’t be my life without weird shit happening. this included the FBI coming to my door after a fashy activist exploited a loophole in the law & called in an anonymous fake tip. (the longer version is on Patreon after i did more investigation)
🧵 so here's my rather weird, but mostly hilarious, experience with the FBI today. I get a new VM; the person claims to an FBI agent & wants to talk about a year-old tweet. "you're not in any trouble, call me back & we'll clear this up." google the # & its not an FBI office
— transform6789.bsky.social (@transform6789) August 9, 2023
after being largely ignored after 1/6, i was asked to be on a number of podcasts in the last half of the year.
right now i’m lining up a June 2024 speaking tour for the Mason/Siege book in Germany, Britain and maybe Norway. Of course i will do US dates, and hopefully Australia/NZ at the end of the year. Reach out if you want to see my speak in your town!
I have two articles that will come out soon. one is my annual year-end far right wrap-up. the other is a special surprise based on things i found during my Mason archival research.
Last, and forward: i’m still hoping to get to the things i wanted to get to last year, like making educational videos and doing an online class. i guess we’ll try again this one.
Although I did these both a bit ago, two podcasts I was on just dropped this week. But what we talk about on them is quite different. On The Loopcast, we get into how I see the general structure and the different wings of the White Supremacist movement, especially in the different ways that they relate to revolutionary violence, on one end of the pole, and elections and the Republican Party, on the other.
Meanwhile, my appearance on Did Nothing Wrong was a real Gen X fest. My conversation with Griff Sombke covered my forthcoming James Mason book, how today’s leftist pro-Islamist sentiment is a revival of what was seen in the mid-’00s, what activists can do to keep it going for the long haul – and in particular, the effect of the rent being Too Damn High!
Looking back, apparently I rarely plug my Patreon on this website, and so of course don’t talk about my writings there. As you might know, I’m not funded by any think thanks, universities, or secretive government agencies – and, of course, the Soros money that was going to ANTIFA dried up a while ago! So Patreon is my main and most steady source of income (it’s usually a little under $600 month). While that’s not huge, I find it very flattering that over 100 people are willing to give me at least a small monthly donation.
In any event, over the last three years I’ve unfortunately had limited time to write other things because I’ve been working on two books, Neo-Nazi Terrorism and Countercultural Fascism: The Origins and Afterlife of James Mason’s Siege (Routledge) and Looking Left at Antisemitism: Antisemitism on the Left, Right, and In-Between in the United States (No Pasaran). They are (finally, Finally!) at their respective publishers, hopefully all the edits are done, and both are due out in 2024. So while my input has decreased elsewhere, where I have been writing is on Patreon.
Because it frees me from the constraints of what the public platforms want – based on something that’s in the news, is under 1,2000 words, and is oriented towards an audience that isn’t necessarily politically sophisticated or that interested in the Far Right – I’ve been working in a different style and approach. These are increasingly full-length pieces. Lately they have gotten longer and more analytical, mixed in with nuts’n’bolts practical, and all based on my almost 30 years of grassroots activist work. (I’ve mostly tried to forget the decade I spent in grad school getting my PhD, although I suppose some of that slips in.)
So if you like my work, I encourage you to sign up to my Patreon and help support my research, articles, books, guides & videos (hopefully more of the later coming soon!) You can do so for as little as $2/month, and if you’re curious but unsure, the platform now offers free seven-day trials.
Below are some of the things I’ve written in the last year to give you a taste.
“Succession, Vacuums, and Pendulums” I show how the new wave of U.S. neo-Nazis, visible after the Orlando rally, have emerged because of dynamics internal to the Far Right. And these same types of dynamics play out in other radical movements, too.
“It’s a Conspiracy! That I Help Run, Apparently” For over a decade, there’s been a conspiracy about me and my role in various political movements. Its adherents range from neo-Nazis to conpiracy theorists who self-identify as “anarchists.” I go through the different actors and claims.
Six Things to Do If You Become the Target of Online Harassment: A Quick and Dirty Guide Does what it says on the tin.
If Americans Knew Alison Weir: The Zionist Lobby Conspiracy Theory as a Bridge Between Left and Right An updated version of my profile of Alison Weir, who peddles antique antisemitic narratives but claims it’s the “Zionists” controlling things from behind the scenes.
What Do We Mean by Red/Brown Politics? A lot of different people and groups get called Red/Brown (those who hold a mixture of Left and Far Right ideas), but they come from different places and they get called this for different reasons. I map out the different types by breaking them down into six different categories.
Was Charlottesville a Success for Antifascists? Was it, really? It certainly might not have been had things gone differently afterward with Trump and mainstream liberals. What I think after participating in the demonstration.
SHUTDOWN! What Happens When You Try to Get A Venue to Refuse to Host an Upcoming Fascist Event Guide to conducting a pressure campaign to shut down Far Right events at a local venue. I also explain the kind of pushback you’ll face.
Ya salio el artículo “Nazis de Color” en español en la página Unicorn Riot. (The “Nazis of Color” article I did with Isaac is now up in Spanish on Unicorn Riot.)
En mayo de 2023, cuando Mauricio García asesinó a ocho personas en un centro comercial en Allen, Texas, parecía otro asesinato masivo sin sentido, similar a los tiroteos en las escuelas. Pero cuando se supo que se identificaba como neonazi, se propagó la indignación: decir que un latino era así fue demasiado para muchos.
Sin embargo, que una persona de color haya llevado a cabo un tiroteo masivo como neonazi fue una sorpresa menor para los investigadores antifascistas. Hace varios años, a uno de nosotros le presentaron a un hombre negro llamado Mohammed Abdali. Si bien fue avalado por un antifascista con credenciales impecables, no parecía correcto. Poco después resultó que no lo era: Gabriel Díaz, su verdadero nombre, había aparecido previamente en los periódicos cuando lo suspendieron de su trabajo como taxista en la ciudad de Nueva York por usar un brazalete con la esvástica en el trabajo. Y esto no fue solo cosplay: una entrevista de televisión mostró que estaba bien versado en la ideología nacionalsocialista. Eso tampoco fue una rareza, ya que se supo que estaba espiando a los antifascistas para el Movimiento Nacional Socialista (NSM), en ese momento el mayor partido neonazi de EE. UU.
Last, being a Far Right monitor is hard, dirty, and dangerous work. I receive no support from any think tanks, non-profits, universities, or anything else. So if you like my work, please consider supporting me at Patreon for as little as $2 a month, which includes access to new exclusive work!
Spencer Sunshine 