I’m really not great about posting my talks, so just an FYI that I will be speaking later this week with Steve Wasserstrom in Portland, Oregon about “Portland’s Role in Neo-Nazi Terrorism.” It’s Thursday, November 14 at OJMCHE (Oregon Jewish Museum and Center for Holocaust Education).

We’ll talk about how several people who lived in Portland in the 1990s—including Adam Parfrey, Michael Moynihan, and Keith Stimely—helped Jame Mason create and disseminate his neo-Nazi terrorist tome, Siege. And we’ll dig into how local media, especially the Willamette Week, actively facilitated this and helped them escape accountability. Steve was part of the Coalition of Human Dignity at the time and was part of this uphill struggle against fascists, as well as their collaborators and enablers, and so we’ll have a good talk about how—both then and now—supposedly left & liberal people in Portland have helped facilitate the spread of antisemitic conspiracy theories, including those from Tim Calvert and a certain washed-up folk singer.

It’s $5 (free for museum members) and they are asking folks to register in advance:
https://www.ojmche.org/events/fighting-neo-nazis-in-pdx-book-talk

“Portland’s Role in Neo-Nazi Terrorism: Book Talk with Spencer Sunshine and Steve Wasserstrom”
November 14 | 6-7:30pm
OJMCHE, 724 NW Davis Street
Portland, Oregon
ojmche.org

Today’s most important book promoting neo-Nazi terrorism is James Mason’s Siege. Spencer Sunshine’s newly released Neo-Nazi Terrorism and Countercultural Fascism: The Origins and Afterlife of James Mason’s Siege is based on five years of archival work and interviews. In conversation with Steven Wasserstrom, Sunshine will talk about the role played in the creation of Siege by several important musicians, publishers, and Holocaust deniers who lived in Portland, Oregon; their connection to local media; and the historical and ongoing presence of conspiracy theorists and neo-Nazis in the city.

Spencer Sunshine holds a PhD in Sociology and is the author of Neo-Nazi Terrorism and Countercultural Fascism: The Origins and Afterlife of James Mason’s Siege (Routledge, 2024). He has done freelance programming at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in NYC, and his articles have appeared in The New Republic, Daily Beast, SPLC, Forward, and JTA. 

Steven M. Wasserstrom recently retired as the Moe and Izetta Tonkon Professor of Judaic Studies and the Humanities at Reed College, where he taught since 1987. He served as the Andrea and Charles Bronfman Distinguished Visiting Professor in Judaic Studies at the College of William and Mary, and as an Invited Scholar at the Zentrum für Literatur und Kulturforschung in Berlin. He has written numerous works including Between Muslim and Jew: The Problem of Symbiosis under Early Islam; Religion after Religion: Gershom Scholem, Mircea Eliade, and Henry Corbin at Eranos; and “The Fullness of Time”: Poems by Gershom Scholem.