Category: Alt Right

“Arrest of Daniel McMahon Suggests That the Feds Are Finally Taking White Nationalism Seriously”

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“A White supremacist was arrested in Florida in mid-September for making online threats against Black city council candidate in Charlottesville, Virginia. To casual observers this looked like a singular arrest in Trump’s America. But experts who watch the militant end of the fascist movement—including myself—are paying close attention to the fate of Daniel McMahon, 31. The arrest comes after the Department of Homeland Security finally affirmed the threat of “racially based violent extremism.”

McMahon, a self-proclaimed fascist whose online aliases include “Jack Corbin” and “Pale Horse,” harassed progressive activists for years. He specialized in terrorizing women and attacked people of color, LGBTQ people, feminists, Jews and antifascist activists.”
…

McMahon was a prolific poster on Gab, which is, essentially, a racist version of Twitter. There, concerning one woman of color, he said, “Fuck that wetback. Too bad the ICE Agent didn’t shove his fist up her cunt and rip out her womb.” On Discord, a chat platform designed for online gamers that White supremacists frequently use for internal communications, he said a “white girl with a ni**er” was “beastilaty” [sic]. On Gab he also wrote, “It’s impossible to rape a female Leftist, because they are so slutty they will sleep with everyone.” He has also been obsessed with me for years; in one of his less profane posts on Gab, he called me the “most evil Jew in the USA.””

Read the entire story at Colorlines

“El Paso Blood Is on the Hands of Everyone Who Has Scapegoated Migrants”

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The list of known victims of the El Paso massacre, as of August 5, 2019. Source: @SamTLevin.

“The far right in the United States changes its look every few years, cycling through hoods, shaved heads and boots, polo shirts and fashy haircuts, and even three-piece suits. But one thing remains constant: Its bigotry and scapegoating drive its followers to kill. And they do so again and again.

The slaughter of 22 people in an El Paso, Texas, Wal-Mart on Saturday was a dramatic example of this trend. It was the largest massacre by a single, open white nationalist in recent history. …

Trump is the gasoline for this explosion of murder, while 8chan — and other ideological white nationalists — are merely the match. …

We all need to take a role in the fight against the far right and its violence. This fight requires antifa activists doxxing and pressuring fascist propagandists, and it also requires everyday people speaking against the stoking of fear and resentment against scapegoated groups. We all need to take action because it’s abundantly clear that the government is not going to do this for us.”

Read the full op-ed at Truthout

 

“Antifa Panic”

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I have a piece in the new European publication, The Battleground, about the attempts by Senator Ted Cruz and Donald “Cheeto Mussolini” Trump to get the federal goverment treat antifa as a domestic terrorist organization. It also looks at how the German antifa movement influenced the evolution of their US cousins as Anti-Racist Action wound down, and a new generation of antifascist activists arose.

“The United States is having its third wave of “Antifa panic” in as many years. Donald Trump’s 27 July tweet called for Antifa—short for antifascist activists—to be declared “a major Organization of Terror”.

This produced a pushback, especially in Germany, sending #IchbinAntifa trending on social media.

Antifa is not an organisation at all, but a decentralised, leaderless movement that opposes fascism and the far-right. Although most of its work is legal and non-violent, the movement is best known for occasional street fights with extremists.

Recently in the US, Antifa has become a bogeyman among conservatives, like 1950s anti-Communism.”

Read the full article at The Battleground

“Rural rage: the roots of right-wing populism in the United States” (with Chip Berlet)

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I have a new peer-reviewed journal article (my first!), which I co-authored with Chip Berlet: “Rural Rage: The Roots of Right-Wing Populism in the United States.” This analysis of the U.S. Patriot movement is part of the “Forum on Authoritarian Populism and the Rural World” published by the Journal of Peasant Studies. It includes 243 endnotes, if that’s your kinda thing.

You can download a free PDF here.

The Implications of the Christchurch Massacre

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I did a short interview with Its Going Down about the meaning of the Christchurch massacre and how we should respond.

“IGD: What are the main takeaways from the massacre in New Zealand?

Spencer Sunshine: Unfortunately these attacks are depressingly common, but here are some thoughts:

1) While our hearts go out to New Zealand’s Muslim community, we shouldn’t look at this as not just targeting them—just as we can’t look at the 2018 Pittsburgh massacre as just targeting Jews or 2015 Charleston massacre as only targeting the black community. Nazis and other White Nationalists target a huge range of people, including: black folks and all other people of color; religious minorities, including Muslims & Sikhs; both religious and secular Jews; feminists; immigrants and refugees; Communists, socialists, and anarchists; antifascists; LGBTQ people; interracial couples—as well as anyone who stands in their way or stands up to them, including white, Christian, cis-het men. They are at war with almost everybody in our communities. Here, truly, and injury to one is an injury to all.”

Read the entire interview at It’s Going Down

“Alt Right and Far Right Mobilization in 2018: A Timeline”

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My extensive timeline, with a summary, of U.S. Alt Right and related Far Right activity imn 2018 is now up!

“While 2018 was not the banner year that 2017 was for the Alt Right and others on the Far Right, it was still a period of intense activity.

The Alt Right’s winning streak, which started in 2016, ended ingloriously in March 2018 with the collapse of one of its largest groups after a sex scandal, coupled with the cancellation of Richard Spencer’s failing college lecture tour. The movement has been in the doldrums since. Some Alt Lite groups—including Joey Gibson’s Patriot Prayer, but especially the Proud Boys—had an unexpected comeback earlier in the year between the spring and fall.

In addition a large number of Far Right candidates, ranging from neonazis to veterans of armed Patriot movement occupations, entered the Republican primaries. Some advanced to the November general election. The one-year anniversary of the deadly Charlottesville rally appeared to be a peak month of action for the Far Right, with many groups feeling the taboo against public demonstrations had expired. But the action that attained the most visibility, the Unite the Right 2 rally in Washington, DC, was a dismal failure.”

See the full timeline and summary at Political Research Associates.

“The U.S. Far Right’s 2018 Election Results: A Blind-Alley for the Alt Right”

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“A large number of candidates with ties to the Far Right ran for office in the 2018 midterm elections, mostly as Republicans. They ranged from neonazis to mainstream Republicans who courted the Far Right for support.

This analysis looks at thirty-five candidates with documented Far Right ties. It found that eleven of them lost primaries, and twenty-four ran in the general election. While a number of candidates won their primaries, no non-incumbents with clear Far Right ties won office on the state or national level. And of the incumbents, only three were re-elected. At the same time, the Democrats re-took the U.S. House, breaking the Republican’s two-year domination of the Executive branch and both national legislative bodies. Clearly, 2018 showed that the electoral arena was not an avenue the Alt Right—or others on the Far Right—could use to advance political power. While Donald Trump gives their movement leverage, his surprise 2016 presidential victory has not translated into electoral successes for other candidates.”

Read the full analysis and election results at Political Research Associates.

New video interview on Splinter

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The good people at Splinter did an interview with me recently. We talk about how many white people hold Alt Right-style views, the different organizing strategies that the Alt Right and Alt Lite use, and what everyday people can do to counter white nationalism.

“We Must Pressure Mainstream Forces to Stop Downplaying the Far Right”

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In the light of the bombings of liberal figures, racist murder of two black folks, and the massacre in the Tree of Life synagogue, I argue that we must pressure mainstream groups to cut off the oxygen to the Far Right. There are three approaches we should focus on:

“One, the mainstream must push back against the demonizing and conspiratorial language used by Trump and others. Mass media outlets must stop allowing themselves to be a conduit for Trump’s lies (and, in some cases, stop actively working to promote them), and cease allowing the spread of demonizing and bigoted ideas in general. For example: Twitter could remove Trump for violating its terms of service, but it simply lacks the will. USA Today had no obligation to print a recent Trump op-ed on Medicare that was filled with lies.

Two, we must push mainstream conservatives to break links with the more extreme members of their party. For example, on October 12, a Manhattan GOP club hosted “alt-right” figure Gavin McInnes. This bigot has had a long career of openly calling for violence, and afterwards, his followers (at least one of whom was at Charlottesville) engaged in a gang-style, 30-on-3 attack against counterprotesters. This powerful GOP club in a posh neighborhood should be held accountable for bringing in violent actors.

Three, we must pressure digital companies to remove content in order to burst the echo chambers where far right activists have their views reinforced and are egged on to violence. The many instances where content is removed after violence shows that outside pressure is effective in forcing platforms to do it.”

Read the entire article at Truthout