Departments

;

far right

  • SOURCE: The New Republic
    2/22/2021

    The 150-Year Prosecution of White Supremacy

    Merrick Garland's answers to quesitons about domestic right-wing extremism show that he understands the through-line connecting post-Reconstruction racist terrorism, the 1990s militia movement, and the groups present at the US Capitol on January 6. It remains to be seen if he will have the support he needs to follow through on his pledge to prosecute them.

  • SOURCE: Made By History at the Washington Post
    2/15/2021

    McConnell’s Task: Purging the Crackpots and Bigots

    by Kevin M. Schultz

    William F. Buckley Jr. was able to advance conservative ideas by publicly dissociating from antisemites, Ayn Rand cultists and John Birch conspiracists on the right-wing fringes. Mitch McConnell's problem leading America's conservative party is that all those groups are back with a vengeance. 

  • 2/14/2021

    Trumpism after Trump: Beyond Fascism

    by Gavriel Rosenfeld

    Understanding the future of the far-right grievance politics catalyzed by the Trump presidency, it might be helpful to think of it as "MAGA-ism," a 21st century American phenomenon.

  • SOURCE: New York Times
    2/5/2021

    Marjorie Taylor Greene Knows Exactly What She's Doing

    by Jamelle Bouie

    Historians Lisa McGirr, Sara Diamond, and Daniel Schlozman and Sam Rosenfeld argue that the Republican Party has always had to keep a porous border between itself and the hard right groups who led its activist base since the Goldwater years. The borders today seem to be dissolving.

  • SOURCE: Washington Post
    2/7/2021

    A Century Ago, White Protestant Extremism Marched on Washington

    "There still has to be a reckoning within white Christian churches about white supremacy. There need to be very careful conversations about this, not as, 'Individuals are prejudiced,' but about, 'This is the system that we all inhabit'."

  • SOURCE: New York Times
    1/26/2021

    Out of the Barrel of a Gun

    The resurgent militia movement and renewed attention to the threat of political violence compels a reckoning with the vast number of firearms in America and with the political significance of guns. 

  • SOURCE: NPR
    1/15/2021

    When White Extremism Seeps Into The Mainstream

    Historian Kathleen Belew discusses the history of the far right and the work of separating the hard core of the movement from its fringes and those who might be persuaded to join it. 

  • SOURCE: The Atlantic
    1/19/2021

    France Knows How This Ends

    by James McAuley

    "What is especially useful to remember about the Dreyfus affair now is the point of no return it represented, the repugnant embrace of lies by one half of society, educated people who were not ignorant but who had simply ceased to care."

  • SOURCE: The New Yorker
    1/18/2021

    The Long Prologue to the Capitol Hill Riot

    Historian Kathleen Belew notes the continuities in far-right and white power culture that have endured since the 1970s and were on display in the Capitol riot. 

  • SOURCE: New York Times
    1/13/2021

    Trump Is the Republican Party’s Past and Its Future

    by Lisa McGirr

    It's not a question of whether Trump voters are driven by racism, nativism or conspiracy theories, or by "economic anxiety." Republican economic policies have created inequality and instability that the party can only paper over by encouraging resentment, suspicion and hostility. It won't end with Trump's departure.

  • SOURCE: New York Times
    1/9/2021

    The American Abyss

    by Timothy Snyder

    "The responsibility for Trump’s push to overturn an election must be shared by a very large number of Republican members of Congress."