Archive for category: #CARR

Craig McCann’s recent article, “Beware the Anti-Fascists, for they have become what they oppose,” I am told, does not necessitate a response. The piece is so noxious that it casts a pall over the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right, which published it, and anyone associated, including myself. Yet I have worked with CARR for something like two years now, authored a lengthy peer-reviewed article through the group, headed up the Area Studies working group, and attended steering committee meetings. At no point in my time at CARR have I heard or read anything quite like the arguments proffered by McCann, so I reject the notion that they typify the organization in any form or represent more than the opinion of one person within it.

Given that assessment, I will take the opportunity, graciously provided to me by CARR’s dogged and tireless director Matthew Feldman, to provide my rebuttal to Dr. McCann’s piece. I would not disparage either the academic record of Prof. Feldman, whose voluminous collections on fascism with Roger Griffin gave me a fillip in researching my own book seven years ago, or McCann, whose contributions on the editing and peer review side of scholarship tend to go unnoticed (as with the excellent text, Violent Radicalization and Far-Right Extremism in Europe).

Certainly, they received much animus over social media, where it is easy to traffic in fast accusations. Unfortunately, I wonder if the author had taken more care regarding the provocative tone of “Beware the Anti-Fascists,” perhaps the negative reaction might have been ameliorated. But then, in a way, a provocation is meant to do just that, catalyzing an equally or even excessively provocative response in order to locate evidence of one’s initial point. In such a controversy, everyone can rest assured that polarization will lead to self-congratulation among one’s colleagues and bitterness against one’s newly-obtained enemies.

Some have taken to Twitter with receipts on Dr. McCann’s social media presence, including comments about trans people and an apparent pivot to the pro-Trump social media site Gettr. However, on the advice of colleagues, I hope to avoid any blemish of ad hominem here, rebutting the article written by McCann on its own merits, rather than integrating sparks from the online firestorm into the present scholarly effort. It is not my place to assume the intentions of the author or, indeed, of the article, which appears to have taken on a life of its own. When dealing with the subject of fascism, tempers often boil over, and recriminations follow. Yet it is precisely the volatility of the subject, the seriousness of its repercussions, that I urge all those engaged in the debate to employ patience and nuance before blind rage.

Responding to Claims of Militant Anti-fascist Activism

The author’s dejection seems palpable, as he puts his own field in scare quotes—he is after all the author of an important work in assessing CVE strategies called The Prevent Strategy and Right-wing Extremism A Case Study of the English Defence League. Casting the field in which he works in such an unfamiliar light indicates significant alienation, and he redoubles the effect by describing the field as “infiltrated.” Without providing any example of such infiltration, the claim appears little more than provocative—an incendiary allegation carried over into the claim that “This [infiltration] has exploded since the riot that took place at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, for which a large number of criminal investigations are still ongoing.” How do we know that people willing to commit crimes infiltrated the field? How do we know they began infiltrating even more after January 6? We must take McCann’s word for it.

McCann does provide two examples of what he describes as those who believe that “the only way to oppose the radical right is by emulating their tactics.” Yet before moving to those examples, we must inquire as to the ownership of tactics. Is political violence originally the strategy of the political right? Clearly the answer is no, but deeper still, to assess the tactics of the fascist movement under the rubric of “political violence” is to do a grave disservice to the scope of violence that it seeks to enact. And this is perhaps the cardinal sin of McCann’s piece: Thou shall not make false equivalences. I by no means seek to encourage violence, nor participate in it. However, when one attempts to balance punching a fascist with bursting into a Mosque and murdering dozens of innocent people for sport, the logical shortfalls become obvious.

But before turning to this dilemma, addressing the examples offered by McCann helps to elucidate the flawed argumentation. The first is an interview from September 6, 2021, with author Talia Lavin conducted by the Bad Faith podcast hosted by Briahna Joy Gray, in which Lavin supposedly advocates “brass knuckling up and flattening the nose of a Proud Boy.” The full transcript reads as follows: “the elements of vulnerability to radicalization [are] very common human emotions—like is feeling lost, is feeling lonely, is feeling purposeless—and anything we can do to mitigate those feelings in such large masses of the population, that’s great. I think there are many constructive things we can do to fight Nazism that don’t involve just brass knuckling up and flattening the nose of a Proud Boy, but like I think you have to be willing to brass knuckle up and flatten the nose of a Proud Boy, too.”

McCann does not describe Gray’s position, which involves a long-term effort to “deprogram” those who “find solace” on the far right. Nor does he describe the question of violence in the context of the “constructive” methods of opposing fascism. This absence of context is further problematized by the issue of being willing to use violence as opposed to seeking it out. A counter-protest against a group of violent fascists bears the serious risk of being attacked. Is it wrong to defend one’s self against an attack? By presenting this multifaceted debate as a unified cry for bloodshed, McCann fails to appreciate the complexity of opinions, which aids his perception of a large-scale infiltration. And to further bolster his case, McCann refers to a podcast episode by the wonderful “Right Rising” podcast—a reference that perhaps illustrates the fact that the “infiltration” he feels may not actually represent the reality of a majority of people in his field.

This becomes a problem of trust. One who has come out swinging against “infiltration” is obviously presenting themselves as suspicious of his colleagues. So it comes as no surprise that he refuses to “trust those identifying so passionately as ‘Anti-Fascists’ to know how the radical right differs from the ‘regular right.’” Again, as readers, McCann expects us to do the work of assuming he does not mean all those who identify passionately as “Anti-Fascists.” One such person would be myself, and I wrote an entire book laboriously distinguishing between the radical, extreme, and center right. Even I have met with criticism from people more engaged than myself in opposing the far right for overplaying the fascist characteristics of figures like Piłsudski, so I wonder if his sense of a failure “to identify a coherent strand of thinking, other than anger” is well founded. Putting his own tone to the side, McCann’s misapprehensions about anti-fascist activists paint a dire but also unrealistic portrait.  

“The largely ignored Antifa protests which have led to large scale disorder, criminal damage and violence in Portland, Oregon is a demonstration of where the wisdom of the mob can lead,” McCann cautions. I live in Portland, Oregon, and have been interviewed by every network affiliate, The Atlantic, Vice Media, and newspapers from as far as France and England, over the subject of political violence in my city of residence. I am always impressed at how much focus there is on Portland, with local far-right agitators like Andy Ngo finding their way to a strange sort of celebrity across right-wing media. Thus the claim that “Antifa protests” have been “largely ignored” seems even less substantiated than Dr. McCann’s other arguments. Indeed, that a British CVE expert is denouncing Portland’s activists at all demonstrates the fact of extensive media coverage by every major newspaper in the world.

To add to this cognitive dissonance, McCann seems to conflate with anti-fascist action the large-scale protests against police violence following the murder of George Floyd on May 28, 2020, for which convicted Derek Chauvin faces 22.5 years in prison. This conflation is mistaken, as the oldest antifa group in Portland, Rose City Antifa, repeatedly attempted to make clear: while they supported protests against the police, they ascribed to anti-fascist action the narrow definition of specifically opposing fascist groups and far-right organizations that support them. Though McCann’s conflation may appear insignificant, it presents a category error through which he can assign to local anti-fascist activists blame for spontaneous and large-scale rioting carried out by non-activist members of the public. While the conflation here is common—after all, rioters often wear all black—it poses a dangerous allegation in apparent efforts to demonize groups that openly confront fascists. In doing so, it postulates a false sequence from “advocating for [anti-fascist] street violence” to “large scale disorder, criminal damage, and violence” in the form of rioting.

To repeat myself, I am not spoiling for violence, but I do not begrudge the use of self-defense if attacked (and incidentally, neither does the law, as far as I am aware). That said, given the risk of assault when openly opposing fascists, I would agree that such activity would require one to be prepared for self-defense. The “vestiges of the moral high ground,” which McCann appears so eager to preserve (and who would blame him!) are also grounded on a paradox. “Violence begets violence,” he assures the reader, explaining his refusal to “brass knuckle up and punch a Proud Boy.” Yet where does the violence begin? Did 51 Muslims provoke the Christchurch shooter before he went on a rampage and murdered them in broad daylight? What about the 23 dead in El Paso? Nobody physically attacked those shooters before their bloodlust overcame their souls. If “violence begets violence,” however, would not aggressive anti-fascist violence be easily explained?

Sometimes, far from begetting more violence, violence actually stops the cycle. In Oslo, a crazed would-be mass murderer burst into a mosque and started shooting before three men brought him down. Nobody died. I have experienced something similar in Portland, since we are on the subject. In August 2020, I arrived at a downtown park just as a large brawl was breaking up. What turned into a street battle was fully planned out by fascists from around the region, who further plotted to carry their violence into the night, probably by beating up homeless people and other vulnerable populations in what they called, “evening festivities” and “night ops.” Anti-fascists who opposed them were attacked, and many suffered injuries, including local reporter and podcaster Robert Evans. Yet as a result of the violent repercussions of their early efforts, the fascists who planned the night-time attacks fled back to their own hometowns (Wilson and Evans 2020, Patriot Coalition 2020).

In leaked chats following the maelstrom of violence, some expressed disappointment, with one activist saying, “So no night action?” and another replying, “Are we not going back in tonight?… I was coming up for the evening festivities.” After some time, the first activist repeats, “Can someone from the head ops please give a clear direction on the night op?” Then another account chimes in, “Tonight is off- a lot of our guys were hurt… it was discussed that the plan was to go in again at another time and better prepared- we now know what they are using against us… we can’t go in with injured people- they need to recoup and heal… today was a win… they know we are here and they know they got their asses handed to them… we need to keep recruiting- we WILL be going in again- and SOON!!!” (Patriot Coalition 2020). It is clear from this message that “evening festivities” and “going in” are euphemisms for extreme violence.

I will not call the repelling of an incursion force bent on “night ops” a victory any more than I will put stock in their exuberant declaration of a “win,” because I do not wish injuries suffered through violence and traumatic experiences of these kinds on anyone. Yet there is some solace to be had in the reality that violence directed against the most vulnerable was deflected, absorbed even, by members of the community who felt more capable of facing assaults by some of the most violent members of society. The true victory would have been preventing the fascists from staging violence in the first place, but anti-fascists averted the worst-case scenario of night rampages.

My experience—I was threatened with a handgun by a far-right activist while documenting some of the aftermath—is by no means unique, although my imparting it may raise eyebrows or stoke anger against me. A close friend who is white was bicycling through downtown one afternoon with her son, who is of mixed racial descent, when they happened on a host of far-right protesters waving Confederate flags and other such symbols. She was paralyzed with fear before being surrounded by a group of anti-fascists who ushered her to safety. The activists’ role that day was not to launch some form of assault or to break other people’s property but to keep vulnerable members of the community safe.

The reason I write these reflections on my own experiences and those of close friends is not to beat a dead horse but to offer a counter argument to the notion that a boogie man named “Antifa” is wreaking havoc throughout Portland. I will not deny that I have sharply criticized some activities carried out in the name of this or that left-wing political ideology. However, I would also stress that the far graver danger faced by Portland lies in those far-right activists who intend to rampage through the city at night and harm people their ideology teaches them to despise.

Nevertheless, perhaps the most intense position staked out by McCann comes after his harsh words about Portland: “Many years ago, we spoke of cumulative extremism in relation to the relationship between Islamist and radical right groups. Now we have the scenario where it is the radical left who have replaced the Islamists.” This claim is easy to misconstrue. McCann is not creating an equivalence between Islamists and leftists so much as he is arguing that leftists have become the principle target of the far right in a kind of spiral of violence.

Cumulative Extremism: Dynamics of Violence between Anti-fascists and the Radical Right

Now, the theory of cumulative extremism (or reciprocal radicalization) has become a hot topic in circles of extremism research. It helps to offer an explanatory framework that implicates two or more parties in a kind of accelerating cycle of violence. The theory derives from an important article by Roger Eatwell, which describes “cumulative extremism”: “the way in which one form of extremism can feed off and magnify other forms.” It is useful to describe cumulative extremism in order to take a step away from it and think through possible contradictions with an eye to another, similar and perhaps simpler term: polarization.

For Bartlett and Birdwell (2013), cumulative extremism involves a trajectory in which actions from either side trigger equal and opposite reactions from the other side. In his own work on “cumulative extremism,” Matthew Feldman (2012) writes, “the intertwined extremes from opposing illiberal camps seek to radicalize otherwise liberal-democratic populaces rejecting both political violence and collective scapegoating—in all its forms—in favor of the clashing of supposedly hostile and monolithic civilizations.” This process of radicalization, also called “polarization,” contributes to cumulative extremism. Studies in cumulative extremism have already included not only Islamists and Counter Jihad but also the Troubles in Northern Ireland (Carter 2020) and anti-fascists opposing the British National Party (Macklin 2020). Hence, redundant talk of one actor “replacing” another loses the complexity of different scenarios, actors, and the social conditions that might foster different outcomes.

Thinking about this particular theoretical corpus, perhaps using the lens of polarization in the context of McCann’s claims about Portland, Donatella Della Porta’s (2013) notion of “root causes” might help us understand how stressors from systemic racism and economic class (including police violence) plays into the reality of political violence, with its dynamic “facilitator causes” including Trumpian exhortation and social media inflammation, unleashed through the “precipitating causes” of rioting following the police murder of George Floyd. While it looks from the outset as though two pitched forces are locked in heated contest—Trumpists versus Black Lives Matter; the far right versus Antifa—a step back shows that the engagement is asymmetrical. The police, far-right vigilantes, peaceful protesters, rioters, anti-fascists—many agents can enter the complex field of engagement, and conflating them brings us only false conclusions.

Hence, the most current literature on cumulative extremism or reciprocal radicalization stresses complexity, asymmetrical conflict, and multi-actor scenarios, while also rethinking predicates of “radicalism” and “extremism” in light of a diminishing center (or multiple centers). In their article, Busher and Macklin (2015) agree that “the interactional dynamics between opposing groups require greater and more detailed attention if we are to better understand the ebb and flow of ‘extremist’ mobilizations both in the UK and elsewhere.” However, they note, more conceptual clarity is needed based on six valuable premises.

1. Name the radicalization taking place; differentiate between actors and deeds.

2. Describe the relationships involved in the “Spirals of Violence.”

3. Assess the ebb and flow of interactions.

4. Address movement-countermovement influences.

5. Reckon with the wider social, cultural, and political environment

6. Describe the closeness of the coupling between movements

Unfortunately no such effort exists in Dr. McCann’s article, so I will venture in this direction to explore how the framework might compare to McCann’s. In the US, the seeds of “reciprocal radicalization” were sown in the fertile soil of the Trump movement and the rise of BLM protests during the year 2020 amid COVID regulations. With one side of the population feeling marginalized and attacked by police and the President and the other being spurred to action by Trump, the conditions were made for a perfect storm for violence and unrest. Here, as Macklin (2020) writes, “a group is never simply entrained by its political opponents but responds to a range of different ‘publics’ both nominal and real.” We are not dealing simply with political actors in the streets but the cultures and communities that produce them, along with the perceptions of the conflicts among the divided public, which become as complex as the conflicts themselves, as is readily visible in the complicated response of Dr. McCann who may or may not have ever visited “deep Portland.”

As Macklin (2020) shows, deterministic models do not always represent the ebb and flow of movements over the long term. Sometimes success in one direction can lead to a demobilization in another. Macklin uses the example of the British National Party’s retreat from the streets after electoral victories, while Carter (2020) uses the example of the decline of the Counter Jihad Movement in the mid-2010s. We could also show the ebb in BLM activity in the lead-up to the 2020 elections and in the midst of an escalation in far-right demonstrations. Throughout 2021, vociferous and sometimes violent protests against COVID-19 regulations had no equal on the side of the left, and have been largely unopposed throughout the US.

For this reason, McCann’s notion that anti-fascist activists, once blooded with the scent of fascists, will turn their ire to the next subject with alacrity has not held up. “I also can’t help but feel that those most vociferously advocating for violence against those they perceive to be ‘Nazis’ would not be capable of punching someone else in the face,” he writes. This claim avoids the controlled definition of anti-fascist action provided by groups like Rose City Antifa, but it also mobilizes a “slippery slope” fallacy. There is no research, as far as I know, that indicates that violent opposition to fascism—however one seeks to avoid it— by nature, leads to further violence against other actors. Carter (2020) observes that in Northern Ireland, riots lead to further forms of violence, but in Portland, we have seen a sharp decrease in political violence since 2020, probably because of Trump’s loss of the election and the increasing consequences felt by the far right due to their repeated violent incursions.

McCann does note something fascinating in his essay. “In positioning themselves in opposition to the radical right,” he writes, “some find themselves unable to challenge the worst excesses of groups on the radical left, for fear of weakening the collective stance against the fascists.” This claim begs for a citation, because it feels so close to being correct. In criticizing self-censorship, McCann appears to support the venting of opinions, such as his own. Yet why would people feel afraid of weakening the collective stance against the fascists today? Plausibly this intuition lies in the severe crisis that democracies face throughout the world in the form of raging, violent nativism, which carries extremely violent fascists with it and sanctions their brutality.

Perforce, when Dr. McCann argues that “if someone on the radical right of the equation so openly advocated for punching members of Antifa in the face, they would be accused of radicalizing people and inciting violence,” he seems somewhat removed from this predicament. In fact, members of the radical right openly advocate for violently assaulting left wingers regularly. They rarely face ostracization from the ranks of the right. The celebrity of Kyle Rittenhouse provides a clear example of the championing of right-wing vigilantism, and has no equal on the left in scale or pitch. I wonder to what degree self-censorship compares to vociferous and fawning approval of vigilante killings, or if the latter might explain the former rather well. Indeed, reciprocal radicalization literature talks about “shared scripts” between violent actors, but in order to recognize common back-and-forths, it is valuable to understand the distribution and dynamics of asymmetrical power relations.

Again, here I am not seeking to “start fires,” as McCann eloquently puts it, but bring attention to the asymmetry of forces. As well as the calls for violence (recall then-President Trump’s phrase, “when the looting starts, the shooting starts”), the left has no equivalent to the disinformation produced by the far right—for instance, on Fox News or Steve Bannon’s wildly successful podcast. There is no structuring “Big Lie,” such as Trump’s assertion of a “stolen election,” on the left. Where the left has made efforts to encourage responsible management of platforms to the exclusion of disinformation that might prove harmful, the far right has struck out against evidenced and established fields of scholarship like Critical Race Theory and even the literature of Holocaust remembrance. To say that this radical asymmetry should have no bearing on people’s ethical calculous pertaining to the condemnation of the excesses of anti-fascists or the left, more broadly, is to reduce complex problems to the simplest equations: violence = bad.

And let me add that I also agree that “no-one advocating for violence should… be given a pass, regardless of your political persuasion,” but I also argue that they should not be condemned ex cathedra without assessing their methods, rationales, and the pressures under which they find themselves. As a scholar I will eagerly admit my anti-fascist partisanship. This, I was told in graduate school, simply means that I can acknowledge my bias and contextualize my findings appropriately. Surely anyone who supports democracy would do the same thing. Beyond that, I would also oppose making generalized moral judgments against people making difficult choices about risk regarding their own efforts to stem the rise of fascism and what John Rawls called “duty.”

In another avoidance of complexity, McCann asks whether “these very same people advocate for ‘brass knuckling up and flattening the nose of an Islamist?’” It is the case that opposition to Islamism is often used as a stalking horse by those who simply hate Muslims and immigrants. It is also the case that anti-fascists travelled all the way to Syria in order to fight against ISIS during that Islamist group’s blitz. So the answer to this question is complicated by the reality of power relations in which, radical or not, Muslims face daily threats from the far right, and frequent false accusations of Islamism only inflame those tensions.

To claim, however, that this complexity muted the response to the terrible murder of Sir David Amess MP, as McCann does, is to completely ignore the outpouring of grief and support from the Muslim community and the Labour Party, which was comparable to the similar response after the murder of Jo Cox. In both cases, the Prime Minister attended the memorial service, along with a long list of MPs and notables. (It bears mentioning that, after the assassination of Cox, the British public went on to vote for Brexit regardless.) Once again, as with the claim that political violence in Portland has been ignored, the notion that the murder of MP Amess produced a “muted response” simply does not bear out. Indeed, the lack of evidence for “infiltration” remains glaring along with these perceptions, which it might be best to view as subjective impressions. Scholars on cumulative extremism recognize the creation of victimization and demonization (Ebner and Guhl 2020), and we must take care to avoid reproducing such dynamics within the scholarly field.

The second and final example pointing to “infiltration” noted by McCann, aside from the podcast, lies in a Twitter argument that took place last month between an academic named Brian Levin and an activist named Molly Conger. The debate is not particularly interesting. Conger does not argue in favor of violence at all. She responds to a tweet by Brian Levin accusing Talia Lavin of “’Punch a Nazi’ drivel,” by pointedly arguing that academic efforts are ineffective. Brian Levin fires back by arguing that “many embrace violence today as 1st choice method against vile little miscreants when they engage in public bigoted, but otherwise non-physical rants.” Escalating the discourse further, Levin accuses Conger of advocating violence simply for pointing out that our academic models have remained unsuccessful at stemming the rise of fascism.

In comments under this short argument, a number of activists make it clear that, in the words of photojournalist Zach D. Roberts, ”[I] [d]on’t know anyone (outside of Nazis) that r embracing violence as 1st choice. They’ve all been fighting it online & w/ non-violent means & all that much of academia is doing is downplaying the threat.” Reading McCann’s creation of a false equivalence between fascists and anti-fascists, wherein the latter is becoming the former, one can understand the frustration about academics “downplaying the threat,” given the asymmetry of violence and violent intent.

Yet McCann is right in one way when he writes, “It’s difficult not to read things like this and to feel sad that those who peddle in grievance and hatred have found their utopia in the click-chasing zero sum game of social media.” That frustration is virtually universal across social media, and appears to be a built-in problem with the mode of communication, itself. As researchers, social media offers us one glimpse into online cultures but it does not bring a comprehensive understanding of social relations. These two examples unveiled by McCann offer scanty evidence to support the ambitious claims made at the paper’s outset. Both of McCann’s examples involve web 2.0, which should not be mistaken for real life. Both also involve Talia Lavin, who as far as I know has, far from attempting to “infiltrate” the CVE field, cannily criticized some of its problems. And although McCann insists that “If you advocate for anything that takes longer than the instant gratification of punching someone in the face, you’re an apologist for the radical right,” as already shown, Lavin states in the interview cited by McCann that long-term and constructive methods are indeed useful.

As I have insisted throughout this article, I do not advocate violence, but I do view self-defense as a necessity in the direst circumstances. I have interviewed former members of anti-racist skinhead gangs from the 1980s, and few have spoken more seriously and critically about “cultures of violence” or “going in for glory.” Yet I am not concerned that, as McCann states, “you may have become what you hate.” I expect that those who revel in political violence against fascists will experience some hard lessons in life, not become a concentration camp guard who brutalizes defenseless detainees. I would perhaps think that someone who glorifies a life of alienated violence against fascists will have a difficult time relating to others in their community, but not become a Nazi who views Anders Breivik as a “saint” and tries to summon the courage to follow in his footsteps. Where one side seeks to engage in violence against civilians in a neighboring community and their opposition from that community seeks to prevent that violence, equivalences between aggressor and defender fail.

And such provocations are baked into the history of fascism and the far right. In England, the Battle of Cable Street is often trotted out. Mussolini’s Blackshirts conducted raids on towns and neighborhoods with left-wing representation. In Germany, the Brownshirts stoked violence by marching through workers’ districts and trying to “control the streets.” In Northern Ireland, far-right Unionist Ian Paisley notoriously provoked conflict with Republicans by marching through Catholic neighborhoods and cities. Provocations of violence appear throughout the history of the far right as ways to beat down and weaken opposition, while using the immediate rush of media attention to promote hateful platforms while presenting themselves as the true, embattled victims. And if victorious, provocations are followed by ever more provocations, expansions, and destruction.

Is opposition to those provocations really easier to decry than the reversal of victim and offender instrumentalized afterword to condemn anti-fascists? I should note that such a reversal is not universally encountered. In Italy, the Resistance against the Blackshirts from 1943-1945 was immortalized in the famous biography by Giovanni Pesce, Senza Tregua. In France, violence between political right and left was common both during the interwar period, and the Resistance was similarly heralded into the post-war period. Of course, I do not believe that we live in conditions identical to those of previous generations, but taking a historical point of view, it appears that a totally pacifist approach to fascism and the far right from which it arose relies on the distinct privilege of not currently facing immediate attack—something that has felt more tenuous in recent years, even for those who enjoy comparatively greater privilege (such as myself).

Conclusion

That said, I will end on a note of agreement with Dr. McCann, who actually comes off as an optimist after all of that. “We should not give in to despair, to this sense of helplessness. Those of us who want a better tomorrow and not to simply prolong the divisiveness we see everywhere, must use our voices to make the case that yes, there are bad people out there, but they are not nearly as numerous as some would have you believe. I strongly believe in bridging divides, and I’ve seen the impact of building relationships across communities, challenging stereotypes and over time drawing support away from the extremes. This approach requires a fortitude beyond the grasp of those seeking instant gratification, quick fixes, and the temporary euphoria of a viral tweet.”

I share this staid and even stoic commitment to the long-term work of building better communities, while still nervously clinging to hopes of a viral tweet or two at some point down the road. I would even venture the claim that some, if not a great many of those written off by Dr. McCann share these methods and goals. As someone who has criticized tendencies on the left with some regularity, I would offer that “the divisiveness we see everywhere” is often weaker than the forces that would unite us. If McCann truly hopes to bridge divides, I am sure it would help to remove some of the straw from of the image created of those who aspire to many of the same objectives and learn who they truly are.

Works Cited

Jamie Bartlett, & Birdwell, J. (2013). Cumulative radicalisation between the far-right and Islamist groups in the UK: A review of evidence. Demos, 5, 3.

Joel Busher & Graham Macklin. (2015). Interpreting “Cumulative Extremism”: Six Proposals for Enhancing Conceptual Clarity, Terrorism and Political Violence, 27:5, 884-905,DOI: 10.1080/09546553.2013.870556

Alexander J. Carter. (2020). Cumulative Extremism: A Comparative Historical Analysis. London: Routledge.

Donatella Della Porta. (2013) Clandestine Political Violence. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Roger Eatwell. (2006) Community Cohesion and Cumulative Extremism in Contemporary Britain, The Political Quarterly, Vol. 77, No. 2.

Julia Ebner, & Guhl J. (2018). Islamist and Far-Right Extremists: Rhetorical and Strategic Allies in the Digital Age. Radicalisation Research, https://www.radicalisationresearch.org/debate/ebner-islamist-far-right-extremists-rhetorical-digital-age/

Matthew Feldman. (2012). From Radical-Right Islamophobia to ‘Cumulative Extremism,’ FaithMatters.

Graham Macklin. (2020). Reciprocal radicalisation in Britain. DARE: Dialogue about Radicalisation and Equality

Patriot Coalition, (2020). Patriot Coalition PNW Daily Chatter Scrapes, https://eugeneantifa.noblogs.org/files/2020/09/Patriot-Coalition-PNW-Daily-Chatter-Scrapes.txt

Jason Wilson, & Evans R. (2020) Revealed: pro-Trump activists plotted violence ahead of Portland rallies, The Guardian, September 23, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/23/oregon-portland-pro-trump-protests-violence-texts

Alexander Reid Ross is a Doctoral Fellow at the Centre for the Analysis of the Radical Right and a PhD candidate in Portland State University’s Earth, Environment, Society program. See full profile here.

© Alexander Reid Ross. Views expressed on this website are individual contributors and do not necessarily reflect that of the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right (CARR). We are pleased to share previously unpublished materials with the community under creative commons license 4.0 (Attribution-NoDerivatives).

In seeking to ensure a permanent radical-right stamp on US governance and society, the US Republican Party (a.k.a the ‘Grand Old Party’ or GOP) has become even more radical right than during the Trump presidency. GOP congress members now openly proclaim credentials and behave in ways that are barely distinguishable from those of the far right, whether in the US or abroad (e.g. AfD, Fidesz, Jobbik, PiS). The continuing threat by Trump to get himself elected again in 2024 encourages boldness in his GOP supporters. The prospect of a ‘Trump 2.0’ regime, as a thinly-disguised elected dictatorship and an illiberal pseudo-democracy enveloping the US, will soon become an existential threat with a high likelihood of becoming reality emboldening supporters to further anti-democratic action. However, countries with prospective and actual radical-right regimes vary, and few are yet at a stage where the influence of radical-right propaganda is as strong as it is in the US.

Against relevant contexts and evidence, this article will examine four projected scenarios for how radical-right influence in nominally democratic countries might develop, and consider which, in general terms, is most likely to occur based on current information.

Projected Scenarios for Radical-Right Influence[1]

Scenario 1: Status Quo Maintained

Despite some electoral successes, the inability of the radical right in many countries to retain seats and expand its elected representation may result in its remaining a fragmented, minority movement memorable only for noisy protests and controversial rhetoric, albeit harbouring hate mongers and violent elements. Nevertheless, dyed-in-the-wool radical-right politicians, protagonists, supporters and sympathisers will remain, and their determination to achieve radical-right ‘successes’ would be undiminished (e.g. anti-abortion law, anti-gun control, anti-vax, anti-Covid controls, anti-immigration, ethnic and religious discrimination, anti-social welfare). 

In addition, the current characteristics of, and level and extent of interactions between, on the one hand, some corporations, institutions, and their leaders and, on the other, radical-right political interests (including agencies and intermediaries) would continue. A minority of corporate and institutional leaders predisposed, either ideologically and/or psychologically, to adopt an authoritarian style and/or radical-right ideas would continue to do so. Individual and corporate donations in the US (whether directly or via trusts and foundations) to radical-right organisations, causes, and activities would remain at their current levels estimated conservatively to exceed US$1.3bn per annum in the US, with asset values exceeding US$10bn. The 2021 paper in Social Policy by ben Asher and Bat Sarah reveals the intensity of the networks involved in the US. These networks are facilitated greatly by online platforms, and especially the commercially-motivated Internet and social media giants. In many respects, the apparent hegemony of these giants (with annual revenues totalling more than US$250bn) in the promulgation of far-right and extremist propaganda and hate messages is but a part of the wider threat from emerging and disruptive technologies (EDTs), cognitive warfare, and psycho-political warfare that operates at multiple levels (Reding and Eaton, 2020).

Populist support would continue at current levels, which vary from country to country. For example, in the UK, estimates have put such support at no more than 5% of the electorate (as evidenced by the low votes for unequivocally radical-right electoral candidates and their sparse successes). However, such low (apparent) support masks a wider, more insidious and nuanced radical-right thinking in British society and government, as evidenced by the Boris Johnson’s unapologetic support for a number of his Cabinet Office advisers who had expressed opinions supporting extreme radical-right views (e.g. Dominic Cummings (Waring 2021, 52-57), Chloe Westley, Andrew Sabisky, and Will O’Shea).

In contrast, in the politically polarised US, approximately 50% of voters are prepared to support the Republican Party (as evidenced in both the 2016 and 2020 votes for President Trump). While not all elected GOP politicians are radicals, a significant number are and have succeeded in gaining dominant control of the party. It is unclear whether the majority of Republican voters realise and endorse the fact that the GOP’s political centre of gravity has shifted in recent years markedly to the right and now encompasses ideology and policies more in tune with the far right than with ‘one nation’ conservatism.

Scenario 2: Gradual Incrementalism in Authoritarian Control

A slow rightward societal drift may occur and entrenchment into an illiberal democracy in some countries, relying on determined radical-right candidates, entryist infiltration of mainstream parties (for example, radical-right infiltration of the UK Conservative Party by UKIP, Brexit/Reform Party and other far-right supporters), weak mainstream candidates, and populist radical-right voters. In line with this general and almost imperceptible solidification and normalisation of a radical-right tenor to civil and political governance (i.e. illiberal democracy and elected dictatorships, as in Brazil and Hungary), a similar drift may occur towards a wider prevalence of authoritarianism in institutions, corporations and society at large.

If Trump had been re-elected as US President in November 2020, this scenario would likely be more evident now than if the Democrat (Joe Biden) had been elected. Trump’s re-election would have encouraged and emboldened like-minded radical-right political and corporate interests in such countries as Brazil, Britain, Germany, Hungary, Italy, and Poland, whose extant governments are either radical-right or increasingly influenced by radical-right ideology (see Bevelander & Wodak 2019 on European trends). Nevertheless, even without Trump’s 2020 election, creeping radical-right authoritarianism in the US has become self-evident throughout 2021. For example, Republican controlled states (such as Texas) have forced through hard-line radical-right ideology in the form of repressive legislation targeting particular groups (e.g. removal of historic Roe v. Wade abortion rights and refusal to implement federal public health policy requirements to counter the Covid-19 pandemic). In ‘small town America’, the discriminatory statements and diktats of local GOP administrations, on such topics as the civil rights of minorities, minority voting rights, gun control, and impartial delivery of policing, have even taken on a secessionist tenor. For example, Professor Leonard Weinberg has reported that some sheriffs in Nevada have asserted that they have the right to override federal government policy, decisions and directives.

A number of large US corporations are reported to be supporting Texas employees who fall foul of its anti-abortion laws imposed by state Republicans. For example, Salesforce is reported to be offering employees in Texas assistance to relocate to company jobs in other states, if they are sufficiently concerned about the Texas Heartbeat Act (the 2021 anti-abortion legislation negating the Roe v. Wade abortion rights). Other large employers are also reported to offer legal assistance for any abortion-related civil actions in Texas against employees (e.g. Lyft, Uber) or funds to go out of state for an abortion (e.g. Match Group). Texas-style creeping authoritarianism may add pressure towards an eventual cleavage of US states into two distinct groups (see below).

Scenario 3: Crisis Opportunism for Rapid Harshening of Authoritarian Climate

A major crisis, or multiple major crises, affecting for example society, economy, employment, trade, national security, public order, or public health, may result in the crisis being used by radical-right administrations as an opportunistic pretext to engage in ever more draconian authoritarianism. In a federal state such as the US, where political control of individual state administrations and legislatures takes precedence, such opportunism is highly likely to be grasped by GOP zealots. Examples of such crises include: pandemics, economic recession, trade wars, international or regional conflicts, mass migration, and even attempted far-right coups.

The precipitate and abject ‘Retreat from Kabul’ withdrawal by the US of all its security and stabilisation forces from Afghanistan in August 2021 after 20 years, and its abandonment of the country to the predations of international terrorists, signalled beyond doubt that the doctrine of  US exceptionalism had expired, despite the likelihood that its ‘for ever’ fantasy will continue in the minds of many. Such a humiliating trashing of the all-powerful US image creates an opportunity for the radical right to present themselves via the GOP as the ‘saviours of American honour’ – a salvationist departure from the allegedly failed multi-lateral ideology and policies of the Democrats and one that will ensure a ‘Fortress America’, ‘America First’ and an end to foreign adventures and assistance. A number of writers have also noted radical-right opportunism in relation to the Covid-19 pandemic, for example, Christou (2020a; 2020b), Volk (2020), Weinberg (2020a, 2020b) and such authors in Waring (2021a) as Denis Fischbacher-Smith, Vasiliki Tsagkroni, and Antony Vass have all noted how the radical-right has engaged in mixed attempts to seize on popular misgivings around Covid-19.

In extreme circumstances, a crisis could lead to rapid collapse of current democratic order and opportunistic takeover of some provincial (or even national) governments by radical-right elements, possibly involving armed force, and leading to pseudo-democracy or dictatorship. This possibility became glaringly evident when Trump refused to concede defeat in the 2020 US presidential election and made concerted efforts in November and December 2020 and into January 2021 to stay in power regardless of the election result. The angry histrionics and intimidating tactics by frequently armed pro-Trump radical-right protestors across the US during the election campaigning, including the far-right Proud Boys whom Trump exhorted to “stand by”, amounted to a thinly veiled threat of potential insurrection unless Trump were re-elected. Coupled with Trump’s initial refusal to acknowledge the handover of power to the officially declared new President, his machinations to damage and thwart the incoming Biden administration, and his orchestration of potential or actual violence by armed supporters intent on forcing authorities to back them, came perilously close to a coup. His ‘dog whistle’ orchestration of the mob attack on the Capitol on January 6, 2021 speaks for itself, and his impeachment authorised by Congress on January 13, 2021 for inciting insurrection, were almost a logical progression for who many regard as a megalomaniacal despot. Indeed, before this, he is reported to have seriously contemplated during an Oval Office strategy meeting on December 18, 2020 a declaration of martial law to impose a second term as president, as urged by former national security adviser and retired General Michael Flynn, and legal adviser Sydney Powell, who were present. A highly controversial advocate of radical-right ideology and a QAnon conspiracy theory devotee, Flynn also aired the suggestion publicly on TV.

This unprecedented ‘banana republic’ conduct overall by a US President and his radical-right entourage and caucus within the GOP, including his sustained baseless attacks on the integrity of the electoral system, severely damaged not only his own credibility and legitimacy but also the reputation and standing of US democracy, at home and abroad. No longer would the US be entitled to lecture foreign regimes about their lack of democratic credentials. The ‘land of the free and the brave’ looked increasingly like the ‘land of the right-wing bully and the cowed’, and no longer the world’s leading democracy.

Although Trump and his supporters were eventually defeated in their hoped-for coup in January 2021, they and fellow travellers have not disappeared. Such far-right militias as the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, the Three Percenters, the Boogaloo Bois/Boys, Gun Owners for Trump, and many more, continue to flourish. Without robust counter-action, their threat may well resurface and such developments in the US, especially if involving GOP collusion, might even result eventually in secession in the form of two different confederacies, styled here and earlier (Waring 2018, pp. 420-421) as the Confederation of Liberal Progressive States and the Confederation of Nationalist Conservative States. The recent repressive predations of the GOP state governance of Texas, and the flight of citizens (many with the support of national employers) to other more liberal states or Canada, may be a foretaste of such a schism unless such policies can be reversed and also stopped more widely in other states (e.g. voter suppression by Republican legislation and officials in Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, Ohio, and Wisconsin). Whether an apocalyptic homeland event (including radical-right insurrection and coup) might force a rapid break-up of the extant United States of America, or whether the US remains in a constant debilitating state of aggravated but inconclusive social and political turmoil engulfing ‘the radical right’ versus ‘liberal progressives’, remains to be seen. According to Leonard Weinberg, the very US constitutional structures and protocols designed to curb, if not thwart, demagogue presidents ironically have failed in recent years and have created conditions not dissimilar to those that led to the American Civil War.

Accentuated by pressures arising from crises that affect most or all sectors, populations in particular countries may become increasingly polarised. On the one hand, authoritarian power wielders in government, the Establishment, and some corporations, will be backed both by other organisations fearful of being penalised for not accepting authoritarian policies, and by a cowed and increasingly compliant populace fearing uncertainty, unemployment, and reduced living standards more than curbs on democratic rights and freedoms. Such competing fears have been clearly evident in a period of sudden very high unemployment and sharp economic recession resulting from the Covid-19 pandemic. In such a context, short-term perceived self-interest may eclipse moral imperatives among the population and, as noted above, the radical right are likely to seize on the political opportunity such vulnerability presents. For example, during the deeply polarised 2020 presidential election campaigns in Poland, such inducements included increases to pensions and benefits, coupled with openly pro-government, anti-immigrant, and anti-minorities propaganda issued via public broadcast channels by the ruling radical-right PiS [Law and Justice] Party (see e.g. Balcer, chapter 9 of Bevelander & Wodak 2019). In the 2021 run-up to elections in Hungary, the incumbent radical-right President Viktor Orbàn promised electors a $1.4bn payback of income tax, an increase in the minimum wage, and home renovation grants. The point at which legitimate inducements become naked bribes to perpetuate unwholesome, or even egregious and draconian, regimes is worthy of further debate.

Scenario 4: Radical Right in Decline

Although unlikely, it is possible that radical-right ideology may reach a point beyond which it ceases to become strengthened, plateaus, and then suffers substantive decline. Although there is always likely to be a hard core of radical-right supporters in a population, electoral support is volatile and unpredictable, especially for populist radical-right parties. Populist sympathisers and supporters typically enthuse over parties that pander to their prejudices and offer (or appear to offer) ‘quick-fix salvation’ solutions to their contemporary fears and anxieties. However, as soon as these parties fail to deliver such salvation, or if their policies begin to appear a liability in other ways, they are likely to be quickly deserted by erstwhile supporters. Examples include: the rapid post-2016 collapse of UKIP (Waring 2019, 112) and its derivative Brexit Party in the 2019 general election, the rapid demise of the Austrian FPŐ following the 2019 collapse of the FPŐ-ŐVP coalition [triggered by the Strache bribery scandal], the further decline of the FPŐ in 2020 relating to its Covid-19 policy and “the fact that the corona virus has exposed the poverty of the FPŐ’s program”, and the diminution of the Italian radical-right Lega party’s power following the collapse of its coalition government with the 5 Star MSP populist party.

For other radical-right rulers or ruling parties, it is too early to predict how they will fare in the short-term. For example: Will Trump continue to be a wunderkind figurehead for the radicalised Republican Party? Will Boris Johnson’s radical-right Conservative government in the UK survive the economic consequences of the ‘triple whammy’ of the Covid-19 recession, the consequences of Brexit, and the NHS/social care crisis? Will Bolsonaro’s radical-right government in Brazil remain popular following the uncontrolled Covid-19 impact on public health and the economy, made worse by his sustained cavalier dismissal of the virus as a serious health threat?

However, substantive and perseverant electoral setbacks for the radical-right do not necessarily mean that their political parties or entities will disappear. Hard-core members and supporters are likely to remain intact, waiting for new opportunities to gain political traction and power. An example of this  are observations on Salvini’s likely fight back following the setbacks of Italy’s radical-right Lega party in 2019. Whether this is likely to happen, we’ll have to wait and see.

Conclusion

Any prognosis for the radical right needs to consider both relevant historical contexts and new contexts and factors that will continue to influence the phenomenon (for example, Covid-19 impact and ramifications; dissemination via uncontrolled Internet and social media platforms of radical-right hate material, fake news, fake facts and fake conspiracy theories; threats to US exceptionalism sparking radical-right reaction; migration fears fuelling nativist and nationalist prejudicial agendas; ethno-religious supremacists stirring up social strife).

Reflecting on the four posited scenarios, I conclude that, in the present and short-term context of multiple crises, the most likely development overall is not clear-cut. It is, however, possible that Scenario 2 (Gradual Incrementalism in Authoritarian Control) will progress to Scenario 3 (Crisis Opportunism for Rapid Harshening of Authoritarian Climate). A lot will depend on which country is being considered and whether both current and unknown future crises are effectively dealt with by mainstream governments (thereby denying the radical right opportunities for offering salvation and threatening disruption, if not violence or even insurrection). In the US in particular, President Biden will try to follow Scenario 1 and roll back, if possible, the authoritarian excesses of the previous Trump administration, but if he fails to obliterate the Covid-19 crisis inherited from Trump, rejuvenate the economy, and enact a Democrat agenda, then Trump or a similar radical-right Republican could well regain the Presidency in 2024 and possibly 2028. In such a development, Scenario 2 would immediately follow Biden’s departure and may accelerate to Scenario 3, depending on any future crises that an authoritarian US administration could exploit. Scenario 4 (Radical Right in Decline) is the least likely. However, my conclusion is speculative, and new developments may intervene that may significantly alter this.

[1] In Waring 2021 (pages 465-470), the author suggests four potential primary scenarios for future development of radical-right influence.

Dr Alan Waring is a Policy and Practitioner Fellow at CARR and is a retired risk analyst and former Visiting Professor, now Adjunct Professor, at CERIDES (Centre for Risk and Decision Sciences) at the European University Cyprus. He is author of several books on risk, including editing and contributing to the three-volume anthology The New Authoritarianism (2018; 2019; 2021 Ibidem Verlag). See full profile here.

© Alan Waring. Views expressed on this website are individual contributors and do not necessarily reflect that of the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right (CARR). We are pleased to share previously unpublished materials with the community under creative commons license 4.0 (Attribution-NoDerivatives).

A long list of journalists, academics, and elected officials have sounded the alarm: Democracy is under threat. According to Freedom House and other research groups, the number of democracies in the world ( i.e. Governments that afford or protect their citizens civil liberties and civil rights) have declined over the last decade.

Some regard this decline as a ‘recession’ – situations from which the affected countries will recover, much as many national economies commonly do. Other observers are less sanguine, citing, among other things, declining levels of support for democratic values among young people. Others point to the Chinese model of astonishing economic success under highly authoritarian auspices as providing an attractive alternative to western-style democratic capitalism.

Even the current American president, Joe Biden, has joined the discussion. After the wreckage left by the Trump administration and the January 6 insurrection at the Capitol, Biden has maintained the world faces a fundamental choice between democracy and authoritarian rule. Is this true? Or, to what extent is it true?

Many of the long-standing democracies appear to be doing just fine. Aside from the United States, the English-speaking democracies – Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, and Britain – show no signs of succumbing to military rule or demagogic control. The same applies to Germany and Japan, the former World War II Axis powers. On the European Continent, the Scandinavian countries show no signs of losing their grip on democratic government. So far as southern Europe is concerned, Spain, Portugal, Italy, and Greece have had their crises from time to time, but presently these states appear nonetheless for wear.

By and large, the countries where democratic rule has collapsed or have shown signs of collapse, e.g. Turkey, Hungary, Poland, have either been newcomers to the democratic experience or in other cases, as in sub-Saharan Africa, have populations too poor and strife-ridden to sustain and support the values of democratic pluralism. Despite these profound problems, Kenya, South Africa, and Nigeria, for example, still manage to maintain more or less democratic governments.

If we confine our analysis to the western democracies, it is the United States that appears to be the outlier. As The Washington Post columnist Max Boot points out it is not democracy, in general, that is in jeopardy but American democracy specifically that is in serious trouble. Why?

Alexander Hamilton, one of America’s Founding Fathers and the subject more recently of a highly successful Broadway musical, observed in 1802 that “The people, sir, is a great beast.” If we were to adopt Hamilton’s view, as many have, the current problem with the country’s democratic system rests with its citizens, their bitter social and political divisions and vulnerability to the appeals of demagogues.

Certainly, that is the way Hamilton and the others who drafted the Constitution in 1787 saw things. Why else would they have created a presidency (Article II) to be chosen not by the People directly but by a college of electors who, in turn, were to be selected by the new country’s thirteen state legislatures? And, of course, the same suspicion of the People’s judgment applies to the original indirect means by which US senators were to be elected.

In a sense, of course, the current campaign by Republicans in states throughout the country to suppress the vote of elements in the electorate, people of color, whose voting preferences they find disconcerting is consistent with Hamilton’s assessment. But then again so are the attitudes of liberal and progressive writers who lament the decisions of Red state voters to vote for Trump and who persist in believing he had actually won the 2020 election, all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding.

In thinking about the apparent frailty of American democracy an alternative possibility comes readily to mind. What do the other western democracies have in common that appear to insulate them from the kinds of breakdowns currently facing the American political system? Virtually all the western democracies, from Norway and Canada in the north to Greece and Italy in the south, and Japan in the east, have parliamentary systems of executive leadership. In other words, these democracies have political executives, prime ministers, premiers, or chancellors, chosen by their countries’ popularly elected parliaments. She or he, along with their cabinets, may lose power if they lose majority support in these elective chambers. Typically, these parliamentary democracies have largely ceremonial presidents (‘heads of state’) or constitutional monarchs, such strongly egalitarian countries as Norway and Sweden both have kings, that are supposed to be above the political realm.

France, with its Fifth Republic, is an exception to the rule. The French constitution stipulates what amounts to a hybrid system, combining a popularly elected president serving a fixed term of office but, also, with a prime minister and cabinet responsible to the country’s chamber of deputies. While most American observers celebrate the separation of powers, with legislative, executive, and judicial institutions having their own domains, the other long-standing democracies possess systems of government built around the fusion of powers, where parliamentary and executive institutions are buckled together. (We should probably remind ourselves that Weimar Germany’s constitution (1919-1933) provided for a popularly elected president with extensive emergency powers.)

For more than a century, various American political scientists, e.g. Woodrow Wilson, James MacGregor Burns, Juan Linz most prominently, have drawn attention to the problems inherent in having a powerful presidency elected independently of an equally independent congress, itself divided into two chambers. The Founders’ intent was to prevent the national government from becoming too powerful. So that, as one scholar (Richard Neustadt) put it during the Kennedy years, under normal conditions the president’s only real power is the power to persuade.

Contemporary reality is something else again. The current situation is one in which Americans are bitterly divided along regional, racial and cultural lines. It is also one where many see political compromises as betrayal; where party politics has become venomous.

Under these conditions, the American president-based system has made for deadlock, paralysis, as well as appeals by some at least for the use of violence and insurrection as the best means available resolving our political differences. Some historians have drawn a parallel between the current situation in the US and the conditions that prevailed in the 1850s, ones that lead to the Civil War. Could they be right?

Professor Leonard Weinberg is a Senior Fellow at CARR and an Emeritus Professor of Political Science at the University of Nevada. See full profile here.

© Leonard Weinberg. Views expressed on this website are individual contributors and do not necessarily reflect that of the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right (CARR). We are pleased to share previously unpublished materials with the community under creative commons license 4.0 (Attribution-NoDerivatives).

This article was originally published at CARR’s media partner, Rantt Media. See the original article here.

The storming of the US-Capitol on January 6, 2021, when hundreds of supporters of then-President Donald Trump violently gained access to the Capitol building with the intent of stopping the formal certification of Joe Biden’s 2020 election win, represented an extraordinary event previously unthinkable for a Western democracy – an event that reminded the keen observer of the coups and military dictatorships in Latin America of the 1950s to the 1980s.

Five people died in relation to the incident, which some commentators – including FBI Director Christopher A. Wray – described as a terrorist act. Among those who stormed the Capitol were members of right-wing extremist groups like the Oath Keepers, the Proud Boys, and the Three Percenters who threatened to murder politicians of both parties. While there is no doubt that the insurgency was incited and abided by Trump and his enablers within the Republican party, the scope and nature of the incident as well as the question of who was directly involved in it remain highly controversial.

Even moderate Republicans are unwilling to uncover the truth and have blocked the establishment of a bipartisan parliamentary commission that might have forced them to reckon with the authoritarian attitude that has permeated their party, a party that is much more interested in perpetuating the big lie of a stolen election and in enacting minority voter suppression on state levels.

Nevertheless, as historians we are not dependent on the whims of a Republican Party that has partially abandoned basic democratic standards in order to gain a better understanding of the January events in Washington, D.C. Contrary to public perception, the January insurgency was not a unique event in the post-war history of the Western world. Rather it was another example in a series of cases where conservative and right-wing groups tried to (re-)claim political power by staging coup attempts at a time when their influence was threatened by a growing progressive movement in politics and society. Italy’s postwar history is another such example.

In this article, I will look at the “Piano Solo“ coup attempt of 1964 and the “Golpe Borghese“ coup d’état in 1970 (parts I and II) before undertaking an analytical comparison between these events and those of January 6 in the United States (part III).

Both events reveal the broad spectrum of right-wing coups, the networks between the main actors and their supporters within the security services, the political establishment, and the conservative milieu as well as the political and social consequences. Of course, the Italian events exhibited major differences to those in the US-Capitol, which are mainly due to different socio-political frameworks. Nevertheless, I will argue that a comparison between the Italian and American coup attempts allows us to better understand and contextualize what exactly occurred on January 6, 2021.

Part I: The “Piano Solo” of 1964

The Historical Setting

From the end of the Second World War, the Christian Democratic Party (Democrazia Cristiana: DC) dominated Italy’s government coalitions. Although the parliamentary elections of May 1958 did not bring any profound changes to the political landscape, Amintore Fanfani, who belonged to the left wing of the DC, sought to integrate the Italian Socialist Party (Partito Socialista Italiano; PSI) into a government coalition. This “opening to the left” was supposed to create a broader and more stable government capable of implementing the country’s pressing political and socio-economic reforms. However, Fanfani’s plan failed due to massive opposition from within his own party.

Instead, in early 1960 the rightist Fernando Tambroni (DC) was elected as the new prime minister of a DC minority government with the votes of the Italian Neofascist Party (Movimento Sociale Italiano; MSI). However, by July 1960 he had been forced to resign after nation-wide demonstrations against his government and its neofascist enablers escalated, resulting in the deaths of several protesters. Tambroni’s abrupt fall was the ultimate sign that center-right governments had no future in Italy. Even the election of Antonio Segni (DC) as President of Italy in 1962 could not alter this trend. Segni, one of the founders of the DC in 1942 and one of the most outspoken conservative politicians, had only narrowly defeated his Social Democrat rival, Giuseppe Saragat.

The first center-left government to include the Socialist Party was formed in December 1963 under Prime Minister Aldo Moro (DC), but it had collapsed by the summer of 1964. On July 14, 1964, while Moro was engaged in new coalition negotiations with the Socialists, President Segni summoned the commander of the Carabinieri, Giovanni de Lorenzo, to the Quirinal Palace. At that time, the content of the meeting was unknown but, one month later, Moro’s second center-left government with the Socialist Party was sworn in.

L’Espresso and the “De Lorenzo Affair”

On May 10, 1967, the Italian left-leaning magazine L’Espresso shocked the Italian public and political establishment with a bombshell report. “Finally,” the magazine told its readers, “the truth about (…) July, 14, 1964: Plot at the Quirinal. Segni and De Lorenzo were preparing the coup.” But did Giovanni De Lorenzo and Antonio Segni really plan a coup? The Carabinieri general and the president supposedly discussed a plan – the “Piano Solo” – to suppress public unrest, which De Lorenzo had put together a couple of months earlier. According to this plan, all persons who supposedly posed a threat to public security were to be imprisoned, and ministries, TV and radio stations as well as the offices of left-wing parties were to be occupied. Sole responsibility for the implementation of this emergency plan would rest with the Carabinieri – other security forces such as the state police or the military were neither involved nor informed.

It was not the first time L’Espresso had exposed De Lorenzo’s dubious and seemingly illegal activities, which was one of the reasons why the May report quickly caused public outrage. In January 1967 the magazine reported that De Lorenzo, then director of the Italian security service SIFAR, had ordered the compilation of 157,000 dossiers on leading figures such as politicians, intellectuals, trade unionists, managers, and clergymen, only for some of these secret dossiers to suddenly vanish. Even today it is not certain who leaked this information to the press.

Nevertheless, both L’Espresso’s reports came at a difficult time for the DC. Moro’s center-left government had come under a lot of pressure to deliver its promised social and political reforms; discontent in the country was brewing, particularly among students and the working class who resented the DC’s “wait and see” approach. Taken together, the parliamentary elections in the spring 1968 did not look very promising for the DC.

A Coup Attempt without a Coup?

But what exactly happened during the conversation between De Lorenzo and Segni? Some contemporary observers like the Socialist Party leader Pietro Nenni or the diplomats at the US embassy in Rome doubted that the meeting represented the early stages of a coup attempt. On April 15, 1969, a parliamentary commission to investigate the events of the summer of 1964 was established under the chairmanship of Giuseppe Alessi (DC). During its existence, the commission collected relevant documents and interviewed several of the main actors. It finished its work on December 15, 1970, but the commission’s findings were only made public by Giulio Andreotti (DC) in the 1990s.

The majority and minority reports reveal that the commission was deeply divided and could not agree on the exact nature of what had happened in the summer of 1964. The DC-led majority argued that a coup, in which only the Carabinieri would have been involved, had zero chances for success. In combination with De Lorenzo’s professional character, which was praised even by left-wing politicians, they concluded that the “Piano Solo” was therefore a purely defensive plan. Left-wing parties, however, were convinced of the plan’s preventive nature as it would have been ill-suited to suppress any nation-wide protests. They argued that all the other emergency plans at that time utilized all security forces, while the “Piano Solo” deliberately ignored the fact that when it came to restoring public order within Italy, the Carabinieri were subject to the orders of the Ministry of the Interior. In addition, the commission could not reach consensus on the extent to which President Segni was privy to De Lorenzo’s plans. It seems very likely that the DC had little interest in questioning the motives of one of its own most prominent politicians.

Even today, we still lack a satisfactory interpretation of the events of the summer of 1964. According to one theory Antonio Segni, who unlike De Lorenzo was a fierce critic of center-left governments, became impatient with the progress of negotiations between Moro’s DC and Nenni’s PSI. Instead of a new center-left government, he preferred a government of technocrats and a government system that would resemble France’s presidential model under Charles de Gaulle.

De Gaulle had become President of the Fifth Republic on January 8, 1959, after a new constitution with a presidential system of government had been approved the previous year. During his talk with De Lorenzo, Segni apparently wanted to discuss different options to curb the escalation of possible unrest in case he was able to go through with his plans. He desperately wanted to avoid another “1960,” which had led to Tambroni’s dramatic downfall.

A second theory does not doubt Segni’s strong leanings towards a presidential system but, given the limited resources of the “Piano Solo,” proponents argue that Segni never seriously considered the establishment of a presidential system in Italy. Rather he used the meeting with De Lorenzo as a smokescreen to pressure the Socialists into accepting a coalition pact that was only favorable for the DC. Of course, this argument assumes that Nenni found out about the talks between De Lorenzo and Segni in the summer of 1964 and only entered Moro’s second government to prevent a potential presidential coup.

Supporters point to the fact that Nenni joined Moro’s government without making any further demands; key Socialist reform projects, including affordable housing, urban planning, strengthening regional governments, and education reform, never made it into the coalition pact. Within Moro’s government, which lasted till 1968, the PSI’s position was so weak that even Confindustria – Italy’s employer organization – supported the center-left government for the first time, because it was overtly moderate and centrist.

The Affair and the Cold War

Due to the lack of sources and concrete information, the events of 1964 are still among the most controversial in Italian postwar history. While the second interpretation has recently gained traction, the international context of the Cold War and its impact on Italy’s domestic affairs should not be completely disregarded when assessing De Lorenzo’s and Segni’s meeting. The thesis of the reactionary coup attempt was first propagated by L’Espresso and a parliamentary commission investigating right-wing terrorism in Italy revealed that the funds for press campaigns against De Lorenzo came from the Soviet Union.

This information does not rebut the fact that De Lorenzo was involved in illegal and dubious activities, but it does suggest that the meeting between De Lorenzo and Segni might have been deliberately overblown by L’Espresso in order to discredit one of the most influential figures within Italy’s security apparatus, who was both a key ally of the DC and the United States of America.

In 1955, Giovanni De Lorenzo was appointed head of the Italian intelligence service SIFAR, whose original mandate included military espionage on behalf of the army, navy, and air force. Given the intensifying Cold War and the growing influence of the Italian Communist Party, SIFAR under De Lorenzo meddled more and more in domestic affairs. This overstepping of authority occurred with the explicit authorization and support of the American CIA.

After he was head of the Carabinieri between 1962 and 1965, De Lorenzo became Chief of Staff of the Italian Army in 1966 with the support of the Socialist Party, who praised his professional character and his partisan activities against German Nazis and Italian fascists between 1943 and 1945. When the “De Lorenzo Affair” made headlines in 1967, left-wing parties within the government successfully demanded his resignation as Chief of Staff despite opposition from many members of the DC.

Thus, the “De Lorenzo Affair” not only eroded public trust in Italy’s security apparatus and political elite, but also constituted a heavy burden for the center-left government. De Lorenzo himself sued L’Espresso’s two journalists, but both avoided prison time due to parliamentary immunity offered to them by the PSI. In 1968, De Lorenzo joined the monarchist party and ran successfully for a seat in parliament. In 1971 he became a member of the Italian Neofascist Party MSI, which merged with the monarchist party one year later.

When De Lorenzo joined the MSI, Italians were once again reminded of his 1964 meeting with Segni, not because his new party affiliation was cited as evidence of his alleged anti-democratic views, but because another reported coup attempt shocked the Italian public at a time when right-wing terrorism was on the rise. On March 18, 1971, the left-wing journal Paese Sera wrote on its frontpage: “Subversive plan against the Republic: Far-right plot discovered.” What had happened?

Part II: The “Borghese Coup” of 1970

Chaos in Italy

Violent student and worker protests, intense social conflict due to high-unemployment rates and internal migration, as well as a wave of right-wing terrorist attacks, including the December 1969 bombing at Piazza Fontana in Milan, plunged Italy into bloody chaos in the late 1960s.

Ultra-conservative as well as neo-fascist forces viewed the breakdown of public order, which was more often than not incited and fueled by their followers, as the opportune moment to bring about their longed-for authoritarian change. A key figure in these attempts was the “Black Prince” Junio Valerio Borghese, honorary president of the Italian neo-fascist party MSI and leader of the neo-fascist group National Front (Fronte Nazionale, FN), which he founded on September 13, 1969. During the Italian Civil War (1943-1945) Borghese commanded the paramilitary unit Xª Flottiglia MAS, which gained a notorious reputation for their ruthless and brutal suppression of the Italian partisan movement.

After the Second World War, Borghese remained a staunch fascist and anti-Communist and harbored deep resentment towards the newly established liberal and pluralistic Italian Republic. Instead of integrating into the new political system, Borghese sought to establish an authoritarian regime and restore “the supreme values of the Italian and European civilization.”

Borghese’s FN appealed to a heterogeneous mix of right-wing extremists and conservatives, including army officers, former fascist officials, businessmen and industrialists, as well as emphatic anti-communists who were united by their opposition towards the “opening to the left” in Italian politics and society. In their attempt to push Italy further to the right, the FN closely cooperated with other right-wing extremist organizations who had abandoned the legalistic approach of the MSI. One of these groups was Stefano Delle Chiaie’s National Vanguard (Avanguardia Nazionale, AN), which became FN’s paramilitary arm in the late 1960s. Delle Chiaie, who was deeply involved in the terrorist campaigns of the “strategy of tension,” thought he had finally found the perfect ally in Borghese’s FN.

In his view, Borghese’s networks and contacts to the security apparatus, the military, and the business world would enable them to carry out a successful coup d’état. And indeed, Borghese was very well connected. He had also established close ties to Lucio Gelli, head of the infamous Propaganda Due (P2) lodge, who is often regarded as the puppet-master of Italy’s “deep state.” While this article is not the right place to discuss the validity of these accusations, it has nevertheless been proven that Gelli, who also preferred the establishment of a right-wing, authoritarian system in Italy, coordinated the funding for the planned coup.

The Abandoned Coup

On December 7, 1970, the time had come: As agreed with Borghese in advance, Major Luciano Berti gathered hundreds of cadets and officers of the Forest Guard (Corpo Forestale dello Stato) – a former Italian police agency – in the center of Rome. Equipped with submachine guns and handcuffs, Berti and his followers were supposed to occupy the television broadcaster RAI and kidnap Italian President Giuseppe Saragat (PSDI). Delle Chiaie and a few members of the AN went to the Ministry of the Interior.

The plot in Rome was supported by other far-rightwing groups who were supposed to occupy key state and party buildings in cities ranging from Milan in the North to Reggio Calabria in the South. Apparently, US-President Richard Nixon and the CIA knew about the coup attempt and were following the events closely, but only a minority within the CIA’s senior leadership was inclined to intervene on the side of the insurgents.

However, in the early morning hours of the next day – Delle Chiaie’s AN had just overtaken the Ministry of the Interior – Borghese suddenly called off the coup. While members of the AN and the Forest Guard tried as quietly as possible to retreat, accusations of betrayal and complaints began to surface by those involved. Why was the coup attempt abandoned? Why were participants informed so late? Rather than address these questions, Borghese and Delle Chiaie fled to Francisco Franco’s Spain. Even today the exact circumstances of the rash and surprising decision to abandon the coup remain unknown.

One thesis argues that, as in 1964, the masterminds behind the plot only intended to stage an attempted coup in order to scare the progressive elements in Italian politics and society. Instead of going through with a coup with an unknown outcome, they sought to remind the left-wing parties and the government that they could strike at will. By doing so, they intended to stop a further “opening to the left” and increase the influence of conservative groups and the far right. In 1971, remaining insurgents from the Borghese coup founded a new group, “The Wind Rose,” and hatched another plot against the Italian government. However, their coup was dashed before it began.

The Reckoning – or lack thereof

At the time of the coup, there was no public outcry, no investigation, and no arrests – the coup seemed to fade into oblivion, becoming an obscure side note in the history of the Italian Republic. On March 18, 1971, however, the left-wing journal Paese Sera wrote on its frontpage: “Subversive plan against the Republic: Far-right plot discovered.” Immediately after the story broke, arrests were made and criminal charges, including high treason, were introduced.

General Vito Miceli, then head of the Italian reformed secret service SID, was also questioned by the investigating magistrate about the plot. Miceli replied that on the night of 7 to 8 December, the secret service had received information of an “unspecified sensational event” by extreme right-wing groups, but the checks immediately carried out had not confirmed any serious threat. Furthermore, SID’s subsequent investigation had found no proof that active military personnel colluded with the rebels or participated in the coup attempt. Miceli called Borghese’s coup attempt a “jolly get-together among old comrades.”

Despite the fact that public prosecutors were able to prove connections between right-wing terrorists and extremists on the one hand and members of the police, military, and secret service on the other hand – Miceli himself was a member of the lodge P2 – as early as 1974, only a limited number of individuals involved in the coup were put on trial in 1977. However, the Court of Assize dropped the charge of “armed insurrection against the state,” arguing that the defendants had only “set out for an isolated, sensational demonstration, one that, although violent and hostile, was inadequate to implement [the charge of armed insurrection] … That ‘gesture’ appears now, as it did then, vain, fanciful, weak.”

Only a few defendants were sentenced on lesser accounts, including for membership in a criminal association. Consequently, with the blessing of the Italian judiciary the Borghese coup was officially dismissed as a comic opera. Borghese himself did not live to see the judicial farce unfolding, having died in exile in Spain in 1974.

Comparisons to January 6

But how do the “Piano Solo” coup of 1964 and the “Golpe Borghese” of 1970 shed more light on the events that were unfolding on January 6, 2021, in Washington D.C.? Can the events in Italy really offer new perspectives? Or are national peculiarities as well as different geographical, chronological, social, and political settings too profound to conduct an insightful comparison?

While we should not dismiss the differences, I would argue that a comparison illustrates several similarities that seem to be key patterns, features and motivations for a far right-wing coup attempt. I argue that taking a closer look at these common patterns can give us a better understanding of what happened on January 6, 2021, why it happened and what the future might hold for the stability of US democracy. In the following, I would like to mention four characteristics that are present in all three cases.

1. All three insurrections occurred at a time of social and political unrest or uncertainty. In the mid-1960s only a small segment of the far right and the conservative milieu regarded the increasing influence of the Socialists, and the beginning of the student and worker strikes, as a threat to their very existence. But, in the late 1960s Italy was plunged into public, bloody chaos, increasing the attraction of law-and-order rhetoric.

At the end of Donald Trump’s term, US society was extremely polarized with violent protests and demonstrations erupting all over the country and with the majority of the GOP abandoning basic democratic principles in pursuit of personal political power. Yes, the degree of turmoil varied. But the more apparent the unrest, the easier it was – and still is – for right-wing groups to recruit new followers by promising them the return of law and order and the establishment of a strong state.

2. In all cases, the insurgents were indirectly or directly aided by politicians, political parties, and businessmen as well as members of the security apparatus. The direct involvement of politicians and parties in the mentioned coup attempts remains a topic of heated discussion despite some incriminating evidence in the case of Antonio Segni and the Christian Democratic Party as well as Lauren Boebert, Josh Hawley and the Republican Party. Nevertheless, the legitimizing effect of their inflammatory rhetoric regarding these attempts cannot be denied.

In Italy, politicians of the DC and the MSI warned of a Sovietization of Italy, should the “opening to the left” continue; in the US members of the GOP accused the Democratic party of Communism and propagated the lie of a stolen election. In addition, the insurgents also enjoyed support from right-wing paramilitaries – particularly during the Borghese coup (e. g. AN) and the insurrection in Washington D.C. (e. g. Proud Boys) – as well as businessmen. Gelli and his associates in P2 channeled money to Borghese’s FN while Charlie Kirk, the founder of Turning Point America, paid for several buses to take protesters to Washington D.C. Furthermore, in all three cases segments of the security apparatus played a role in how events unfolded.

While in 1964 the Carabinieri would have taken center stage, six years later members of the Forest Guard and the Italian army joined the coup attempt. In the case of Washington, investigations are still ongoing into the conduct of some Capitol Police officers, the slow decision-making process at the Department of Defence to deploy the National Guard as well as the lack of general preparation despite information regarding a possible armed insurrection. It seems that without the participation or at least the collusion of some elements of the security apparatus and the political elite, none of these coup attempts would have ever gotten off the ground.

3. Another unsettling similarity is the lack of will among the conservative political establishment to investigate and acknowledge the seriousness of the coup attempts. In Italy and the United States, the Christian Democratic Party and the GOP respectively either delayed or successfully stopped the establishment of an independent commission to investigate the events. In addition, after the plot became public, members of these political parties have been eager – often aided by members of the security apparatus and the right-wing media – to downplay the events.

Borghese claimed that he only gathered his members in Rome to protest the planned visit of the Yugoslavian president Josip Broz Tito to Italy, while the attack on the US-Capitol was preceded by a seemingly harmless demonstration in support of Donald Trump. Moreover, Miceli called Borghese’s coup a “jolly get-together among old comrades” and Republican Representative Andrew Clyde had the following to say about the attack on the US-Capitol: “Watching the TV footage of those who entered the Capitol and walked through Statuary Hall showed people in an orderly fashion staying between the stanchions and ropes, taking videos and pictures. (…) If you didn’t know the TV footage was a video from January the 6th, you would actually think it was a normal tourist visit.”

The strategy behind these statements is always the same: play down, distract, rewrite, forget. And, as the British newspaper The Guardian wrote on July 6, 2021, “interviews with diehard Trump fans suggest that the riot denialism is working.” This leads me to my final point:

4. Operationally, the plots in Italy both failed. However, politically – according to Franco Ferraresi – they have succeeded because “from then on, the existence of groups and forces ready to carry out such steps had to be considered a realistic possibility.” Such a possibility forced Pietro Nenni to enter Moro’s second government in 1964 without making any further demands; the discovery of the Borghese coup in 1971 may well have accelerated the end of the center-left government and helped to establish a DC-government under Andreotti the following year. Both coups also undermined the public’s trust in state institutions, particularly in the security apparatus, with devastating consequences for Italy in the 1970s: The violence during the so-called “years of lead” claimed the lives of hundreds of Italians. The slow or even absent criminal prosecution of people involved in the plots and the inadequate investigation into the events also contributed to a feeling of strength among the far right.

At the moment, the exact consequences of the January riot in Washington D.C. for the stability of US democracy remain murky at best. The deployment of the National Guard in Washington for weeks is a strong indication that some decision-makers in Washington thought another violent insurrection was possible. The arrest of participants and the judicial process seems painstakingly slow and has been strongly criticized in US progressive circles, leading to an increased distrust of state institutions, while the current decision not to bring charges of armed insurrection against the rioters seems painfully reminiscent of the Italian court’s 1977 ruling.

In the meantime, the right-wing media and politicians use the absence of clear sentencing to “airbrush the US Capitol insurrection from history” (The Guardian) and construct their own narrative of a “fun tourist trip,” thereby framing the attackers as the actual victims of some “deep state” conspiracy. The best example in this context is Ashli Babbitt, who was shot while she tried to violently gain access to the Capitol Building. She is now hailed by the right-wing media and Trump’s base as a martyr to their cause. Paul Gosar, a Republican Representative from Arizona, claimed that Babbitt had been “executed.” This tactic reminds us of how Italian fascists and German National Socialists created their own martyrs in the 1920s and 1930s: The corpses of Nicola Bonservizi (1890-1924) and Wilhelm Gustloff (1895-1936) were brought back home with pomp and circumstance and given a state funeral.

The fears of a repeat of what happened on January 6, 2021, continue to grow in the United States, particularly in light of the lack of public reckoning and serious investigation into the events. A comparison with the plots that occurred in Cold War Italy reveals not only similarities in the build-up, the course of events, and the aftermath that can be regarded as characteristic of right-wing coup attempts; it also illustrates above all the importance of coming to terms with these coup attempts and the need to establish an accurate narrative of the events.

Failure to do so allows the right-wing media and politicians to spread deliberate misinformation, thereby legitimizing the use of violence against the state and everyone who is considered an enemy of their political and social worldview as well as trying to cancel the memory of one of the “darkest days” in US history. There is, of course, still time to remedy this situation; otherwise, the “darkest hours” of US democracy might be still ahead of us.

Dr Tobias Hof is a Senior Fellow at CARR and Privatdozent for Modern and Contemporary History at the History Department, Ludwig Maximilians University, München. See full profile here.

© Tobias Hof. Views expressed on this website are individual contributors and do not necessarily reflect that of the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right (CARR). We are pleased to share previously unpublished materials with the community under creative commons license 4.0 (Attribution-NoDerivatives).

This article was originally published at CARR’s media partner, Fair Observer. See the original article here.

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On March 8, a task force that was convened to make recommendations to improve congressional security after the January 6 insurrection on Capitol Hill proposed establishing a permanent military presence in Washington, D.C., to be on standby in the event that similar security breaches take place. Recommending the establishment of a permanent Quick Reaction Force made up of National Guard troops, the task force was in effect responding to reports of the unusual restrictions in place by the Trump Administration’s Pentagon that hindered the ability of the D.C. National Guard Commander to deploy troops as the mob descended on the Capitol.

All of this points to signs that we are entering into an era where the U.S. will be in a constant state of counterinsurgency with itself. Although the events of January 6 were of no surprise to anybody who had been paying attention, especially considering these groups planned in plain sight, the chaos of that day and the imminent threat to congressional members made the threat of cis-hetero white supremacist patriarchy hard to ignore for even those who vehemently denied the impact of Trump’s rhetoric that mobilized the mob in the first place.

Although the “Capitol Rioters” violated many people’s popular perceptions of far-right extremists as lower-class, uneducated, and/or poor, the fact is that economic anxiety has always been a poorly veiled excuse for white entitlement. These upper-class, well-educated, suburbanites that made up the Capitol Mob were trying to reclaim what they had been brainwashed by Conservative and far-right media and then-President Trump himself to believe was at risk – their right to rule.

The counter-insurgency that the U.S. has always prided itself in quelling abroad, and an important part of their military strategy, has actually been slowly simmering on U.S. soil – and January 6 was just the visual and spectacular view of it boiling over. But the boil had been rolling and ongoing for some time – in the past few years, white supremacist groups have carried out the majority of terrorist plots and attacks, and hate crimes in the U.S. reached the highest level in more than a decade in November 2020.

It’s important to note here, however, that these are just the attacks and hate crimes that result in deaths, injuries, and formal reports – but the true nature of cis-hetero white supremacist patriarchy is so insidious because it is often hidden and systemic, and not as spectacularly violent as many people want to believe.

It is this ideology that drove the Capitol Mob in the first place, goaded on by their gleeful leader who reveled in cruelty. As Adam Serwer wrote for The Atlantic, the appeal of Trump’s speech and political positions was that his supporters rejoiced in the suffering of the people they had been socialized to hate and fear. These spectacles of violence, which these supporters both observe and take part in, are a part of the draw.

A gallows – complete with a noose – was erected in on the Capitol Mall on January 6 – and if the rioters had managed to reach the Senate chambers, it was probably far from just being a symbolic prop. Pipe bombs were found in the vicinity, a rioter with zip ties had stashed weapons and had an arsenal at home, and the mob that entered the Capitol Building was chanting to “hang Mike Pence.” It’s not hyperbolic or outrageous to make the assessment that this mob was out to dole out punishment to those they viewed as traitors and to incite a civil war.

White supremacists in the military and police is not a new phenomenon and, in fact, has been a strategy used by white supremacist groups for decades, and has been brought back to the forefront of mainstream discussion after it was discovered that dozens of law enforcement officials, active-duty military members and veterans were a part of the mob that engaged in the January 6 insurrection. Ashli Babbitt, who was killed by a Capitol Police officer after she attempted to force her way into the House Chamber, was an Air Force Veteran. Even before the insurrection, in the Summer of 2020, an Air Force sergeant with ties to the Boogaloo Bois was charged with the murder of a California federal security officer. Despite all evidence pointing to the counter-insurgency being a domestic issue, the FBI and other agencies have long either downplayed or dismissed the true threat of white supremacist groups, who are only becoming more organized and more violent.

Indeed, in October of 2019, the Department of Homeland Security finally announced that it was beginning to address white supremacist terrorism as a security threat, and one year later, a report was released that finally admitted that the biggest threat to U.S. democracy was not the invisible face of Russian troll farmworkers who pushed disinformation onto social media platforms, but violent far-right extremists who used online platforms exactly as they were designed to spread their ideology and mobilize their adherents.

For so long, the U.S. and most of the West had turned their eyes to the “threat” of extremism outside of its borders, and ignored the growing wave of white supremacist terrorism, for reasons that extol and uphold the cis-hetero white supremacist patriarchal system and ideology that dictate our day-to-day culture and lives. But now that the call is coming from loudly inside their own house, it has become too pernicious and too lethal to ignore – but despite all of the growing media attention, task forces, and other resources being thrown at the problem, the worry could be that it may be too little too late.

The Pandora’s Box of white supremacist organized violence has been opened, and shutting it will take more than just classifying and acknowledging its threats. The very structures that allowed for it to fester, flourish, and spread must be dismantled, and this would require a rethinking of our entire digital ecosystem, a reckoning of traditional media that have long pushed these ideas in the form of Fox News and other conservative outrage media outlets, and the very systems that supported these two institutions in the first place.

It’s easy to try and name the groups that haunt and frighten us, but the groups are merely a physical manifestation of the ideologies that drive and ground them. The insurgency has always been here. Without cutting off hate at the source, it will merely keep growing and evolving again, and it will always go back to the same roots even if its appearance has changed.

Dr Julia DeCook  is a Senior Fellow at CARR and Assistant Professor at the School of Communication, Loyola University Chicago. See full profile here.

© Julia DeCook. Views expressed on this website are individual contributors and do not necessarily reflect that of the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right (CARR). We are pleased to share previously unpublished materials with the community under creative commons license 4.0 (Attribution-NoDerivatives).

This article was originally published at CARR’s media partner, Rantt Media. See the original article here.

The year 2020 has seen a spate of activity that has fueled the growth of far-right activity globally. The COVID-19 pandemic has led to a spike in conspiracy theory communities that are intimately linked with the radical right, including the QAnon movement and anti-lockdown groups. Another such moment was the global protest movement against racial injustice under the banner of Black Lives Matter. Sparked in the United States by the death of George Floyd at the hands of police, these protests quickly spread internationally. In response to these protests, far-right activity saw an increase both online and offline, not only in the US but globally.

These mobilizations should not be taken lightly. They have resulted in deaths on both sides, including the shooting dead of two activists in Kenosha, Wisconsin, by an individual affiliated with a far-right militia, and the shooting of an activist involved in a pro-Trump caravan in Portland, Oregon.

Such activity is, of course, not new. Violent clashes between the left and right have been observed globally for many decades and also in recent years, including clashes between far-right and far-left protesters at various rallies organized by radical-right groups in Australia in the second half of the 2010s. However, this activity does raise the need for careful research into the risks posed by groups on both the left and right fringes of the political spectrum. The risk of violence posed by the radical-right is becoming more recognized.

However, the potential use of violent tactics within contemporary radical left movements is less well understood, despite frequent claims during public debates — and especially from conservative voices — that lump in radical-left activism with violent behaviors or even going so far as likening it to terrorism, like former US President Donald Trump did in his infamous tweet in early June, designating “ANTIFA as a Terrorist Organization.”   

Potential Threats

To better understand the potential threats posed by both far-left and far-right activists, as well as the interplay between these opposing political movements, a team of researchers at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue and Victoria University, Melbourne, are undertaking a research project mapping far-right and far-left activity online in Australia. Through this work, we hope that we will start to establish an evidence base around the potential risks posed by these groups, as well as the role reciprocal activity plays in online activism by such groups.

This work is focused on examining the activity of known far-left and far-right actors across Facebook and Twitter as well as far-right actors on Gab and Telegram. Using a mixed methodology drawing on natural language processing techniques and qualitative analysis, we are interrogating the output of these groups, identifying key topics of conversation as well as their attitude toward their political opponents.

In November 2020, our teams published our first briefing paper, analyzing the activity of the far right and far left on Facebook. We analyzed the activity of 50 public pages and groups associated with the Australian far right and 33 public pages and groups associated with the Australian far left. Across both cohorts, we mapped activity throughout the first seven months of 2020, finding notable increases in the volume of conversation in the month of June, coinciding with worldwide Black Lives Matter protests.

Amongst far-right entities, this conversation focused on both domestic issues, such as climate change activism during Australia’s bushfire crisis and state responses to the COVID-19 pandemic, as well as international discussions, including on China’s role in the coronavirus outbreak and Black Lives Matter protests in the US and beyond. A qualitative analysis of this activity reveals in particular that the global protests against racial injustice were a central discursive element in attacking the left more broadly among the Australian far right. Public debate around violence within the Black Lives Matter movement in America and Trump’s repeated attacks on left-wing activists were used as opportunities to characterize domestic racial justice movements as being “anti-white” and “violent.”

Reciprocal Radicalization

This corresponds with trends documented through ongoing ISD analysis in Canada and New Zealand that demonstrate the importance of US politics and activity in shaping the agenda of far-right groups internationally, and a continued trend among domestic far-right movements toward internationalization. This points toward the need for global awareness when monitoring domestic activity, but also highlights how far-right activity is increasingly framed in the context of global struggles — either for the preservation of white identity and culture or against the progressive left that activists see as a destructive and insurrectional force against traditional values and forms of culture.

It is within this context of a perceived transnational battle between progressive, pro-minority left-wing groups and their right-wing counterparts that we can begin to analyze and understand the risks of so-called cumulative extremism or reciprocal radicalization — potential escalation, both online-rhetorical and physically violent in the offline world, between far-left and far-right movements. So far, most academic and non-academic studies have focused on dynamics between the far right and Islamist extremists.

In our data-set we examined the scale and nature of conversation mentioning far-left ideologies, groups or actions in far-right communities, and vice versa, to better understand how central political opponents are to the online mobilization and messaging on the political fringes in Australia. In total, mentions of the far right accounted for 17% of the output of far-left pages and groups, whilst mentions of the far left accounted for 7% of the output of far-right entities. This suggests that far-right ideologies and actions have a more central role in shaping far-left political agendas and inspiring reciprocal activity from the far-left than vice versa.

However, qualitative analysis revealed that when discussing the left, the far right are more violent, including explicit calls for the execution and murder of left-wing activists. The far left, on the other hand, appear to frame their discussion more through the need to counter the far right with non-violent means, such as the mobilization of a broad — anti-fascist and anti-capitalist — grassroots movement.

This analysis should not be used to comprehensively define the risk posed by far-left movements — some activists associated with these groups have traditionally and recently been involved in violent activity and many have expressed in-principle support for the option of defensive violence as part of a direct action toolkit in opposing the threats of fascism. However, it does suggest that policies focusing on tackling the far right should be a priority given their increased proclivity to violent rhetoric.

Our analysis also indicates that such activity may have a knock-on effect of limiting the risks of far-left violence, often in response to a fascist or other far-right threats. By recognizing that these groups are interconnected by their reciprocal opposition, and analyzing the nature of this oppositional activity, we can start to evidence the collective risks posed by such activity and its spill-over into offline activity.

*[This article draws on a larger research project currently conducted by ISD and Victoria University within the Centre for Resilient and Inclusive Societies (CRIS), a think tank consortium of eight Australian and international academic, community and industry partners.]

Dr Mario Peucker is a Senior Fellow at CARR and Senior Research Fellow at Institute for Sustainable Industries and Liveable Cities (ISILC), Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia. See full profile here.

Jacob Davey is a Policy and Practitioner Fellow at CARR and a Senior Research Manager at Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD). See full profile here.

© Mario Peucker and Jacob Davey. Views expressed on this website are individual contributors and do not necessarily reflect that of the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right (CARR). We are pleased to share previously unpublished materials with the community under creative commons license 4.0 (Attribution-NoDerivatives).

This post is also hosted by our partner organisation, Fair Observer, here.