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Spencer Sunshine

https://spencersunshine.com/
https://twitter.com/transform6789

Spencer Sunshine, PhD writes about the U.S. White Nationalist movement (including the Alt Right, neonazis, and esoteric fascists), the Patriot movement and militias, and antisemitic currents. He is the lead author of the 2016 report Up In Arms: A Guide to Oregon’s Patriot Movement, which is a collaboration between PRA and Oregon’s Rural Organizing Project. 

Articles

  • The U.S. Far Right’s 2018 Election Results

    A Blind-Alley for the Alt Right
    Steve King

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

    Article
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  • Alt Right and Far Right Mobilization in 2018

    A Timeline
    London protest in respond to President Trump’s visit, July 2018

    There is no reason to expect the Alt Right, Alt Lite, and associated Far Right groups to disappear in 2019. It was Trump that energized the movement, and it will remained tied to his presidency.

    Article
    Read more
  • Standoffs and the Far Right

    What Changed After Oklahoma City?
    Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building after bombing, 1995.

    Twenty-three years ago, on April 19, 1995, Timothy McVeigh detonated a powerful homemade truck bomb in front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The death toll reached 168, and about 850 were injured.

    Article
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  • Jake Laskey and the American Front

    In the small Oregon town of Cottage Grove, just south of Eugene, a sign on an empty storefront that used to house a local museum announces a new business: Wolfclan Armory. While most towns would welcome the new blood, instead protests have already…

    Article
    Read more
  • The Future of the U.S. “Populist Radical Right” and White Nationalism

    Looking at Cas Mudde’s The Far Right in America

    Donald Trump did not invent nativism or right-wing populism, but he did provide those ideologies a more prominent platform than it has enjoyed in many decades. And, as scholar Cas Mudde warns, its claws in American society will ensure that it…

    Article
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  • Steve Bannon’s “Washed Out” Antisemitism

    Steve Bannon speaking at the 2017 Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Maryland. Photo: Gage Skidmore via Flickr.

    Stephen K. Bannon was the Executive Chairman of the Far Right media website Breitbart from March 2012 to August 2016, and from August 2017 to January 9, 2018. Between the two periods he took a leave of absence to be Donald Trump’s campaign adviser…

    Article
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  • The Big Picture: Far Right Mobilization in 2017

    Memorial for Heather Heyer in downtown Charlottesville. Photo: Courtesy of Bob Mical via Flickr.

    In the United States, 2017 was a banner year for fascist and related far right activism. There were arguably the highest levels of public demonstrations by the Right since the last wave of Klan and neonazi activity in the 1980s and ‘90s. A main…

    Article
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  • Three Pillars of the Alt Right

    White Nationalism, Antisemitism, and Misogyny

    The new wave of avowed White nationalists who have been energized by Donald Trump—most prominently the Alt Right—have held demonstrations across the United States, most famously in Charlottesville, Virginia in August 2017. Progressive activists have…

    Article
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  • Rumors of Civil War

    How Anti-Communist Conspiracies Imagine an Antifa Civil War on November 4

    A conspiracy theory has spread like wildfire through the Far Right claiming that on November 4, “antifa” will start a civil war and attempt to overthrow Donald Trump. The date is supposed to precede the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution,…

    Article
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  • Joey Gibson and Patriot Prayer

    The Westboro Baptist Church of the Alt Right

    Joey Gibson is a Far Right activist who, since March 2017, has made a name for himself by organizing confrontational rallies in liberal enclaves on the West Coast that have frequently descended into violence. Based in Vancouver, Washington (located…

    Profile on the Right
    Read more
  • A Guide to Who’s Coming to the Largest White Nationalist Rally in a Decade

    The Unite the Right rally, which will take place in Charlottesville, Virginia on August 12, 2017, looks like it will be the largest White Nationalist rally in the United States in more than a decade. Between 500 and 1,000 people are expected to…

    Article
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  • Peas in an Oregon Pod: Right-Wing Paramilitaries & The GOP

    The Republican Party of Multnomah County, Oregon (which includes Portland) disregarded public outcry when it passed a resolution last week to allow private, paramilitary groups to provide security functions at GOP events. Chairman James Buchal said…

    Article
    Read more
  • Trump’s “Second Amendment People”?

    The U.S. Patriot Movement Today

    Judging from his recent statements, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump seems to be making plans for post-election violence if he’s defeated. At the beginning of August he warned, “I’m afraid the election’s going to be rigged.”1)…

    Article
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  • Right Woos Left: When Patriot Movement Groups Try to Recruit Progressive Activists

    Sometimes Patriot movement groups reach out to progressive activists in an attempt to recruit them to their cause. As you would expect, they typically downplay their reactionary social views and stress the more libertarian parts of their …

    Article
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  • Coordination: How the Patriot Movement Re-imagines Governmental Ties

    “Coordination” is a process which allows state, county, and other lower-level governments to give input to federal agencies’ land use plans, in an attempt to achieve consistency. While this process is mentioned in a number of federal acts, the Hard…

    Article
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  • Up in Arms

    A Guide to Oregon’s Patriot Movement

    Video produced by the Resist.TV Collective highlighting the work of Political Research Associates and Rural Organizing Project. Up in Arms: A Guide to Oregon’s Patriot Movement is a groundbreaking report and toolkit designed to support…

    Report
    Read more
  • Oregon III%

    Oregon Three Percenters are very active and seems to have eclipsed the Oath Keepers as the locus of Patriot movement organizing in the state.

    Profile on the Right
    Read more
  • The Oath Keepers in Oregon

    Oath Keepers chapters have been active in Oregon since the national organization was founded in 2009. However, most chapters seem to have been established since 2014 in the wake of the events at Bundy Ranch.

    Profile on the Right
    Read more
  • Gunning for Office: Oregon’s Patriot Movement and the May 2016 Primary

    In the wake of the armed occupation of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge in January and February 2016, a slew of candidates linked to the so-called Patriot movement are running for office in Oregon, including in the upcoming May primary.

    Article
    Read more
  • Profile on the Right: Three Percenters

    The Three Percenters (aka 3%ers, III%ers, or “Threepers”) are a Patriot movement paramilitary group that pledges armed resistance against attempts to restrict private gun ownership. Adherents and supporters have been associated with threats and acts…

    Profile on the Right
    Read more
  • The Continuing Appeal of Racism and Fascism

    Cryptofascists and pro-White separatists are attempting to make inroads into progressive political and counter-cultural circles.

    Article
    Read more
  • Drawing Lines Against Racism and Fascism

    Crypto-fascists and pro-White separatists are entering and recruiting from progressive circles. This essay offers some guidelines for identifying and dealing with this growing problem.

    Article
    Read more
  • The Politics of Anti-Gay Persecution

    Gambia, Egypt, Jamaica, Russia, with a Helping Hand from US Religious Conservatives; Global LGBT Recap

    Human Rights Day was celebrated this week, on December 10. Religious conservatives in the US and abroad have labeled American efforts to promote LGBT human rights overseas as imperialism. But activists at a conference coinciding with the third…

    Article
    Read more
  • 5 Right-Wing Media Narratives Attacking the 'Black Lives Matter' Movement

    Black Lives Matter protests have electrified the country, and the Right has responded with its usual bag of tricks, as it tries to ensure that the U.S. racial hierarchy remains intact. The Right’s approaches include trying to make the conversation…

    Article
    Read more
  • Attack On NYC Art Gallery Highlights Fascist Organizing in U.S. Immigrant Communities

    New York City is one of the most diverse U.S. cities, and has a profusion of immigrant communities. While this might make the city seem like one of the least likely places for fascist activism, the opposite seems to be true: there is a spate of…

    Article
    Read more
  • Campus Profile - Alison Weir: If Americans Knew

    Few political writers today appear in the publications of both the Left and the Far Right. One rare exception is Alison Weir, the founder of If Americans Knew (IAK).

    Profile on the Right
    Read more
  • Frazier Glenn Miller & The Ongoing Trend of Former-Military Neo-Nazi Murders

    Military Veterans and the White Separatist Underground’s Cult of Violence

    All three perpetrators fit a very specific pattern: military veterans; involved in White nationalist politics for years; felt (apparently) their lives were at an end; decided to go out and murder unsuspecting civilians at the very public…

    Article
    Read more
  • The Right Hand of Occupy Wall Street

    From Libertarians to Nazis, the Fact and Fiction of Right-Wing Involvement

    The most successful mobilization on the Left in recent years—the Occupy movement—had ambiguously defined enemies and used an organizing model that was easily replicated. These strategies were key elements of its success, but they also enabled a…

    Article
    Read more
  • 20 on the Right in Occupy

    In my Public Eye article “The Right Hand of Occupy Wall Street,” I detail many of the issues related to right-wing and conspiracy theorist participation in the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement—including the false attempts by the mainstream right-…

    Article
    Read more
  • Confronting the Right Across Generations

    Spencer Sunshine Interviews Walter Reeves

    In 1990, when I was a teenager, I met and began working with Walter Reeves and other members of Neighbors Network—an anti-Klan, anti-Nazi group based in Atlanta, GA. Reeves was its co-chair of education and outreach from 1989 until the group’s…

    Q&A
    Read more
  • Rebranding Fascism: National-Anarchists

    On September 8, 2007 in Sydney, Australia, the antiglobalization movement mobilized once again against neoliberal economic policies, this time to oppose the APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) summit. Just as during the protests against the…

    Article
    Read more

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