Research

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

An Alt Right Update

My January report, “Ctrl-Alt-Delete,” was published at the beginning of Donald Trump’s administration. It dealt with the Alt Right’s ideological roots, major players, multiple internal currents, and complex relationships with both conservatives and…

Article

The Art of Activism: Ashley Lukashevsky

The cover artist for the summer issue of The Public Eye, Ashley Lukashevsky, was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii, where she was involved with activism from a young age. Her life took a detour, however, when she attended University of Southern…

Art of Activism

Attacking Trans People in Defense of “Austerity"

On July 24, 2017, the Family Research Council (FRC), a right-wing political advocacy group based in Washington, DC, issued an Action Alert to its members, enlisting their support in denying healthcare to military personnel who are transgender. FRC…

Article

The Triumph of the Lie

How Honesty and Morality Died in Right-Wing Politics

This is how lies move to normalization: A small “white lie” is put forward, just to clarify a point. A larger lie follows, but it’s still only a detail in a larger argument. The whopper, down the line, performs another function: drawing attention…

Article

Dancing with Dictators

As was outlined in part one of this series, evidence shows that American corporate entities are taking advantage of the U.S. Christian Right’s pre-existing relationships with political, religious, and business leaders in Africa in order to advance…

Article

Religion, Money, & Politics: An (un)Holy Trinity

As with anti-LGBTQ and anti-abortion culture wars, the exportation of American economic ideologies to the Global South (and the strategies and tactics employed to impose them on others) has a long history of violence and destruction. From Nestle’s…

Article

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

Skin in the Game

How Antisemitism Animates White Nationalism

Young Eric Ward posing with friends holding books

Antisemitism forms the theoretical core of White nationalism. First, it allows us to identify the fuel that White nationalist ideology uses to power its anti-Black racism, its contempt for other people of color, and its xenophobia—as well as the…

Article

The Right’s Relationship with Climate Denial

In 2015, the United States and China – the two biggest emitters of greenhouses gases in the world – were among 195 countries to ratify the Paris climate accord with the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change. Less than two years later…

Article

The Art of Activism: Erik Ruin

This spring’s Public Eye cover artist, Erik Ruin, is a Philadelphia-based printmaker, shadow puppeteer, and paper-cut artist whose work has been called “spell-binding” by The New York Times. He describes his art as oscillating “between the poles of…

Art of Activism

Identity Evropa and the Fraternity of White Supremacy

“Become part of the fraternity”: Screenshot from the Identity Evropa website.

The media often portrays clean-cut individuals such as Alt Right leader Richard Spencer or members of Identity Evropa as proof of a re-branding of White nationalism and indeed, there is a long history of White supremacist groups re-inventing their…

Article

California's Prop 47 Savings in Context

On June 8, 2017, the California Board of State and Community Corrections announced the reallocation of $103 million in savings resulting from the passage of 2014’s Proposition 47 criminal justice sentencing reforms to drug treatment, mental health…

Article

Press Release: Judge condemns Scott Lively's efforts to render very existence of Ugandan LGBTIs illegal, finds US law offers no redress

Historic Case Exposes Right-Wing Activist’s Campaign of Persecution in Uganda.

Press Release

Endgame

How “Bipartisan Criminal Justice Reform” Institutionalizes a Right-Wing, Neoliberal Agenda

More than an actual means of improving policy, “bipartisan criminal justice reform” has become a mantra signifying hope: that people of good will can come together across ideological divides and partisan gridlock to end our country’s overreliance on…

Article

Book Review: The Populist Explosion

The Populist Explosion by John B. Judis is a tightly framed analysis of populism’s recent advances on both sides of the Atlantic. Judis relates this international upsurge to the Great Recession that began in 2008 but also to the neoliberal economic…

Book Review

Seventeen Years of Tracking the World Congress of Families

PRA first reported on the World Congress of Families (WCF) in 2000, noting its role within the coalition of Christian Right groups that was beginning to emerge as a well-organized and influential force at the United Nations. Writing for The Public…

Article

Trumpism and the Unstable Ground of Whiteness

Photo from 1926 of Klansmen on a ferris wheel in Cañon City, CO.

Trumpism is built on a split-screen image of life for the White middle and working classes: a contemporary view of economic suffering and “loss” to encroaching “others,” while in the background hovers a shimmering past of cultural and economic glory…

Article

Between Trump and Putin

The Right-Wing International, a Crisis of Democracy, and the Future of the European Union

Two men in suits leaning over a table shaking hands

One of the more striking features of the 2016 U.S. election was the convergence of the rhetoric and talking points of President Donald Trump and his supporters with those of the Kremlin. And in the tangled and ongoing investigation of Russian…

Article

Chechnya's LGBTQ Assault and the Consequences of "Pro-Family" Contradictions

In early April, reports of atrocities being committed against LGBTQ people began to emerge out of Chechnya, a small, independent republic of the Russian Federation that is predominantly Muslim. Novaya Gazeta — an independent Russian newspaper —…

Article

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