Fascists Are Attempting to Win Followers by Rebranding as Antiwar
“As income inequality and capitalist instability becomes more ubiquitously acknowledged across the working class, the right has, more generally, looked for a way to capture popular narratives around class struggle. Through its own version of anti-capitalism, the right is attempting to recruit from the left and base the notion of class struggle on ethnic nationalism and conspiracy theories. These trends are also contemporarily referred to as ‘Third Positionism,’ [politicalresearch.org] an idea opposed to both capitalism and communism for their purported values of multiculturalism, egalitarianism and modernism.”
“In April 2020, Heimbach joined the “Countering Violent Extremism” organization Light Upon Light after saying he had left the white nationalist movement, [politicalresearch.org] according to an interview on a podcast with the organization’s founder, Jesse Morton. Light Upon Light billed itself as a ‘deradicalization’ group, working to expose “extremist” groups, including both white nationalist and Islamist movements, and to move former extremists out of these destructive patterns. Critics have suggested that Light Upon Light, and several similar organizations, lacked rigorous standards and often acted as a “rubber stamp” that allows white nationalists to appear reformed without doing the reparative work necessary, while also allowing them to speak as ‘experts’ without sufficient experience.”
“Heimbach’s previous organization, the Traditionalist Workers Party, was one of the largest formations related to the so-called ‘alt-right,’ but the organization dissolved after Heimbach’s affair with his father in law’s wife was exposed in 2017, and he was later arrested in 2018 for assaulting his wife. He moved on to the neo-Nazi National Socialist Movement, but was eventually expelled. “’Heimbach] was promoting some communist type stuff and it didn’t resonate well with the membership of the group,’ said former NSM Commander Jeff Schoep in an exclusive 2020 interview. [politicalresearch.org]”