Hate Groups

Tragic rampage killing sprees are too often reoccurring events in the United States landscape. Since the Columbine High School massacre in 1999, dozens of children and young people have died at the hands of shooters, cited as loners, victims of bullying out for revenge against those that had wronged them; but the shooters have another and often less noted characteristic in common: Most of them are white, all of them are men. This thesis is about one of those men.
On May 23, 2014, Elliot Oliver Robertson Rodger killed six people, wounded 13, and committed suicide before police could apprehend him. Taking its departure in masculinities theory and affect theory, this thesis aims to explore the current state of hegemonic masculinity, and aims to demonstrate its influence on the motivation for Elliot Rodger’s rampage killing spree, on his justification of the crime, and on the discursive self-construction he left behind. Ultimately the thesis argues that Elliot Rodger used an ideology of hegemonic masculinity as a basis for creating a discursive self-construction as a grievable body, by blaming those he targeted: women.
The theoretical framework is constructed from theories and research by Judith Butler, Michael Kimmel, C.J. Pascoe, R.W. Connell and Lauren Berlant.

While Supremacist groups in the United Stales share certain common elements and characteristics. In addition to a view of racial hierarchy, there is usually some form of antisemitism, dualism, apocalypticism, a reliance on conspiracy theories, a masculinist perspective, and antipathy towards gays and lesbians. They also share some common elements with all social movements. At the same time, there are distinctive differences among White Supremacist groups. There are several ways to illustrate these differences. In order to better explain how these groups operate in the public sphere, we separate them into the categories of political, religious, and youth cultural (racist skinhead, racist gangs, etc.) This typology, proposed by Vysotsky (2004), focuses on how these groups recruit and mobilize supporters around specific ideologies or cultural frames. We also look at several complexities and controversies in the study of White Supremacist organizations.

""Debates about the relationship and boundary between mainstream and extremist (sometimes referred to as radical or violent) activism historically emerge in response to violent incidents, where defenders of a cause will attempt to differentiate between the two in order to maintain their legitimacy and critics will attempt to make links between them in order to delegitimize the movement. This is necessary in the case of the former and possible in the case of the latter because of both popular opposition and distaste for ‘extremism’ (however defined) and because of the overlap between the ideologies and objectives of mainstream movements and so-called extremist ones, even if they differ in terms of tactics. While a movement’s ideology does come into play in the definition of extremism, its application is usually reserved for those movements or activists that, while sharing an ideology or objectives with mainstream ones, reject legitimate democratic methods in favor of violence. While this analytical distinction and boundary is applied to many movements, perhaps the clearest application is the anti-abortion movement in the United States, which includes: elected officials, members of the Republican Party, the Christian Right, church groups and citizen activists, as well as more militant direct action organizations, terrorists and elements of the extreme right. The distinction and relationship between the ‘mainstream’ and ‘extreme’ anti-abortion activism has become more significant in the first decade of the 21st century as America has not only waged a war against terrorism, but the stigma of terrorism that had become attached to the anti-abortion movement in the 1990s has been obscured as anti-abortion activism reached the White House and political power under President George W. Bush and the ascendant Christian Right. Yet, anti-abortion violence returned soon after Bush left office and Barack Obama entered it as the murder of Dr. George Tiller, one of the few doctors to perform so-called ‘late-term abortions,’ by activist Scott Roeder in Wichita, Kansas on May 31 2009 clearly illustrated.

This chapter provides an overview of the literature on extremist or violence anti-abortion activism, and where it fits in to wider literature on the anti-abortion or pro-life movement, the Christian Right and other forms or sectors of the right, as well as terrorism. This is followed by an overview and examination of the different sectors of the anti-abortion movement, including the mainstream, militant direct action organizations such as Operation Rescue, the Pro-Life Action Network and Lambs of Christ, and extremist ones that advocate or perpetuate violence such as the American Coalition of Life Activists, Missionaries of the Preborn and the Army of God, websites such as the Nuremburg Files and so-called ‘lone wolf’ terrorists such as Rev. Mike Bray, Rev. Paul Hill, John Salvi, James Kopp, Eric Rudolph and Scott Roeder. This includes an overview and examination of the theological and textual sources and material used to advocate and justify violent activism, and the history of anti-abortion extremism and violence in the post-Roe v. Wade context from 1973 to the present. Through these sections, the chapter interrogates the relationships between extremist and violent anti-abortion violence, the mainstream anti-abortion movement, wider mainstream Christian Right and extreme right. It also examines responses to these activists and anti-abortion violence by the government and the mainstream anti-abortion movement. Significantly, the chapter looks at whether the mainstream anti-abortion movement provides support for more extreme elements activists or disassociates itself from these elements as it is frequently called upon to do, and whether it can or should be held responsible for perpetrators of violence who share a common cause. Finally, the chapter examines how anti-abortion extremism and violence are understood in relation in post-9/11 America.

On the book Extremism in America:

“A first-rate survey of the various strands of domestic extremism, from far left to far right, that are increasingly convulsing our country. A must-read for students, scholars, officials, and others entering this important field.”—Mark Potok, Southern Poverty Law Center

“With contributions on areas ranging from anti-abortion extremism to modern anarchism and black nationalism, this is a fascinating study of an often neglected and vital area of American politics.”—Martin Durham, author of White Rage: The Extreme Right and American Politics

The American Republic was born in revolt against the British crown, and ever since, political extremism has had a long tradition in the United States. To some observers, the continued presence of extremist groups?and the escalation of their activities?portends the fragmentation of the country, while others believe such is the way American pluralism works. The word extremism often carries negative connotations, yet in 1964 Barry Goldwater famously said, “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice.”
         
Extremism in America is a sweeping overview and assessment of the various brands of bigotry, prejudice, zealotry, dogmatism, and partisanship found in the United States, including the extreme right, the antiglobalization movement, Black Nationalism, Chicano separatism, militant Islam, Jewish extremism, eco-extremism, the radical antiabortion movement, and extremist terrorism. Many of these forms of single-minded intolerance are repressed by both the state and society at large, but others receive significant support from their constituencies and enjoy a level of respectability in some quarters of the mainstream. The essays in this volume, written by area specialists, examine the relationship between these movements and the larger society, dissect the arguments of contemporary American anarchist activists, look at recent trends in political extremism, and suggest how and why such arguments resonate with a considerable number of people.
"

The Proud Boys are an opportunistic hate group whose message of white male chauvinism is cloaked in religious and nationalist symbols. They fit into the global trend of religious nationalism in that they are driven by a reaction to religious pluralism, entertain atavistic yearnings, and celebrate a founding hero, Donald Trump. Enthralled with fistfighting, in both their initiatory rituals and their engagements with antifa groups, they delight in offending the genteel sensibilities they associate with the "white liberal elite." They are proudly anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, and anti-feminist, but their list of enemies appears to be ever shifting, suggesting a toxic virility run amuck. Their celebration of masculinity resembles the masculinism and misogyny that arose in response to the Victorian era in the US.

At 9:02 on the morning of April 19th, 1995, a bomb went off at the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. The bomb not only killed over 160 people and injured more than 650, but it also shook the illusion held by many Americans of a nation safe from the political unrest and terrorism outside its borders (an illusion that would be shattered for good on 9/11). In the hours and days following the bombing, the media and law enforcement authorities focused on the Muslim terrorists they believed were responsible, including a Muslim Oklahoma City resident detained at Heathrow Airport in London. On April 20th, one day after bombing, another Oklahoma City resident, Iraqi refugee Suhair al-Mosawi, was attacked in his home as retaliation for the bombing. When Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols – two white, Christian, home-grown anti-government activists – were arrested, what became evident was that these were ‘American’ terrorists. In spite of the initial shock of the bombing and focus on Muslims, this was far from a new phenomenon. For many experts who had been researching and monitoring the extreme right, the bombing was the culmination of a fifteen-year trajectory of violence. In response to the bombing, hearings were held, anti-terror legislation was passed, arrests were made and numerous books written and films made about the phenomenon. Yet, following the events of 9/11, Oklahoma City and the domestic extreme right were pushed to the margins of history and memory, as terrorism and terrorists were redefined as Islamic or Islamist, and Christianity and patriotism were evoked in America’s defense.

Throughout American history, both terrorism and extremism have been constructed, evoked or ignored strategically by the state, media and public at different points, in order to disown and demonize political movements whenever their ideologies and objectives become problematic or inconvenient – because they overlap with, and thus compromise, the legitimacy of the dominant ideology and democratic credentials of the state, because they conflict with the dominant ideology or hegemonic order, because they offend the general (voting) public, or because they expose the fallacies of national unity and bi-polar opposition in the face of foreign enemies or international conflicts, such as the war on terror. This chapter looks at how domestic extreme right terrorism has been constructed, represented, evoked or ignored in the American political imagination in the post-civil rights era, with a particular focus on its changing status following the Oklahoma City bombing and 9/11.""

This article aims to address two questions: (1) How does hate speech manifest on North American white supremacist websites and (2) Is there a connection between online hate speech and hate crime? Section I defines hate speech and explains the research methodology upon which the article is based. Section II analyses the ways that hate groups utilise the Internet and their purposes in doing so, examining the content and the functions of hate sites as well as the agenda of hate mongers. Section III explores the connection between hate speech and hate crime. It is argued that there is sufficient evidence to suggest that speech can and does inspire crime. The article is based in the main on primary sources: a close study of dozens of hate websites, and is informed by more than 50 interviews and discussions with experts in the field.

Course Description: This course provides an overview of the sociological study of hate and prejudice using a variety of perspectives. It begins with an overview of the sociology of prejudice which includes the social psychology and functions of prejudice and the structural and systemic factors that influence the persistence of prejudice. The course will then cover the impact of hate through case study analysis of discrimination as it is manifested in hate crime. Analysis will then move on to a social movements study of organized hate groups in American society with detailed study of their ideology, structure, recruitment strategies, in-group dynamics, and transnational activity. Finally, the course will end with an exploration and evaluation of methods for combating hate and its social manifestations.

In the Ethics, Spinoza argues that individual human emotions and imagination shape the social world. This world, he argues, can in turn be shaped by political institutions to be more or less hopeful, more or less rational, or more or less angry and indignant. In his political works, Spinoza offered suggestions for how to shape a political imaginary that is more guided by hope than by fear or anger. In this chapter, using the framework of Spinoza's theory of emotions, I will investigate how Barack Obama's promise of 'hope' was translated into Donald Trump's rhetoric of hate. Such a transition, from hope to fear is one that would be unsurprising to Spinoza. Spinoza worried about the political and personal effectiveness of hope. He argued that hope can easily be turned into what he called ‘indignatio’ or indignation – an emotion that he believed eroded trust in political institutions. Spinoza warned about the danger of governance that relies upon the emotions of anger and hatred. I will set out how the Trump administration's reliance on the motivational forces of hate and anger risk what Spinoza called indignation.  Spinoza’s political works were written to show how to turn political indignation and anger into a chastened, and perhaps more rational, hope. Finally, I will propose that we may derive from Spinoza participatory, democratic institutions that can overcome this indignation.

*This article is free access for a limited time.

https://journals.sagepub.com/eprint/9AASEPKBDCB78PPUGUTA/full

‘Hate stereotyping’ occurs when researchers foreground negative emotions, especially hate, as motivating right-wing social movements, epitomized by labels like ‘hate group’. This convention contradicts empirical evidence showing that hateful feelings and ideological prejudices are mostly insignificant for attracting and retaining members in such movements. Using contemporary theories of hate, this article demonstrates the concept’s limits and misuse in studying and theorizing the political Right. For instance, hate’s theoretical and methodological ambiguity sometimes leads scholars to confuse hatred with right-wing ideology and prejudice, which can obfuscate findings and spur dubious generalizations across political groups. Moreover, some researchers accept post-structuralist theories of hate as a substitute for vital data on emotions, motivations and meaning-making among right-wing actors. Hate explanations persist because they appeal to ‘common sense’ about intolerance, not because of their methodological integrity for studying right-wing movements. By foregrounding intolerance, hate stereotyping risks sustaining the dominant narrative that prejudices such as racism are deviant, and that racism is a problem of bad attitudes and fringe ideologies, rather than larger issues of systemic and structural inequality.

In the Ethics, Spinoza argues that individual human emotions and imagination shape the social world. This world, he argues, can in turn be shaped by political institutions to be more or less hopeful, more or less rational, or more or less angry and indignant. In his political works, Spinoza offered suggestions for how to shape a political imaginary and political culture that is more guided by hope than by fear or anger. In this chapter, using the framework of Spinoza's theory of emotions, I will investigate how Barack Obama's promise of 'hope' was translated into Donald Trump's rhetoric of hate. Such a transition, from hope to fear is one that would be unsurprising to Spinoza. Spinoza worried about the political and personal effectiveness of hope. He argued that hope can easily be turned into what he called 'indignatio' or indignation – an emotion that he believed eroded trust in political institutions. Spinoza warned about the danger of governance that relies upon the emotions of anger and hatred. I will set out how the Trump administrations reliance on the motivational forces of hate and anger risk what Spinoza called indignation. Spinoza's political works were written to show how to turn political indignation and anger into a chastened, and perhaps more rational, hope. Finally, I will propose that we may derive from Spinoza participatory, democratic institutions that can overcome this indignation.

In the backdrop of the abolition of slave trade and the end of
colonialism, one will think that racism and all its prejudices have been
laid to rest. The spate of happenings on the planet, particularly in
Europe and America, will go far to demonstrate that supremacist belief
systems are a long way from been stifled. Racism often induce feeling
of superiority amongst people and also among nations such that some
nations view others with a disdainful and obligatory attitude to help,
thereby placing unnecessary injunctions and policies to retain their hold
on such countries as is discernible in neo-colonialism. Furthermore,
there is a feeling of discrimination against anything Islam and black
such that black is regarded as ugly and both should be treated with
suspicion. This work intends to look at the difference faces of racism
throughout history and the rationale behind it. This work is critical in
light of the fact that it looks at the raising racist belief systems and tries
to highlight the requirement for social change and advance as it
influences human improvement.

Η ρατσιστική βία είναι φαινόμενο που προηγήθηκε της κοινωνικοοικονομικής κρίσης, λαμβάνοντας υπόψη σχετικές αναφορές από ΜΚΟ και ΜΜΕ. Τα αίτια της θα πρέπει να αναζητηθούν (και) σε διαχρονικά φαινόμενα όπως η ρητορική μίσους από θεσμικούς παράγοντες, οι αδυναμίες του εκπαιδευτικού συστήματος, η διαχρονική ατιμωρησία περιστατικών αυθαιρεσίας της ΕΛ.ΑΣ., η αναπαραγωγή στερεοτύπων από ΜΜΕ και όχι μόνο στον «ανταγωνισμό» μεταξύ «αυτοχθόνων» και «ξένων» για τις παροχές του συρρικνωμένου κοινωνικού κράτους και της μείωσης των θέσεων εργασίας λόγω της κρίσης. Επίσης, η απουσία ενός κεντρικού, εθνικού συστήματος καταγραφής της ρατσιστικής βίας, δεν επιτρέπει την ανάδειξη της πλήρους έκτασης και διαχρονικής εξέλιξης του φαινομένου.

In this chapter, we examine the enactments of love, community, and justice by the Murfreesboro Loves collective. Although some scholars have critiqued concepts such as love and community for enabling racialized exclusions/ others express hope for a critical politics of love. Rhetorical scholars also have demonstrated interest in rhetorics of love, a conversation to which this chapter contributes. We examine Murfreesboro Loves' mobilization of love as an organizing strategy of social justice, specifically exploring how Murfreesboro Loves engaged an invitational rhetorical style that differed from other modalities of counterprotest. By appealing to audiences from diverse racial, religious, and political backgrounds; promoting messages of inclusion and acceptance; employing a power-with rather than a power-over approach; and avoiding confrontation, Murfreesboro Loves interrupted the antagonistic model that characterizes the current political climate. Our study responds to critiques of invitational rhetoric's pragmatic and political utility and invites further consideration of how invitational rhetoric can contribute to community and social justice organizing, providing "an important foundation for achieving radical change.

Stereotypes and hate crimes are complex issues. Stereotypes are not only harmful in their own right; they do damage by fostering prejudice and discrimination. A well established stereotypes can also lead to the feeling of hate towards a particular groups or community resulting to hate crime many a times. More specifically, "personal discrimination" refer to acts of discrimination committed by individuals whereas "institutional discrimination" refers to discriminatory policies or practices carried out by organizations and other institutions. The paper briefly reviews some literature concerning these cause of discrimination, psychology of hate crimes through the lens of Freudian psychoanalysis, Gauffman's idea of Dramaturgy, psychological result of hate crimes, its impact on victims and vulnerable groups. Most people who perpetuate stereotypes don't resort to hate crimes. But they're contributing to a climate where hate crimes become possible. But do hate crime only the result of stereotypes? Or is this theory also related to the concept of sins? Or killing ones who are being hated by a particular community is a shortcut way to heaven? There are many such questions followed with the act of hate crimes. Will try to resolve this. But before heading towards the understanding of Freudian psychoanalysis, we should first know what is the concept of psychology all about.

The Proud Boys are an opportunistic hate group whose message of white male chauvinism is infused with religious and nationalist symbols. They fit into the global trend of religious nationalism in that they are driven by a reaction to religious pluralism, entertain atavistic yearnings, and celebrate a founding hero, Donald Trump. Enthralled with fistfighting, in both their initiatory rituals and their engagements with antifa groups, they delight in offending the genteel sensibilities they associate with the "white liberal elite." They are proudly anti-Semitic, Islamophobic, and anti-feminist, but their list of enemies appears to be ever shifting, suggesting a toxic virility run amuck. While they are but one expression of an enduring European-American chauvinism, their celebration of masculinity resembles the masculinism and misogyny that arose in response to the Victorian era in the US.

Interview to Sustainable Security about hate on the Internet, reflections relating to my book Confronting the Internet’s Dark Side: Moral and Social Responsibility on the Free Highway (2015) which examines the dark side of the internet and the issue of social responsibility on the net

Progressive thinkers have argued that placing the concept of vulnerability at the center of discussions about social justice will lead governments to more equitably distribute resources and create opportunities for precarious groups – especially women, children, people of color, queers, immigrants and the poor. At the same time, conservatives claim that their values and communities are vulnerable to attack–often by these same groups. In turn, they craft antidemocratic representations of vulnerability that significantly influence the political landscape, restricting human and legal rights for many in order to expand them for a historically privileged few. Vulnerability Politics examines how twenty-first century political struggles over immigration, LGBTQ rights, reproductive justice, and police violence create an emotionally potent sense of vulnerability that shapes political culture and the law. By researching organizations like the Minutemen (civilians who monitor the US/Mexico border), the Protect Marriage Coalition (a campaign to ban same-sex marriage in California), and the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform (an anti-abortion movement), this book demonstrates how conservative movements use the rhetoric of risk to oppose liberal policies by claiming that the nation, family, and morality are imperiled and in need of government protection. "Vulnerability Politics" argues that this sensationalism shifts the focus away from the everyday and institutional precarities experienced by marginalized communities and instead reinforces the idea that groups only deserve social justice protections when their beliefs reflect the dominant nationalist, racial, and sexual ideals. It concludes by assessing how progressive social movements like Black Lives Matter leverage narratives of harm and vulnerability to create state accountability to violence, in productive ways that resist wholesale stigmatization or victimization of communities.

The narratives and images on websites of US hate groups that oppose undocumented immigrants represent and reproduce discourses that contribute to the subject formation of group members, who feel ethically obliged to counter unauthorized immigration. Left alone by the government, which is seen as unreliable and uncaring of patriotic values, they position themselves as heroic saviours of the nation. We argue that these hate groups’ ‘games of truth’ develop in response to the perception that irregular immigration threatens specific social orders and values, for instance about citizenship, national identity and otherness. This article helps to understand the ways in which anti-immigrant narratives serve the functions of countering these threats and of asserting the group members’ ethical obligation as a form of care of the self. In other words, from a Foucaultian viewpoint, we interpret the problematizations of ‘illegal’ immigration as discursive practices for the subject formation of hate group members.

Amidst a rise in hate crimes, hate group organizing, and anti-Muslim and anti-refugee policy making in the United States, this paper examines efforts by a national hate group to organize opposition to the resettlement of Syrian Muslim refugees in West Virginia, a non-traditional refugee destination. Through analysis of materials disseminated at a public seminar titled the "Invasion and Colonization of West Virginia," we identify four unique social-spatial themes this group is using to make alarmist and conspiratorial claims about Muslim refugees invading and colonizing the state and nation. These themes include the language of smallness, which affixes a white and Christian identity to certain spaces and suggests that these spaces are threatened. Spatial themes of 'fresh territory' and 'sowing seeds' are used to frame refugee resettlement as an assertion of social-spatial control to change 'small spaces' and ultimately change America. Claims of invasion and colonization function powerfully through the fourth theme of the "Other Islamic Bomb," which frames Muslim women's fertility as the vehicle of the invasion and colonization. This paper adds to emerging literature on the geographies of Islamophobia by examining not only the convergence of anti-Muslim and anti-refugee sentiment but its mobilization in regionally and locally specific contexts. The analysis demonstrates the dynamic interplay between spatial and social claims on which these alarmist narratives rely to vilify Muslims and refugees and to foment opposition in places not historically associated with immigration or refugee resettlement.

There has been much written about the white male backlash or ‘angry white male’ phenomenon of the 1980s and 1990s, much of it concerning mainstream conservative political and cultural manifestations. What is rarely considered within this literature are the ways in which the extreme right itself transformed during the period, particularly as they have traditionally been the most vocal about, and mobilised around, perceived threats to white supremacy, from abolition to civil rights. For the extreme right, the passing of the Civil Rights Act did not lead to a conventional backlash or a reassertion of white supremacy and white nationalism. Instead, corresponding to the perceived loss of white supremacy that the Act represented to them, such identities and ideologies were effectively rejected. In their place, what emerged were forms of racial and national identity and ideology that represented the white man as a racial and political other, displaced as an effect of the developments of the civil rights era.

In this paper, I will examine this transformation of traditional hegemonic white supremacy and white nationalism and the development of counter-hegemonic forms of white otherness and white separatism. The focus of this analysis will be the Christian Patriot Movement (including Aryan Nations, Posse Comitatus and The Order), which emerged from the KKK, John Birch Society and Christian Identity movement in the 1970s and came to dominate the extreme right in the 1980s and 1990s. More specifically, I will examine the ways in which the Christian Patriot movement employed mythology, theology, producerist populism and republicanism, as well as discourses appropriated from Jews, African-Americans and anti-imperialist movements in order to represent the white race as an oppressed and persecuted racial other within post-civil rights America, and inform their white separatist programme.

The current historic and political moment presents a unique opportunity; and dare I say, responsibility for criminologists to engage with teaching about prejudice, bias crime, and organized supremacist groups. The campaign and election of the 45 th president has emboldened public expression of bigotry, acts of intimidation and violence against people and groups based on their race, ethnicity, national origin, religion, sexual orientation, and gender identity in a manner that is unprecedented in the post-Civil Rights era. Teaching these concepts can be laden with a number of pitfalls for critical criminologists that serve to legitimize inadequate analyses, reinforce the power of the state, and propose inadequate solutions. In this column, I provide an overview of the " Sociology of Hate " course with particular attention paid to the manner in which critical analysis is embedded in the analysis of material and course content.

My recent book, Confronting the Internet’s Dark Side: Moral and Social Responsibility on the Free Highway (2015), examines the dark side of the internet and the issue of social responsibility on the net. In this interview to Oxford Research Group (August 14, 2017), https://sustainablesecurity.org/2017/08/14/the-dark-side-of-the-internet-an-interview-with-raphael-cohen-almagor/
I explain why I choose to examine this subject as a research project; identify hate speech; distinguish between hate speech and free speech, and between religious incitement and critique of religious beliefs; observe the connection between hate speech and violent acts, and advise practical actions that can and should be taken to counter hate on the Internet.

This thesis examines how the American extreme right transformed in the post-civil rights era, or what is termed the “fifth era”, between 1976 and 1995. I argue that the extreme right underwent a radical re-politicisation in the mid-1970s, in response to the perceived effects of the political developments of the civil rights era on its traditional white Christian constituency, and the failure of its predecessors to maintain white supremacy and defend the nation. What occurred was a rejection of traditional hegemonic extreme right organisations, ideologies and strategies and their replacement by newer, more radical, counter-hegemonic ones. These were based around opposition to the state and political mainstream, most notably the shift from traditional white supremacy and nationalism to racial separatism, and from electoral activism to armed insurgency. Furthermore, I argue that this historical paradigm shift requires a corresponding analytic paradigm shift. This is because the majority of existing analysis not only fails to address this transformation but is also based on paradigms established in previous eras and based on traditional characteristics that the fifth era extreme right themselves rejected because of their overlap with the mainstream right, failure or lack of relevance. This thesis focuses on the case of the Christian Patriot movement and its three most prominent representatives, Posse Comitatus, Aryan Nations and The Order, which dominated the era and played a role in each major era-defining event and ideological and strategic initiative. I examine the movement’s history, ideology, identity and strategies both in comparison to those of their predecessors and through the development of the fifth era itself. In doing so, I illustrate both how the movement responded to political developments of the post-civil rights era and how this historical paradigm shift manifested, as well as propose a new analytic approach to the extreme right through my method of discourse analysis.

"Recent debate surrounding racism and immigration in the UK reveals that anti-racist policy is being constructed within a ‘Third Way’ political agenda such that the definition of racism comes to signify a phenomenon considered detrimental to the ‘building of community’. Given the controversial role of the British state in perpetuating the ‘immigration/race-relations problematic’, this paper argues that New Labour’s approach to racism comes to embody a set of contradictory assumptions fostered in previous administrations while incorporating elements significant to ‘Third Way’ governance.
Crucial to current policy prescription is the reconstitution of the subject of racism, such that both perpetrator and target are viewed through the policy lens of emotional governance. In short, the contemporary anti-racist state seeks to foster legitimacy via an appeal to an emotionalized subjective condition, so that policy defines racism according to the needs of state. Consequently, current ‘race-relations’ policy is an intervention which redefines racist causation while reinforcing state authority."

Religious movements and religious ideas have played important roles in the United States almost since the formation of the American republic. From those who sought to abolish slavery in the 19th century to the civil rights and anti-war movements of the 20th, Christian clergy and laymen claimed religious inspiration for their involvements. There is another side to this story, however. In addition to championing these progressive causes, Christian, largely Protestant, religious ideas have also been central to the various radical right-wing movements that have surfaced over the course of American history. Or, as the journalist H. L. Mencken once put it in connection with the 1928 presidential election campaign: ‘the Ku Klux Klan is really the secular wing of the Methodist church in the South!’ Xenophobic, Anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic, and especially anti-communist, far-right organisations in the USA have employed religious sentiments to justify their campaigns against important social changes in public life. We propose to tell their story.

Progressive thinkers have argued that placing the concept of vulnerability at the center of discussions about social justice will lead governments to more equitably distribute resources and create opportunities for precarious groups – especially women, children, people of color, queers, immigrants and the poor. At the same time, conservatives claim that their values and communities are vulnerable to attack–often by these same groups. In turn, they craft antidemocratic representations of vulnerability that significantly influence the political landscape, restricting human and legal rights for many in order to expand them for a historically privileged few.

Vulnerability Politics examines how twenty-first century political struggles over immigration, LGBTQ rights, reproductive justice, and police violence create an emotionally potent sense of vulnerability that shapes political culture and the law. By researching organizations like the Minutemen (civilians who monitor the US/Mexico border), the Protect Marriage Coalition (a campaign to ban same-sex marriage in California), and the Center for Bio-Ethical Reform (an anti-abortion movement), this book demonstrates how conservative movements use the rhetoric of risk to oppose liberal policies by claiming that the nation, family, and morality are imperiled and in need of government protection.

"Vulnerability Politics" argues that this sensationalism shifts the focus away from the everyday and institutional precarities experienced by marginalized communities and instead reinforces the idea that groups only deserve social justice protections when their beliefs reflect the dominant nationalist, racial, and sexual ideals. It concludes by assessing how progressive social movements like Black Lives Matter leverage narratives of harm and vulnerability to create state accountability to violence, in productive ways that resist wholesale stigmatization or victimization of communities.

http://www.stopwar.org.uk/index.php/news-comment/36-matt-carr/940-how-islamophobes-wage-a-holy-war-against-muslims-in-the-name-of-free-speech

But what about the event itself.  What was it trying to do?  The contest was sponsored by the American Freedom Defence Iniatiative (AFDI), a ‘counterjihadist ‘ organization, whose president Pamela Geller  told  CNN yesterday, ‘ Islamic jihadis are determined to suppress our freedom of speech violently. They struck in Paris and Copenhagen recently, and now in Texas.’

To say that Geller is not a particularly appealing figure does not begin to describe her.    The Southern Poverty Law Center describes her as the ‘anti-Muslim movement’s most visible and flamboyant figurehead’ who is ‘relentlessly shrill and coarse in her broad-brush denunciations of Islam’.  Few people familiar with her track record or her website Atlas Shrugged will find much reason to differ from this judgement.

In the past Geller has suggested that the teenagers murdered by Anders Breivik on Utoya Island deserved what they got because they expressed solidarity with Gaza; that Obama is a Muslim who once had sex with a ‘crack whore'; and that Muslims who pray five times a day are ‘cursing Christians and Jews five times a day.’

‘Post-raciality’ encompasses seemingly antithetical positions: victory or utopia. However, one could argue that both are constitutive of a moment missed, the moment being that which comes after the ‘end of history’. An understanding of the post-racial requires that ‘it’ be situated within the paradigms which rejected ‘the conservatism of Left or Right’ and which branded the present as one of ‘no alternatives’, and consequently for many offered ‘no future’. Understood thus, the post-racial becomes an anti-utopian tool which validates the absence of alternative or big ‘P’ politics. Political elites aim to make us feel better about ourselves in the absence of solution. This is no cynical ruse; post-raciality is not a neo-liberal construct. Rather, post-racial pessimism is the logical outcome of the collapse of the emancipatory politics which defied modern oppression. This paper offers a meta-analysis of post-raciality and argues that therapolitics presents us with a line of continuity predicated on ‘safety’ and ‘trust’ which connects Clinton’s One America initiative, the establishment of the Other Than Mexican migrant category under the Bush administration, and Obama’s response to immigration and ‘hate’.

Facebook’s groups application is a social networking site for like-minded individuals to express their thoughts on topics and to share photos and ideas. This increased capacity for social interaction created yet another avenue for spreading hatred. As a result, Facebook serves as host to a large variety of ‘hate’ groups and pages on the Web. Because the Facebook groups application is relatively new, the term ‘hate group’ is loosely defined its context. Building on traditional mass media theories, this exploratory study uses a critical hermeneutics approach to investigate the nuances of hate communities on Facebook and offers tips for creators, administrators and citizens to identify and manage hate within the context of a social media network. Findings indicate group titles often do not exhibit their true cause. For example, hundreds of hate groups indirectly target gays by characterizing a celebrity as gay. Similarly, political hate groups often spew hateful language rather than political discourse. While research is needed to assess the long-term effects of hate speech, limited restrictions on some hate expression may be worth considering.