Members of the Radical Right are allying with authoritarian regimes like Russia to undermine the liberal world order as we know it. Civilizations tend to exist either in a state of war or peace. Clausewitz reminds us that war is none other than “the continuation of politics by other means”. However, war does not stay… Continue reading “Right-Wing Authoritarians Are Waging A Hybrid War On Democracy”
Matteo Salvini’s League party takes advantage of the frustration felt by Italians living in poverty to fuel xenophobia and hatred toward immigrants. Since Matteo Salvini took over the leadership of the Northern League party (rebranded as the League before last year’s elections) in late 2013, the focus of his harsh political campaigns shifted from southern… Continue reading “Italian Populists Use Social Welfare to Ignite a “War Between the Poor””
Last month’s massacre of 22 people in a Texas Walmart by a man who wanted to resist “a Hispanic invasion” is only the latest horror story as the radical right continues to murder and terrorize. For the first time in memory, a consensus of U.S. law enforcement officials agree that white supremacist domestic terrorism has… Continue reading “U.S. Domestic Terrorism: What Is To Be Done?”
Since 2017, one-third of terror plots with an aim to kill were linked to far-right ideologies. In September, the highest-ranking counterterrorism officer in Britain, Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu, declared the far-right to be the fastest growing terrorist threat to Britain. According to the Met, in the last year, a quarter of all terrorism… Continue reading “Far-Right Terrorism Is Now Britain’s Fastest Growing Problem”
During the Second World War, the Sonderkommando [Special Working Group] was forced by Auschwitz-Birkenau’s SS commandantur to carry out the ghastly work at the gas chambers. This included leading the victims to their deaths, often unsuspectingly, and afterwards burning the bodies of those gassed on pyres, at the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp. A crematoria was established… Continue reading “75th commemoration of the Sonderkommando Revolt at Auschwitz–Birkenau”
While Christianity is on the decline in Europe, the effective co-option of Christian ideas and emblems among the radical right is continuing unabated. The recent publication of the British Social Attitudes Survey offered dismal reading for the Church of England and British Christianity more broadly. As Polly Toynbee put it in The Guardian, the findings showed that Christianity in… Continue reading “How the Radical Right Co-Opted Religion”
Answering some of the pressing, if not existential questions facing diverse, democratic societies require a clearer understanding of tolerance. Tolerance is vital to the functioning of modern, liberal democracies. In societies where individual rights and freedoms are recognized and protected, some amount of tolerance of difference is required. Diversity comes in many forms: thought… Continue reading “What is tolerance and how much of it do democracies require?”
Anti-fascist action has been an inherent part of the British society. Macklin and Busher (2015), who looked at the interactions between far right movements and counter-movements in the period after World War II, referred, for instance, to the activities of the 43 Group in the 1940s, the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in the 1970s, Anti-Fascist… Continue reading “The Battle of Cable Street: ‘they shall not pass’”
Through racial grievance politics and voter suppression tactics, the GOP has clung to power by cultivating a fearful minority of white voters. The dominance of white voters in American elections is under threat. Latinos, African-Americans, Asian-Americans and those of Native American descent now represent a growing and active part of America’s electorate. If the demographic… Continue reading “How Republicans Engineered Minority Rule”
White supremacists like Richard Spencer advocate for ‘peaceful ethnic cleansing’ of people of color. President Trump’s policies serve that objective. In September, reports hit major news outlets that, Bee Love Slater, a transgender woman of color, was found ‘burned beyond recognition’—the eighteenth transgender woman murdered in the US this year. The veneer of tolerance, the… Continue reading “This Is What ‘Peaceful Ethnic Cleansing’ Looks Like”