As contemporary society becomes immersed in visual culture, extremist imagery is becoming progressively organised around a network of symbols, rituals, and collective meanings. Therefore, it is particularly informative to examine the correlation existing between cultural aspects of extremism and criminal transgression. Traditionally, video games, especially violent ones, tend to avoid any recognisable settings or direct… Continue reading “Framing Far Cry 5: The Gamification of White Separatist Propaganda”
The hateful actions of the furthest fringes tend to be tolerated, downplayed or even ignored. In October 2019, England’s national football team played what should have been a humdrum European Championship qualifying match against Bulgaria in Sofia, the country’s capital. But the match soon made headlines for all the wrong reasons, being stopped twice because… Continue reading “Football fandom and fascist generals: Bulgaria’s radical right”
Perhaps the most bizarre thing about Black Hebrew Israelism is the way it mirrors, with only a change in color, the ideas of Christian Identity. Yet another apparent anti-Semitic multiple murder has hit the United States with Tuesday’s killing of four people and the subsequent deaths of the two attackers in a Jersey City, N.J.… Continue reading “The Strange History of the Group Tied to Jersey City Murders”
Part 1 of this blog summarised current psychological theories relevant to understanding far-right personalities and behaviour. The following sections summarise the data on three non-violent far-right supporters, and analyse to what extent these theories are born out[1]. Case 1: Male aged 76, UKIP and Britain First Supporter The author has known this individual (Subject 1)… Continue reading “Jekyll-and-Hyde: What Creates a Far-Right Supporter? Part 2.”
Call for Chapters Routledge Handbook of Non-Violent Extremism: Groups, Perspectives and New Debates Background For a long-time overshadowed by jihadi extremism, non-violent (or vocal) extremism has been the centre of inflamed political and academic debates throughout the world (Cordesman, 2017; Gilligan, 2019; Hamid, 2016; Wali, 2013; Whitespunner, 2018). This debate is fuelled by the massive… Continue reading “Call for Chapters: New Routledge Handbook on Non-Violent Extremism”
Much has been written about the development of the personalities and other psychological characteristics of Alt-Right/far-right leaders such as Donald Trump (e.g. authors in Cruz and Buser, 2017; Waring & Paxton, 2019) and of violent far-right extremists – such as Anders Breivik, Thomas Mair, and Darren Osborne (e.g. Jackson (2019), Melle (2013), Turner-Graham (2019a), and… Continue reading “Jekyll-and-Hyde: What Creates a Far-Right Supporter? Part 1.”
Neo-Nazi and other white supremacist organizations in the United States are looking for a new improved pool of racists to draw from. The leaders of neo-Nazi and other white nationalist groups in the United States face a major problem, one having to do with their claims of white or Aryan racial superiority. What to do if… Continue reading “The Search for the Better Nazis”
The White House aide’s emails frightened America, and rightly so. But the bigger story is a vast racist network that has shocking reach into the GOP. Even amid the impeachment drama, the tranche of emails unearthed this month by the Southern Poverty Law Center has been attention-grabbing. The communications, sent in 2015 and 2016 by current Trump… Continue reading “The Creepy Racist Network Behind Trump Aide Stephen Miller”
Democracy has a core meaning but it needs to be defined from a vantage point, given that is is a contested concept subject to dynamic framing and reframing processes. According to Habermas’ deliberative democracy theory, deliberation is central to democratic decision making. Hence, language development is an essential part of democracy and democratic discourse: autocrats… Continue reading “Of ‘Nazi-Pigs’, ‘Jewish sows’ and ‘bourgeois coalitions’ (A German perspective)”
For decades, anti-Semitism has been a steady ideological feature of radical-right violence and terrorism in Germany. The suspect in the terrorist attack on a synagogue in the German city of Halle in October, 27-year-old Stephan B., was driven by anti-Semitism and a radical-right worldview. After the murder of Walter Lübcke in June, this was the second deadly… Continue reading “Anti-Semitism Continues to Be a Steady Feature Among Germany’s Radicals”