The recently deceased Kevin Coogan helped create the scholarly groundwork for preventative measures against the rise of the Alt Right. Born on October 8, 1952, Coogan was raised in an Irish family in Philadelphia where he grew up in a loving and intellectually stimulating community. “Our grandparents ran a boarding house for Irish immigrants,” his… Continue reading “Remembering Kevin Coogan”
While bigotry and white supremacy are core tenets of the radical right, underlying it all is a deeply ingrained misogyny that has manifested in violence. Once upon a time, almost exactly a century ago now, the radical right in America declared that one of its primary objectives was to defend the chastity and honor of… Continue reading “The Radical Right’s Violent Hatred of Women”
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”
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.”
White privilege isn’t about guilt or blame, it is about identifying how racist social structures perpetuate inequality so that we can dismantle them. Concepts, such as white privilege, white fragility, structural racism, intersectionality, and the importance of a ‘call-out culture’ associated with the #MeToo movement, have become critical to the way English-speaking scholars approach the… Continue reading “Why It’s So Important For Us To Discuss White Privilege”
Begging for money is a well-known device of far-right agitators, and it by far exceeds the simple request to donate a few dollars every once in a while. In September, the former darling of the alt-right, Milo Yiannopoulos, used the messaging app Telegram to complain to his followers that he was “talking to the same 1,000 people,… Continue reading “Great Little Men: Why the Alt-Right Begs for Money”
Why did the movie become a new cultural touchstone for the alt-right? The far right has long used popular culture as a means of promoting their own ideals. It is a common misconception that extremists live and act within their own, fringe cultural sphere. Whilst much of far right literary and musical culture is produced… Continue reading “Joker, the far right and popular culture”
Cartoonists are modern jesters but, unlike those merrymen of yore, they are no longer safe. It has been traditionally accepted in modern societies that the media play a key role in the way they function. Journalists counteract the abuses of power by governments, frame political issues and are implicitly recognized as being part of the… Continue reading “In Sri Lanka, Cartoonists Take on the Alt-Right”
Authoritarianism, a characteristic of the far-right, has developed anew in the 21st century and has presented itself in multiple guises and in multiple loci to an extent that poses an increased threat and risk to democratic societies. For good or ill, I choose to label this phenomenon as the Alternative Right (Alt-Right), although recognizing that… Continue reading “The New Authoritarianism and the Glorification of Amoral Calculation”