Alt-America: the time for talking about white terrorism is now

[riversedge]

I will be reading the book--just need to get it.




` Alt-America: the time for talking about white terrorism is now

As Alt-America has grown, especially online, so has the violence that inevitably accompanies it: acts of domestic terrorism, hate crimes, and threats of civil war backed by a wave of citizen militias

by David Neiwert

Sunday 26 November 2017 06.00 EST
Last modified on Sunday 26 November 2017 09.32 EST




In the days before he walked into Charleston’s Mother Emanuel church with a gun and murdered nine people, Dylann Roof put together a manifesto. It was a bizarre, rambling tract loaded with racial and political animus, much of it cribbed from white-supremacist groups with ties to South Carolina’s Republican establishment. In the final section, Roof wrote:

I chose Charleston because it is most historic city in my state, and at one time had the highest ratio of blacks to Whites in the country. We have no skinheads, no real KKK, no one doing anything but talking on the internet. Well someone has to have the bravery to take it to the real world, and I guess that has to be me.

Roof ’s manifesto was reminiscent of a similar document penned in 2008 by a conservative Tennessee man named Jim David Adkisson. Adkisson was enraged by the looming nomination of a black man as the Democratic candidate for the presidency.

“I’m protesting the DNC running such a radical leftist candidate,” Adkisson wrote. “Osama Hussein Obama, yo mama. No experience, no brains, a joke. Dangerous to America, he looks like Curious George!” He was appalled by the race-mixing mores of modern times as exemplified by Obama’s mother: “How is a white woman having a niger [sic] baby progress?” he asked.

In July 2008, Adkisson walked into a Unitarian Universalist church in downtown Knoxville during a performance of a children’s musical, armed with a 12-gauge shotgun. He opened fire, killing two people and wounding seven more.

.......................................

In much of the public imagination, Adkisson’s and Roof’s rampages were isolated incidents. In reality, however, they were key manifestations of a larger, more disturbing phenomenon, one which has been ignored or even actively discounted by elected officials and the mainstream media – rightwing domestic terrorism.

In the seven and a half years between those two attacks, domestic terrorism in America – acts that are plotted and executed on American soil, directed at US citizens, by actors based here – spiked dramatically. But hardly anyone noticed.


During that time span, there were 201 total cases of domestic terrorism in the United States – almost three times the rate of the preceding eight years. The large majority of these crimes were committed by rightwing extremists – some 115 in all, compared to 63 cases of Islamist-inspired domestic terror, and 19 cases of leftwing-extremist terrorism.........................................






An extract from... Alt-America: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump by Dan Neiwert
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Copyright © 2017 by Dan Neiwert. Reprinted by permission of Verso.







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Neo Nazis, Alt-Right, and White Supremacists march through the University of Virginia Campus. Photograph: Samuel Corum/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Unlike the mainstream media, law-enforcement analysts who studied domestic terrorism were not blind to the reality of what was happening, for Poplawski’s was

[Adsos Letter]

1. Finished this about a month ago.

Excellent writing. If you have the time commitment for it, read Zeskind’s Blood and Politics: The History of the White Nationalist Movement, from the Margins to the Mainstream. Chronologically, Neiwert’s work begins where Zeskind’s ends.

[Hortensis]

2. If it's about RIGHT-WING terrorism, why is the title

"alt-America?" I reject, as always, the false equivalence between left and right that is blasted as a blanket of dirty lies across America.

Btw, experts have examined all terrorist incidents in the U.S., and this is how their perpetrators break out.

94% Right wing, non-Islamic.
4% Islamic (almost entirely by definition right wing)
2% Left wing, non-Islamic.

94+% ARE RIGHT WING TERRORISTS!

Something to keep in mind. Half this nation is left wing, i.e., leaning liberal in basic orientation. People choosing to ignore that huge reality and refer to "white" terrorism and "alt-American" terrorism are intentionally mischaracterizing right-wing white terrorism, i.e., arising from white conservative extremism.

[Adsos Letter]

3. "white conservative extremism"

That is exactly what Neiwert is examining, the movement of white, right-wing extremism from the political margins into the mainstream of right-wing, Republican politics.

Perhaps he could have titled it better but the focus is on the right-wing throughout the work. The alt-America refers to that segment of society which adheres to right wing politics, not to the overall political society that composes the nation. No attempt is made to gather right/left/independent under one cope, nor does Neiwert attempt any "false equivalence between left and right."

If you've not read his work you might consider giving it a shot. He writes very well, something of a journalistic style, and is considered an expert on the militia movement in the United States.

I hope I've made sense here. I'm suffering with a whomper cold/sinus infection combo, and at my age these things hit particularly hard.

[Hortensis]

4. Thanks, Adsos Letter. I will read more from Neiwert.

And your suspicion that I read little past the headline is correct. So much stuff trashing Democrats is brought here that I just assumed this was more.

A title that tricks those eager feed their conviction that Democrats are just as bad as Republicans into reading isn't all bad.