Spencer Sunshine

Last updated

Spencer Sunshine is an American writer and activist, primarily known for his writings on right-wing extremism. [1] He is an associate fellow at Political Research Associates. [2]

Contents

Life

Sunshine grew up in rural Georgia in the 1970s and 1980s, where he was threatened for having a Jewish father. [1] He has a doctorate in Sociology from the City University of New York, where he wrote a dissertation on post-1960s American anarchism. [3] [1] [4] He describes himself as a "libertarian socialist." [5] Sunshine's writing has prompted death threats. He does not publicly disclose where he lives. [1]

He co-organized a YIVO conference on Yiddish Anarchism in 2019. [6]

His book Neo-Nazi Terrorism and Countercultural Fascism: The Origins and Afterlife of James Mason’s ‘Siege was published by Routledge in 2024. [7]

Selected bibliography

Related Research Articles

<i>Goy</i> Word meaning non-Jew

In modern Hebrew and Yiddish, goy is a term for a gentile, a non-Jew. Through Yiddish, the word has been adopted into English also to mean "gentile", sometimes in a pejorative sense. As a word principally used by Jews to describe non-Jews, it is a term for the ethnic out-group.

Christian Identity is an interpretation of Christianity which advocates the belief that only Celtic and Germanic peoples, such as the Anglo-Saxon, Nordic nations, or people of the Aryan race and people of kindred blood, are the descendants of the ancient Israelites and are therefore God's "chosen people". It is a racial interpretation of Christianity and is not an organized religion, nor is it affiliated with specific Christian denominations. It emerged from British Israelism in the 1920s and began to take shape during the 1940s-1970s. Today it is independently practiced by individuals, independent congregations, and some prison gangs.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Sholem Schwarzbard</span> Russo-French anarchist poet and assassin

Samuel "Sholem" Schwarzbard was a Russian-French Yiddish poet. He served in the French and Soviet military, was a communist and anarchist, and is known for organising Jewish community defense against pogroms in pre-First World War era and Russian Civil War era Ukraine, and for the assassination of Ukrainian nationalist leader Symon Petliura in 1926. He wrote poetry in Yiddish under the pen name of Baal-Khaloymes.

Boyd Blake Rice is an American experimental sound/noise musician using the name of NON since the mid-1970s. A pioneer of industrial music, Rice was one of the first artists to use a sampler and turntable as an instrument. He is also a writer, archivist, actor, and photographer.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michael J. Moynihan</span> American musician and journalist

Michael Jenkins Moynihan is an American writer, editor, translator, journalist, artist, and musician. He is best known for co-writing Lords of Chaos, a book about black metal. Moynihan is founder of the music group Blood Axis, the music label Storm Records and publishing company Dominion Press. Moynihan has interviewed numerous musical figures and has published several books, translations, and essays. He also supported and promoted the creation of the neo-Nazi book Siege by James Mason by writing the book's introduction and helping the author promote the work. His politics shifted through the decades, but remained controversial throughout his career.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lucy Dawidowicz</span> American historian and writer (1915–1990)

Lucy Dawidowicz was an American historian and writer. She wrote books about modern Jewish history, in particular, about the Holocaust.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adam Parfrey</span> American writer and editor(1957–2018)

Adam Parfrey was an American journalist, editor, and the publisher of Feral House books, whose work in all three capacities frequently centered on unusual, extreme, or "forbidden" areas of knowledge. A 2010 Seattle Weekly profile stated that "what Parfrey does is publish books that explore the marginal aspects of culture. And in many cases—at least back when his interests were almost exclusively transgressive—he sheds light on subjects that society prefers to leave unexplored, carving a niche catering to those of us with an unseemly obsession with life's darkest, most depraved sides."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">James Mason (neo-Nazi)</span> American Nazi

James Nolan Mason is an American neo-Nazi. Mason is an ideologue for the Atomwaffen Division, a neo-Nazi terrorist organization. After growing disillusioned with the mass movement approach of neo-Nazi movements, he began advocating for a white supremacist revolution through terrorism. He was referred to as the "Godfather of Fascist Terrorism" in the Fair Observer. He has been convicted of assault and weapons charges, as well as charged with sexual exploitation and possession of pornographic images of a minor. In 2021, Mason is one of only two individuals sanctioned by the Canadian Government on its list of terror-related entities.

Anarchists have traditionally been skeptical of or vehemently opposed to organized religion. Nevertheless, some anarchists have provided religious interpretations and approaches to anarchism, including the idea that the glorification of the state is a form of sinful idolatry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">National-anarchism</span> Radical right-wing nationalist ideology

National-anarchism is a radical right-wing nationalist ideology which advocates racial separatism, racial nationalism, ethnic nationalism, and racial purity. National-anarchists syncretize ethnic nationalism with anarchism, mainly in their support for a stateless society, while rejecting anarchist social philosophy. The main ideological innovation of national-anarchism is its anti-state palingenetic ultranationalism. National-anarchists advocate homogeneous communities in place of the nation state. National-anarchists claim that those of different ethnic or racial groups would be free to develop separately in their own tribal communes while striving to be politically horizontal, economically non-capitalist, ecologically sustainable, and socially and culturally traditional.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Anarchism in Israel</span>

Anarchism in Israel has been observed in the early Kibbutz movement, among early Labor Zionists as well as an organised movement in Israel following the 1948 Palestine war. Anarchism has also had a mixed relationship with Zionism and the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, with +972 Magazine publishing an article claiming anarchists were "the only group in Israel engaged in serious anti-occupation activism." Animal rights are notably popular among Israeli anarchists, even when compared to anarchist movements in other countries.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Influence and reception of Friedrich Nietzsche</span>

Friedrich Nietzsche's influence and reception varied widely and may be roughly divided into various chronological periods. Reactions were anything but uniform, and proponents of various ideologies attempted to appropriate his work quite early.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Dovid Katz</span> American Yiddish scholar and historian

Dovid Katz is an American-born Vilnius-based scholar, author, and educator specializing in Yiddish language and literature, Lithuanian-Jewish culture, and the Holocaust in Eastern Europe. In recent years, he has been known for combating the so-called "Double Genocide" revision of Holocaust history which asserts a moral equivalence between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. He is editor of the web journal Defending History which he founded in 2009. He is known to spend part of each year at his home in North Wales. His website includes a list of his books, of some articles by topic, a record of recent work, and a more comprehensive bibliography.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jewish left</span> Movement of activists whose Judaism informs their support left-wing or liberal causes

The Jewish left consists of Jews who identify with, or support, left-wing or left-liberal causes, consciously as Jews, either as individuals or through organizations. There is no one organization or movement which constitutes the Jewish left, however. Jews have been major forces in the history of the labor movement, the settlement house movement, the women's rights movement, anti-racist and anti-colonialist work, and anti-fascist and anti-capitalist organizations of many forms in Europe, the United States, Australia, Algeria, Iraq, Ethiopia, South Africa, and modern-day Israel. Jews have a history of involvement in anarchism, socialism, Marxism, and Western liberalism. Although the expression "on the left" covers a range of politics, many well-known figures "on the left" have been of Jews who were born into Jewish families and have various degrees of connection to Jewish communities, Jewish culture, Jewish tradition, or the Jewish religion in its many variants.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rudolf Rocker</span> German anarchist writer and activist

Johann Rudolf Rocker was a German anarchist writer and activist. He was born in Mainz to an artisan family.

<i>Siege</i> (Mason book) Book collecting the articles of American neo-Nazi James Mason

Siege is an anthology of essays first published as a single volume in 1992, written in 1980s by James Mason, a neo-Nazi and associate of the cult leader Charles Manson. After growing disillusioned with the mass movement approach of neo-Nazi movements, he began advocating for white revolution through terrorism. Referred to as the "Godfather of Fascist Terrorism", Mason has been proscribed as a "terrorist entity" in Canada.” Mason originally wrote the essays for the eponymous newsletter of the National Socialist Liberation Front, a militant splinter of the American Nazi Party.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Abba Gordin</span> Israeli anarchist and writer (1887–1964)

Abba Lvovich Gordin (1887–1964) was an Israeli anarchist and Yiddish writer and poet.

<i>Fraye Arbeter Shtime</i> Yiddish-language anarchist newspaper published in New York City, 1890–1977

Freie Arbeiter Stimme was a Yiddish-language anarchist newspaper published from New York City's Lower East Side between 1890 and 1977. It was among the world's longest running anarchist journals, and the primary organ of the Jewish anarchist movement in the United States; at the time that it ceased publication it was the world's oldest Yiddish newspaper. Historian of anarchism Paul Avrich described the paper as playing a vital role in Jewish–American labor history and upholding a high literary standard, having published the most lauded writers and poets in Yiddish radicalism. The paper's editors were major figures in the Jewish–American anarchist movement: David Edelstadt, Saul Yanovsky, Joseph Cohen, Hillel Solotaroff, Roman Lewis, and Moshe Katz.

Joseph Jacob Cohen (1878–1953) was an anarchist who led the Stelton and Mohegan intentional communities and edited the Yiddish anarchist periodical Fraye Arbeter Shtime.

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 Pine, Dan. "'Very fine people': Neo-Nazis are still a menace to America's future". The Jewish News of Northern California.
  2. Strickland, Patrick. "'Nazis in your neighbourhood': Site maps US fascists". Al Jazeera.
  3. https://search.worldcat.org/title/Post-1960-U.S.-anarchism-and-social-theory/oclc/873626873
  4. Pickens, Miriam (2018-08-27). "An Anarchism of the Working-Class: A Review of Whither Anarchism?, by Kristian Williams (To the Point/AK Press, 2018), Reviewed by Miriam Pickens". The Institute for Anarchist Studies . Retrieved 2024-10-19.
  5. Grudo, Gideon. "A forgotten chapter: When Jewish America spoke Yiddish -- and was anarchist". The Times of Israel.
  6. Silow-Carroll, Andrew. "A YIVO conference finds a new audience for Yiddish anarchism". The Times of Israel.
  7. Carroll, Jordan S (October 9, 2024). "The Definitive History of Neo-Nazi Edgelords". Los Angeles Review of Books.