Alexander Reid Ross | |
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 Alexander Reid Ross discussing his book Against the Fascist Creep in 2018 |
Alexander Reid Ross is an American author and adjunct geography lecturer at Portland State University with fellowships at the Centre for the Analysis of the Radical Right (CARR) in the UK and at Political Research Associates. [1] [2] He is author of Against the Fascist Creep.
| Published | 7 February 2017 |
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| Publisher | AK Press |
| Pages | 400 |
| ISBN | 9781849352444 |
Ross published the book Against the Fascist Creep in 2017. [3] In it, Ross defines the phenomenon and term "fascist creep", "the crossover space between right and left" through which "at least in its early stages, fascists often utilize 'broad front' strategies ... to gain access to mainstream political audiences." This can take the appearance of individuals who attempt to position themselves as outside of political divides. [4] In practice, this takes the form of rightwing movements appropriating the language of the left, [5] such as attempts by the right to infiltrate the radical environmentalist factions of the left. [6] The book also describes how the right weaponizes detached irony to break taboos against far-right politics. [7]
The Portland Mercury arts staff listed the book as among 2017's best, describing it as "one of the most thoroughly researched histories of fascist organizing and theoretical lineage from Mussolini to the so-called alt-right of today". The Mercury highlights the book as both clarifying and subtle. [8]
During a book tour event in June 2017, men wearing "Make America Great Again" hats visited the event and attempted disruption. These included Jamie Troutman, an organizer of Unite the Right. [9] Ross told the right-wing visitors that they could stay as long as they remained quiet in the back, which they did. After attendees at the event described the intrusion on social media, local anti-racists and anti-fascists began visiting the bookstore. The crowd swelled from around twenty to over sixty, according to Ross, and the talk continued without further disruption. The right-wing visitors left after the event, and some anti-fascists followed. [3]
Ross began collecting cases in which far-right actors and vigilantes appeared at demonstrations and similar events starting on May 27, 2020. [10] Using this data, he developed an interactive map of the United States describing events and metadata such as involved groups. By early September, Ross had accumulated over 500 such incidents. [11] By mid-October, he had accumulated over 800 incidents. Approximately 90% of the data is sourced from social media and news outlets. The remainder comes from the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED), a non-partisan, international political violence tracking group. Ross categorizes over 400 of the events as beyond harassment or intimidation. Ross found that, though vigilante-style attacks and threats had fallen since summer, the proportion of gun violence and vehicular attacks increased. Though demonstrations and violence at demonstrations were both decreasing, the severity of attacks was increasing, Ross found. The project has been praised by the research director at ACLED, and Heidi Beirich. [10]
In 2018, Ross published an article title "The Multipolar Spin: how fascists operationalize left-wing resentment" in the Southern Poverty Law Center's (SPLC) blog Hatewatch. [12] After receiving complaints, the article was taken down and an apology was extended to "those who believe they have been falsely described" as "white supremacists, fascists, and/or anti-Semites". [13] According to the SPLC's statement, "neither we nor the article's author intended to make any such accusations" and the article was only intended to show "that individuals on the left share some policy views with respect to multipolarism that are also held by the far right and/or appear on far-right media and conferences advocating them". [13] The article described links from members and media of the far-right and the Russian sphere of influence to those the left. Among those discussed was Max Blumenthal, a former AlterNet senior writer, whom Ross argues has used the guise of anti-imperialism to align with Russian and Syrian interests. Blumenthal strenuously opposed these statements and brought his concerns to the SPLC. [14]
The article was the third in a series. The first two titles were "The Internet Research Agency: behind the shadowy network that meddled in the 2016 Elections" and "The far-right influence in pro-Kremlin media and political networks". After the retraction of the third entry, the first two were also removed. [15]
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is an American 501(c)(3) nonprofit legal advocacy organization specializing in civil rights and public interest litigation. Based in Montgomery, Alabama, it is known for its legal cases against white supremacist groups, for its classification of hate groups and other extremist organizations, and for promoting tolerance education programs. The SPLC was founded by Morris Dees, Joseph J. Levin Jr., and Julian Bond in 1971 as a civil rights law firm in Montgomery.
Paul Edward Gottfried is an American paleoconservative political philosopher, historian, and writer. He is a former Professor of Humanities at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania. He is editor-in-chief of the paleoconservative magazine Chronicles. He is an associated scholar at the Mises Institute, a libertarian think tank, and the US correspondent of Nouvelle École, a Nouvelle Droite journal.
Anti-Racist Action (ARA), also known as the Anti-Racist Action Network, is a decentralized network of militant far-left political cells in the United States and Canada. The ARA network originated in the late 1980s to engage in direct action and doxxing against rival political organizations on the hard right to dissuade them from further involvement in political activities. Anti-Racist Action described such groups as racist or fascist, or both. Most ARA members have been anarchists, but some have been Trotskyists and Maoists.
The term red–green–brown alliance, originating in France in the 2000s, refers to the alliance of leftists (red), Islamists (green), and the far right (brown). The term has also been used to describe alleged alliances of industrial union-focused leftists (red), ecologically-minded agrarians (green), and the far right (brown).
In popular discourse, the horseshoe theory asserts that the far-left and the far-right, rather than being at opposite and opposing ends of a linear continuum of the political spectrum, closely resemble each other, analogous to the way that the opposite ends of a horseshoe are close together. The theory is attributed to the French philosopher and writer of fiction and poetry Jean-Pierre Faye in his 2002 book, Le Siècle des idéologies.
The Dark Enlightenment, also called the neo-reactionary movement, is an anti-democratic, anti-egalitarian, reactionary philosophical and political movement. In 2007 and 2008, software engineer Curtis Yarvin, writing under the pen name Mencius Moldbug, articulated what would develop into Dark Enlightenment thinking. Yarvin's theories were elaborated and expanded by philosopher Nick Land, who first coined the term Dark Enlightenment in his essay of the same name. The term "Dark Enlightenment" is a reaction to the Age of Enlightenment and apologia for the public view of the "Dark Ages".
The Proud Boys is an exclusively male North American far-right neo-fascist militant organization that promotes and engages in political violence. The group's leaders have been convicted of violently opposing the US government, including the constitutionally prescribed transfer of presidential power. It has been called a street gang and was designated as a terrorist group in Canada and New Zealand. The Proud Boys are known for their opposition to left-wing and progressive groups and for their support for former U.S. President Donald Trump.
The alt-right is a far-right, white nationalist, white supremacist, anti-LGBT, anti-immigration and antifeminist movement. A largely online phenomenon, the alt-right originated in the United States during the late 2000s before increasing in popularity and establishing a presence in other countries during the mid-2010s, and has been declining since 2017. The term is ill-defined and has been used in different ways by academics, journalists, media commentators, and alt-right members themselves.
Lauren Cherie Southern is a Canadian alt-right YouTuber, political activist and commentator. In 2015, Southern ran as a Libertarian Party candidate in the Canadian federal election. Southern worked for Rebel Media until March 2017, when she began to work independently.
Jack Michael Posobiec III is an American alt-right political activist, television correspondent and presenter, conspiracy theorist, former United States Navy intelligence officer, and provocateur.
Antifa is a left-wing anti-fascist and anti-racist political movement in the United States. It consists of a highly decentralized array of autonomous groups that use nonviolent direct action, incivility, and violence to achieve their aims. Most antifa political activism is nonviolent, involving poster and flyer campaigns, mutual aid, speeches, protest marches, and community organizing. However, some who identify as antifa also use tactics involving digital activism, doxing, harassment, physical violence, and property damage. Members of antifa aim to combat far-right extremists, including neo-Nazis and white supremacists.
Patriot Prayer is a far-right group founded by Joey Gibson in 2016 and based in Vancouver, Washington, a suburban city in the Portland metropolitan area. Since 2016, the group has organized several dozen pro-gun, pro-Trump rallies held in liberal cities in the Pacific Northwest and Northern California. Often met with large numbers of counter-protesters, attendees have repeatedly clashed with left-wing groups in the Portland area. Far-right groups, such as the Proud Boys, have attended the rallies organized by Patriot Prayer, as well as white nationalists, sparking controversy and violence.
Joseph Owan Gibson is an American right-wing activist and the founder of the alt-right group Patriot Prayer, which is active in Portland, Oregon and other cities within the Pacific Northwest.
Rose City Antifa (RCA) is an antifascist group founded in 2007 in Portland, Oregon. A leftist group, it is the oldest known active antifa group in the United States. While anti-fascist activism in the United States dates back to the 1980s, Rose City Antifa is the first to adopt the abbreviated moniker antifa. Since 2016, Rose City Antifa has been one of the nine chapters of the Torch Network coalition.
The Rise Above Movement (RAM) is a militant alt-right Southern California-based street fighting group which has variously been described as "a loose collective of violent neo-Nazis and fascists", white nationalists, white supremacists, and far-right persons. According to the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), it "is inspired by identitarian movements in Europe and it is trying to bring their philosophies and violent tactics to the United States." Its members are primarily located in the areas of Orange County and San Diego, and are variously numbered at 20 to 50. Individual RAM members are also members of other organizations, such as the self-described Identitarian Identity Evropa/American Identity Movement, the "Western chauvinist" Proud Boys, and the neo-Nazi skinhead Hammerskin Nation, according to Northern California Anti-Racist Action (NoCARA).
Opponents of the alt-right have not reached a consensus on how to deal with it. Some opponents emphasized "calling out" tactics, labelling the alt-right with terms like "racist", "sexist", "homophobic", and "white supremacist" in the belief that doing so would scare people away from it. Many commentators urged journalists not to refer to the alt-right by its chosen name, but rather with terms like "neo-Nazi". There was much discussion within U.S. public discourse as to how to avoid the "normalization" of the alt-right. The activist group Stop Normalizing, which opposes the normalization of terms like alt-right, developed the "Stop Normalizing Alt Right" Chrome extension. The extension went viral shortly after the release of Stop Normalizing's website. The extension changes the term "alt-right" on webpages to "white supremacy". The extension and group were founded by a New York-based advertising and media professional under the pseudonym George Zola.
Andy Cuong Ngo is an American conservative journalist, author, and social media influencer known for covering and video-recording demonstrators. He is the editor-at-large of The Post Millennial, a Canadian conservative news website. A regular guest on Fox News, Ngo has published columns in the New York Post and The Wall Street Journal.
The Grayzone is an American far-left news website and blog founded and edited by American journalist Max Blumenthal. The website, initially founded as The Grayzone Project, was affiliated with AlterNet before becoming independent in early 2018. A fringe website, it is known for misleading reporting and sympathetic coverage of authoritarian regimes. The Grayzone has denied human rights abuses against Uyghurs, posted conspiracy theories about Venezuela, Xinjiang, Syria and other regions, and posted pro-Russian propaganda during the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Since its foundation in 2016, members of the Proud Boys, a far-right, neo-fascist, and exclusively male organization, have been involved in a number controversial and violent events. This list contains a number of those events, some of which have resulted in criminal charges being filed against participants.
Tusitala John Toese also known as Tiny, is a convicted felon. He is a member of the Proud Boys, a far-right group that engages in political violence in the United States. He was, and still is, a member of the Portland area far-right group Patriot Prayer, prior to joining the Proud Boys and has been convicted of multiple criminal charges for violence at rallies.
'After receiving some concerns about the article from Max Blumenthal that evening, we took it down, pending further review,' the SPLC said in a statement.
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 | This article needs additional or more specific categories .(October 2020) |
