There are family resemblances among fascisms and the racial programs among the RW groups that converge at events like Charlottesville. What brings this home are witnesses from within the right-wing groups like a 25 year old Swede.
One needs to understand that there are common elements of racial supremacy whether arguing the marginal differences like whether neo-Nazis are less “Nazi”, or whether a program promoting the (re-) domination of Western Civilization favors the colonial supremacy of European cultures. As if one could ignore the historical racialism of such colonialism/neocolonialism as manifest everyday in the so-called West.
Labeling something economic nationalism while promoting ethnic discrimination still devolves to programs appealing to racial hierarchies, especially when hypothesizing racialist policies that support anti-democratic immigration policies.
“Economic anxiety” is just code for not wanting the “Other” to move next door, rent your apartment, or marry your kids. It’s no different than claiming a historic heritage that while not directly owning a slave, was still an economic heritage based on slave-holding/human trafficking in the 19th Century. Under capitalism, all lives have economic anxiety (see Trump tax returns — will we?).
And then there’s having a President and a White House who cannot clearly condemn enemies of histories that have defined this nation as explicitly anti-fascist.
Patrik Hermansson, 25, spent a year pretending he was writing a masters thesis about the suppression of right-wing free speech. Working undercover for British advocacy group Hope Not Hate, his investigation took him from Sweden to London to Washington D.C. and finally Charlottesville.
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One of Hermansson’s most interesting encounters during his time undercover was with Jason Reza Jorjani, an academic who until recently sat on the board of directors of AltRight.com, a website designed to foster cooperation between different white nationalist groups. (Prominent neo-Nazi Richard Spencer serves as its American Editor.) Jorjani is of Iranian-American descent and describes himself as a “long-time student of the glorious history of the Aryan nation of Iran”.
Hermansson met with Jorjani at an Irish bar in midtown Manhattan in June, where the two talked about a future in which Europe embraces fascism. “It’s going to end with the expulsion of the majority of migrants including citizens, who are of Muslim descent, generally” Jorjani said. “That’s how it’s going to end. It’s going to end with concentration camps and expulsion and war. At the cost of a few hundred million people.”
It uncovers the infiltration of the “alt-right” in the UK, with Sheffield-born blogger Paul Joseph Watson among those using their online following to reach audiences the traditional far-right has until now been unable to muster.
As a general principle The Independent avoids using the term “alt-right”, on the basis it is a euphemism employed to disguise racist aims.
The report says a second, “moderate” wing – dubbed the “alt-light” – has become increasingly influential on right-wing politics in Britain, pushing Ukip and others into ever-more hard-line territory.
Authors of the study
The International Alternative Right: From Charlottesville to the White House also claim to have found links between the hard-right network and the Trump administration.
Speaking of his experiences infiltrating the network of white supremacists, Patrik Hermansson said: “For almost a year I’ve been at the heart of a world of extreme racism, antisemitism, Holocaust denial, esoteric Nazi rituals and wild conspiracy theories.
“What I found was a movement that sometimes glorifies Nazi Germany, openly supports genocidal ideas and is unrelentingly racist, sexist and homophobic.”
www.independent.co.uk/...