SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
To donate by check, phone, or other method, see our More Ways to Give page.
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
Trump supporters rally on the National Mall, 2017 (Kelly Bell/Shutterstock.com)
On March 5, the prominent white nationalist Richard Spencer was scheduled to speak at Michigan State University.
The event quickly turned into a bust when only about three dozen people made it inside the building -- while hundreds of Spencer supporters and anti-fascist protestors confronted each other outside, throwing rocks and punches. Local police arrested 25 people.
The next day, Spencer's lawyer Kyle Bristow resigned and quit the white nationalist "alt- right" movement altogether, complaining about the relentless vilification of his work in the media.
The Southern Poverty Law Center previously described Bristow as the "go-to attorney for a growing cast of racists." He'd set up the Foundation for the Marketplace of Ideas, which he once described as "the sword and shield" of the alt- right. Now the website and Facebook page no longer exist, and there's been no mention of any new leadership.
Less than a week later, on March 11, Spencer announced in a YouTube video that he was canceling a planned college tour amid increasing violence and low attendance. "Antifa is winning" and rallies "aren't fun anymore," Spencer conceded. "We felt that great feeling of winning for a long time. We are now into something that feels more like a hard struggle, and victories are not easy to come by."
Indeed, as alt-right members seek more of a public profile, coordinated anti-fascist actions and online pushback have intensified, making it harder for them to recruit, host events, and find jobs. They've been forced into online echo chambers.
Two days later, the implosion continued. Matthew Heimbach, head of the white supremacist Traditional Worker Party (TWP), was charged with domestic battery for assaulting his stepfather and TWP spokesperson, Matthew Parrott. The two violently confronted each other after Parrott learned of an affair between his wife and Heimbach. Soon after the arrest, Parrot resigned from TWP and took down the website. "I'm done. I'm out," Parrott told the Southern Poverty Law Center. "SPLC has won. Matt Parrott is out of the game. Y'all have a nice life."
At one level, the alt-right seems to have succumbed to leadership rivalries and infighting. The Washington Post even reported recently that the movement appeared to be "imploding."
However, division is not necessarily a sign of collapse. Indeed, such divisions are inevitable in a political movement -- and could instead be a sign of intense ideological activity. Even though high-profile leaders like Richard Spencer and Matthew Heimbach have stumbled, white grievance and the far right ideologies that fuel it continue to be nurtured online, and have broken into the political mainstream on both sides of the Atlantic.
European Inspiration
From its inception, the American alt-right has been drawing its ideological, rhetorical, and tactical inspiration from European far-right thought and movements. And there, the trend is toward more tightly controlled, somewhat less explicitly racial branding.
Identity Evropa (IE) is a relatively new, youth-led American white nationalist group that promotes what it calls "ethnopluralism" -- that is, ethnic separation -- to preserve a mythologized European heritage and white identity from the perceived threat of "Islamicization" and mass migration.
After Charlottesville and under the new leadership of Patrick Casey, IE has been distancing itself from the more extreme elements of the alt-right to control their branding. IE members are now carefully vetted, events are invitation-only, and they use an "identitarian" rhetoric centered on "culture" and "identity" rather than race.
IE's inspiration comes from the pan-European identitarian organization Generation Identity (GI). Many American far-right activists admire GI for its ability to pull off high profile publicity stunts and bring activists out onto the streets. Discussing North American identitarianism and collective learning between the U.S. and Europe, American far right activist and social media personality Brittany Pettibone told Austrian GI co-leader Martin Sellner (now also her boyfriend) in a video: "We've mastered the online activism and you've mastered the in-real life activism."
Last summer, GI activists rented out a ship and sailed out into the Mediterranean to disrupt the work of humanitarian groups saving the lives of migrants. They received financial support and media coverage from a wide range of far-right figures and groups across the world -- including former KKK leader David Duke, Canadian "alt-light" vlogger Lauren Southern, Breitbart News, and European Parliament member Nigel Farage.
More recently, GI struck again. In late April, between 80 and 100 activists -- including Pettibone, Southern, and Sellner -- tried to block a French alpine pass used by migrants. They set up a "border" with plastic wire mesh, rented out two helicopters, and flew drones to surveil the area and rebuked migrants. "The mission was a success," a GI spokesperson told the French newspaper Le Monde. "We successfully brought media and political attention to the pass." In both actions, stopping migrants was less important than getting international publicity and proving their legitimacy.
Identity Evropa imitates many lower-wattage GI tactics such as banner drops, flash demonstrations, and leafleting campaigns, mostly on college and university campuses. These non-violent actions are then heavily shared online to amplify their impact and visibility. The group also focuses on fostering a sense of community among members through social meetups, hiking trips, fitness clubs, and communal activities.
Organizing Digitally
Although the recent misfortunates have befallen the most extreme and public fringes of the alt-right, the more putatively "moderate" wing continues to propagate and normalize far-right propaganda in the mainstream political discourse with impunity. Right-wing radicals and social media personalities Mike Cernovich and Alex Jones in the U.S., Paul Joseph Watson in the UK, and Lauren Southern in Canada have together over 4 million followers on YouTube alone.
The majority of American extreme right groups are now highly internationalized, and highly active on the Internet. Skillfully using multimedia opportunities and social media, they are able to reach, recruit, and mobilize a wider audience and diffuse far-right propaganda beyond national borders. The internet has given them the opportunity to scale up their activism from the local level to the transnational level, opening up new markets and broadening their audience.
The tech savvy alt-right is not short of options to thwart crackdown efforts led by tech companies and regulators. Extremist groups banned from mainstream crowdfunding platforms like PayPal, for example, have been investing in cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin to collect money and continue their activities free from government control. During his speech at the far-right National Front party convention in France last month, white nationalist Stephen K. Bannon, formerly Donald Trump's chief strategist, praised cryptocurrency and block-chain technology for their liberating and empowering potential.
Penetrating the Mainstream
Neither the KKK nor white nationalists hold a monopoly on violence, racism, Islamophobia, or nativism. In fact, their bigoted beliefs have long been thriving far beyond the insular world of the far right and are firmly rooted in the broader social and political order.
In her recent book White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide, American writer and academic Carol Anderson traces the legacy of white rage and structural racism in American society. She writes:
White rage is not about visible violence, but rather it works its way through the courts, the legislatures, and a range of government bureaucracies. It wreaks havoc subtly almost imperceptibly. Too imperceptibly, certainly, for a nation consistently drawn to the spectacular -- to what it can see. It's not the Klan. White rage doesn't have to wear sheets, burn crosses, or take to the streets. Working the halls of power, it can achieve its ends far more effectively, far more destructively.
In this sense, the Republican Party has become a much more powerful instrument of white rage than the alt-right. At the state level, University of Georgia Professor and Far Right in America author Cas Mudde writes, "authoritarianism and nativism run rampant among governors and legislators alike. It is almost exclusively among GOP-controlled states that strict anti-immigration and 'anti-Sharia' legislation was introduced. And the vast majority of Republican governors refused to accept Syrian refugees to their state, on the unfounded allegation that they would include terrorists."
At the federal level, far-right-leaning elected officials in the House and Congress are a minority, albeit a vocal one. In the White House, however, ultra-conservatives are gaining power since problematic far rightists (like Stephen Bannon and Sebastian Gorka) and more establishment-minded "globalists" (like Rex Tillerson, Gary Cohn, and H.R. McMaster) have been purged. Trump's nomination of John Bolton and Mike Pompeo, well known war hawks and Islamophobes, to key foreign policy posts suggests that this element of the Republican Party is ascendant, at least within the executive branch.
With the nomination of CIA director Pompeo as new secretary of state, "President Trump is playing right into the hands of the radical anti-Muslim movement in the U.S. and abroad," warns the SPLC. Indeed, Pompeo has close ties with major anti-Islamic groups, such as Act For America, which has lobbied to restrict refugees settlements into the United States. Act for America awarded Pompeo its highest honor, the National Security Eagle award, in 2016.
Bolton's background is even more problematic. He's deeply connected with high-profile members of the so-called counter-jihadist movement, such as the president of the right-wing Center for Security Policy, Frank Gaffney. Bolton was also chairman of the anti-Muslim Gatestone Institute, a think tank known for publishing fearmongering articles and fake news about refugees and Islam, right up through March 2018.
Facing external resistance and internal disagreements, the alt-right is having trouble unifying and mobilizing in the streets. However, it continues to be a threat online by skillfully using the Internet to spread far-right propaganda, recruit, raise money, and build transnational solidarity networks.
Carol Anderson advises her readers to pay attention to the logs and kindling, and not get blindsided by the flames. The president's inflammatory tweets, white nationalists gathering in the streets, and the surge in hate crimes are the visible flames of a rampaging wildfire.
Sometimes, as with Richard Spencer and Matthew Heimbach, the flames threaten to burn themselves out. But the digital campaigns on the Internet and the mainstreaming of identitarian rhetoric are the kindling that bears closer attention.
Donald Trump’s attacks on democracy, justice, and a free press are escalating — putting everything we stand for at risk. We believe a better world is possible, but we can’t get there without your support. Common Dreams stands apart. We answer only to you — our readers, activists, and changemakers — not to billionaires or corporations. Our independence allows us to cover the vital stories that others won’t, spotlighting movements for peace, equality, and human rights. Right now, our work faces unprecedented challenges. Misinformation is spreading, journalists are under attack, and financial pressures are mounting. As a reader-supported, nonprofit newsroom, your support is crucial to keep this journalism alive. Whatever you can give — $10, $25, or $100 — helps us stay strong and responsive when the world needs us most. Together, we’ll continue to build the independent, courageous journalism our movement relies on. Thank you for being part of this community. |
On March 5, the prominent white nationalist Richard Spencer was scheduled to speak at Michigan State University.
The event quickly turned into a bust when only about three dozen people made it inside the building -- while hundreds of Spencer supporters and anti-fascist protestors confronted each other outside, throwing rocks and punches. Local police arrested 25 people.
The next day, Spencer's lawyer Kyle Bristow resigned and quit the white nationalist "alt- right" movement altogether, complaining about the relentless vilification of his work in the media.
The Southern Poverty Law Center previously described Bristow as the "go-to attorney for a growing cast of racists." He'd set up the Foundation for the Marketplace of Ideas, which he once described as "the sword and shield" of the alt- right. Now the website and Facebook page no longer exist, and there's been no mention of any new leadership.
Less than a week later, on March 11, Spencer announced in a YouTube video that he was canceling a planned college tour amid increasing violence and low attendance. "Antifa is winning" and rallies "aren't fun anymore," Spencer conceded. "We felt that great feeling of winning for a long time. We are now into something that feels more like a hard struggle, and victories are not easy to come by."
Indeed, as alt-right members seek more of a public profile, coordinated anti-fascist actions and online pushback have intensified, making it harder for them to recruit, host events, and find jobs. They've been forced into online echo chambers.
Two days later, the implosion continued. Matthew Heimbach, head of the white supremacist Traditional Worker Party (TWP), was charged with domestic battery for assaulting his stepfather and TWP spokesperson, Matthew Parrott. The two violently confronted each other after Parrott learned of an affair between his wife and Heimbach. Soon after the arrest, Parrot resigned from TWP and took down the website. "I'm done. I'm out," Parrott told the Southern Poverty Law Center. "SPLC has won. Matt Parrott is out of the game. Y'all have a nice life."
At one level, the alt-right seems to have succumbed to leadership rivalries and infighting. The Washington Post even reported recently that the movement appeared to be "imploding."
However, division is not necessarily a sign of collapse. Indeed, such divisions are inevitable in a political movement -- and could instead be a sign of intense ideological activity. Even though high-profile leaders like Richard Spencer and Matthew Heimbach have stumbled, white grievance and the far right ideologies that fuel it continue to be nurtured online, and have broken into the political mainstream on both sides of the Atlantic.
European Inspiration
From its inception, the American alt-right has been drawing its ideological, rhetorical, and tactical inspiration from European far-right thought and movements. And there, the trend is toward more tightly controlled, somewhat less explicitly racial branding.
Identity Evropa (IE) is a relatively new, youth-led American white nationalist group that promotes what it calls "ethnopluralism" -- that is, ethnic separation -- to preserve a mythologized European heritage and white identity from the perceived threat of "Islamicization" and mass migration.
After Charlottesville and under the new leadership of Patrick Casey, IE has been distancing itself from the more extreme elements of the alt-right to control their branding. IE members are now carefully vetted, events are invitation-only, and they use an "identitarian" rhetoric centered on "culture" and "identity" rather than race.
IE's inspiration comes from the pan-European identitarian organization Generation Identity (GI). Many American far-right activists admire GI for its ability to pull off high profile publicity stunts and bring activists out onto the streets. Discussing North American identitarianism and collective learning between the U.S. and Europe, American far right activist and social media personality Brittany Pettibone told Austrian GI co-leader Martin Sellner (now also her boyfriend) in a video: "We've mastered the online activism and you've mastered the in-real life activism."
Last summer, GI activists rented out a ship and sailed out into the Mediterranean to disrupt the work of humanitarian groups saving the lives of migrants. They received financial support and media coverage from a wide range of far-right figures and groups across the world -- including former KKK leader David Duke, Canadian "alt-light" vlogger Lauren Southern, Breitbart News, and European Parliament member Nigel Farage.
More recently, GI struck again. In late April, between 80 and 100 activists -- including Pettibone, Southern, and Sellner -- tried to block a French alpine pass used by migrants. They set up a "border" with plastic wire mesh, rented out two helicopters, and flew drones to surveil the area and rebuked migrants. "The mission was a success," a GI spokesperson told the French newspaper Le Monde. "We successfully brought media and political attention to the pass." In both actions, stopping migrants was less important than getting international publicity and proving their legitimacy.
Identity Evropa imitates many lower-wattage GI tactics such as banner drops, flash demonstrations, and leafleting campaigns, mostly on college and university campuses. These non-violent actions are then heavily shared online to amplify their impact and visibility. The group also focuses on fostering a sense of community among members through social meetups, hiking trips, fitness clubs, and communal activities.
Organizing Digitally
Although the recent misfortunates have befallen the most extreme and public fringes of the alt-right, the more putatively "moderate" wing continues to propagate and normalize far-right propaganda in the mainstream political discourse with impunity. Right-wing radicals and social media personalities Mike Cernovich and Alex Jones in the U.S., Paul Joseph Watson in the UK, and Lauren Southern in Canada have together over 4 million followers on YouTube alone.
The majority of American extreme right groups are now highly internationalized, and highly active on the Internet. Skillfully using multimedia opportunities and social media, they are able to reach, recruit, and mobilize a wider audience and diffuse far-right propaganda beyond national borders. The internet has given them the opportunity to scale up their activism from the local level to the transnational level, opening up new markets and broadening their audience.
The tech savvy alt-right is not short of options to thwart crackdown efforts led by tech companies and regulators. Extremist groups banned from mainstream crowdfunding platforms like PayPal, for example, have been investing in cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin to collect money and continue their activities free from government control. During his speech at the far-right National Front party convention in France last month, white nationalist Stephen K. Bannon, formerly Donald Trump's chief strategist, praised cryptocurrency and block-chain technology for their liberating and empowering potential.
Penetrating the Mainstream
Neither the KKK nor white nationalists hold a monopoly on violence, racism, Islamophobia, or nativism. In fact, their bigoted beliefs have long been thriving far beyond the insular world of the far right and are firmly rooted in the broader social and political order.
In her recent book White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide, American writer and academic Carol Anderson traces the legacy of white rage and structural racism in American society. She writes:
White rage is not about visible violence, but rather it works its way through the courts, the legislatures, and a range of government bureaucracies. It wreaks havoc subtly almost imperceptibly. Too imperceptibly, certainly, for a nation consistently drawn to the spectacular -- to what it can see. It's not the Klan. White rage doesn't have to wear sheets, burn crosses, or take to the streets. Working the halls of power, it can achieve its ends far more effectively, far more destructively.
In this sense, the Republican Party has become a much more powerful instrument of white rage than the alt-right. At the state level, University of Georgia Professor and Far Right in America author Cas Mudde writes, "authoritarianism and nativism run rampant among governors and legislators alike. It is almost exclusively among GOP-controlled states that strict anti-immigration and 'anti-Sharia' legislation was introduced. And the vast majority of Republican governors refused to accept Syrian refugees to their state, on the unfounded allegation that they would include terrorists."
At the federal level, far-right-leaning elected officials in the House and Congress are a minority, albeit a vocal one. In the White House, however, ultra-conservatives are gaining power since problematic far rightists (like Stephen Bannon and Sebastian Gorka) and more establishment-minded "globalists" (like Rex Tillerson, Gary Cohn, and H.R. McMaster) have been purged. Trump's nomination of John Bolton and Mike Pompeo, well known war hawks and Islamophobes, to key foreign policy posts suggests that this element of the Republican Party is ascendant, at least within the executive branch.
With the nomination of CIA director Pompeo as new secretary of state, "President Trump is playing right into the hands of the radical anti-Muslim movement in the U.S. and abroad," warns the SPLC. Indeed, Pompeo has close ties with major anti-Islamic groups, such as Act For America, which has lobbied to restrict refugees settlements into the United States. Act for America awarded Pompeo its highest honor, the National Security Eagle award, in 2016.
Bolton's background is even more problematic. He's deeply connected with high-profile members of the so-called counter-jihadist movement, such as the president of the right-wing Center for Security Policy, Frank Gaffney. Bolton was also chairman of the anti-Muslim Gatestone Institute, a think tank known for publishing fearmongering articles and fake news about refugees and Islam, right up through March 2018.
Facing external resistance and internal disagreements, the alt-right is having trouble unifying and mobilizing in the streets. However, it continues to be a threat online by skillfully using the Internet to spread far-right propaganda, recruit, raise money, and build transnational solidarity networks.
Carol Anderson advises her readers to pay attention to the logs and kindling, and not get blindsided by the flames. The president's inflammatory tweets, white nationalists gathering in the streets, and the surge in hate crimes are the visible flames of a rampaging wildfire.
Sometimes, as with Richard Spencer and Matthew Heimbach, the flames threaten to burn themselves out. But the digital campaigns on the Internet and the mainstreaming of identitarian rhetoric are the kindling that bears closer attention.
On March 5, the prominent white nationalist Richard Spencer was scheduled to speak at Michigan State University.
The event quickly turned into a bust when only about three dozen people made it inside the building -- while hundreds of Spencer supporters and anti-fascist protestors confronted each other outside, throwing rocks and punches. Local police arrested 25 people.
The next day, Spencer's lawyer Kyle Bristow resigned and quit the white nationalist "alt- right" movement altogether, complaining about the relentless vilification of his work in the media.
The Southern Poverty Law Center previously described Bristow as the "go-to attorney for a growing cast of racists." He'd set up the Foundation for the Marketplace of Ideas, which he once described as "the sword and shield" of the alt- right. Now the website and Facebook page no longer exist, and there's been no mention of any new leadership.
Less than a week later, on March 11, Spencer announced in a YouTube video that he was canceling a planned college tour amid increasing violence and low attendance. "Antifa is winning" and rallies "aren't fun anymore," Spencer conceded. "We felt that great feeling of winning for a long time. We are now into something that feels more like a hard struggle, and victories are not easy to come by."
Indeed, as alt-right members seek more of a public profile, coordinated anti-fascist actions and online pushback have intensified, making it harder for them to recruit, host events, and find jobs. They've been forced into online echo chambers.
Two days later, the implosion continued. Matthew Heimbach, head of the white supremacist Traditional Worker Party (TWP), was charged with domestic battery for assaulting his stepfather and TWP spokesperson, Matthew Parrott. The two violently confronted each other after Parrott learned of an affair between his wife and Heimbach. Soon after the arrest, Parrot resigned from TWP and took down the website. "I'm done. I'm out," Parrott told the Southern Poverty Law Center. "SPLC has won. Matt Parrott is out of the game. Y'all have a nice life."
At one level, the alt-right seems to have succumbed to leadership rivalries and infighting. The Washington Post even reported recently that the movement appeared to be "imploding."
However, division is not necessarily a sign of collapse. Indeed, such divisions are inevitable in a political movement -- and could instead be a sign of intense ideological activity. Even though high-profile leaders like Richard Spencer and Matthew Heimbach have stumbled, white grievance and the far right ideologies that fuel it continue to be nurtured online, and have broken into the political mainstream on both sides of the Atlantic.
European Inspiration
From its inception, the American alt-right has been drawing its ideological, rhetorical, and tactical inspiration from European far-right thought and movements. And there, the trend is toward more tightly controlled, somewhat less explicitly racial branding.
Identity Evropa (IE) is a relatively new, youth-led American white nationalist group that promotes what it calls "ethnopluralism" -- that is, ethnic separation -- to preserve a mythologized European heritage and white identity from the perceived threat of "Islamicization" and mass migration.
After Charlottesville and under the new leadership of Patrick Casey, IE has been distancing itself from the more extreme elements of the alt-right to control their branding. IE members are now carefully vetted, events are invitation-only, and they use an "identitarian" rhetoric centered on "culture" and "identity" rather than race.
IE's inspiration comes from the pan-European identitarian organization Generation Identity (GI). Many American far-right activists admire GI for its ability to pull off high profile publicity stunts and bring activists out onto the streets. Discussing North American identitarianism and collective learning between the U.S. and Europe, American far right activist and social media personality Brittany Pettibone told Austrian GI co-leader Martin Sellner (now also her boyfriend) in a video: "We've mastered the online activism and you've mastered the in-real life activism."
Last summer, GI activists rented out a ship and sailed out into the Mediterranean to disrupt the work of humanitarian groups saving the lives of migrants. They received financial support and media coverage from a wide range of far-right figures and groups across the world -- including former KKK leader David Duke, Canadian "alt-light" vlogger Lauren Southern, Breitbart News, and European Parliament member Nigel Farage.
More recently, GI struck again. In late April, between 80 and 100 activists -- including Pettibone, Southern, and Sellner -- tried to block a French alpine pass used by migrants. They set up a "border" with plastic wire mesh, rented out two helicopters, and flew drones to surveil the area and rebuked migrants. "The mission was a success," a GI spokesperson told the French newspaper Le Monde. "We successfully brought media and political attention to the pass." In both actions, stopping migrants was less important than getting international publicity and proving their legitimacy.
Identity Evropa imitates many lower-wattage GI tactics such as banner drops, flash demonstrations, and leafleting campaigns, mostly on college and university campuses. These non-violent actions are then heavily shared online to amplify their impact and visibility. The group also focuses on fostering a sense of community among members through social meetups, hiking trips, fitness clubs, and communal activities.
Organizing Digitally
Although the recent misfortunates have befallen the most extreme and public fringes of the alt-right, the more putatively "moderate" wing continues to propagate and normalize far-right propaganda in the mainstream political discourse with impunity. Right-wing radicals and social media personalities Mike Cernovich and Alex Jones in the U.S., Paul Joseph Watson in the UK, and Lauren Southern in Canada have together over 4 million followers on YouTube alone.
The majority of American extreme right groups are now highly internationalized, and highly active on the Internet. Skillfully using multimedia opportunities and social media, they are able to reach, recruit, and mobilize a wider audience and diffuse far-right propaganda beyond national borders. The internet has given them the opportunity to scale up their activism from the local level to the transnational level, opening up new markets and broadening their audience.
The tech savvy alt-right is not short of options to thwart crackdown efforts led by tech companies and regulators. Extremist groups banned from mainstream crowdfunding platforms like PayPal, for example, have been investing in cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin to collect money and continue their activities free from government control. During his speech at the far-right National Front party convention in France last month, white nationalist Stephen K. Bannon, formerly Donald Trump's chief strategist, praised cryptocurrency and block-chain technology for their liberating and empowering potential.
Penetrating the Mainstream
Neither the KKK nor white nationalists hold a monopoly on violence, racism, Islamophobia, or nativism. In fact, their bigoted beliefs have long been thriving far beyond the insular world of the far right and are firmly rooted in the broader social and political order.
In her recent book White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide, American writer and academic Carol Anderson traces the legacy of white rage and structural racism in American society. She writes:
White rage is not about visible violence, but rather it works its way through the courts, the legislatures, and a range of government bureaucracies. It wreaks havoc subtly almost imperceptibly. Too imperceptibly, certainly, for a nation consistently drawn to the spectacular -- to what it can see. It's not the Klan. White rage doesn't have to wear sheets, burn crosses, or take to the streets. Working the halls of power, it can achieve its ends far more effectively, far more destructively.
In this sense, the Republican Party has become a much more powerful instrument of white rage than the alt-right. At the state level, University of Georgia Professor and Far Right in America author Cas Mudde writes, "authoritarianism and nativism run rampant among governors and legislators alike. It is almost exclusively among GOP-controlled states that strict anti-immigration and 'anti-Sharia' legislation was introduced. And the vast majority of Republican governors refused to accept Syrian refugees to their state, on the unfounded allegation that they would include terrorists."
At the federal level, far-right-leaning elected officials in the House and Congress are a minority, albeit a vocal one. In the White House, however, ultra-conservatives are gaining power since problematic far rightists (like Stephen Bannon and Sebastian Gorka) and more establishment-minded "globalists" (like Rex Tillerson, Gary Cohn, and H.R. McMaster) have been purged. Trump's nomination of John Bolton and Mike Pompeo, well known war hawks and Islamophobes, to key foreign policy posts suggests that this element of the Republican Party is ascendant, at least within the executive branch.
With the nomination of CIA director Pompeo as new secretary of state, "President Trump is playing right into the hands of the radical anti-Muslim movement in the U.S. and abroad," warns the SPLC. Indeed, Pompeo has close ties with major anti-Islamic groups, such as Act For America, which has lobbied to restrict refugees settlements into the United States. Act for America awarded Pompeo its highest honor, the National Security Eagle award, in 2016.
Bolton's background is even more problematic. He's deeply connected with high-profile members of the so-called counter-jihadist movement, such as the president of the right-wing Center for Security Policy, Frank Gaffney. Bolton was also chairman of the anti-Muslim Gatestone Institute, a think tank known for publishing fearmongering articles and fake news about refugees and Islam, right up through March 2018.
Facing external resistance and internal disagreements, the alt-right is having trouble unifying and mobilizing in the streets. However, it continues to be a threat online by skillfully using the Internet to spread far-right propaganda, recruit, raise money, and build transnational solidarity networks.
Carol Anderson advises her readers to pay attention to the logs and kindling, and not get blindsided by the flames. The president's inflammatory tweets, white nationalists gathering in the streets, and the surge in hate crimes are the visible flames of a rampaging wildfire.
Sometimes, as with Richard Spencer and Matthew Heimbach, the flames threaten to burn themselves out. But the digital campaigns on the Internet and the mainstreaming of identitarian rhetoric are the kindling that bears closer attention.
"The time is long overdue for Congress to use the leverage we have—tens of billions in arms and military aid—to demand that Israel end these atrocities," said Sen. Bernie Sanders.
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders said he intends to force votes on Wednesday to block the Trump administration's effort to send billions of dollars' worth of additional bombs and assault rifles to Israel as the country's military starves and massacres Gaza's population.
Sanders (I-Vt.) first introduced the resolutions in March after the Trump administration notified Congress of its plans to send Israel more weaponry, including thousands of 1,000-pound bombs and tens of thousands of assault rifles.
The senator's resolutions, S.J.Res.34 and S.J.Res.41, aim to prohibit the sale of 1,000-pound bombs, Joint Direct Attack Munition (JDAM) guidance kits, and assault rifles, as well as related logistical support. The joint resolutions are privileged, meaning they cannot be amended and are not subject to the Senate filibuster, requiring just a simple-majority vote to pass.
"U.S. taxpayers have spent tens of billions of dollars in support of the racist, extremist Netanyahu government. Enough is enough," Sanders said in a statement Tuesday. "We cannot continue to spend taxpayer money on a government which has killed some 60,000 Palestinians and wounded more than 143,000—most of whom are women, children, and the elderly. We cannot continue supporting a government which has blocked humanitarian aid, caused massive famine, and literally starved the people of Gaza."
"The time is long overdue for Congress to use the leverage we have—tens of billions in arms and military aid—to demand that Israel end these atrocities," the senator added.
"Continuing these arms sales would violate U.S. laws that prohibit assistance to governments engaged in gross human rights abuses and obstruction of aid."
Since the start of President Donald Trump's second term, his administration has approved around $12 billion in arms sales to Israel and lifted a Biden-era block on the delivery of 2,000-pound bombs that Israeli forces have used to commit atrocities against Palestinians.
Earlier this year, Sanders led an unsuccessful effort to block the Trump administration's sale of nearly $9 billion in weapons to the Israeli government. Just 14 senators, all Democrats, backed the resolutions.
But there are some indications that support for blocking arms sales could grow as the starvation crisis that Israel has imposed on Gaza intensifies. Sen. Angus King (I-Maine), who did not support the resolutions Sanders tried to pass in April, said earlier this week that he would vote for "an end to any United States support whatsoever" for Israel "until there is a demonstrable change in the direction of Israeli policy."
"My litmus test will be simple: No aid of any kind as long as there are starving children in Gaza due to the action or inaction of the Israeli government," said King.
Sanders argued that cutting off offensive U.S. military support for Israel is both a moral and legal necessity. In a press release announcing the impending votes, the senator's office noted that "the arms sales in question clearly violate the criteria laid out in the Foreign Assistance Act and the Arms Export Control Act."
"Reliable human rights monitors have documented numerous incidents involving the use of 1,000-pound bombs and JDAMs in illegal strikes leading to unacceptable civilian death tolls," Sanders' office explained. "These include strikes in which hundreds of civilians have been killed and strikes on humanitarian facilities, including U.N. schools. The rifles in question will go to arm a police force overseen by Itamar Ben-Gvir, who advocates for the forcible expulsion of Palestinians from the region, who has been convicted of support for terrorism by an Israeli court, and who has distributed weapons to violent settlers in the West Bank."
Hassan El-Tayyab, legislative director for Middle East policy at the Friends Committee on National Legislation, applauded Sanders for moving once again to block U.S. arms sales to Israel "in light of its devastating conduct in Gaza."
"The Israeli military has used U.S.-origin weapons in attacks that have killed Palestinian civilians, destroyed civilian infrastructure, and deepened an ongoing humanitarian catastrophe," said El-Tayyab. "Continuing these arms sales would violate U.S. laws that prohibit assistance to governments engaged in gross human rights abuses and obstruction of aid. This resolution rightly affirms that U.S. weapons must not fuel further atrocities, and that only diplomacy, not more bombs, can bring an end to this crisis."
"Zeldin's assertion that the EPA shouldn't address greenhouse gas emissions is like a fire chief claiming that they shouldn't fight fires," said one critic. "It is as malicious as it is absurd."
U.S. President Donald Trump's administration faced an onslaught of criticism on Tuesday for starting the process of repealing the 2009 legal opinion that greenhouse gases endanger public health and the welfare of the American people—which has enabled federal regulations aimed at the fossil fuel-driven climate emergency over the past 15 years.
Confirming reports from last week, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin unveiled the rule to rescind the 2009 "endangerment finding" at a truck dealership in Indiana. According to The New York Times, he said that "the proposal would, if finalized, amount to the largest deregulatory action in the history of the United States."
If the administration succeeds in repealing the legal finding, the EPA would lack authority under the Clean Air Act to impose standards for greenhouse gas emissions—meaning the move would kill vehicle regulations. As with the reporting last week, the formal announcement was sharply condemned by climate and health advocates and experts.
"Greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and are the root cause of the climate crisis," said Deanna Noël with Public Citizen's Climate Program, ripping the administration's effort as "grossly misguided and exceptionally dangerous."
"This isn't just a denial of science and reality—it's a betrayal of public trust and yet another signal that this administration is working for corporate interests, and no one else."
"Stripping the EPA of its ability to regulate greenhouse gases is like throwing away the fire extinguisher while the house is already burning," she warned. "The administration is shamelessly handing Big Oil a hall pass to pollute unchecked and dodge accountability, leaving working families to bear the costs through worsening health outcomes, rising energy bills, more climate-fueled extreme weather, and an increasingly unstable future. This isn't just a denial of science and reality—it's a betrayal of public trust and yet another signal that this administration is working for corporate interests, and no one else."
Noël was far from alone in accusing the administration's leaders of serving the polluters who helped Trump return to power.
"Zeldin and Trump are concerned only with maximizing short-term profits for polluting corporations and the CEOs funneling millions of dollars to their campaign coffers," said Jim Walsh, policy director at Food & Water Watch. "Zeldin's assertion that the EPA shouldn't address greenhouse gas emissions is like a fire chief claiming that they shouldn't fight fires. It is as malicious as it is absurd."
Dan Becker, director of the Center for Biological Diversity's Safe Climate Transport Campaign, similarly said that the proposal is "purely a political bow to the oil industry" and "Trump is putting fealty to Big Oil over sound science and people's health."
Earthworks policy director Lauren Pagel also called the rule "a perverse gift to the fossil fuel industry that rejects yearslong efforts by the agency, scientists, NGOs, frontline communities, and industry to protect public health and our environment."
"Donald Trump and Lee Zeldin are playing with fire—and with floods and droughts and public health risks, too," she stressed, as about 168 million Americans on Tuesday faced advisories for extreme heat made more likely by the climate crisis.
🚨 The Trump administration just took its most extreme step yet in rolling back climate protections.
[image or embed]
— Sierra Club (@sierraclub.org) July 29, 2025 at 4:58 PM
Justin Chen, president of American Federation of Government Employees Council 238, which represents over 8,000 EPA workers nationwide, said that the repeal plan "is reckless and will have far-reaching, disastrous consequences for the USA."
"EPA career professionals have worked for decades on the development of the science and policy of greenhouse gases to protect the American public," he continued, "and this policy decision completely disregards all of their work in service to the public."
The Union of Concerned Scientists (UCS) highlighted that Chris Wright, head of the Department of Energy, joined Zeldin at the Tuesday press conference and "announced a DOE 'climate science study' alongside remarks that were rife with climate denial talking points and disinformation."
UCS president Gretchen Goldman said that "it's abundantly clear what's going on here. The Trump administration refuses to acknowledge robust climate science and is using the kitchen sink approach: making every specious argument it can to avoid complying with the law."
"But getting around the Clean Air Act won't be easy," she added. "The science establishing climate harms to human health was unequivocally clear back in 2009, and more than 15 years later, the evidence has only accumulated."
Today, Zeldin’s EPA plans to release a proposal to revoke the Endangerment Finding, which is the legal & scientific foundation of EPA’s responsibility to limit climate-heating greenhouse gas pollution from major sources.
[image or embed]
— Moms Clean Air Force (@momscleanairforce.org) July 29, 2025 at 12:58 PM
David Bookbinder, director of law and policy at the Environmental Integrity Project, was a lead attorney in the 2007 U.S. Supreme Court case Massachusetts vs. EPA, which affirmed the agency's authority to regulate greenhouse gases under the Clean Air Act and ultimately led to the endangerment finding two years later.
Bookbinder said Tuesday that "because this approach has already been rejected by the courts—and doubtless will be again—this baseless effort to pretend that carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gasses that cause climate change are not harmful pollutants is nothing more than a transparent attempt to delay and derail our efforts to control greenhouse pollution at the worst possible time, when deadly floods and heat waves are killing more people every day."
In a statement from the Environmental Protection Network, which is made up of ex-EPA staff, Joseph Goffman, former assistant administrator of the agency's Office of Air and Radiation, also cited the 2007 ruling.
"This decision is both legally indefensible and morally bankrupt," Goffman said of the Tuesday proposal. "The Supreme Court made clear that EPA cannot ignore science or evade its responsibilities under the Clean Air Act. By walking away from the endangerment finding, EPA has not only broken with precedent; it has broken with reality."
Aru Shiney-Ajay, executive director of the youth-led Sunrise Movement, responded to the EPA proposal with defiance, declaring that "Donald Trump and his Big Oil donors are lighting the world on fire and fueling their private jets with young people's lives. We refuse to be sacrifices for their greed. We're coming for them, and we're not backing down."
Israel has already summarily rejected the U.K. leader's ultimatum to take "substantive" steps to end the war on Gaza by September, agree to a two-state solution, and reject West Bank annexation.
United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer was accused of "political grandstanding" after he said Tuesday that his country would recognize Palestinian statehood if Israel did not take ambiguously defined steps to end its war on Gaza—conditions that were promptly dismissed by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
"Today, as part of this process towards peace, I can confirm the U.K. will recognize the state of Palestine by the United Nations General Assembly in September, unless the Israeli government takes substantive steps to end the appalling situation in Gaza, agree to a cease-fire, and commit to a long-term sustainable peace, reviving the prospect of a two-state solution," Starmer said during a press conference.
"This includes allowing the U.N. to restart the supply of aid and making clear that there will be no annexations in the West Bank," the prime minister continued, adding that "the terrorists of Hamas... must immediately release all of the hostages, sign up to a cease-fire, disarm, and accept that they will play no part in the government of Gaza."
Member of Scottish Parliament Scott Greer (Scottish Greens-West Scotland) responded to Tuesday's announcement on social media, saying, "Starmer wouldn't threaten to withdraw U.K. recognition of Israel, but he's made recognition of Palestinian statehood conditional on the actions of their genocidal oppressor?"
"Another profoundly unjust act from a Labour government thoroughly complicit in Israel's crimes," Greer added.
British attorney and activist Shola Mos-Shogbamimu asserted that "Keir Starmer knows his time is up and pivots to save his career but it's too late."
"By placing a condition on recognizing Palestine this declaration is performative and disingenuous because before September he can claim Israel has substantively complied with the condition," she added.
Leftist politician and Accountability Archive co-founder Philip Proudfoot argued on social media that "decent" Members of Parliament "need to table a no-confidence motion in Starmer now."
"He has just used the recognition of Palestine as a bargaining chip in exchange for Israel following its BASIC LEGAL OBLIGATIONS," he added. "This is one of the lowest political acts in living memory."
Media critic Sana Saeed said on social media, "Using Palestinian life and future as a bargaining chip and threat to Israel—not a surprise from kid starver Keir Starmer."
Journalist Sangita Myska argued that "rather than threatening the gesture politics of recognizing a Palestinian state (that may never happen)," Starmer should expel Israel's ambassador to the U.K., impose "full trade sanctions" and a "full arms embargo," and end alleged Royal Air Force surveillance flights over Gaza.
Political analyst Bushra Shaikh accused Starmer of "political grandstanding" and "speaking from both sides of his mouth."
Starmer's announcement followed a Monday meeting in Turnberry, Scotland with U.S. President Donald Trump, who signaled that he would not object to U.K. recognition of Palestine.
However, U.S. State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce called Starmer's announcement "a slap in the face for the victims of October 7," a reference to the Hamas-led attack of 2023.
While the United States remains Israel's staunchest supporter and enabler—providing billions of dollars in annual armed aid and diplomatic cover—Trump, Vice President JD Vance, and U.S. Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee have all expressed concerns over mounting starvation deaths in Gaza.
On Tuesday, the U.N.-affiliated Integrated Food Security Phase Classification warned that a "worst-case" famine scenario is developing in Gaza, where health officials say at least 147 Palestinians, including at least 88 children, have died from malnutrition since Israel launched its obliteration and siege of the enclave following the October 2023 attack.
Israel—which imposed a "complete siege" on Gaza following that attack—has severely limited the amount of humanitarian aid that can enter the strip. According to U.N. officials, Israel Defense Forces troops have killed more than 1,000 aid-seeking civilians at distribution points run by the U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation. IDF troops have said they were ordered to shoot live bullets and artillery shells at aid seekers.
Netanyahu—who is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity and war crimes in Gaza including murder and weaponized starvation—responded to the U.K. prime minister's ultimatum in a social media post stating, "Starmer rewards Hamas' monstrous terrorism and punishes its victims."
"A jihadist state on Israel's border TODAY will threaten Britain TOMORROW," Netanyahu said. "Appeasement towards jihadist terrorists always fails. It will fail you too. It will not happen."
The U.K. played a critical role in the foundation of the modern state of Israel, allowing Jewish colonization of what was then the British Mandate of Palestine under condition that "nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine," who made up more than 90% of the population.
Seeing that Jewish immigrants returning to their ancestral homeland were usurping the indigenous Arabs of Palestine, the British subsequently prohibited further Zionist colonization. This sparked a nearly decadelong wave of terrorism and other attacks against the British occupiers that ultimately resulted in the U.K. abandoning Palestine and the establishment of Israel under the authority of the United Nations—an outcome achieved by the ethnic cleansing of more than 750,000 Palestinian Arabs.
On the topic of annexing the West Bank, earlier this month, all 15 Israeli government ministers representing Netanyahu's Likud party recommended the move, citing support from Trump. The International Court of Justice (ICJ) found last year that Israel's occupation of Palestine, including the West Bank and Gaza, is an illegal form of apartheid.
Last week, French President Emmanuel Macron said his country would announce its formal recognition of Palestinian statehood during September's U.N. General Assembly in New York. France is set to become the first Group of Seven nation to recognize Palestine, which is currently officially acknowledged by approximately 150 of the 193 U.N. member states.
Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz subsequently threatened "severe consequences" for nations that recognize Palestine.
Starmer's announcement came on the same day that the Gaza Health Ministry said that the death toll from Israel's 662-day assault and siege on Gaza—which is the subject of a South Africa-led genocide case at the ICJ—topped 60,000. However, multiple peer-reviewed studies in the prestigious British medical journal The Lancet have concluded that Gaza officials' casualty tallies are likely significant undercounts.