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Arlie Russell Hochschild’s Strangers in their own Land, which explored the motivations and resentments of working-class conservatives in Louisiana, was named one of six books to help understand Donald Trump’s win by the New York Times when he was first elected president, in 2016. (Another was Hillbilly Elegy, by now vice president JD Vance, published just a few months earlier.)

Since then, Californian progressive sociologist Hochschild has been struggling to understand the appeal of Donald Trump: particularly to white, working-class men, once a strong Democratic constituency. No writer has worked harder to grasp the gut-level appeal that saw Trump win two elections – and in the process, convert the Republican Party into his personal fiefdom.

*Review: Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame and the Rise of the Right – Arlie Russell Hochschild (The New Press)

The puzzle is greatest when one contrasts the current billionaire cabinet with the fact much of Trump’s support comes from people who are objectively worse off under his policies – including tariffs. Last week, Oxfam America called them “an attack on the global working class” that will harm working-class families in the United States and “inflame inequality”.

In Strangers in their own Land, Hochschild called this “the Great Paradox”. Stolen Pride returns to many of that book’s questions, but in a different era – and a US that seems more fragmented, and far angrier than it was in 2016.

Hochschild explores the world of Pikeville, Kentucky, a poor, overwhelmingly white, Trump-supporting city in the heart of Appalachia: in the “whitest and second-poorest congressional district in the country, a region that had rapidly shifted from the Democratic Party to the Republican Party”.

The American dream’s broken promise

One of Hochschild’s subjects is James Browning, a recovering drug user whose hands are tattooed and covered in rings. “There you have it” he says, “I have a shame hand and a pride hand.” This sums up the basic argument of Stolen Pride.

“Pride and shame,” she writes, “signal the juncture between the identity we hold out to the world, and how the world responds to our identity.” The men she speaks to desperately need a sense of pride, but too often find their failures are the cause of deep shame. The American Dream, after all, teaches them every individual can make it, inherently implying failure is due to individual weakness.

Many of the men she speaks to have experienced unemployment, domestic breakups, jail, alcoholism and drug abuse. (She even manages to speak to one current jail inmate.) Kentucky has one of the highest rates of opioid addiction in the United States – and despite Trump’s attacks on Mexico and Canada, the doctor-prescribed drugs some were addicted to appear to be domestically manufactured.

So many of the men Hochschild interviewed talk of the balance between shame and pride, I began to wonder if they were prompted. On reflection, I suspect this represents Hochschild’s careful selection from a series of very extensive interviews, conducted over roughly six years.

Her emphasis is almost entirely on the men in Pikeville, though a majority of white women also voted for Trump. I would love to see Hochschild explore this further. That so many women can support a convicted sexual predator in a country obsessed with sexual behaviour is one of the mysteries of contemporary American politics.

By 2021, many Americans – and most Republicans – believed Trump’s claims that he had really won the 2020 election. They saw the rioters at the Capitol on January 6 as heroes defending American democracy. In Trump’s claim the election was stolen, many of those Hochschild interviews saw parallels to what they believed had been stolen from them, by economic and cultural upheavals.

Importantly, many of her respondents saw Trump as a bully — but a bully who stood up for them, against what they perceived as urban liberal elites. When Hillary Clinton spoke of his supporters as “a basket of deplorables”, she reinforced the grievances of people consistently looked down on as “hillbillies” and “rednecks” by people they identified as Democratic elites.

How ‘deep stories’ inform politics

For Hochschild, there are underlying emotional narratives, which she calls “deep stories”, that inform our political positions.

In Strangers in their Own Land, these were identified as a sense of being overtaken by groups, usually educated women and Black people, who benefited from programs of affirmative action. The second Trump administration’s crusade against “DEI” is playing directly to these grievances. In Stolen Pride, this feeling is strengthened by the sense liberal elites are undermining both traditional values and the ability for individuals to succeed.

Eastern Kentucky is coal country, and Clinton’s ill-worded election-trail claim she would “put a lot of coal miners and coal companies out of business” was a major factor in swinging voters towards Trump. For men who took pride in their work, the collapse of the coal industry produced a sense of shame: strengthened by a strong belief individuals are to blame for their own misfortunes.

Pikeville was also the site of a neo-Nazi march in April 2017, the forerunner of the tragic Unite the Right march in Charlottesville later that year, which resulted in one death and multiple injuries.

Much of the book skilfully explores the preparations for and reactions to the Pikeville march, which seemingly passed without incident. Some 100 white nationalists turned up and were outnumbered by counter protesters, As Hochschild writes, “Very few Pikeville locals were involved on either side”.

Perhaps the most fascinating figure in Hochschild’s book, and evidence of her skill in persuading the most unlikely people to open up in interviews, is Matthew Heimbach, who led the 2017 Pikesville march, identified as a proud Nazi and co-founded the now-defunct neo-Nazi party, Traditionalist Worker Party.

He also co-planned the Charlottesville march, where he railed against “white genocide” and was sued (with other members of the TWP) for his role in it on behalf of Charlottesville victims. He was found guilty on charges of civil conspiracy in 2021.

“Some years later”, he reveals some of his core beliefs are shaken, especially his attitude toward Black Americans, whom he recognises as often sharing the same sense of dispossession that had fuelled his own anger. “I love Russia and I love Putin,” he told Hochschild, “so I looked into moving there.” As Hochschild remarks: “It seemed that Adolf Hitler was to be replaced in his pantheon by Vladimir Putin.”

Transcending the gulf?

Pikesville is also the home of America’s most famous family feud, between the Hatfields and the McCoys. The feud, which lasted many decades from the late 19th century, “began as a dispute over a stolen pig” and “ended as the longest and fiercest clan fight in the nation”. It has been the basis for a dozen movies, virtually all unmemorable. In 2017, a member of the reconciled clans said if they could settle their differences, “there has to be a way for Americans to get back together as one”.

In the last section of the book, Hochschild looks for ways to transcend the apparent gulf that separates blue and red America. Reading the book after Trump’s return to power, this felt sadly inadequate. Yes, as she points out, most voters are more moderate than the politicians on either side. Sadly, this is not sufficient protection against the rise of the authoritarian plutocracy that now seems to have a firm grip on Washington.

Hochschild wrote this book during the Biden administration and the lead-up to the 2024 elections. I assume she finished it before Trump named Vance as his vice president: a man who first came to prominence with his own account of Appalachian pride and shame. Hochschild doesn’t discuss his Hillbilly Elegy, though it is listed in her references.

Hochschild brilliantly captures the pain of men who feel left behind and conveys something of life in rural Kentucky that goes beyond easy stereotypes. I could feel empathy for many of the people she comes across. But I was unpersuaded there is much room for optimism that the appeal of Trump, and those who follow him, will easily be defeated.

Dennis Altman, Vice Chancellor's Fellow and Professorial Fellow, Institute for Human Security and Social Change, La Trobe University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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https://www.alternet.org/2021/11/charlottesville-verdict/

Returning a verdict against dozens of white supremacist leaders and organizations who organized Unite the Right, a Virginia jury has awarded millions in damages to nine plaintiffs who were injured in the violence during the chaotic rally that ended with a car attack by James Fields.

The defendants were found liable in four of six counts, including a Virginia state conspiracy claim that they subjected the plaintiffs to racial, religious or ethnic harassment or violence. But the mixed-race jury deadlocked on a major claim in the civil case against the organizers, whether they engaged in a conspiracy to commit racially motivated violence.

The plaintiffs presented evidence over the course of the four-week trial showing that the defendants meticulously planned the Unite the Right rally on the digital chat platform Discord. While the ostensible reason for the rally was to support two Confederate monuments slated for removal in Charlottesville, the organizers' private communications revealed that their true inspiration was a violent rally four months earlierin Berkeley, Calif. and that they hoped to bait left-wing opponents into the streets, and as primary organizer Jason Kessler put it, "fight this shit out."

The evidence showed that Kessler quickly reached out to Matthew Heimbach, an avowed fascist and antisemite who led the Traditionalist Worker Party and had already organized a coalition of "hard right" white supremacist groups that included League of the South, the National Socialist Movement and Vanguard America. All the organizations sent members to Charlottesville, and the leader of Vanguard America wound up providing a shield to Fields before he drove his car into counter-protesters.

After securing a commitment from Spencer — then the most famous figure in the alt-right movement that emerged on the coattails of Donald Trump's 2016 election — for the headlining speaker slot, Kessler wrote in a phone text: "We are raising an army, my liege, for free speech but the cracking of skulls, if it comes to it."

The plaintiffs also presented evidence that Elliot Kline, both a lieutenant to Spencer and a leader of Identity Evropa, organized Unite the Right alongside Kessler. Kline's former girlfriend, Samantha Froelich, testified that he was obsessed with exterminating Jews, saying he would "gas the kikes forever." Robert "Azzmador" Ray, a contributing writer for the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer, mentioned in a Discord chat in the month prior to Unite the Right that had "just got done with an hourlong chat with some of the organizers and I feel better about the thing. The plan is the same: Gas the kikes." After macing counter-protesters at the Aug. 11 torch march, Ray reported to his fellow neo-Nazis: "I personally literally gassed half a dozen kikes."

Counsel for the defendants argued that Fields car attack was not reasonably foreseeable or intended by the defendants, who anticipated only pushing and shoving, or, at most, fist fights, but the jury evidently didn't buy it. The defendants all testified that they did not know Fields and had not seen him prior to his appearance at the Aug. 12, 2017 rally.

Plaintiff Natalie Romero was injured in Fields' car attack, which left her with a fractured skull, a cleft lip, persistent headaches and trouble maintaining balance. Romero and co-plaintiff Devin Willis were among a small group of University of Virginia students who linked arms around a statue of Thomas Jefferson during a torch march in which white nationalists made monkey noises at them and threw lit torches at their feet while macing, punching and kicking others. All the plaintiffs, who include a pastor, a landscaper, a paralegal who recently passed the bar exam, testified that they have been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of physical injuries or emotional distress.

As she and a dozen or so counter-protesters linked arms around statue, Romero described the sound of the approaching torch marchers as "almost like thunder, like the earth was growling." She recalled that they chanted "Blood and soil" and "White power."

"There's another that I hate repeating," Romero testified. "I like, hear it in my nightmares. If my phone buzzes, I hear the same cadence, the 'You will not replace us.' That one is just so terrifying to hear the whole time."

https://archive.thinkprogress.org/how-russia-wooed-american-white-supremacists-and-how-it-fell-apart-8a8cf6e3b814/

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Russian attempts to woo American white supremacists have backfired

A quarter-century after American neo-fascists began looking to Russia for support, the relationship is on its heels.

CASEY MICHEL

APR 20, 2018,

The National Rifle Association (NRA) doesn’t want to talk about its relationship with Russia. For months, the gun lobby has avoided questions from lawmakers on its ties to Russian officials specifically sanctioned by Washington — all the more after the NRA’s primary contact in Russia, Alexander Torshin, was named in the latest round of U.S. sanctions.

But the NRA is only one facet of a nexus of strange links between the American far-right and those close to the Kremlin. From Christian fundamentalists swooning for Russian President Vladimir Putin, to American secessionists repeatedly traveling to Moscow, to far-right media mouthpieces finding a home on Russian propaganda outlets, these ties have only grown — and grown more notorious — over the past few years.

Indeed, no foreign entity has provided as much support for these far-right causes recently as those in Moscow, where those with conspicuous ties to the Kremlin worked to cultivate and coalesce these American movements that, in the age of Trump, have gained new credence.

[A photo shared by Russian Deputy PM Dmitry Rogozin (right), then under U.S. sanctions, which appears to show him standing alongside the NRA's Joe Gregory, Pete Brownell, and David Keene in Moscow in Dec. 2015. (CREDIT: TWITTER)]

The NRA tried to dodge questions about its ties to Russia, but Congress isn’t done yet

Sen. Wyden sends another letter to the NRA after the gun advocacy group dodged his previous queries about ties to Russia.

However, the recent scrutiny on the relationship between Russian officials and the NRA demonstrates how this attempt to make inroads with far-right groups in the U.S. can backfire. And that backlash is even starker when it comes to the cooperation Kremlin-linked figures have pursued with American white supremacists. After an embarrassing series of setbacks in 2018, America’s young white supremacists — the new generation of white nationalists who burst forth during the Trump campaign — are on their heels, battered by bad press, and, in certain cases, facing significant jail time.

The ties between American white nationalists and Russians extend beyond the past few years. And those ties haven’t produced anywhere near the success many expected. In fact, over the past few months, they have effectively imploded.

Great White North

Despite reports that Putin’s intimates routinely referred to former President Barack Obama as the n-word or “monkey,” American white supremacists had connected with Russians long before his presidency. The first significant ties between white supremacists and neo-fascists in Russia and the U.S. can be traced to the immediate aftermath of World War II, when a number of American far-right figures — including noted fascist Harold Keith Thompson — built up contacts with Soviet agents.

KGB operatives also recruited Americans in the 1970s to deface synagogues in Washington and New York, while further paying them to “desecrate Jewish cemeteries,” as one KGB general wrote in his memoirs.

Since Vladimir Putin's return to power in 2012, the Western far-right has looked to Russia for support. (CREDIT: AP/MIKE STEWART)]

Inside Russia’s alliance with white nationalists across the globe

Given that the Soviet Union was the great boogeyman for much of the American far-right, these initial connections were only explored to a limited extent. But after the collapse of the Soviet Union, as Russian fascists surged amidst the Soviet rubble, American white supremacists took a fresh look at Moscow.

The first, most prominent neo-fascist to travel to a newly independent Russia appears to be Lyndon LaRouche. A font of anti-Semitic conspiracy, LaRouche found fertile ground in Russia.

ACCORDING TO HIS MAGAZINE, LYNDON LAROUCHE’S IDEAS REACHED MOSCOW IN A TIME OF “TROUBLES.”

In October 1992, LaRouche’s Schiller Institute joined with the Russian State Humanitarian University to organize a conference on “Alternative Approaches to Economic Reform.” As LaRouche’s magazine would later relate, his ideas had “reach[ed] Moscow in time of troubles,” with his teachings, according to one conference participant, “open[ing] for us a new world.” The American fascist even managed at one point to speak in front of the entire Russian parliament.

LaRouche also partnered with Sergei Glazyev, a one-time Minister of External Economic Relations of the Russian Federation who later joined the opposition against President Boris Yeltsin.Glazyev’s patronage, as researcher Anton Shekhovtsov would write, allowed LaRouche to become “an opinion maker and commentator on political and economic issues in Russia — a status that LaRouche could not enjoy in his home country where he has remained a fringe political figure.”

Russia presents “an unmatched opportunity to help protect the longevity of the white race,” said David Duke.

LaRouche was soon superseded in Russia by another American white supremacist, however — one who gained newfound prominence decades later during Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. It’s unclear how David Duke, former Ku Klux Klan leader and anti-Semitic white supremacist extraordinaire, first ended up in Russia. Regardless of how he landed there, Duke says that his five years in Russia were some of the most productive in his life.

Duke sold his books in the Russian parliament and attended numerous white supremacist conferences in the country, often as the lone American representative. Toward the turn of the century, Duke began saying that Russia presented “an unmatched opportunity to help protect the longevity of the white race.” He clarified that Moscow — a city he said had “the largest number of [w]hite people of any city in the entire world” — was the “key to white survival.”

Along the way, Duke brought other American neo-fascists to Moscow, including Preston Wiginton, a Texas white supremacist who courted Russian skinheads in his own right.

Duke never managed to build the official ties LaRouche amassed. However, one photo hints at the types of audiences Duke attained while in Russia. In a black suit and maroon tie, Duke stands next to a man with a scraggly beard, a dark blazer, and drooping eyes — a man who would, in years to come, be referred to as “Putin’s Brain,” and who would become one of the primary nodes between Russian circles and American white nationalists.

David Duke (left) and Alexander Dugin (right) pose in an undated photo.

DAVID DUKE (LEFT) AND ALEXANDER DUGIN (RIGHT) POSE IN AN UNDATED PHOTO.]

The rise of Eurasianism

Before detailing the features and fascism coursing Alexander Dugin’s history and writings, a necessary caveat: It’s easy to overstate the importance of Dugin, the man in the undated photo with Duke. Despite the catchy descriptors, Dugin’s direct ties to Putin appear, at best, scant. We know of only one official meeting between the two, in 2000, shortly after Putin rose to the presidency.

Still, that one meeting paid dividends. “Dugin refuses to discuss the meeting,” wrote Charles Clover, a journalist who has covered Dugin in depth. “[B]ut it would change his career. Soon there were sponsors, contacts, and open doors.”

While Putin may have kept Dugin at an arm’s length, security officials had no problem catering to him, and allowing him to teach a new generation of Russian military officers. As his profile rose, Dugin began lecturing at Russia’s General Staff Academy and his material was eventually assigned to every member of the academy.

Alexander Dugin, the leader of the Eurasian Movement, left, and his supporters sing during a rally of Russian nationalist groups in central Moscow, Sunday, April 8, 2007. CREDIT: AP Photo/Ivan Sekretarev]

The frightening common ground between a Trump adviser and white nationalism’s favorite philosopher

Trump’s chief strategist, Steve Bannon, sees Dugin’s ideology as an ally against liberalism.

Much of that comity from Russian officials stemmed from Dugin’s theories, which center primarily on “Eurasianism,” itself a geopolitical theory that was little more than soft cover for Russian imperialism.

Dugin’s theories are buried in fabricated history. As Yale historian Timothy Snyder notes, Dugin is a “[c]ontemporary Russian fascist,” one whose “references are German Nazis and postwar West European fascists.” Dugin’s primary theory, positing Russia as a country eternally at war with the U.S., builds upon the work of Lev Gumilev, himself a resounding fraud.

To be sure, Dugin’s theories were easy to mock. As Clover wrote, Eurasianists’ theories “are barely credible and are best understood as a sort of metaphor.” But as one researcher on the Russian right said about Dugin’s 1997 Foundations of Geopolitics, “There has probably not been another book published in Russia during the post-communist period which has exerted a comparable influence on Russian military, police, and statist foreign policy elites.”

Alexander Dugin, the leader of the Eurasian Movement (far right) takes part in a Russian nationalists’ rally in support of Serbia in Moscow, Russia, Sunday, April 27, 2008. CREDIT: AP Photo/Mikhail Metzel]

The white nationalist movement’s favorite philosopher

Dugin’s connections to America’s racist circuit is well established.

For many in Moscow, particularly within the Russian security services, Dugin’s theories offered a way back for the Kremlin and Russian imperialism writ large. Ignoring Dugin’s own fascism — he named his alter ego after a Nazi official in charge of paranormal research, after all — officials during the Putin years lapped up Dugin’s teachings. During Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Putin appeared to be doing little more than following Dugin’s own ideas for Ukrainian fracture.

As Marlene Laruelle, a professor at George Washington University, wrote, “The influence of [Dugin’s] personality and his works must not be underestimated.”

A new world

In 2014, Russia appeared ascendant, boasting a successful Olympic Games, a stronger post-2008 economic recovery than many Western states, and the perceived ability to out-dance the U.S. at every step, from Edward Snowden to events in Syria.

After the annexation of Crimea, nationalists — white nationalists, especially — across the U.S. looked to Putin for guidance. He was, said one, now the head of the “last great White empire.” All the while, Dugin acted as the lynch pin binding Russia’s growing ties with the Western far-right.

These new ties between Moscow, Russian nationalists, and America’s neo-fascists over the past few years centered on the two most prominent young American white supremacists the 21st century has produced.

Richard Spencer’s wife called Dugin a “well-educated scholar” with a “rare intellectual caliber.”

The first is Richard Spencer, the infamously dubbed “dapper white nationalist.” In 2014, Spencer managed to organize a conference in Budapest, Hungary, for like-minded fascists. “The Future of Europe,” he called it. The keynote speaker was slated to be none other than Dugin.

Unfortunately for them both, Hungary barred Dugin’s entry, citing sanctions, while Spencer was detained and eventually expelled from the country. But shortly thereafter, Spencer would be writing for Dugin’s site, sharing Dugin’s thoughts with his own followers, and pushing pro-Russian policies.

The purpose and meaning of the alt-right movement https://t.co/P0iQHMfIhV

— Alexandr Dugin (@A_G_Dugin) December 19, 2016

While Buzzfeed in 2014 reported that Spencer said he knew Dugin “personally,” it’s still unclear how Dugin first came across Spencer’s radar: Spencer doesn’t speak Russian, and Dugin’s English remains broken.

However, in the final days of the American presidential campaign, a series of clues emerged tying the two together.It turned out that Spencer had married a woman named Nina Kouprianova, who had, over the few years prior, pushed a steady stream of pro-Russia, and pro-Dugin, material to her own followers.

Originally from the Soviet Union, Kouprianova — writing under the name “Nina Byzantina” — had whitewashed Putin’s regime at every turn, appearing on Russian propaganda networks as an “independent scholar” and claiming that Russia had “chosen the path… of healthy debate.” (Spencer, as it is, also appeared on RT multiple times, described by the channel as the editor of an “online culture journal.”)

Kouprianova also acted as one of Dugin’s translators. With her fluency in both Russian and English, she helped introduce Dugin’s writings and theories into English — some of which would later be published via Spencer’s own publishing house. Rather than point to his fascism, chauvinism, or sheer fraudulence, Kouprianova claimed Dugin was a “well-educated scholar” with a “rare intellectual caliber.” He was, she said, “one of the greatest minds of our time.”

All of this, as Spencer began referring to Russia as the “sole white power in the world.”

Traditional voices

But the Spencer-Kouprianova tandem wasn’t the only pair tying directly back to Dugin, or recruiting American white supremacists toward the Kremlin’s perceived court philosopher. Matthew Heimbach acted as Russian nationalists’ other twin American pole, around whom people like Dugin could expand their following.

As the presidential campaign started, Heimbach was already one of the leading figures among the young white supremacists backing Trump; in 2016, he was arrested for shoving an anti-Trump protester at a Trump rally.

But where Spencer relied on his supposed intellect, Heimbach preferred grassroots organizing — acting, in a sense, as the brawn to Spencer’s brain. By 2015, Heimbach had decided the he would form his own organization, which he would call the Traditionalist Worker Party.

The Traditionalist Worker Party didn’t hide its bigotry. In time, it would grow into a “major energizing and motivating factor for young racists,” as the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Ryan Lenz told ThinkProgress. And at its launch party, there was only one logical voice to christen them: Dugin.

“I see Russia as kind of the axis for nationalists,” Heimbach said.

In a speech — this time by video, as Dugin was barred from entering the U.S. — Dugin issued a “common message” to his “American friends,” exhorting Heimbach and his followers to success. “I’m very glad that I can address you,” Dugin said. “The actual modern world is losing its identity — the cultur[e], the civilization, is in great danger, and I think, maybe, it’s the greatest danger in all our human history.”

According to Heimbach, Dugin’s speech was “amazingly well-received, and exciting for the American white nationalist movement.” (Dugin would later present a similar speech at Texas A&M University, this time at the behest of none other than neo-Nazi Wiginton.)

Heimbach didn’t stop with Dugin. Soon thereafter, he announced plans to travel to Russia for the second annual conference — organized by the Russian Imperial Movement, itself an outgrowth of efforts from Russian Deputy Prime MinisterDmitry Rogozin— focused on gathering leaders of the West’s white nationalists under one roof in St. Petersburg. (The 2015 conference had featured, among dozens of others, a former KKK lawyer and white supremacist Jared Taylor, one of Spencer’s ideological mentors.)

“I see Russia as kind of the axis for nationalists,” Heimbach said. During the Soviet period, he added, “there was the Comintern, the Communist International. And in the modern era, it’s almost like a nationalist version — or theTraditionalist International.”

The conference was postponed, but in 2017, Heimbach welcomed a representative from the Russian Imperial Movement to the U.S. — the first summit on American soil between an American white supremacist and an official representative of a notorious Russian nationalist movement. The Russian Imperial Movement, apparently impressed with Heimbach’s hospitality, said that, moving forward, “the task is to share the experience of political [and] information warfare,” as well as “joint squad tactics training.”

[CREDIT: Facebook

Russian, American white nationalists raise their flags in Washington]

“When we went to the White House, we took a photo with a Russian imperial flag,” Heimbach told ThinkProgress. “Hopefully before too long, when we’re able to meet in D.C., it will be on the terms of the Russian Imperial Movement [and] the new imperialist tsarist Russia meeting with the delegates from a free and independent white homeland.”

Implosion

In late 2016, everything seemed right: for Russia, for America’s white supremacists, for the marriage between the two. Trump had been elected, promising good times and glad tidings to Moscow and the young white nationalists buoying his campaign. The future appeared bright.

As Dugin reveled to extreme right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, “Anti-Americanism is over! Now the people of free America, free Russia, all anti-globalists of the world, should build a new world — a new architecture!”

A year later, however, that bright future has dimmed.

Trump still refrains from criticizing Putin, and has undercut American efforts at propping up human and civil rights globally. But his election hasn’t proven to be nearly the panacea Russia expected, as Ukraine, Syria, and the ongoing sanctions regime illustrate.

For the young white supremacists riding Trump’s coattails, matters appear even worse.

Matthew Heimbach, along with Richard Spencer, have suddenly left young white supremacists without a clear leader.CREDIT: GETTY / SCOTT OLSON]

With their leadership knocked out, young white supremacists face a directionless future

Following the collapse of Richard Spencer and Matthew Heimbach, the question of leadership rocks young white supremacists.

After last summer’s violent rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, membership among the young white supremacist cohort became more toxic than ever before, with any number of websites and platforms kicking off Spencer, Heimbach, and their ilk. Suddenly, no one showed up at Spencer’s events — at his nationwide tours, at his college appearances. He was, as Trump’s first year closed, now a bully without a pulpit. In March, he announced he would be rethinking his entire strategy, slinking back into the shadows.

Heimbach’s fall, meanwhile, has been even more spectacular. He was recently arrested in his trailer after — in a twist as ludicrous as any over the past few years — having an affair with his mother-in-law, and battering his father-in-law when the latter found out. It was a bizarre ending for a man ThinkProgress had dubbed the “most important white supremacist” of 2016.Given a prior arrest, Heimbach is facing the prospect of significant jail time. And his Traditionalist Worker Party, by all appearances, is no more.

White nationalists and mothers-in-law are never a good mix. CREDIT: THE WASHINGTON POST]

Leading white supremacist arrested following affair with mother-in-law

Battery charges and the likelihood of a lengthy prison sentence now await Matthew Heimbach.

And then there’s Dugin: The man who once had the Kremlin’s ear — or so he, and many, would claim — is out of a job, following his pro-genocidal comments aimed at Ukrainians. It’s unclear how, exactly, Dugin makes a living. But any interest in his teachings has effectively dried up.

As has Russia’s interests in American white supremacists — for the time being, at least. Dating from at least 2014, the ties seem to have peaked toward the end of 2016. But Trump’s victory, for both, appears increasingly hollow. And the dreams of a Traditionalist International, like the Comintern before it, appears all but dead.

http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/nsm-heimbach-little-rock/

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Matt Heimbach Makes His National Socialist Movement Debut at Little Rock Rally

By Jared Holt | November 14, 2018 11:33 pm

(Photo: Jared Holt for Right Wing Watch)

In Sherwood, Arkansas, fewer than two dozen men, some bearing swastika tattoos, gathered in the parking lot of a Kohl’s department store to prepare for a trip into Little Rock, where they planned to make a public display of their banners and their sidearms, and to inveigh against what they said was a “white genocide” being conducted against South African landowners of European descent, not to mention white people nearly everywhere.

Before departing the parking lot, NSM members, wearing their black neo-Nazi getups, darted into the store for a last-chance bathroom stop before they convoyed through the town.

Amid the gaggle of black-clad men, most of them middle-aged or older, one in particular stood out: the 27-year-old Matthew Heimbach, the recently appointed director of community outreach for the National Socialist Movement (NSM), one of America’s oldest and largest neo-Nazi groups, currently based in Detroit, Michigan.The foundation of NSM was formed in the 1960s by two chief lieutenants of the American Nazi Party (ANP) after ANP leader George Rockwell was murdered by one of his followers. In 1994, leadership of NSM was handed to Jeff Schoep, who has served as the group’s “commander” for the last 24 years.

NSM members openly fetishize Adolf Hitler and, until relatively recently, wore Nazi symbols on their outfits. Heimbach, it seems, was brought on to help make the Third Reich ideology more palatable to young white nationalists and even radical socialists. He apparently hopes to do for neo-Nazis what the briefly famous Richard Spencer failed to do for white separatists: smooth out the rough edges of NSM’s public profile in order to grow the movement.

But if you were looking for an image-fixer for your authoritarian movement, Heimbach might seem an odd choice. The founder of the now-defunct Traditionalist Worker Party, Heimbach first splashed into mainstream media for a second when he assaulted an African American woman who was protesting at a Trump rally. He was scheduled to speak at the 2017 Unite the Rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, which was disbanded by police before it got started, leading to an unleashing of violence by far-right demonstrators in the streets of the historic town. Heimbach has since referred to James Fields–who drove his car into a march of counter-protesters, killing Heather Heyer and injuring dozens more–as a “prisoner of war.” (After the Charlottesville melee, he had a star turn before the cameras of the PBS NewsHour, where he declined to express remorse for Heyer’s death.)

NSM Member

In March, Heimbach was shown in news photos attacking anti-fascist protesters outside a Michigan State University venue where Spencer, the white nationalist, was speaking. Days later, Heimbach was arrested on domestic violence and other assault charges stemming from a rather complicated love-triangle situation involving his father-in-law, David Parrott, and Parrott’s wife, which led to the dissolution of the Traditionalist Worker Party.

Since Heimbach’s arrival at NSM, the group has undergone another public rebranding in hopes of appealing to radical-left activists, as well as the white nationalists more typically viewed as being part of the right. Heimbach, who is adamant that he is a socialist, briefly attempted to infiltrate Democratic political circles in Southeastern Tennessee.

Right Wing Watch asked Heimbach how he expected to garner the favor of the American left while at the same time attaching himself to a group whose members are notorious for covering themselves in swastikas and Nazi icons. His answer was vague, citing the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition, an alliance in the 1960s and 70s that unified social justice groups of different ethnicities in a push for social justice efforts.

However, when the press is not around and Heimbach is speaking candidly with other members of the white nationalist movement, his agenda is much clearer. On a podcast hosted by fellow movement members, Heimbach argued that killing Jews is was “the only way to do it,” and he has professed contempt for blacks, Muslims and LGBTQ people. In chat logs, Heimbach has been chummy with a neo-Nazi in Atomwaffen Division, three of whose members have been charged with five murders done in the name of their cause.

‘We’ve Got Enough Racists Here. F*ck Off!’

NSM members speak at the Arkansas Capitol Building. (Photo: Jared Holt for Right Wing Watch)

Upon arrival on the capitol grounds, the NSM members were greeted by Little Rock and State Capitol Police officers, who conducted weapons checks of NSM members, many of whom were carrying firearms, knives, pepper spray and clubs. A police helicopter circled overhead, snipers were visible on a nearby rooftop, and the capitol grounds held hundred of police officers in SWAT gear. On either side of the rally sat MRAT vehicles.

Before taking to the capitol steps, Heimbach instructed NSM members to refrain from using racial slurs and to avoid giving “random salutes.” NSM chief of staff Burt Colucci and other members loaded flags, a public address system, and shields onto a dolly that they rolled around the capitol building up to the capitol steps.

NSM “Commander” Jeff Schoep

Many NSM members had traded in their old neo-Nazi shirts for one bearing a new NSM logo–a fasces symbol inside a cog, reminiscent of the branding used by Heimbach’s disbanded Traditionalist Worker Party. Heimbach said the new logo was meant to represent a socialist cause and a tribute to working-class white people. In 2016, under Heimbach’s advice, the group ditched displays of the swastika at public events in favor of the rune figure they would build of wood and set aflame later that night. This is NSM’s third distinct branding since 2015.

Meanwhile, Schoep told reporters before the rally that they should not write about the group as a hate group or a neo-Nazi group, but rather a “white nationalist” group. As Schoep spoke, members stood behind him, bearing evidence of the group’s past iconography, including swastika tattoos, t-shirts emblazoned with the name of an Aryan youth group, and items adorned with Nazi symbols such as the SS bolts and “1488”–a number meant to represent both the “14 Words” white supremacist slogan and “HH” for “Heil Hitler.” There’s also the obvious fact that the group members call themselves “national socialists,” which is the very definition of a “Nazi.”

“We have enough racists here! Fuck off!” one counter-protester screamed at NSM members as they unloaded their gear.

Local news media in the area announced prior to the rally that they would not cover the event. During the rally, Colucci singled out an article published by local station KARK explaining the lack of coverage, seemingly frustrated.

Austin Kellerman, the news director of the NBC and Fox affiliates in Little Rock who authored the article Colucci took issue with, spoke with Right Wing Watch before Saturday’s rally about the decision not to cover the rally, citing the fact that few of the neo-Nazis who came to Little Rock were locals.

“It’s not our community, and we don’t want to give the appearance to people who flip on the news that night that this is a local issue and how local people feel when it’s just people coming into town to look for attention,” Kellerman said. “If you don’t want this to be a story in Arkansas, don’t let it be a story in Arkansas.”

KARK did have camera operators on the ground in the situation that they may be “forced” to cover the event if people were injured.

Counter-protesters at the event told me that they wished local news had covered the rally because they believed ignoring it was enabling the group to recruit new members, uncontested.

“Ignoring them is not an option,” one counter-protester said.

Another chimed in, “Silence breeds solidarity and we don’t want to be associated with that.”

At one point during the rally, apparent NSM supporters caused a stir in the crowd of counter-protesters. Members of the John Brown Gun Club in Springfield, Missouri, created a barrier between groups to defend counter-protesters. Police eventually escorted the men from the crowd.

From Stormfront to the Oval Office

Saturday was NSM’s first appearance in the Natural State’s capitol, where in 1957 nine young black students enrolled at the nearby Little Rock Central High School despite Gov. Orval Faubus’ efforts at the time to prevent its desegregation. Because of this, Little Rock stands as a landmark of the civil rights era. The approximately 20 NSM members gathered on the steps described land reform efforts in South Africa as its own kind of civil rights crisis.

“White genocide,” as NSM speakers called it, is a popular conspiracy theory in the white nationalist movement, promoted by the white supremacist website, Stormfront, among others. Believers in the white genocide myth assert that governments, through immigration policy and promotion of racial and ethnic diversity, are secretly plotting to erase white people from their nations.

Ever since the first calls to end apartheid in the 1960s, South Africa has been a fascination of white nationalists.In recent years, as politicians in South Africa debate land reform measures that would redistribute farm land seized by white colonizers from black people back to those communities, the country has received attention from the online far-right–and, most recently, by President Donald Trump. A 2017 audit by the South African government showed that 72 percent of South Africa’s farmland remains in white hands.

YouTube celebrity Lauren Southern and Rebel Media’s Katie Hopkins both traveled to South Africa this year to produce separate documentaries about land reform efforts; their films emphasized violence taking place against white landowners, which lifted the topic from fringe white nationalist forum boards like Stormfront into mainstream right-wing discussion online. Southern, in particular, even went so far as to visit a whites-only town in South Africa and to present that town as a potential solution to the image of racial violence she painted for her viewers in the rest of her film, which has been viewed on YouTube almost two million times.

Eventually, the topic made its way to viewers of the Fox News channel via Tucker Carlson, one of the network’s primetime hosts. After one segment on Carlson’s show, Trump took to Twitter to order that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo investigate the issue. Department of State spokesperson Heather Nauert was particularly cagey when reporters asked about Trump’s tweet the day after, saying that Pompeo would “take a look at it.”

Heimbach told Right Wing Watch that he interpreted Trump’s acknowledgement of the situation in South Africa as an affirmation of their cause, but was skeptical it would lead to a consequential shift on the issue.

“I think it is a validation that people are identifying what’s happening in South Africa, what’s happening in Europe, but one of the big problems is that Republicans have a mad tweet game but that doesn’t lead to substantive legislation,” Heimbach said.

Heimbach added that he had been in contact with activists on the ground in South Africa, including members of the Afrikaner Resistance Movement (AWB), a South African neo-Nazi separatist political and paramilitary organisation. Heimbach said that he had donated to Suidlanders and had read literature published by the organization, but that no formal political affiliation existed between NSM and Suidlanders, one among a small handful of organizations, also including AfriForum, that have courted the international far-right in efforts to make their agenda in South Africa an international cause. Members of such groups have specifically targeted U.S. white nationalist groups for their advocacy, but have also sought relations with more establishment figures and organizations on America’s right wing. Earlier this year, two members of AfriForum met with officials at USAID and the Heritage Foundation, as well as with members of the staff of Sen. Ted Cruz. They also had their picture taken with National Security Adviser John Bolton (though it remains unclear whether Bolton knew who they are).

Whatever Heimbach’s misgivings about Republicans’ commitment to stemming the tide of what he and his comrades call “white genocide,” NSM Commander Schoep took heart from the president’s tweet. Speaking on the steps of the Arkansas state capitol building, Schoep declared, “Even President Trump pointed out that there’s a genocide going on. … Our people are being wiped out on a daily basis by communist criminals.”

“If you think for one second we will surrender without a fight in this nation, you are sadly mistaken,” Schoep said.

Burn, Baby, Burn

National Socialist Movement members burn a wooden depiction of an Odal rune worn by SS soldiers in Nazi Germany. (Video capture / VK.com)]

Growing up in Arkansas, I heard about the white supremacist groups that made their home here, particularly in the northern region of the state. The town of Harrison is notorious among the state’s residents for the active racist groups who have staked their claim there. Bill Roper’s Shield Wall Network maintains an active presence in the state, and Arkansas hosts active chapters of the Klu Klux Klan.

(Screenshot / Twitter.com via News2Share’s Ford Fischer)

After their rally, members of NSM drove to the property ofScott Goodwin,two hours south of Harrison, for dinner, and to burn a large, wooden structure in the shape of the Odal rune symbol worn by SS soldiers in Nazi Germany, which the NSM employed as a logo displayed on their flags and shields at the rally earlier in the day. (The Odal is said to represent “heritage.”)

Goodwin’s son, Jacob Scott Goodwin, was found guilty of beating DeAndre Harris, a black man, in a parking garage during last year’s Unite the Right gathering in Charlottesville. Harris suffered a spinal injury and head lacerations that required eight staples, according to the Washington Post. Jacob Goodwin’s attorney is a relative of KKK leader Thomas Robb, who lives in Harrison.

Many white nationalist groups and figures, including the NSM, are still facing lawsuits resulting from their participation in the Charlottesville melee. Their accusers, Schoep said, are represented by “some of the best lawyers that the left has.” Those attorneys, Schoep asserted, aim to “use lawfare to bankrupt the white nationalist movement in the United States.”

When I first heard of the scheduled rune burning, I asked Heimbach if NSM also planned to burn a swastika that night. He told me that without the expertise of a carpenter, the swastika was too logistically complicated to erect and burn.

“The arms fall off and it’s just a mess,” Heimbach said, laughing.

But video shot that night indicates a swastika was at the ready alongside the burning Odal rune. Video posted to Russian social media platform VK by Colucci showed a that wooden structure in the form of a swastika leaned against Goodwin’s trailer home.

According to Heimbach, Goodwin has been testy with members of the media since the release of an NBC documentary about his son’s incarceration and the relationship of Goodwin and his wife to the white supremacist cause. (The film was produced with the assistance of photographer David Holloway, whose own relationship with the movement has been questioned by anti-racist group One People’s Project.)

While the post-rally events on the Goodwin property were closed to press, News2Share journalist Ford Fischer was invited by Heimbach to the gathering, where he expected to be allowed to film the ritual burning. But when Fischer arrived, he said, an NSM member drew a knife, asking Fischer whether he thought the blade would penetrate the tactical vest the journalist wore.

“All things considered, I’m ok with skipping it,” Fischer tweeted.

Ford Fischer

@FordFischer

Replying to @FordFischer

One guy actually took his knife out and asked whether I thought it could go through my bulletproof vest. I said something like “no, but I appreciate you not stabbing me” and he holstered it and said “you ain’t done nothing to me.”

All things considered, I’m ok with skipping it.

432

5:21 PM - Nov 10, 2018 · Cabot, AR

Struggling to Reinvent the Swastika

Evidence of the National Socialist Movement’s past iconography on a speaker at the NSM rally in Little Rock, Arkansas, on November 10, 2018. (Photo: Jared Holt for Right Wing Watch)]

Heimbach has attempted to cultivate unity among neo-Nazi groups for years and shift their rhetoric away from that of white supremacy toward a flavor of white nationalism he hopes will resonate more with American people, in the prospect earning him cheers of “Hail Heimbach” at white supremacist gatherings. While pushing for this re-imagining of the white supremacist movement, Heimbach fell in love with Trump for speaking about what he believed to be “white interests.”

Vegas Tenold, a journalist who has been researching and reporting on NSM since 2010, told Right Wing Watch that Heimbach’s apparent effort to rework the public image of NSM seemed puzzling unless Heimbach is hoping to establish himself, via NSM–which has been irrelevant in American politics for decades–as a leader in the broader movement.

“The NSM is essentially just Matthew trying to take it over now,” Tenold said of the group’s rebranding attempt. “They won’t abandon the swastika. I mean, look at them. Like you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, a lot of these guys have been doing this forever. You can’t teach an NSM member not to ‘Sieg heil’ a swastika.”

When Richard Spencer and his colleagues ushered in the era of the “alt-right,” older white supremacist groups like NSM found themselves “feeling left behind,” Tenold said. As Heimbach tries to shape their message with language that is reminiscent of Spencer’s posturing, he may face resistance.

“Being LARP-ing Nazis is the bread and butter of who they are,” Tenold said.

Ultimately, Heimbach is attempting to repurpose a group that, from its inception, was hellbent on expressing its Nazi ideology. NSM, however miniscule in the modern white supremacist movement, is a group of Jew-hating, swastika-brandishing Nazi wannabes and probably will always be. Given NSM’s dismal showing in Little Rock, those efforts don’t appear to be paying publicly visible dividends.

In the video shared by Colucci from the burning after the rally, NSM members throw up straight-arm salutes and, in the English-language version of “Sieg heil,” cry, “Hail victory!”

Tags: Donald Trump Jeff Schoep Katie Hopkins Lauren Southern Matthew Heimbach Alt-Right neo-Nazi white nationalism white supremacist National Socialist Movement

Chat Site for Gamers Got Overrun by the Alt-Right. Now It’s Fighting Back.

Discord’s invite-only chat rooms are where the deadly Charlottesville march was planned.

Since then leakers and the SPLC have been rooting out neo-Nazis, one at a time.

Kelly Weill

04.16.18 4:54 AM ET

The Daily Beast

Discord wanted to create a chat platform for gamers. Instead it’s attracted a community of white supremacists.

Discord is a free voice and text app with invite-only chat rooms, but those private servers quickly found a new fanbase with hate groups, who wanted to discuss plans in secret. After white supremacist groups were revealed to have used Discord to plan the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, last year, Discord started banning those groups en masse. But purging hate from the private chat rooms is no easy task.

In early April, the media collective Unicorn Riot leaked more than a year of Discord logs leaked from the now-defunct neo-Nazi group The Traditionalist Worker Party. The leaked logs showed the TWP’s dramatic implosion after an affair and alleged assault among the party’s leaders in March. The chat logs also show a splinter group of former TWP members starting their own Discordchat room to discuss launching a new white supremacist group.

The chat logs were the latest in a series of leaked messages fromneo-Nazi Discord chat rooms, called “servers.”But those servers shouldn’t have been online at all. After the Unite the Right rally, Discord shut down chat rooms associated with the rally and announced “action against white supremacy, Nazi ideology, and all forms of hate.”

The public declaration put Discord ahead of larger social media platforms like Twitter, where white supremacist Richard Spencer was verified as recently as November. (He remains on Twitter, albeit without his verified status.)

Discord told The Daily Beast it has also begun working with the Southern Poverty Law Center to combat hate groups on the platform, although it did not specify the details of the arrangement.

“Although some far-right extremists continue to return to the platform, Discord’s decision to ban the most well-known communities has deprived them of a place to openly organize, plan, and promote their poisonous ideologies,” Heidi Beirich, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project, said in a statement. “Discord’s pledge to continue to combat extremist organizing on their platform is critical. This fight is not going to end tomorrow. Other tech companies who struggle with these same issues should know it’s always the right policy decision to reject organized hatred.”

But unlike Facebook and Twitter, Discord’s semi-private nature lets more hate speech go undetected. Discord told The Daily Beast it does not read users’ messages, and relies on users to report behavior that violates the app’s terms of service.

“This fight is not going to end tomorrow. Other tech companies who struggle with these same issues should know it’s always the right policy decision to reject organized hatred.”

— Heidi Beirich, SPLC

“Discord has a Terms of Service (ToS) and Community Guidelines that we ask all of our communities and users to adhere to,” a spokesperson said. “These specifically prohibit harassment, threatening messages, calls to violence or any illegal activity. Though we do not read people’s private messages, we do investigate and take immediate action against any reported ToS violation by a server or user. We will continue to be aggressive to ensure that Discord exists for the community we set out to support—gamers.”

The reliance on users to report abuse appears to have led some neo-Nazis to think of the platform as a safe space.

“I think the alt-right has relied on Discord as a means of communication across distances, with the expectation that what’s happening, or what they can talk about is secure,” Ryan Lenz, a senior investigative reporter with the Southern Poverty Law Center, told The Daily Beast.

Even after alt-right Discord logs leaked last August, revealing how neo-Nazis planned the Unite the Right rally, some groups still believed their messages were safe on the chat app.

“Don’t let reporters know what platform we communicate on,” Zaine Deal, a former TWP member wrote on Discord on Christmas Day, 2017.

Other extremist groups also lingered on the platform. In February, ProPublica reported on a Discord server for the Atomwaffen Division, a neo-Nazi group that has been implicated in four murders in recent months.The ProPublica report revealed Atomwaffen members celebrating the most recent murder, that of Jewish teenager Blaze Bernstein.

Shortly after the report, Discord banned Atomwaffen and other white supremacist groups, including the Nordic Resistance Movement, Iron March, and European Domas.

But keeping the groups off Discord is another matter. The Daily Beast observed one 4chan-affiliated Discord group shuffle across at least three Discord servers, always posting a link to a backup chat room in case their primary room was banned.

“I think time and time again, especially in the aftermath of Charlottesville, we’ve seen that Discord is not as secure as the alt-right thought it would be,” Lenz said, “and that many of their unsavory ideas or true intentions have been laid bare by leaks and otherwise communications on the platform.”

Kelly Weill

kelly.weill@thedailybeast.com

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