Two interviews about the U.S. far right

I recently recorded two radio interviews about my book Insurgent Supremacists: The U.S. Far Right’s Challenge to State and Empire. Between them, the interviews touch on many of the book’s major themes.

Christina Aanestad interviewed me on September 16 for The Sunday Show on KPFA of the Pacifica Radio Network. The interview aired on September 23 as part of the station’s pledge drive and is available in KPFA’s online archives, here. Our 45-minute conversation explored a range of issues, including the following:

• federal security agencies’ history of widely varied relationships with violent right-wing organizations – ranging from sponsorship to crackdown
• Christian theocratic forces – Christian Reconstructionists and New Apostolic Reformation
• the contrasting racial politics of white nationalists and Christian theocrats
• Patriot movement ideology and conspiracist anti-elitism
• the alt-right’s political origins – especially European New Right, paleoconservatism, and manosphere
• Proud Boys – distinct from but in coalition with white nationalists
• the alt-right’s relationship with Donald Trump
• some pitfalls in analyzing the far right
• the need for a multi-pronged antifascist strategy.

The second interview was with Rob Seimetz for the program Moving Forward on the Progressive Radio Network. We spoke for an hour by phone on September 22 and the interview aired a few days later. It’s available here. Some of the points addressed include:

• the concept of fascism and whether the U.S. should be considered a fascist country
• white supremacism and color-blindness as different forms of racist ideologies
• the distinction between rightists who are loyal to the existing U.S. political system and those who are not, and how these forces are also interconnected
• anti-establishment and leftist-sounding elements of far right politics, and the difference between systemic analyses of power and anti-elitism based on conspiracy theories
• the recent “shift in the center of gravity of patriarchal politics in the US” from the Christian right’s emphasis on the patriarchal family (and mobilizing women) to the alt-right/manosphere emphasis on predatory sexuality (and excluding women from politics altogether)
• paleoconservatism’s role in shaping the alt-right
• the alt-right’s mixed success since Trump took office, and the longer-term threat posed by far right forces. 

Photo credit:
Vintage Astatic Silver Eagle Microphone, by Joe Haupt from USA [CC BY-SA 2.0], via Wikimedia Commons.