The Rise of the Radical Right in America
By Dr. Jim Castagnera, Esq.
Tuesday, November 8th, was Election Day in the United States in 2016. I’d voted after driving home from my job at Rider University, had dinner with my wife Joanne, then settled in for the ritual of watching the lection returns.
The 2016 campaign season had been an emotional roller coaster, regardless of which major candidate you favored. As some political pundit or other had opined, “Both parties picked the one candidate that the other could defeat.” Hilary Clinton was the heir-apparent to Barack Obama. Having elected, and reelected, the first Black American President, the nation seemed ready to put the first female into the Oval Office. Clinton brought an impressive record to the presidential race: First Lady, New York Senator, Secretary of State. But she also brought an extraordinary amount of baggage:
· The September 11 (of all dates!), 2012 attack on the American diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, by the Islamic militant group Ansar Al-Sharia. That being a presidential election year, Congressional Republicans tried mightily to lay blame for lack of preparedness at the feet of Democratic leadership.[i] Although no wrongdoing was ever laid directly on Clinton, six Congressional committee notwithstanding, “Benghazi” remained a blotch on her record as Obama’s Secretary of State right into the 2016 election campaign.
· “On March 16, 2016 WikiLeaks launched a searchable archive for over 30 thousand emails & email attachments sent to and from Hillary Clinton's private email server while she was Secretary of State. The 50,547 pages of documents span from 30 June 2010 to 12 August 2014. 7,570 of the documents were sent by Hillary Clinton. The emails were made available in the form of thousands of PDFs by the US State Department as a result of a Freedom of Information Act request. More PDFs were made available on February 29, 2016, and a set of additional 995 emails was imported up to February 2, 2018.”[ii]
· Not only did these vast email dumps provide fodder for journalists, pundits, opponent and the general public to question, criticize and embarrass the candidate. They also precipitated FBI investigations, the second one virtually on the eve of the election. Although the first investigation ended in early July 2016 with a determination that no criminal charges were warranted,[iii] this fell far short of a vote of confidence on Clinton’s competency.
Running against Clinton was a former reality-TV star and real estate tycoon, who repeatedly called her a “crook” and led chants at his rallies of “Lock her up.” Such rhetoric was heretofore unheard of in a presidential campaign. And Donald Trump’s disdain for political correctness was just one of his idiosyncratic characteristics.
Trump launched his campaign for the presidency on June 16, 2015 at Trump Power in New York City. From the get-go, his campaign was unprecedented. “Many of Trump's remarks were controversial and helped his campaign garner extensive coverage by the mainstream media, trending topics, and social media. Trump's campaign rallies attracted large crowds as well as public controversy. Some of the events were marked by incidents of violence between Trump supporters and protesters, mistreatment of some journalists, and disruption by a large group of protesters who effectively shut down a major rally in Chicago. Trump himself was accused of inciting violence at his rallies.”[iv]
Initially, Trump’s candidacy was considered by many to be a joke. Indeed, he was the butt of satire and parody every bit as merciless as his own harsh rhetoric. One example, comedian and TV host Bill Maher, will suffice:
· Three years before the ’16 election, referencing Trump’s offer of $5million to charity if Obama would release his college transcripts and birth certificate, Maher commented, “Suppose that perhaps Donald Trump had been the spawn of his mother having sex with an orangutan, because, well, I didn't just make this up. The color of his hair and the color of an orange orangutan is the only two things in nature of the same color. . . . I'm not saying it's true, I hope it's not true, but unless he comes up with proof, I'm willing to, I'm willing to offer five million dollars to Donald Trump that he can donate to a charity of his choice, Hair Club for Men, the Institute for Incorrigible Douchebaggery, whatever charity . . ." Trump produced his own birth certificate, then sued Maher.[v]
· Maher’s satire intensified as the 2016 campaign also heated up. For example, following the April 2016 GOP presidential-primary debate, Maher commented, ““I could not believe Trump last night. This was, like, in the first two minutes of the debate. He had to respond to this accusation, which, if you haven’t been following, [Senator] Marco Rubio all week was saying that Donald Trump has small hands, and you know what they say about men with small hands? Yeah, they put up tall buildings with their name on them. So, Trump had to make sure everybody knows he didn’t need to make his penis great again—it was already great. He actually came out there and said, ‘I guarantee you there’s no problem. I guarantee you.’ Over to you, FactCheck.org. And maybe we should, you know what? I mean, come on: Trump lies about everything else, we gotta know. Come on, Don, you’re the guy who made Obama show his birth certificate. We need proof. Show us the Dick Certificate. Let’s see it.”[vi]
But the tone of Maher’s remarks altered markedly, as he --- along with millions more
Americans --- watched in amazement Donald Trump’s relentless march from the “comic relief” of the campaign to the winner of the most GOP primary contests, to the Grand Old Party’s nominee, to the winner of the 2016 presidential election. Per Wikipedia, “On November 8, 2016, Trump and Pence were elected president and vice president of the United States. Trump's populist positions in opposition to illegal immigration and various trade agreements, such as the Trans-Pacific Partnership, earned him support especially among voters who were male, white, blue-collar, working class, and those without college degrees. Many voters in the Rust Belt, who gave Trump the electoral votes needed to win the presidency, switched from supporting Bernie Sanders to Trump after Hillary Clinton won the Democratic nomination.”[vii]
On November 2, 2016, less than a week before the voting, Maher --- like most other Democrats --- had stopped laughing. “I always said this would be a tight race. I have never seen an election quite like this. On one side a hysterical woman, and on the other side Hillary Clinton. We thought it was gonna be a disaster. We shit our pants. But then it was a bunch of nothing. I hope when we look back on this, Trump is like Y2K.”[viii] But Trump was not like Y2K --- the computer melt-down anticipated by many prior to January 1, 2000 that never happened. Trump --- like most Republican presidential candidates before him --- lost the popular vote but won the Electoral College contest… the contest that counts. Maher probably spoke for millions of voters on the other side of the tally when he commented three days after the election, “He won. He ran a vicious, vulgar campaign and I gave it back exactly in measure—I was also vicious and vulgar—but he won. And he did it his way. Nobody gets to sing that song more than Donald Trump. Everybody told him he couldn’t do this, he couldn’t do that—and he won. He did the hardest thing in the entire world to do: win election as the leader of the free world.”[ix]
The Rise of the Radical Right
Aurelian Mondon[x] and Antonia Vaughan[xi] of England’s University of Bath trace the stages of the American radical-right’s rises and recessions. Some of this should seem familiar to you, having read this book’s chapter on McVeigh and Nichols.
As in many other countries, the extreme right in the US found itself pushed to the margins in the aftermath of the Second World War. However, this process was neither straightforward nor definitive. Not only did racism remain systemic, but the history of the Ku Klux Klan, for example, shows that the organisation remained close to the mainstream until the 1960s, when a combination of Civil Rights struggle and wider political development forced it into decline. At the time, ‘the destruction of the Klan in this way allowed it to become symbolic of the end of racism, akin to an exorcism of an evil within the nation, as identified in post-racial narratives’ (citation omitted). From then on, the Klan took an even more extremist turn as did a number of other organisations and militias. However, the marginalisation of the extreme right did not mean the end of racism, and more coded discourse remained within mainstream politics, particularly under the Nixon, Reagan and Bush administrations. Racial discrimination was coded into laws, institutionalised and maintained through implicit and explicit government policies and discourses.[xii]
They continue:
The 5th era of far-right activity saw groups go ‘underground and offline’ (citation omitted), regarding the internet as free from government oversight or control. The far right’s online presence was mixed, with innovation dependent on the national context: a number of sites took advantage of the affordance of the internet to spread propaganda, expand networks, and connect previously scattered individuals. The online presence of the far right evolved with the internet, moving from bulletin boards, to websites and forums, to the social media platforms that have since come to dominate. Winter has noted how key events, such as the election of Obama in 2008, gave an initial boost to the far right as it provided a clear rallying call. Social media and the internet more generally helped the diffusion of propaganda and manifestos, such as in the case of Anders Breivik, the Norwegian terrorist who murdered 77 people in a series of attacks in 2011, including 69 young left-wing activists on the island of Utøya. This was also witnessed after the terrorist attack in 2019 in Christchurch, New Zealand, when Australian Brenton Tarrant murdered 51 Muslims at a mosque. His manifesto, as well as images of the numerous symbols drawn on his weapons, quickly spread across the Internet and resonated across far-right communities.[xiii]
Their assessment of the 2016 presidential election is as follows:
In 2016, the alt-right was a jubilant cheerleader for Trump, a candidate considered for a number of months to be somewhat of a joke, attracting many who claimed to have joined the movement ironically or subversively. As the campaign progressed, the alt-right fuelled and was fuelled by a venomous discourse of toxic masculinity and racism, epitomised by their branding of opposition conservatives as ‘cuckservatives’. Legitimising the connection, Trump ultimately hired alt-right individuals such as Steve Bannon, then editor of Breitbart. As such, its actors gained prominence in the campaign and access to government during the Trump presidency; alt-right discourse became mainstreamed, if not altogether mainstream. For example, it became increasingly common to hear adversaries, no matter how moderate, denounced as traitors to the nation trying to institutionalise Socialism and open borders.[xiv]
Charlottesville, August 2017
Donald Trump’s ascension to the U.S. presidency was not the only catalyst of a resurgent right. The resurgence also was intended as a counter to organized efforts aimed at removing the vestiges of the Confederacy, once and for all. This effort was, in turn, a response to the brutal attack on a Charleston church in 2015,when a white supremacist invade a service and slaughtered the minister (a state senator) and eight parishioners.[xv] Among other responses to the travesty, a movement arose to remove the remaining statues and monuments, and change the names of streets and public spaces, dedicated to the Confederacy. One such statue, that of Robert E. Lee, was scheduled from removal from what once had been Lee Park in Charlottesville, Virginia.
A local white supremacist, Jason Kessler, spearheaded the “Unite the Right” rally that would bring all manner of right-wing adherents to his hometown --- and that of his alma mater, the University of Virginia --- in August 2017. Kessler was a man of many parts: blue-collar dishwasher, truck driver and handyman; blogger, poet, and novelist; former Democrat, liberal and Occupy-movement adherent turned Neo-Nazi.[xvi]
Among the assorted groups and ideological true-believers brought to Charlottesville for the August 11-12, 2017 rally were:
· the neo-Nazi Traditionalist Worker Party,
· the neo-Confederate League of the South,
· the National Socialist Movement,
· the Loyal White Knights,
· the Confederate White Knights,
· the Fraternal Order of Alt-Knights,
· the California-based fight club Rise Above Movement,
· the Detroit Right Wings (a play on the NHL Detroit Red Wings).[xvii]
Conducted in the backyard of UVA, the rally predictably aroused a bevy of counter-
protesters. Clashes were inevitable, no doubt deemed by some to be desirable. On By day two, the situation was so volatile that Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe declared a state of emergency and the state police labeled the rally an unlawful assembly. In the event, this was too little too late. At about 1:35 on the second afternoon, a self-proclaimed white supremacist, James Alex Fields, Jr. drove his car into a group of counter-protesters, injuring 35 and killing Heather Heyer. Fields fled the scene in his auto but was soon apprehended.[xviii]
Aftermath
On August 11, 2022, the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Hatewatch commented:
Five years after white supremacists descended on Charlottesville, Virginia, the statue they came to protect is gone, and the “alt-right” coalition they embodied has imploded. At the same time, the existential threat that far-right extremism poses to the U.S. has arguably never been more severe. Such is the complex fallout of “Unite the Right,” where hundreds of extremists immersed a college town in violent conflict, generating shocking images that news organizations continue to broadcast as symbols of the nation’s struggle with hate and authoritarianism. They also helped bring the “great replacement” conspiracy theory into mainstream right-wing discourse by chanting, “Jews will not replace us” in viral videos staged on the eve of Unite the Right.
***
When Trump supporters attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, the event embodied a still-evolving cultural shift in far-right extremism, one that left behind many of the men who participated in Unite the Right on Aug. 12, 2017. Still, it’s almost impossible to imagine Trump’s mob enacting that kind of violence in a world where Unite the Right never took place.[xix]
Regarding the “cultural shift” referred to above, Hatewatch has said:
One year after Donald Trump’s supporters stormed the Capitol in Washington, D.C., the hard-right, anti-democracy faction of the Republican base that led the attack threatens to overtake the party for the long term. This hard-right faction, loyal to former President Trump, minimizes, or supports, the violent storming of the Capitol on Jan. 6. They have worked to systemically undermine America’s democracy in the months following the attack by installing into positions of power loyal proponents of Trump’s Big Lie and by passing a flurry of voter suppression bills. The few Republicans who oppose Trump or acknowledge the wrong that he and others did on Jan. 6 face being ostracized. This group of Republicans also embrace lies and conspiracy theories to spin away what happened that day. Repeatedly, such high-profile Trump backers as Tucker Carlson have opted to further stoke the feelings of paranoia and bitterness that undergirded the attack, rather than work to calm the tensions of a nation in turmoil.[xx]
[i] “2012 Benghazi Attack,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_Benghazi_attack (last accessed Dec. 30, 2023).
[ii] “Hilary Clinton Email Archive,” Wikileaks, https://wikileaks.org/clinton-emails/ (last accessed Dec. 30. 2023).
[iii] “Statement by FBI Director James B. Comey Investigation of Secretary Hillary Clinton’s Use of a Personal Email System,” FBI News, July 5, 2016, https://www.fbi.gov/news/press-releases/statement-by-fbi-director-james-b-comey-on-the-investigation-of-secretary-hillary-clinton2019s-use-of-a-personal-e-mail-system (last accessed Dec. 30, 2023).
[iv] “Donald Trump 2016 Presidential Campaign,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump_2016_presidential_campaign (last accessed De. 30, 2023).
[v] Frederick E. Allen, “Donald Trump Sues Bill Maher for Calling Him an Orangutan”, Forbes, Feb. 6, 2013, https://www.forbes.com/sites/frederickallen/2013/02/06/donald-trump-sues-bill-maher-for-calling-him-the-son-of-an-orangutan/?sh=62478fdf367d (last accessed Dec. 30, 2023).
[vi] Marlow Stern, “Bill Maher Calls Out Trump: Show Us the Dick Certificate,” Daily Beast, April 13, 2017, https://www.thedailybeast.com/bill-maher-calls-out-trump-show-us-the-dick-certificate (last accessed Dec. 30, 2023).
[vii] “Donald Trump Presidential Campaign,” op. cit., Note 4.
[viii] Ted Johnson, “Bill Maher: I Hope When We Look Back on This, Trump is Like Y2K”, Variety, Nov. 2, 2016, https://variety.com/2016/biz/news/bill-maher-donald-trump-1201907925/ (last accessed Dec. 30, 2023).
[ix] Marlow Stern, “Bill Maher Surrenders to President-Elect Trump: He Did It… And He Did It His Way,” Daily Beast, Nov. 11, 2016, https://www.thedailybeast.com/bill-maher-surrenders-to-president-elect-trump-he-won-and-he-did-it-his-way (last accessed Dec. 30, 2023).
[x] “Aurelian Mondon, “ University of Bath, https://researchportal.bath.ac.uk/en/persons/aurelien-mondon (last accessed Dec. 30, 2023).
[xi] “Antonia Vaughan (University of Bath)”, Oxpol, https://blog.politics.ox.ac.uk/author/antonia-vaughan-university-of-bath/?author=antonia-vaughan-university-of-bath (last accessed Dec. 30, 2023).
[xii] Aurelian Mondon & Antonia Vaughan, “The Trump Presidency and the Mainstreaming of Far-Right Politics,” Gale, https://www.gale.com/intl/essays/aurelien-mondon-antonia-vaughan-trump-presidency-mainstreaming-far-right-politics (last accessed Dec. 30, 2023).
[xiii] Ibid.
[xiv] Ibid.
[xv] “Charleston Church Shooting,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charleston_church_shooting (last accessed Dec. 30, 2023).
[xvi] “Jason Kessler,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jason_Kessler (last accessed Dec. 30, 2023).
[xvii] “Unite the Right Rally,” Wikipedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unite_the_Right_rally (last accessed Dec. 30, 2023).
[xviii] Ibid.
[xix] Michael Edison Hayden et al, “’Unite the Right’ 5 Years Later: Where Are They New?”, Southern Poverty Law Center, Aug. 11, 2022, https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2022/08/11/unite-right-5-years-later-where-are-they-now (last accessed Dec. 31, 2023).
[xx] Michael Edison Hayden, “One Year After Jan.6, the Hard Right Digs In,” Southern Poverty Law Center, Dec. 30, 2021, https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2021/12/30/one-year-after-jan-6-hard-right-digs (last accessed Dec. 31, 2023),
