Daily Archives: October 23, 2022

How alt-right media and a handful of Twitter bots tried to get the United States National Security Advisor fired

On August 3, a handful of Twitter accounts launched a media campaign under the hashtag #FireMcMaster. The hashtag appeared in response to United States National Security Advisor H.R. McMasters recent personnel decisions at the National Security Council (NSC) and his recently leaked letter to former President Barack Obamas National Security Advisor Susan Rice.

The ensuing social media campaign to #FireMcMaster spread virally and, ultimately, forced President Trump to affirm support for his closest advisor on matters relating to national security and foreign policy, for now. Mobilization across alt-right social media platforms is commonplace, and this case shows another correlation between their mobilization and high-performing bot networks.

In the past week, McMaster fired Rich Higgins, the NSCs Senior Director for Strategic Planning, because of a memo Higgins wrote alleging a conspiracy or political warfare against Trump, including from globalists, bankers, the deep state, and Islamists. McMaster also fired two other senior officials brought to the NSC by General Michael Flynn, who preceded McMaster in the National Security Advisor position.

McMaster also extended the top secret clearances to all of his predecessors as National Security Advisor, including Susan Rice, who alt-right in the media has accused of politically-motivated requests to unmask portions of sensitive intelligence sources, during the 2016 United States presidential elections. The practice of extending security clearances for former National Security Advisors and unmasking certain aspects of intelligence are commonplace and routine for any United States National Security Advisor.

Both actions led to a coordinated campaign, spearheaded by known alt-right figures, to fire McMaster. The anti-McMaster campaign was initiated by large, alt-right media platforms primarily Infowars and Breitbart, as well as alt-right Twitter activists including Paul Joseph Watson and Jack Posobiec, both of whom are associated with Prison Planet, another website operated by Alex Jones.

Between August 2 and August 6, Infowars and Breitbart published 14 negative stories about McMaster and his relationship to President Trump.

Infowars

Aug 4: Everything the president wants to do, McMaster opposes former NSC official says

Aug 4: General McMaster panics as journalists expose him as greatest national security threat

Aug 3: McMaster purging key Trump Allies

Aug 3: Report: McMaster fired National Security Council official for penning memo on globalists

Breitbart

Aug 6: McMaster worked at think tank backed by Soros-funded group that helped Obama sell Iran nuclear deal

Aug 4: Trump meets with McMaster amid reports he cleared Susan Rice, purged loyalists

Aug 4: Brigitte Gabriel: Politically correct H.R. McMaster doesnt see eye-to-eye with Trump on how to defeat Islamic State

Aug 4: Report: H.R. McMaster increasingly volatile and frequently blows his top

Aug 3: Report: H.R. McMaster gave explicit instruction not to mention Obama holdovers in Trump admin

Aug 3: Allen Roth: H. R. McMaster at odds with Trump on Iran nuclear deal

Aug 3: H.R. McMaster promised Susan Rice she could keep her security clearance in secret letter

Aug 3: NSC Purge: McMaster deeply hostile to Israel and to Trump

Aug 3: Report: H. R. McMaster believes Susan Rice did nothing wrong in unmasking requests

Aug 2: Report: H. R. McMaster fired National Security Council official for penning memo on globalists

These were quickly picked up by other alt-right media outlets. Below is an example of how one of those stories Report: McMaster fired National Security Council official for penning memo on globalists spread:

Other articles on Infowars and Breitbart had similar amplifying networks behind them.

The Twitter campaign #FireMcMaster was led by a traditional group of alt-right activists, among whom were Prison Planets Paul Joseph Watson and Jack Posobiec:

They, however, were not as effective as Lee Stranahan. Stranahan is the founder of Populist.TV and a co-host of the Sputnik news show Fault Lines. Sputnik is a Russian government media outlet that frequently recurs in @DFRLab reporting.

In a recent interview with The Atlantic, Stranahan said: Im on the Russian payroll now, when you work at Sputnik youre being paid by the Russians.

Stranahan was heavily involved in the #FireMcMaster campaign. Between August 3 and August 7, Stranahan used #FireMcMaster 25 times. During the same time, he only used #FaultLines (the name of his show) 12 times.

Apart from that, Stranahan posted a video on Periscope in which he called on alt-right Twitter users to retweet #FireMcMaster. He also urged Trump supporters to get on the phone, call the White House, and ask President Donald Trump to fire McMaster.

On top of that, he published three videos on his YouTube channel urging his subscribers to call the White House and ask for McMaster to be fired:

#FireMcMaster on Twitter appears to have been the most well-organized campaign in the history of the alt-right. A total of 136,292 tweets using the hashtag #FireMcMaster were posted between August 3 and August 6, with two thirds posted between August 3 and August 4.

@DFRLab analyzed a sample of 6,064 tweets posted during the period of August 3 and August 6. We found that 1,278 tweets using #FireMcMaster were generated by a mere 86 accounts, with the most active account managing to post 69 tweets using the hashtag. Our random sample indicates that less than 8 percent of all accounts sharing #FireMcMaster was responsible for 20 percent of all traffic on the hashtag.

The following are some of the most active Twitter accounts to converse using the hashtag #FireMcMaster.

Twitter user @MarieMa49685063 posted 34 tweets using #FireMcMaster. Overall, in just four days, the account posted more than 3,000 tweets, 90 percent of which were retweets. Its highly likely that this account is a bot.

Similarly, @Hrenee80 posted 34 tweets using the hashtag, and posted 3,195 tweets in total last week (the week of August 1), of which 90 percent were retweets. Such volume indicates the account is likely a bot.

@RescueTracker81 mentioned the hashtag 69 times, but this account is less likely to be a bot. It posts an average of 156 tweets a day, of which 74 percent are retweets.

@GeneralDefense appears to be a bot. It was created a few weeks ago, and it posts 226 tweets a day on average.

More importantly, #FireMcMaster makes up 68 percent of all hashtag usage by the @GeneralDefense account. In total, the account has posted 98 tweets with the hashtag.

@tamaraleighllc is another account that appears to be at least partially automated. It tweets 332 tweets a day, 98 percent of which are retweets.

The spread of the call for McMasters dismissal, and the spread of accompanying media articles, did not stop with Twitter, but also proliferated heavily on Facebook. Data from Buzzsummo suggests that anti-McMaster articles from Circa, Breitbart, Liberty Writers News, The Daily Caller, and Young Conservatives (@TheYoungCons) garnered 126,000 engagements on Facebook alone.

Due to Facebooks limited API (application program interface), its hard to tell how organic the engagement was, but if the Twitter campaign is any indication, the articles were likely spread by fake or automated accounts.

Redditors on /r/TheDonald, an alt-right forum of Reddit dedicated to discussions of President Trump, also actively engaged in spreading the hashtag and the articles associated with it.

Redditors were sharing the hashtag #FireMcMaster and encouraging others to spread it more widely:

Links to tweets using the hashtag were also shared on the subreddit to prompt others to retweet and like them:

This, by far, is one of the most organized and widespread alt-right campaigns to date, spanning across Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, and other social media. This shows the alt-rights capacity to organize and amplify on several platforms simultaneously, and it signals the communitys growing digital capabilities.

The success of the campaign forced Trumps administration to respond. Only two days after the start of the campaign, the White House issued a statement saying President Trump supports H. R. McMaster. The case shows how effective a group of well-organized bots, trolls, and cyborgs can, in extremis, force the White Houses hand in internal policy matters or at least shape public posture.

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#FireMcMaster, explained. How alt-right media and a handful of | by ...

Political alignment favoring traditional politics

Right-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that view certain social orders and hierarchies as inevitable, natural, normal, or desirable,[1][2][3] typically supporting this position on the basis of natural law, economics, authority, property or tradition.[4][5]:693,721[6][7][8][9][10] Hierarchy and inequality may be seen as natural results of traditional social differences[11][12] or competition in market economies.[13][14][15]

Right-wing politics are considered the counterpart to left-wing politics, and the leftright political spectrum is one of the most widely accepted political spectrums.[16] The term right-wing can generally refer to the section of a political party or system that advocates free enterprise and private ownership, and typically favours socially traditional ideas.[17]

The Right includes social conservatives and fiscal conservatives, while a minority of right-wing movements, such as fascists, harbor anti-capitalist sentiments.[18][19][20] The Right also includes certain groups who are socially liberal and fiscally laissez-faire, such as right-wing libertarians.

The following positions are typically associated with right-wing politics.

The original use of the term "right-wing", relative to communism, placed the conservatives on the right, the liberals in the centre and the communists on the left. Both the conservatives and the liberals were strongly anti-communist. The history of the use of the term right-wing in reference to anti-communism is a complicated one.[21]

Early Marxist movements were at odds with the traditional monarchies that ruled over much of the European continent at the time. Many European monarchies outlawed the public expression of communist views and the Communist Manifesto, which began "[a] spectre [that] is haunting Europe", and stated that monarchs feared for their thrones. Advocacy of communism was illegal in the Russian Empire, the German Empire, and Austria-Hungary, the three most powerful monarchies in continental Europe prior to World War I. Many monarchists (except constitutional monarchists) viewed inequality in wealth and political power as resulting from a divine natural order. The struggle between monarchists and communists was often described as a struggle between the Right and the Left.

By World War I, in most European monarchies the divine right of kings had become discredited and was replaced by liberal and nationalist movements. Most European monarchs became figureheads or they yielded some power to elected governments. The most conservative European monarchy, the Russian Empire, was replaced by the communist Soviet Union. The Russian Revolution inspired a series of other communist revolutions across Europe in the years 19171923. Many of these, such as the German Revolution, were defeated by nationalist and monarchist military units. During this period, nationalism began to be considered right-wing, especially when it opposed the internationalism of the communists.

The 1920s and 1930s saw the decline of traditional right-wing politics. The mantle of conservative anti-communism was taken up by the rising fascist movements on the one hand and by American-inspired liberal conservatives on the other. When communist groups and political parties began appearing around the world, their opponents were usually colonial authorities and the term right-wing came to be applied to colonialism.

After World War II, communism became a global phenomenon and anti-communism became an integral part of the domestic and foreign policies of the United States and its NATO allies. Conservatism in the post-war era abandoned its monarchist and aristocratic roots, focusing instead on patriotism, religious values, and nationalism. Throughout the Cold War, colonial governments in Asia, Africa, and Latin America turned to the United States for political and economic support. Communists were also enemies of capitalism, portraying Wall Street as the oppressor of the masses. The United States made anti-communism the top priority of its foreign policy, and many American conservatives sought to combat what they saw as communist influence at home. This led to the adoption of a number of domestic policies that are collectively known under the term McCarthyism. While both liberals and conservatives were anti-communist, the followers of Senator McCarthy were called right-wing and those on the right called liberals who favored free speech, even for communists, leftist.[22]

In France after the French Revolution, the Right fought against the rising power of those who had grown rich through commerce, and sought to preserve the rights of the hereditary nobility. They were uncomfortable with capitalism, the Enlightenment, individualism, and industrialism, and fought to retain traditional social hierarchies and institutions.[23][24] In Europe's history, there have been strong collectivist right-wing movements, such as in the social Catholic right, that have exhibited hostility to all forms of liberalism (including economic liberalism) and have historically advocated for paternalist class harmony involving an organic-hierarchical society where workers are protected while class hierarchy remains.[25]

In the nineteenth century, the Right had shifted to support the newly rich in some European countries (particularly England) and instead of favouring the nobility over industrialists, favoured capitalists over the working class. Other right-wing movementssuch as Carlism in Spain and nationalist movements in France, Germany, and Russiaremained hostile to capitalism and industrialism. Nevertheless, a few right-wing movementsnotably the French Nouvelle Droite, CasaPound, and American paleoconservatismare often in opposition to capitalist ethics and the effects they have on society. These forces see capitalism and industrialism as infringing upon or causing the decay of social traditions or hierarchies that are essential for social order.[26]

In modern times, "right-wing" is sometimes used to describe laissez-faire capitalism. In Europe, capitalists formed alliances with the Right during their conflicts with workers after 1848. In France, the Right's support of capitalism can be traced to the late nineteenth century.[27] The so-called neoliberal Right, popularised by US President Ronald Reagan and UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, combines support for free markets, privatisation, and deregulation with traditional right-wing support for social conformity.[9] Right-wing libertarianism (sometimes known as libertarian conservatism or conservative libertarianism) supports a decentralised economy based on economic freedom and holds property rights, free markets, and free trade to be the most important kinds of freedom. Political theorist Russell Kirk believed that freedom and property rights were interlinked.[28]

Conservative authoritarians and those on the far-right have supported fascism and corporatism,[26] a political ideology which advocates the organization of society by corporate groupssuch as agricultural, labour, military, scientific, or guild associationson the basis of their common interests.[30]

In France, nationalism was originally a left-wing and Republican ideology.[31] After the period of boulangisme and the Dreyfus Affair, nationalism became a trait of the right-wing.[32] Right-wing nationalists sought to define and defend a "true" national identity from elements which they believed were corrupting that identity.[27] Some were supremacists, who in accordance with scientific racism and social Darwinism applied the concept of "survival of the fittest" to nations and races.[33] Right-wing nationalism was influenced by Romantic nationalism, in which the state derives its political legitimacy from the organic unity of those who it governs. This generally includes the language, race, culture, religion, and customs of the nation, all of which were "born" within its culture. Linked with right-wing nationalism is cultural conservatism, which supports the preservation of the heritage of a nation or culture and often sees deviations from cultural norms as an existential threat.[34][pageneeded]

Right-wing politics typically justifies a hierarchical society on the basis of natural law or tradition.[6][7][8][9][10][35]

Traditionalism was advocated by a group of United States university professors (labeled the "New Conservatives" by the popular press) who rejected the concepts of individualism, liberalism, modernity, and social progress, seeking instead to promote what they identified as cultural and educational renewal[36] and a revived interest in concepts perceived by traditionalists as truths that endure from age to age alongside basic institutions of western society such as the church, the family, the state, and business.

Right-wing populism is a combination of civic-nationalism, cultural-nationalism and sometimes ethno-nationalism, localism, along with anti-elitism, using populist rhetoric to provide a critique of existing political institutions.[37] According to Margaret Canovan, a right-wing populist is "a charismatic leader, using the tactics of politicians' populism to go past the politicians and intellectual elite and appeal to the reactionary sentiments of the populace, often buttressing his claim to speak for the people by the use of referendums".[38][pageneeded]

In Europe, right-wing populism often takes the form of distrust of the European Union, and of politicians in general, combined with anti-immigrant rhetoric and a call for a return to traditional, national values.[39] Daniel Stockemer states, the radical right is, "Targeting immigrants as a threat to employment, security and cultural cohesion."[40]

In the United States, the Tea Party movement stated that the core beliefs for membership were the primacy of individual liberties as defined by the Constitution of the United States, preference for a small federal government, and respect for the rule of law. Some policy positions included opposition to illegal immigration and support for a strong national military force, the right to individual gun ownership, cutting taxes, reducing government spending, and balancing the budget.[41]

Philosopher and diplomat Joseph de Maistre argued for the indirect authority of the Pope over temporal matters. According to Maistre, only governments which were founded upon Christian constitutionswhich were implicit in the customs and institutions of all European societies, especially the Catholic European monarchiescould avoid the disorder and bloodshed that followed the implementation of rationalist political programs, such as the chaos which occurred during the French Revolution. Some prelates of the Church of Englandestablished by Henry VIII and headed by the current sovereignare given seats in the House of Lords (as Lords Spiritual); but they are considered politically neutral rather than specifically right- or left-wing.

American right-wing media outlets oppose sex outside marriage and same-sex marriage, and they sometimes reject scientific positions on evolution and other matters where science tends to disagree with the Bible.[42][43]

The term family values has been used by right-wing partiessuch as the Republican Party in the United States, the Family First Party in Australia, the Conservative Party in the United Kingdom, and the Bharatiya Janata Party in Indiato signify support for traditional families and opposition to the changes the modern world has made in how families live. Supporters of "family values" may oppose abortion, euthanasia, and birth control.[44][45]

Outside the West, the Hindu nationalist movement has attracted privileged groups which fear encroachment on their dominant positions, as well as "plebeian" and impoverished groups which seek recognition around a majoritarian rhetoric of cultural pride, order, and national strength.[46]

In Israel, Meir Kahane advocated that Israel should be a theocratic state, where non-Jews have no voting rights,[47] and the far-right Lehava strictly opposes Jewish assimilation and the Christian presence in Israel.[48] The Jewish Defence League (JDL) in the United States was classified as "a right wing terrorist group" by the FBI in 2001.[49]

Many Islamist groups have been called right-wing, including the Great Union Party,[50] the Combatant Clergy Association/Association of Militant Clergy,[51][52] and the Islamic Society of Engineers of Iran.[53][54]

Right-wing politics involves, in varying degrees, the rejection of some egalitarian objectives of left-wing politics, claiming either that social or economic inequality is natural and inevitable or that it is beneficial to society.[35] Right-wing ideologies and movements support social order. The original French right-wing was called "the party of order" and held that France needed a strong political leader to keep order.[27]

Conservative British scholar R. J. White, who rejects egalitarianism, wrote: "Men are equal before God and the laws, but unequal in all else; hierarchy is the order of nature, and privilege is the reward of honourable service".[55] American conservative Russell Kirk also rejected egalitarianism as imposing sameness, stating: "Men are created different; and a government that ignores this law becomes an unjust government for it sacrifices nobility to mediocrity".[55] Kirk took as one of the "canons" of conservatism the principle that "civilized society requires orders and classes".[28] Italian scholar Norberto Bobbio argued that the right-wing is inegalitarian compared to the left-wing, as he argued that equality is a relative, not absolute, concept.[56]

Right libertarians reject collective or state-imposed equality as undermining reward for personal merit, initiative, and enterprise.[55] In their view, such imposed equality is unjust, limits personal freedom, and leads to social uniformity and mediocrity.[55]

In the view of philosopher Jason Stanley in How Fascism Works, the "politics of hierarchy" is one of the hallmarks of fascism, which refers to a "glorious past" in which members of the rightfully dominant group sat atop the hierarchy, and attempt to recreate this state of being.[57]

According to The Cambridge History of Twentieth-Century Political Thought, the Right has gone through five distinct historical stages:[58]

The political terms Left and Right were first used in the 18th century, during the French Revolution, in reference to the seating arrangement of the French parliament. Those who sat to the right of the chair of the presiding officer (le prsident) were generally supportive of the institutions of the monarchist Old Regime.[23][59][60][27] The original "Right" in France was formed in reaction to the "Left" and comprised those supporting hierarchy, tradition, and clericalism.[5]:693 The expression la droite ("the right") increased in use after the restoration of the monarchy in 1815, when it was applied to the Ultra-royalists.[61]

From the 1830s to the 1880s, the Western world's social class structure and economy shifted from nobility and aristocracy towards capitalism.[62] This shift affected centre-right movements such as the British Conservative Party, which responded in support of capitalism.[63]

The people of English-speaking countries did not apply the terms right and left to their own politics until the 20th century.[64] The term right-wing was originally applied to traditional conservatives, monarchists, and reactionaries; an extension, extreme right-wing, denotes fascism, Nazism, and racial supremacy.[65]

Rightist regimes were common in Europe in the Interwar period, 19191938.[citation needed]

The political term right-wing was first used during the French Revolution, when liberal deputies of the Third Estate generally sat to the left of the presiding officer's chair, a custom that began in the Estates General of 1789. The nobility, members of the Second Estate, generally sat to the right. In the successive legislative assemblies, monarchists who supported the Old Regime were commonly referred to as rightists because they sat on the right side. A major figure on the right was Joseph de Maistre, who argued for an authoritarian form of conservatism.

Throughout the 19th century, the main line dividing Left and Right in France was between supporters of the republic (often secularists) and supporters of the monarchy (often Catholics).[27] On the right, the Legitimists and Ultra-royalists held counter-revolutionary views, while the Orlanists hoped to create a constitutional monarchy under their preferred branch of the royal family, which briefly became a reality after the 1830 July Revolution.

The centre-right Gaullists in post-World War II France advocated considerable social spending on education and infrastructure development as well as extensive economic regulation, but limited the wealth redistribution measures characteristic of social democracy.[citation needed]

The dominance of the political right of inter-war Hungary, after the collapse of a short-lived Communist regime, was described by historian Istvn Dek:

Although freedom fighters are favoured, the right-wing tendency to elect or appoint politicians and government officials based on aristocratic and religious ties is common to almost all the states of India.[67][68][69][70] Multiple political parties however identify with terms and beliefs which are, by political consensus, right or left wing. Certain political parties such as the Bharatiya Janata Party, identify with conservative[71] and nationalist elements. Some, such as the Indian National Congress, take a liberal stance. The Communist Party of India, Communist Party of India (Marxist), and others, identify with left-wing socialist and communist concepts. Other political parties take differing stands, and hence cannot be clearly grouped as the left- and the right-wing.[72]

In British politics, the terms right and left came into common use for the first time in the late 1930s during debates over the Spanish Civil War.[73]

In the United States, following the Second World War, social conservatives joined with right-wing elements of the Republican Party to gain support in traditionally Democratic voting populations like white southerners and Catholics. Ronald Reagan's election to the presidency in 1980 cemented the alliance between the religious right in the United States and social conservatives.[74]

In 2019, the United States populace leaned center-right, with 37% of Americans self-identifying as conservative, compared to 35% moderate and 24% liberal. This was continuing a decades long trend of the country leaning center-right.[75]

The United States Department of Homeland Security defines right-wing extremism in the United States as "broadly divided into those groups, movements, and adherents that are primarily hate-oriented (based on hatred of particular religious, racial or ethnic groups), and those that are mainly anti-government, rejecting federal authority in favor of state or local authority, or rejecting government authority entirely. It may include groups and individuals that are dedicated to a single issue, such as opposition to abortion or immigration."[76]

The meaning of right-wing "varies across societies, historical epochs, and political systems and ideologies."[77] According to The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics, in liberal democracies, the political right opposes socialism and social democracy. Right-wing parties include conservatives, Christian democrats, classical liberals, and nationalists, as well as fascists on the far-right.[78]

British academics Nol O'Sullivan and Roger Eatwell divide the right into five types: reactionary, moderate, radical, extreme, and new.[79] Chip Berlet wrote that each of these "styles of thought" are "responses to the left", including liberalism and socialism, which have arisen since the 1789 French Revolution.[80]

Other authors make a distinction between the centre-right and the far-right.[85]

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Right-wing politics - Wikipedia

After New Zealand passed new gun laws this week, most automatic and semi-automatic weapons have become outlawed there as of Friday a swift response to the March 15 shootings in Christchurch that left 50 Muslim men, women and children dead at the hands of an alleged white supremacist terrorist. But guns werent the only weapon used by the shooter.

The shootings followed the release of materials some have called a manifesto but that has more accurately been called a media plan. In it are multiple medieval references, several involving medieval Vikings, which these days function as a signal to white supremacists. Along with much else from the European medieval world, the Viking past is part of the far rights standard visual and textual imaginary. That vision of a Viking world depends on contemporary digital and filmic popular culture such as the TV show Vikings and Viking-adjacent video games as well as on academic and historical sources.

But far-right Viking medievalism is not about historical accuracy. Rather, its used to create narratives. So, to resist the medieval narratives that activate violent hate, we must create counternarratives and to do that, we must understand the real Viking past and how it has been weaponized.

The term Viking possibly comes from the Old Norse word vkingr (sea warrior). As Stefan Brink and Neil Prices The Viking World describes, historically, it referred to seafaring groups who traversed the seas, oceans and rivers to raid, trade and colonize around the 10th and 11th centuries. They established settler colonies across the Mediterranean, Caspian, Black, Arctic and North Atlantic seas and waterways, maintaining a presence in regions ranging from present-day Russia and Europe to the Americas. Crucially, they were not homogeneous seafarers as is often imagined; they were multicultural and multiracial. But until recently, scholarly discussions of the Vikings in relation to race and a Global Middle Ages had been sidelined.

So where does the white supremacist vision of Viking genealogy come from?

Despite the fact that real Viking history was multicultural, academic medieval studies have historically been to blame for the upholding of that imaginary past.

In the 19th century, Romantic German nationalism metastasized into the Vlkish movement, which was interested in historical narratives that bolstered a white German nation state. The movement rewrote history, drawing on folklore such as that of Brothers Grimm, medieval epics and a dedication to racial white supremacy. Late 19th and early 20th-century scholars simultaneously drew from and reinforced this racialized imagination of the medieval past. Crucially, Vilhelm Grnbachs multi-volume work Vor Folket i Oldtiden (The Cultures of the Teutons) imagined an ancient Germanic genealogy that ran from Tacitus through the Middle Ages.

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German scholarly work during the eve of the Third Reich then added to this idea, with authors like Gustav Neckel and Bernhard Kummer blaming socialism, Jews and class revolutions for the decline of a Germanic race they saw descending from this Viking past. Another German scholar, Otto Hfler, who based his work on Grnbach, wrote of the Mnnerbunde, which the scholar Stefanie von Schnurbein has described as all-male warrior associations in so-called primitive societies. His take on Mnnerbund would become used as an explanation of the past and current Germanic race, and fueled the idea behind Nazi groups such as the SS and SA.

After World War II, despite the defeat of the Axis powers, these ideas didnt go away. Rather, they saw a resurgence in specific circles, including various far-right neo-pagan groups, like the Scandinavian Nordic Resistance Movement, known for their neo-Nazi violence. Grnbachs multivolume work, translated and available online, and the works of his contemporaries have also influenced current far-right extremists in Europe and North America.

This neo-pagan resurgence intersects with many facets of extremism today, from eco-fascism another term the Christchurch terrorist invoked to groups like the Odinists, who practice a form of white toxic masculinity based on the belief that the barbaric warriors of medieval Northern Europe functioned as a violent warrior comitatus. Odinists follow a neo-pagan medieval Scandinavian religion that is unacknowledged by the official Icelandic pagan religion, satr. The man who is accused of attacking two teenage girls (one in a hijab) and murdering Rick Best and Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche in Portland, Ore., in 2017 has linked himself to the idea of Vinland, the concept of a Viking North America onto which an imaginary Odinist past has been superimposed.

Nor is this use of Old Norse and Viking history limited to specific alt-right subgroups. In fact, it is a generalized social fixture in these circles. For example, when researcher Patrik Hermansson went undercover among the denizens of this world, he attended gatherings where extremists drank mead from a traditional Viking horn and prayed to the Norse god Odin. The Viking past contributes to a medieval toolkit of language, allusion and symbolism used to transmit white supremacist messages.

Communities of color have in the past fought white supremacist medieval narratives at the grassroots by spreading their own counternarratives, from W.E.B. Du Bois creating an African-American vision of the medieval past in Dark Princess to the Asian Americans who pushed back against racist medievalism during the period of Chinese Exclusion. Scholars and historians not just medievalists must also interrogate their disciplines from the inside, setting the record straight about medieval race and the Global Middle Ages.

So far, however, the most widespread, concerted and effective way to fight back against this historical white supremacist Viking genealogy has come not from academics or journalists.

Rather, it has come from Taika Waititi, the indigenous Maori director and writer. His movie Thor: Ragnarok in which Thors hammer, a medieval item regularly brandished by extremists, is destroyed was a multiracial and postcolonial counternarrative to the white Viking narrative circulating through the alt-right digital ecosystem. After decades of building up the violent Viking vision, more such stories will be needed to disrupt this medieval machine.

Historians perspectives on how the past informs the present

Dorothy Kim is an Assistant Professor of Medieval Literature at Brandeis University. She was a Fulbright Fellow in Iceland.

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Real Viking History and the Imagined White Supremacist Past | Time

Its getting tough to continue being a moderate Centre-Rightist these days as Western society appears to be slowly unravelling.

Its even tougher when you find out stuff like this:

Key, who served three terms as prime minister from 2008 to 2016, revealed his preferences in a quick-fire round of 20 questions that featured at the end of a new online series calledBoth Sides Now, hosted by members of the Labour and National youth wings.When asked whether he would have voted Clinton or Trump had he been in the US in 2016, Key replied: Trump. But I mean, you know, Im a right-wing voter, Im never voting left.

This is terrible. I had been assured by people in a position to know that most of the National Party supported Barack Obama, and by extension, Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden.

Fortunately the new leader of National has assured worried voters that his favourite US President was Obama. Also, Key wasnt asked if he would have voted for Trump in 2020, although that may be a foregone conclusion given his other comments.

Meantime, rumours abound that Hollywood, as part of the rising campaign of anti-racism, is looking at re-booting some of the classics.

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More Toxic, Alt-Right, QAnonism | No Minister

1. Steve Bannon's influence on conservative politics: Expert on alt-right explains  University of Colorado Boulder
2. Steve Bannon: how the Trump allys varied career led him to prison  The Guardian US
3. Steve Bannon's Prison Sentence Explained  Grunge
4. Steve Bannon verdict: Ex-Trump adviser sentenced to four months in jail  BBC
5. View Full Coverage on Google News

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Steve Bannon's influence on conservative politics: Expert on alt-right explains - University of Colorado Boulder