Category Archives: Alt-right

The subtle crush. The reciprocity. The perfect date. The walls around your heart slowly receding. The full on infatuation. The carnal connection. The imperfection. The dark descent. The ultimatum. The separation. The devastation. The peace. Syd, the impossibly cool writer, producer, and frontwoman of the beloved alt-R&B band The Internet, masterfully dictates the evolution of a failed coupling on Broken Hearts Club, her second solo endeavor. Syds sound is often atmospheric, and she knows it. I think a lot of people would agree that my voice and my music share a similar energy of Sunday cleaning music, or Lets light the incense and candles and have some wine music, she told Rolling Stone. It just kind of fits a certain mood. In turn, Broken Hearts Club is magnificently scored and could fill a room of romantic company with swirling ambiance. Yet, it is also expertly sequenced, as good of a story as it is a backdrop.

Around the start of the pandemic, Syd found herself with an album full of sanguine love songs that no longer resonated with her. A searing split with a long-term partner in a world of isolation pushed her to add more to the project that reflected the relationships end. She could have just as easily started over, reverted back to the more hedonist tone of her 2017 debut Fin, or made a project more fitting of the name Broken Hearts Club. Surprisingly, most of the album she settled on doesnt languish in heartbreak. Instead, it delights in the splendor of new love, even if it does so apprehensively. The Smino-assisted single Right Track is rejuvenating and upbeat, with a jolting guitar riff and a warm sense of relief. Dont you love it when things go right? Syd sings airily.

By the albums center, its protagonist has gone from cautiously falling in love to full-on plummeting. Rodney Darkchild Jerkins, famed collaborator to Syds R&B foremothers Brandy, Monica, and Mariah Carey, among many more, produced and co-wrote Control with Syd; its where her craven adulation is made clear. You kiss my neck, I melt away, she says over frenetic percussive flourishes that sound like theyre nearly tripping over themselves. Control is immediately reminiscent of Aaliyahs One in a Million, now a familiar sonic touchstone after being resuscitated by acts like Tink and Normani. The production on Broken Hearts Club dances through more decades, from the splashes of reverberated drums on CYBAH, to the passionate electric guitar solo on Fast Car to the modern 808s on Tie the Knot. Syds careful manipulation of musical eras emphasizes the timeless love story she weaves.

Syd is formally inducted into the albums titular club with the help of Internet bandmate Steve Lacy, who produced the downcast BMHWDY, a song where Syd sings of familiar romantic decimation: I deleted all your pictures/You wanna stay friends and thats big a ya/But girl I cant get witcha. Its the creeping complications before this point in songs like Out Loud where she pines for public affection, or Heartfelt Freestyle where Syd craves reassurance over a jazzy sample of Kruangbins White Glove that feel the most relatable. Meaningful relationships dont just fall apart. They erode. Guided by Syds laudable ear and angelic voice, Broken Hearts Club succeeds in sewing a narrative of love grown and wilted.

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Syds Broken Hearts Club is More Than Mood Music Its a Motion Picture - Rolling Stone

The modern environmental movement and the far-right movement might appear to be on opposing sides of the political ideology spectrum. But overlap does exist and researchers say it's growing. Christian Aslund/EyeEm/Getty Images hide caption

The modern environmental movement and the far-right movement might appear to be on opposing sides of the political ideology spectrum. But overlap does exist and researchers say it's growing.

At first glance, the modern environmental movement and the far-right movement including anti-immigrant and white supremacist groups might appear to be on opposing sides of the political ideology spectrum. But overlap does exist.

Researchers say this intersection between the far-right and environmentalism is bigger than many people realize and it's growing.

"As climate change kind of turns up the heat, there's going to be all sorts of new kinds of political contestations around these issues," Alex Amend said.

Amend used to track hate groups at the Southern Poverty Law Center. These days he researches eco-fascism. He says once you start to look at this overlap, you find two big misconceptions.

"One that the right is always a climate denialist movement. And two that environmental politics are always going to be left-leaning," Amend said.

Conservative leaders from Rush Limbaugh to former President Donald Trump have certainly denied climate change in the past.

But today, a different argument is becoming more common on the conservative political fringe.

On the podcast "The People's Square," a musician who goes by Stormking described his vision for a far-right reclamation of environmentalism.

"Right-wing environmentalism in this country is mostly especially in more modern times an untried attack vector," Stormking said. "And it has legs, in my opinion."

"Attack vector" is an apt choice of words because this ideology has been used in literal attacks.

In El Paso, Texas, in 2019, a mass shooter killed more than 20 people and wounded more than 20 others. He told authorities he was targeting Mexicans. He also left behind a manifesto.

"The decimation of the environment is creating a massive burden for future generations," the shooter wrote. "If we can get rid of enough people, then our way of life can be more sustainable."

Abel Valenzuela, local of El Paso, meditates in front of the makeshift memorial for shooting victims at the Cielo Vista Mall Walmart in El Paso, Texas, on August 8, 2019. Paul Ratje/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

He titled that manifesto, "An Inconvenient Truth," which was also the name of Al Gore's Oscar-winning 2006 documentary about climate change.

Anti-immigrant environmental arguments pop up in more official places too like court filings.

Last July, Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich filed a lawsuit against the federal government. He claimed that the Biden administration's decision to stop building the border wall was a violation of the National Environmental Policy Act.

"I wish people like, you know, the environmentalists cared half as much about human beings and what's going on in Arizona as they do, or they supposedly do, about plant and wildlife, Brnovich said in an interview with KTAR News.

Brnovich argued that because migrants leave trash in the desert, a border wall is needed to protect the environment.

"We know that there's information out there that says that every time someone crosses the border, they're leaving between six and eight pounds of trash in the desert," he said. "That trash is a threat to wildlife. It's a threat to natural habitats."

Mainstream environmental organizations take the opposite view that a wall will harm ecosystems on the border. A federal judge ultimately tossed out Brnovich's case.

Workers reinforce a section of the U.S.-Mexico border fence, as seen from eastern Tijuana, Mexico, on January 18, 2019. Guillermo Arias/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

This strain of anti-immigrant environmentalism may be growing today but it isn't new. And that brings up another misconception that environmental politics are always left-leaning.

The truth is, eco-fascism has a long history, both in the U.S. and in Europe. Blair Taylor is a researcher at the Institute for Social Ecology. He said even the Nazis saw themselves as environmentalists.

"The idea that natural purity translates into racial or national purity that was one that was very central to the Nazis' environmental discourse of blood and soil," Taylor said.

In the 90s when Taylor started reading books about the environmental movement, he stumbled upon some ideas that seemed very wrong.

"There is this earlier very nativist, exclusionary and racist history of environmental thought," Taylor said. "It was very much based on this idea of nature as a violent competitive and ultimately very hierarchical domain where, you know, white Europeans were at the top. So that's been rediscovered, I think, by the alt-right."

Taylor was kind of horrified to learn that in some ways, the environmental movement was founded on ideas of white supremacy.

The word "ecology" was even coined by a German scientist, Ernst Haeckel, who also contributed to the Nazis' ideas about a hierarchy of races. This history applies to the United States, too.

A view of the Lower Falls at the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone National Park on May 11, 2016. Mladen Antonov/AFP/Getty Images hide caption

Dorceta Taylor is a professor at Yale University and author of The Rise of the American Conservation Movement: Power, Privilege, and Environmental Protection.

Taylor's research helped reveal parts of American environmental history that had not been widely known.

"We see a taking of Native American lands to turn into park spaces that are described as empty, untouched by human hands, pristine, to be protected," Taylor said.

"Environmental leaders are very, very at fault for setting up this narrative around, you know, untouched spaces. And to preserve them, Native people must be removed, the lands taken from them and put under federal or state protection ... so this is where the language of preservation really crosses over into this narrative of exclusion."

Taylor read the notes and diaries of early American environmentalists and learned that the movement to preserve natural spaces in the U.S. was partly motivated by a backlash against the racial mixing of American cities.

"White elites, especially white male elites, wanted to leave the spaces where there was racial mixing," she said. "And this discomfort around racially mixed neighborhoods infuses the discourse of those early conservation leaders."

John Muir was a Scottish-born American naturalist, engineer, writer and pioneer of conservation. He campaigned for preservation of U.S. wilderness including Yosemite Valley and Sequoia National Park, and founded The Sierra Club. Universal History Archive/Getty Images hide caption

The connections between environmentalism and xenophobia in the U.S. are long and deep. In recent years, some prominent groups, including the Sierra Club, have begun to publicly confront their own exclusionary history.

"We're not just going to pretend that the problem's not happening. We're actively going to do the responsible thing and begin to address it," said Hop Hopkins, the Sierra Club's director of organizational transformation.

The organization went through its own transformation. In the 20th century, the group embraced racist ideas that overpopulation was the root of environmental harm.

In fact, in 1998 and again in 2004, anti-immigrant factions tried to stage a hostile takeover of the Sierra Club's national board. They failed, but the organization learned a lesson from those experiences you can't just ignore these ideas or wish them away.

"We need to be educating our base about these dystopian ideas and the scapegoating that's being put upon Black, indigenous and people of color and working-class communities, such that they're able to identify these messages that may sound like they're environmental, but we need to be able to discern that they're actually very racist," Hopkins said.

It's common to come across people who say they believe in the environmental movement and the racial justice movement, but don't believe the movements have anything to do with each other. That disbelief is why Hopkins said he does the work he does.

That work goes beyond identifying the racism and bigotry in the environmental movement. It also means articulating a vision that can compete with eco-fascism. Because as climate change increases, more people will go looking for some narrative to address their fears of collapse, says Professor Emerita Betsy Hartmann of Hampshire College.

"If you have this apocalyptic doomsday view of climate change, the far-right can use that doomsday view to its own strategic advantage," Hartmann said.

In that way, the threat of eco-fascism has something in common with climate change itself.

The problem is visible now and there is time to address it, but the longer people wait, the harder it's going to be.

Read this article:

The far-right's vision of environmentalism has long roots in the US - NPR

The overview of Matthew Roses A World After Liberalism: Philosophers of the Radical Right (Yale University Press) in this recent column stopped well short of addressing the religious perspective the author brought to the material under analysis. I characterized Roses worldview as Christian humanist without much confidence that the brand name would be instantly recognizable. Indeed, to anyone shaped by the culture-war arguments of recent decades, Christian humanism will sound like a contradiction in terms. It might be the one point on which Jerry Falwell and Christopher Hitchens would have agreed.

The thinkers discussed in A World After LiberalismOswald Spengler, Julius Evola, Francis Parker Yockey, Alain de Benoist and Samuel Francis, a group whose work spans the decades between the First World War through the start of this centurytend to think of Christianity as the root of egalitarianism, liberalism, democracy and related blights undermining the natural hierarchy that should prevail in a well-ordered world. They are more culturally sophisticated than any given pocket of misanthropic xenophobes or mens-rights movementarians on social media, to be sure; otherwise, the world views overlap quite a bit. That similarity is not necessarily grounds for dismissing these philosophers of the radical right, but rather an indication that their doctrines have a constituency.

I finished my column on Roses book feeling not quite up to unpacking his Christian-humanist perspective but also wanting to ask him a few things. Fortunately, he was agreeable to the idea of an email interview. A transcript of our exchange follows.

Q: Of the five authors you discuss, only Oswald Spengler is a name familiar outside a pretty small milieu. What led you to this particular rabbit hole?

A: The authors I cover started to be mentioned by journalists in Europe and the United States in early 2016, during their coverage of the refugee crisis and the Trump campaign. It took only a little bit of reading for me to discover that there was an intellectual tradition on the far right that was different from what I had assumeddeeper, more modern, more philosophical, more reflective about contemporary thought and life, and more suspicious about the place of Christianity in Western culture. I didnt share any of their ideas, but I had to admit that this intellectual tradition sometimes posed serious questions. In March 2018, I published an essay on intellectual foundations of the alt-right in the magazine First Things, and the response to it was really overwhelming.

Q: Was there any model in mind in writing the sort of political/intellectual profiles that make up your book?

A: One of the hardest parts about writing this book was that theres so little scholarship on most of these figures. There are a few people out there doing great work, and I pay tribute to them, but I didnt have any obvious models for the book itself. I cite my old teacher Mark Lilla, and I would recommend his style as a model for how to write intellectual history for a wide audience. I should also mention Isaiah Berlin, whose books are really galleries of individual intellectual portraits. For me, the best kind of writing helps the reader to see the unity or tension between a subjects thought and life.

Q: You interrogate these mens ideas from a distinct stance that I characterized in the review as Christian humanism. That was, admittedly, guesswork, based on what seemed like echoes of Charles Taylors critique of secularity and Alasdair MacIntyres perspective on modern ethics. Heres your chance to set the record straight, or to clarify where youre coming from, in any case.

A: Good guess. I am Roman Catholic, and Charles Taylor and Alasdair MacIntyre have certainly influenced how I understand modern moral thought. But since my book is about authors that arent well-known, let me mention a philosopher whos influenced me, but whose name might not be familiar to many: Heinrich Rommen. Rommen was a star student of Carl Schmitts but was later imprisoned by the Nazis for his involvement in underground Catholic publishing. Rommen went on to write a number of important books about Christian democracy, which deserve to be better known.

My approach to the radical right is similar to the approach that Rommen took to his former teacher. [Schmitts work in political theory has been influential despite his membership in the Nazi party between 1933 and 1936. SM] I see it as inspired by a religious and moral critique of modern life, especially modern notions of equality and justice, which the radical right thinks are corruptive of the highest human aspirations, And here I partly agree: liberalism is unsatisfying. Our need to be loyal to a community or people to the exclusion of others, our need to inherit and transmit a cultural identity, our need to admire human greatness, our need to experience spiritual transcendencethese are needs of the human soul that liberalism cant satisfy. But they are real needs, and a culture that ignores or impugns them is inviting disaster.

Q: A recent Pew survey found that most regularly churchgoing white Americans (including those identifying as Catholic) voted for Trump in 2020. The former president has tapped into many of the same concerns as the strain of radical-right, anti-Christian/neo-pagan thought you analyze. This seems contradictory on some level. Any thoughts?

A: My book is about an ignored chapter in 20th-century intellectual history. It is explicitly not a book about what happened in 2016 or a guide to the new right in 2022. Many books about the far right essentially argue that it represents a powerful political demographic but also that its intellectually backwards. I sometimes joke that my view is the opposite: I think its a small movement but one that has some sophisticated thinkers.

Q: Fair enough! Do you have other work in progress?

A: I do. Right now Im going through Samuel Huntingtons archives at Harvard. Did you know he was writing about religion at the end of his life?

Q: Other than about a clash of civilizations with Islam?

A: Yes, near the end of his career, Huntington became especially interested in the relationship between religion and national identity. Im still working through a manuscript that he never finished (or published), and Im fascinated to see that he was thinking about theology. One obituary of Huntington reports that he said he wished to be remembered for his patriotism and his faith.

More here:

Interview with Matthew Rose on 'A World After Liberalism: Philosophers of the Radical Right' - Inside Higher Ed

Mr. Nottingham, the founder and executive director of The Challenging Learning Group, an education company, said: My purpose is, instead of giving them clarity, its creating confusion, or cognitive wobble. Like when you are learning to ride a bike and it wobbles I am trying to create that mental wobble so they have to think about it more.

Mr. Nottingham identified three mental states that students occupy when learning something new: relatively comfortable, relatively uncomfortable and panicked. Too many parents and educators intervene when learning gets uncomfortable, denying students a chance to stretch enough to deepen their learning, he said. Its counterproductive, he said, like trying to help a child learn to ride a bike by holding onto the back of the seat to navigate every bump, hole or obstacle.

In 2018, TNTP, a nonprofit based in New York focused on improving K-12 education, surveyed 1,000 lessons in five diverse schools to see why so many students were graduating with decent grades but were unprepared for college. It found that in class, students successfully completed most (71 percent) of the work sheets, class activities and other work they were given to do. But those assignments were too easy; they reflected grade-level standards only 17 percent of the time. That gap exists because so few assignments actually gave students a chance to demonstrate grade-level mastery, the authors of the survey concluded.

Not stretching students because there isnt time for the kinds of conversations that make learning interesting and, at times, tricky can be consequential, especially for marginalized students. Lacey Robinson, president and chief executive of UnboundED, an organization that designs learning to be rigorous and meaningful, said educators sometimes did not have the content knowledge and training to help fill in gaps, and too often had low expectations for Black and brown students. This can cause those students to lose interest in learning; they get relegated to lower-level material and fall further behind.

We often find that educators use what I call this really illogical model of putting students in a grade level below, Ms. Robinson said, in the hope that they catch up to the grade level theyre supposed to be in.

Your academic identity gets solidified the more you work that muscle, she added. And you work that muscle due to the rigor and the productive struggle.

Some researchers have gone beyond encouraging struggle to actually design for failure. Manu Kapur, an educational psychologist at ETH Zurich, has spent 17 years showing that students learn new concepts more fully, and retain the knowledge longer, when they engage in what he calls productive failure grappling with a problem before getting instruction on exactly how to do it.

Read the rest here:

Learning the Right Way to Struggle - The New York Times

But the advertisement experiment, the apparent effectiveness of just highlighting Trumps pro-vaccine rhetoric to receptive audiences, is an example of a different kind of creativity. Republican vaccine skepticism was hardly monolithic: Most Republicans got the vaccines, many prominent conservatives politicians, Fox News figures, more urged people to take them, and plenty of figures on the right insisted they were pro-vaccine, anti-mandate. All this could have been material for more Republican-friendly and therefore more persuasive forms of advertisement and outreach than what the Biden administration, with its mandates-and-misinformation focus, ultimately delivered.

Or so I tend to think. But in the end, its Republicans themselves officeholders, media personalities, Trump who had the best opportunity to do outreach to their own vaccine-hesitant supporters, to cut the ads and hold the events and otherwise break down the more understandable and sincerely motivated forms of skepticism. And so its within conservatism that the failure of the past year was the clearest.

The best way to understand that failure is to connect it to the things that conservatives got right, or partly right, during the course of 2020 and 2021. In particular, as we look back over the pandemic era, the right-wing doubts about the various mitigation strategies mask mandates, school closures, lockdowns, social distancing now have a certain amount of data to support them.

For instance, there was a lot of talk throughout 2020 about how quick-to-reopen red states were killing their residents while blue states were protecting them. But as my colleague David Leonhardt has pointed out, by the end of Covids first year in the U.S., the virus had swept across the country, and there was no significant partisan divide in deaths. More recently, as Omicron swept through the country, he noted that it was hard to discern a clear difference in infection rates between liberal and conservative counties, even though liberal areas were still implementing more mitigation measures. Or to step outside the United States: A study published last month in The Lancet looking at excess death rates worldwide in the Covid era found that two European countries often critiqued for being too lax relative to their neighbors, Sweden and the Britain, didnt have notably worse outcomes relative to their peers.

These trends are suggestive; they dont mean that all nonpharmaceutical interventions were in vain. But they do imply that they were often oversold, their capital-S Scientific basis emphasized at the expense of reasonable doubts. Combine this reality with the manifest harms of some interventions, school shutdowns especially, and you get the fact pattern that made a figure like Ron DeSantis into a conservative folk hero for resisting many of these measures.

Link:

Opinion | How Republicans Failed the Unvaccinated - The New York Times

Still, Woods conceded that walking Augusta Nationals hilly terrain for four consecutive days will test the recuperative limits of his right leg, which was surgically rebuilt after his sport-utility vehicle tumbled off a Los Angeles-area boulevard at a high speed on Feb. 23, 2021.

He sustained open fractures, in several places, of the tibia and the fibula in his right leg, injuries that had to be stabilized with a rod and with screws and pins inserted into his foot and ankle. Woods spent a month in a hospital and was confined to a bed at his Florida home for another two months.

Asked Tuesday if he had pain while playing golf, Woods replied: There is, each and every day.

Woods said he had no misgivings about his ability to play. The worry, he said, was the topographical perils of Augusta and the demands of the 72-hole tournament: Walking is the hard part.

Woods is scheduled to play the first round with Louis Oosthuizen, who finished second at the Masters in 2012 but has never won at Augusta, and Joaquin Niemann, who tied for 40th at last years tournament.

Woods, who practiced briefly Tuesday morning before heavy rain chased the golfers from the course before 11 a.m., said he planned to play a nine-hole practice round on Wednesday. Woods also played nine practice holes on Sunday and Monday, the second time with Fred Couples and Justin Thomas. Woods was limping more noticeably on Monday than on Sunday. He walked up the many hills slowly with his gait slightly more inhibited.

Couples, a longtime friend and a frequent practice-round companion of Woodss for more than a decade, agreed with Woods that the sloping, uneven contours of Augusta National would most likely present the biggest challenge to Woods.

It is about the walking, Couples said. Its brutal to walk, and to go do that after what hes gone through whatever it was, 14 months ago and to be playing today?

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Tiger Woods Says He Intends to Play the Masters - The New York Times

My children never got the chance to know the pleasure of a heartfelt exchange that traveled with the speed of a text but nevertheless carried the soul of the sender. All they have known is what email has devolved into: reply-all responses to bulk messages, shipping notifications, fund-raising pleas, systemwide reminders and, of course, spam. Email is now just a way to be at the beck and call of anyone, and any robot, with an internet connection.

True, the real problem is the other notifications, all more urgent than anything that arrives in an inbox. Our phones vibrate incessantly with alerts that make us feel bad in a dozen different ways. The planet is on fire. Nuclear war may be imminent. A calamity that happened to someone we dont know feels personal because it is happening in real time. All day long, tragedy after distant tragedy arrives to break our hearts. The whole world is right there, buzzing in our pockets.

Of all the available online depressants, email is the easiest to ignore, but digital natives never paid attention in the first place. For them, email isnt annoying. It simply doesnt exist.

Is it any wonder that minimalist tech is making a comeback among people too young to remember when minimalist tech was all we had? It doesnt take a degree in sociology to guess why the #flipphone hashtag on TikTok has more than 346 million views or why the Gen Z artist Lorde disabled the browser on her phone and started reading Annie Dillard.

There are ways to break the tyranny of the inbox, as Cal Newport, the author of A World Without Email: Reimagining Work in an Age of Communication Overload, calls it. People who email the scholar Ther A. Pickens get a thoughtful auto-response explaining that she is writing a book and has limited time for additional projects. If you receive silence in response to your request, know too that is also a kind of speech, Dr. Pickenss message reads.

I tell myself that ignoring email isnt an option for me, but the truth is that I effectively ignore the vast majority of the messages I get anyway, not because they dont matter but because I just dont have time to respond. Feeling bad about not answering has become the only response I can manage.

I once told a friend of mine, a retired Episcopal priest, that I still had unanswered emails in my inbox from 2016, and he immediately closed his eyes, made the sign of the cross in the air and started mumbling. Are you absolving me of the sin of unanswered emails? I asked. He smiled, nodded and kept on praying.

More:

Opinion | The Kids Are Right About Email, Too - The New York Times

The Commission for Countering ExtremismEnd of Year Report, 2021-2022, March 2022Foreword

It was a great honour to be appointed the Interim Commissioner at the Commission for Countering Extremism (CCE) in March 2021.

Extremism is a scourge on our society and the challenges it poses are great: communities divided, viewing each other with mutual suspicion and hatred. A rejection of democratic values and principles. A mindset that justifies or leads to hate crime or terrorism.

My time in office has reinforced my belief that the CCE is uniquely placed to assist government in providing a robust response to extremism in all its forms.

Since being appointed, I have provided advice to the government on the future structure and function of the Commission.

In doing so, I engaged with Ministers, policy officials, law enforcement, intelligence, prison governors, and regulatory bodies. I wanted a clear understanding of the issues they face while addressing extremism whether that is online, in schools, prisons, charities, or elsewhere and to look at the knowledge base on extremism, including with those who have front-line operational roles.

That engagement helped me better understand why there is such a need to increase the awareness of extremism across the public sector and the challenges government faces around engagement, particularly with groups where there is an extremism concern.

I was therefore pleased that the Home Secretary shared my vision of a permanent Commissioner-led body that can provide independent advice and expertise to government.

However, the CCE cannot only be government facing. Coming from a think-tank background, I am aware of the expertise that exists outside government. That is why we continue to engage with think-tanks, civil society groups, and academics, to understand how best to harness fresh and innovative external thinking around counter-extremism.

The CCEs Academic Practitioner Counter Extremism Network (APCEN) plays a vital role here, helping connect practitioners with leading academics specialising in the study of extremism. I am pleased that APCENs membership has grown in the past 12 months and I am considering how best to utilise APCENs expertise and knowledge in the future.

There is much to do. The extremism landscape is dynamic and evolving.

However, the challenges it presents are consistent. We will do all we can to ensure the CCE is at the forefront of addressing them.

Robin Simcox, Interim Commissioner for Countering Extremism

Robin Simcox was appointed as Interim Commissioner for Countering Extremism in March 2021. This appointment was made for an initial six month period, following the conclusion of Dame Sara Khan DBEs three-year tenure as Commissioner.

The important work of the Commission for Countering Extremism will continue, and Im delighted Robin Simcox will bring his expertise and innovative thinking to this role.

The objectives, as set out by the Home Secretary for the Interim Commissioner, required Robin to work across government and with external partners in England and Wales.

Since March 2021, this work has included providing advice to the Home Secretary on the future structure and function of the Commission, raising awareness around extremism in all its forms across the public sector, and considering how best public bodies can be supported in their efforts to disrupt those who seek to sow division in our communities. The Commission has also worked closely with Home Office and other government departments, to support better understanding of extremism across a range of ideologies and behaviours, helping shape policy and advice on departmental counter extremism work.

Part of the Commissions remit requires engagement across the counter extremism sector. In carrying out this work, the Commission has engaged widely across government, regulatory bodies, and law enforcement over the last twelve months. A full list of our engagements can be found at Annex B.

Through this engagement, the Commission has sought to better understand the issues faced in identifying and combatting extremism, and how best we can develop our shared knowledge on extremism. These conversations have highlighted to us the dedication and passion for counter extremism work that exists across the public sector, as well as the continued need for a permanent and independent Commissioner-led body on extremism.

My time as Interim Commissioner for Countering Extremism so far has only served to reinforce my belief that a robust governmental response to extremism is necessary. I have been very heartened to see such Ministerial enthusiasm for the role of the Commission in helping to shape this response, and such willingness across government to harness the Commissions expertise.

Robin Simcox, Interim Commissioner for Countering ExtremismOctober 2021

Over the last 12 months, the Commission has continued to grow its Academic and Practitioner Counter Extremism Network (APCEN), which was set up in October 2020.The Network brings together leading academics with policy officials and practitioners from the counter extremism sector. APCEN works to identify knowledge gaps, share new and emerging trends and research, and facilitate collaborative working and projects between members. APCEN significantly enhances the CCEs ability to provide expert advice and knowledge to government around extremism in England and Wales.

Keeping our country safe and secure is the firstduty of the government. The Commission for Countering Extremism holds a vital role in our national securityYour work is challenging. Your work makes a difference, both at home and abroad.

The Rt Hon Priti Patel MP, Home SecretaryFebruary 2022

In February 2022, the Commission hosted the first CCE Conference, bringing together government policy officials, academics, and public sector practitioners to consider how extremism manifests itself in the UK today and how best the sector should be responding. Panels included in-depth conversations on online harms, children and education, and prisons.

As an independent, arms-length body of the Home Office, our budget and spending is negotiated with the Home Office and is subject to Home Office finance policy and HM Treasury rules, including value for public money, and follow systems and processes for HR and procurement. The Commissions budget allocation and expenditure is in Annex A.

The Commission also recognises the importance of transparency. While we are not covered by the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act, to support transparency in our work we respond to all appropriate requests that come direct to us, or via the Home Office. The Commission received seven FOI requests over the last 12 months and responded to all of them.

Robin Simcox starts in-post as Interim Commissioner, immediately beginning engagement with key stakeholders, both in and outside of government.

Robin presents his vision for the CCE to Munira Mirza, then Director of the No 10 Policy Unit, outlining his views on future government policy and the issues currently being faced by counter extremism practitioners.

Robin continues his engagement across the sector. Meetings include Counter- Terrorism Policing, and William Shawcross, Independent Reviewer of Prevent.

Robin meets with Baroness Williams of Trafford, Minister of State, to outline his priorities and future vision for the Commission.

Robin posts his first online CCE blog as Interim Commissioner.

Robins engagement across the sector includes visits to HMP Wandsworth and HMP Belmarsh. Meetings include the Anti-Muslim Hatred Working Group, Antisemitism Policy Trust, and several leading academics.

Robin meets Rt Hon Priti Patel MP, Home Secretary to deliver advice and insights on key issues and challenges for government in countering extremism.

Robin takes part in a panel discussion on terrorism and extremism alongside Lord Carlile of Berriew CBE QC and Sir Alex Younger, as part of CEGs Young Leaders in National Security Fellowship.

Robin meets representatives from the Ahmadiyya Muslim Community and discusses extremism faced by the community, during a tour of the Baitul Futuh Mosque.

Robin delivers a speech on the work of the Commission and its aims to the University of Salford.

The Commissions Academic and Practitioner Counter Extremism Network marks the end of its successful twelve month pilot phase.

Robin meets Damien Hinds MP, Minister for Security, to discuss extremist threats and express the urgent need for a robust response to extremism.

Robin posts his second CCE blog, reflecting on his first six months in post.

Alongside advisory engagement with policy officials, Robin continues to engage academics across the country, to better harness innovation and insights from academia and think tanks. Themes discussed include the Far Right and the effectiveness of laws around proscription.

The Commission attend and feed into several cross-government roundtables and advisory meetings.

Robin receives presentations on Salafism and alt-right online subcultures.

The Commission hosts its first ever panel event, bringing the Home Secretary, senior policy officials, academics and practitioners together to share knowledge and insights.

The Commissions budget for Financial Year 2021/22 is 1,000,000 per annum. This is in line with (HMT) Guidance on Managing Public Money (the consent for our expenditurewas based on HMT consent under the guidance in Box 2.6),[footnote 2] and agreement from the Home Office.

Up to the end of January 2022, the Commission has spent 402,598.22.

The Financial end of year forecast for 2021/22 is c846,000. This includes pay andnon-pay, CCE projects, legal fees, IT and accommodation, and 300k underspend accrued due to delays in staff recruitment returned to Home Office Finance on 21/01/22.

Robin Simcox claimed 62.93 in expenses from April 2021 to the end of February 2022.

To respect data protection requirements, organisations names are listed rather than academics.

The Interim Commissioners engagement includes one-to-one meetings, workshops, conferences, and group discussions.

No.10

Home Office

Security Services

Ofsted

Foreign, Commonwealth, and Development Office

HM Prisons and Probations Service

Department for Education

Hate Crime Policing

Ofcom

Counter Terrorism Policing

Department for Levelling Up, Housing, and Communities

Department for Digital, Culture, Media, and Sport

Anti-Muslim Hatred Working Group

Charity Commission

Independent Press Standards Office

Lord Carlile of Berriew CBE QC

HMP Wandsworth

HMP Belmarsh

Local Government Authority

The Prime Ministers Independent Advisor on Social Cohesion & Resilience

The Independent Reviewer of Prevent

The Independent Faith Engagement Advisor

The Independent Reviewer of Terrorism Legislation

The Rt Hon Priti Patel MP (as Secretary of State for the Home Department)

Damian Hinds MP (as Minister of State for Security and Borders)

Baroness Williams of Trafford (as Minister of State Home Office)

Jane Hutt MS (as Minister for Social Justice, Wales)

University College London

Coventry University

University of Salford

Anglia Ruskin University

Kings College London

Swansea University

University of Huddersfield

Brunel University

University of Birmingham

University of Kent

Tech Against Terrorism

CREST Advisory

Centre for Countering Digital Hate

Moonshot

Unity Initiative

APCEN

Public.IO

Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right

Veritable Analytics

REOC Communications

Policy Exchange

Institute for Strategic Dialogue

Counter Extremism Group

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End of year report, 2021 to 2022 (accessible) - GOV.UK

The last programming that viewers of RT America saw, on the morning of March 1, was a half hour of BoomBu$tthe Russian-funded networks business show. That day, cohost Rachel Blevins, a 27-year-old from Mineral Wells, an hour west of Fort Worth, had led with a roundup of economic fallout from Western sanctions against Russia over, as she put it, its ongoing military operation in Ukraine, using Vladimir Putins euphemism for his war.

Though that days coverage of the conflict on BoomBu$t was mellow compared to the previous RT America show, which had featured one guest averring that not all Ukrainians are Nazis and another complaining that Ukrainian president Volodymyr Zelensky was being hailed as a hero. Blevins focused on the negative impacts from the sanctions: higher oil prices, a potential 2008-style global financial crisis, recession fears, and even tensions over the International Space Station. Next: a plug for The World According to Jessehosted by Jesse Ventura, the wrestler, conspiracy theorist, and former Minnesota governorfollowed by a cheeky house ad that said, RT is not alt-left or alt-right, but we are a solid alternative to the bullshit. Then, abruptly, the screen went dark and a message appeared: This channel is no longer available. DirecTV.

It was another blow to a network that was seeing its reach drastically curtailed due to government bans in Europe (an EU ban took effect the next day) and restrictions imposed by big tech companies such as Facebook and TikTok. Two days later, RT America announced that it was suspending its operations altogether. Launched in 2010, the channel was the Washington, D.C.based offshoot of the network formerly known as Russia Today. RT had begun broadcasting in 2005, soon expanding into a globe-spanning network of TV channels and digital media funded by the Russian government and run by close affiliates of Vladimir Putin. RT America became a home for iconoclasts, second-act pundits, and opportunistic apparatchiks, many of whom pretended not to notice their employers alignment with the Kremlin.

Blevins, along with most of the staff, was out of a job. She hadnt been the most prominent host at RT America, but she was one of its most loyal. She started working at RT America in 2018, just over a year after graduating from Texas Tech University with a degree in journalism. Her last BoomBu$t show was her 196th. In the early days of Russias invasion, Blevinss coverage had been highly diversionary; while the Russian military pressed into Ukraine on February 25, the second day of what RT called a special operation, Blevins led the program with a story about a Russian investigation into genocide in the breakaway Donbas region of Ukraine that had purportedly been carried out by Ukrainian neofascists. Analysts had warned just a week before that Putin would use exactly such a fabrication in order to justify invading Ukraine, as he had done in the lead-up to the annexation of Crimea in 2014.

As RT was systematically deplatformed in Europe and America, Blevins became one of the loudest voices defending her employer. On Twitter, she batted back at a legion of critics who saw her as a fitting target for their rage over RT and Russias war. A representative example: Your profile bio has a typo, it says Opinions are my own, it should say Opinion are from Vlad. Fixed it for you, I take payments in euros or dollars (sorry no rubles atm).

On February 27, as Russian troops bore down on Ukraine, Blevins took to Rokfin.coman Austin-based subscription platform similar to Patreon that mostly features wrestling and conspiracy contentto address RT critics. Ive never been told by RT what I should or shouldnt say. Ive never been told I needed to follow any sort of narrative and thats why I work for the network I work for, she said. She went on to defend the way RT covered the war in Ukraine, referring to the so-called invasion and linking the conflict to U.S. policy. For all the people sitting there saying, Well, Ukraine is a sovereign country, they should be able to do what they want to dowell, to a certain extent, sure, however, thats not whats happening now. Ukraine is not acting as a sovereign nation...it is acting under the influence of NATO.

On February 28, when Twitter slapped a label on her account warning that it constituted Russian-affiliated state media, Blevins fired back, insisting that she is an individual journalist who does not speak for Russia or Russian media. After being bombarded by what she describes as a flurry of hate mail, Blevins deleted the tweet only to surface the next day to address her critics. If youre one of the people pushing to ban RT and threatening myself and my colleaguesI hope you know that youre not achieving what you think you are. And when RT America shut down on March 3, she was one of the few RT employees to speak out, writing on Twitter that she was heartbroken and signing off with a George Orwell quote: Journalism is printing what someone else does not want publishedeverything else is public relations. When I talked to her on the phone the next day, she said she felt as if she was in a nightmare I still havent woken up from.

Blevins, for all her pro-Kremlin messaging, had never quite fit the stereotype that might leap to mind when one thinks of Putins American puppets. For lack of a better term, she came across as a normal young American journalist, passionate and seemingly sincere. But shed been with RT America for three and a half years, and she continues to vociferously defend its journalism. All of which raises some questions, foremost among them: how did a young woman from a small town in Texas end up as the face of RT America as the network spectacularly imploded?

Blevinss family moved from Colorado to Mineral Wells, an economically struggling town of around 15,000, when she was eleven. She attended Community Christian School, a small, private religious institution, where she graduated as valedictorian in 2013. A scholarship landed her at Texas Tech, where she began taking journalism classes. After her professors warned that young journalists usually have to toil for years covering local crime and local elections, Blevins said she planned to switch majorsthat is, until one of her professors assigned her and her classmates to conduct an official interview with a source. She chose the topic of government control of media. Her father, a regular listener of talk radio, suggested she interview Ben Swann, a TV journalist originally from El Paso who has alternated between stints as an award-winning major-market local TV anchor and an enthusiastic promulgator of conspiracy theoriessometimes at the same time. When they met, Swann had a short-lived radio show on the Republic Broadcasting Network, a fringe Texas-based outlet that has repeatedly featured hard-core white supremacists and Holocaust deniers.

Blevins says the interview helped open her eyes to what she terms independent journalists and independent networks. Facebooks algorithm had catalyzed the explosive growth of viral content farms, many of them seat-of-the-pants publishers that specialized in sensational and conspiratorial storiesand it just so happened that Swann was launching a website, Truth in Media, that needed writers. I was kind of in the place of saying, Okay, well, I dont have much experience, but I can try. And so I started out writing for him. By June, she was regularly freelancing for the site.

Swann was also a regular guest on RT America at the time, sometimes echoing Kremlin propaganda. In one 2014 segment, he averred that any credible evidence does not seem to exist that Russian-backed insurgents in Ukraine were responsible for shooting down Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17an argument that was part of a larger campaign by Putin and RT to sow confusion about who was responsible for the 298 deaths that resulted. (An RT reporter resigned on air in disgust over the outlets coverage of the incident.) Years later, when Blevins had her own RT America show, Swann would pop up as a guest; in one of her last shows, he was introduced as a crypto analyst.

It didnt take long for Blevins to get noticed by RT higher-ups. Just a few months into her freelancing gig at Truth in Media, during the fall semester of her sophomore year, the news director for RT America saw one of Blevinss stories and reached out to offer her a job as a reporter. I said, Hey, Im still in college; Im going to get this degree. I will reach back out, and lets keep in touch and basically keep the networking going until I graduate. The offer might seem odd, or premature, but it was standard practice for RT. A 2020 Oxford study, based on interviews with 23 RT journalists, found that the networks management deliberately recruited journalists with little to no experience, in order to be able to mold the newly hired journalists and shape their minds.

The Truth in Media site no longer exists, but from what I could find, Blevinss work was fairly tamemostly write-ups of headline news with a libertarian bent. But it introduced her to a wider community of conspiracy-prone, Russia-credulous outlets. Soon she was freelancing for two more such sites, the Free Thought Project and We Are Change, the latter of which is run by Luke Rudkowski, an associate of Alex Jones who got his start as a leader of the 9/11 Truth movement in New York and came to viral YouTube fame in 2007 for yelling that former national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski was New World Order scum. Blevins produced stories that mostly focused on police brutality in the U.S. and American atrocities abroad, but bore the hallmarks of the RT style: persistent whataboutism, fury at the mainstream media, and a reflexively pro-Putin posture.

For a newsletter for Texas Techs College of Media and Communication, Blevins was writing articles with headlines like Department of Public Relations Presents Student and Faculty Member of the Year Awards. At the same time, for We Are Change, she was writing articles with all-caps headlines like WHY ITS TIME FOR THE WASHINGTON POST TO GIVE UP THE ANTI-RUSSIA CAMPAIGN, WHY THE U.S. IS DEMONIZING RUSSIA TO COVER UP FAILURE IN SYRIA, and RUSSIAN PRESIDENT VLADIMIR PUTIN WARNS DONALD TRUMP OF COUP DETAT, the latter of which published in January 2017 and argues in the lede that Putins latest sensational comments put the nail in the coffin of this whole Russian hacking scandal that we have been hearing about for the past two months.

Two Texas Tech journalism professors I spoke to said they knew nothing about Blevinss unusual freelance gigs during her time there. But they praised her as a top student. She was one of the sharpest young girls that came through the program, said Mary Ann Edwards, who taught her news writing. She was diligent; she was so conscientious about everything she did. Professor Randy Reddick recalled that she got a 94 on a paper criticizing media coverage of the 2016 presidential campaign. His main criticism to her: Be careful, this is opinionatedyou might rephrase.

After graduating in 2017, Blevins kept churning out freelance pieces as well as making her own videos for Facebookat least until the platform began cracking down on misinformation in the wake of Trumps election. In 2018, Facebook scrubbed the Free Thought Projectwhich was reaching 20 to 30 million people per week, according to one of its foundersfrom the platform. Later it zapped Blevinss own Facebook page, where she had accumulated close to 70,000 followers and posted videos, some of which she claims had a million views. With her freelance work drying up, Blevins turned to her next best option: the network that had made her an offer three years earlier.

I was reaching out to RT America, saying, Hey, you know, Ive been very vocal about foreign policy. Ive been very vocal in my frustration with some of the things that the U.S. government is doing and with the way the media landscape is today. And for me, RT America was the only option where I could actually cover the stories that I was passionate about, and it was the only place where I was seeing that coverage happen. She got the gig.

Part of the appeal for Blevins, she says, was RTs version of the old Fox News Fair and Balanced slogan: Question more. And indeed, RT wasnt left-wing or right-wing in the style of so many U.S. outlets. Thats because, as RTs own top leaders have acknowledged, the outlet is intended to impress Kremlin talking points on its audiences, particularly during times of war, and to sow division among Americans. It attracted American viewersand some of its editorial staffthrough a resonant critique of the failings and moral outrages of mainstream media and U.S. foreign policy. On some days, RT sounded like Noam Chomsky, on others, like Steve Bannon. The one constant theme was that America is a failing empirea contention that many Americans find appealing and absent from mainstream media.

Plus, as Bloomberg put it in 2017, referring to another young RT America anchor: Where else on cable news could a 27-year-old inveigh against U.S. imperialism on a nightly basis?

In conversations I had with Blevins, she had no qualms about working for RT and seemed mostly mystified by the backlash toward the networks coverage of the war in Ukraine.

It frustrates me that taking the stance of providing context to a conflict is automatically seen as supporting that conflict or supporting what the Russian military is doing, said Blevins, who calls herself incredibly anti-war. She added: And I think that its frustrating to come from a standpoint of everything has to be one way or the other. Everything has to be left or right, right or wrong, whatever.

Does Blevins really think Putin invaded Ukraine to fight Nazis? Had she used the Kremlins euphemistic phrase military operation because that was the Kremlins preferred phrasing for its war?

She admits to being surprised that Russia actually went through with an invasion, but cant quite process the criticism over the networks terminology. It feels like Im in a place where I cant win, she said. Every single thing I say, every term I use is going to be blown up in one way or another. And at the time, RT as a whole had been using that phrasing, and that was what we continued to use for our show just because we were in a position of trying to find the best way to navigate it, and we may not have chosen the best way to navigate it.

Blevins kept returning to context she said had been omitted by the mainstream media. In her account, its the U.S., not Russia, who is the primary aggressor. Russia did not wake up and decide that it was going to just take over Ukraine. I dont necessarily think that theyre fighting to take over Ukraine from what Ive heard and from what Ive paid attention to. But the way that the media coverage has been, that, you know, Putin is someone who wants to go in there and to overthrow the Ukrainian government and to install someone who he agrees with. And what weve actually seen happen is that the Russian government has two main demands from the moment that they lead this invasion in the country. Their demands have been that Ukraine be a neutral state and that it be a demilitarized state.

Moreover, she said, the U.S. media had turned a blind eye to the American financing of neo-Nazis in Ukraine. Russia understands the threat of having Nazis on their doorstep, she said. Exaggerating the threat of the far right in Ukrainewhich elected a Jewish president, Zelensky, in 2019 has been a consistent Kremlin messaging tactic at least since Russias annexation of Crimea in 2014. Like most propaganda, there is an element of truthUkrainian nationalists with neo-Nazi views played a prominent role in fighting Russia in the Donbas region in 2014. But outside Russia and the hallways of RT, Putins claim that his goal in waging war on Ukraine to denazify the country is greeted with ridicule.

With RT America off the air, perhaps forever, Blevins is trying to reboot as a freelancer. Her Twitter account, still bearing that Russian-affiliated state media label, looks scarcely different than it did when she was employed by RT. Shes making weekly videos for a tiny paying audience on Rokfin; the most recent had her explaining to fans that she had struggled with my coverage of the Ukraine conflict and conceding that she may not personally agree with exactly the way [Russia] has gone about invading Ukraine, while arguing again that Putin is taking on neo-Nazis.

But as for her time at RT, she says she has few regrets. The opportunities that I was given theregoing from being straight out of college into a reporter position, then going on to hosting an international business-finance showthose are opportunities I would not have gotten anywhere else, she said. I will always be so grateful for that.

More here:

How a 27-Year-Old Texan Became the Face of Russias American TV Network As It Imploded - Texas Monthly

As millions of Brazilians watched the live images of the U.S. Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, in disbelief, many commentators in the United States and Brazil were quick to agree that then-U.S. President Donald Trump had overplayed his hand. They believed the attackwhich failed to accomplish its objective of obstructing a democratic transition of powerwould damage the outgoing presidents political fortunes and complicate the U.S. Republican Partys future.

One year later, however, the way Brazilians interpret that day and its meaning has changed as the Republican Partywhich failed to condemn Trump and now propagates an increasingly revisionist narrative about the Jan. 6 eventslooks set to take back control of the U.S. Congress in Novembers midterm elections. Guga Chacra, an influential Brazilian political commentator, flatly stated in a recent analysis that we were wrong to assume Trump would be ostracized in the attacks aftermath, pointing out that the Capitol invasion didnt debilitate Trump. This shift in perspective among Brazilians is buttressed by the real possibility of Trump returning to the White House in 2025.

Today, Trumps decision to incite a violent mob to disrupt an electoral certification process no longer looks like a high-risk gamble but one of several carefully planned steps to consolidate the false narrative of a rigged election among his followers and maintain control of the Republican Party. Indeed, while the Democratic Party is currently in power at the national level, Trump retains de facto control of the GOP and its agenda. On Feb. 4, the GOP declared the Jan. 6, 2021, riots legitimate political discourse and censured Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for taking part in Congresss inquiry into the attacks.

As millions of Brazilians watched the live images of the U.S. Capitol insurrection on Jan. 6, 2021, in disbelief, many commentators in the United States and Brazil were quick to agree that then-U.S. President Donald Trump had overplayed his hand. They believed the attackwhich failed to accomplish its objective of obstructing a democratic transition of powerwould damage the outgoing presidents political fortunes and complicate the U.S. Republican Partys future.

One year later, however, the way Brazilians interpret that day and its meaning has changed as the Republican Partywhich failed to condemn Trump and now propagates an increasingly revisionist narrative about the Jan. 6 eventslooks set to take back control of the U.S. Congress in Novembers midterm elections. Guga Chacra, an influential Brazilian political commentator, flatly stated in a recent analysis that we were wrong to assume Trump would be ostracized in the attacks aftermath, pointing out that the Capitol invasion didnt debilitate Trump. This shift in perspective among Brazilians is buttressed by the real possibility of Trump returning to the White House in 2025.

Today, Trumps decision to incite a violent mob to disrupt an electoral certification process no longer looks like a high-risk gamble but one of several carefully planned steps to consolidate the false narrative of a rigged election among his followers and maintain control of the Republican Party. Indeed, while the Democratic Party is currently in power at the national level, Trump retains de facto control of the GOP and its agenda. On Feb. 4, the GOP declared the Jan. 6, 2021, riots legitimate political discourse and censured Reps. Liz Cheney and Adam Kinzinger for taking part in Congresss inquiry into the attacks.

Taken as a whole, the remarkable successes of Trumps party in controlling the narrative surrounding Jan. 6 since his tumultuous exit from the White House makes emulating his strategy seem all the more attractiveand far less risky.

Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is no doubt watching closely. Bolsonaro has never hidden his authoritarian ambitions and admiration for Trump, whom he described as his greatest international ally. Ahead of the 2020 U.S. election, Bolsonaro often expressed his hope that Trump would win reelection. This year, the Trump of the Tropics, as Bolsonaro is often called abroad, is headed into a presidential election of his own.

In addition to frequently embracing Trumps argument that the 2020 U.S. election was rigged, Bolsonaro has eagerly promoted conspiracy theories about Brazils electoral system in recent years, leading electoral officials to say they consider a challenge by Bolsonaro to the outcome of Octobers vote inevitable. In particular, Bolsonaro seeks to systematically discredit electronic voting, which has been used across Brazil since 1996.

Bolsonaro frequently argues without evidence that Brazils electoral system is susceptible to fraud, calling for the reintroduction of paper ballots. After Jan. 6, 2021, Bolsonaro warned supporters, If we dont have the ballot printed in 2022, a way to audit the votes, were going to have bigger problems than the U.S. Pro-Bolsonaro WhatsApp and Telegram groups are rife with fearmongering about election fraud.

For Bolsonaro, the events of Jan. 6 initially held more lessons of what to avoid than what to emulate. To succeed where Trump had not, the Brazilian president would have to co-opt the armed forces, further erode public trust in the electoral system, and mobilize a larger number of followers to act. Although all of these options seemed possible, they could have posed serious risks for Bolsonaro and his family, such as being prosecuted for sedition or losing control over Brazils conservative camp.

In the aftermath of Jan. 6, Bolsonaros son Eduardoa congressmanfocused on the attackers mistakes while presiding over the Brazilian Chamber of Deputies Commission on Foreign Affairs and National Defense. The younger Bolsonaro said if the invaders had been better organized, they would have taken the Capitol, ominously adding that if the riotersdescribed as good citizens by Ernesto Arajo, Brazils foreign minister at the timewould have had a minimal war power [none of them] would have died, allowing them to [kill] all the police inside or the congressmen they all hate.

But now, the second coming of Trumps party may lead Bolsonaro and his advisors to believe that rejecting electoral resultseven if futile where maintaining power is concernedcould provide him with long-term benefits, including by helping to consolidate a core cadre of loyalists. After all, the fact that the Republican Party today remains in lockstep with Trump despite his 2020 electoral loss suggests Bolsonaro could utilize his own stop the steal myth to prevent the emergence of rival politicians on the right, labeling anyone who accepts his opponents victory as a traitorous false conservative.

Put differently, Bolsonaro may now reason that, even if he incites an armed revolt that ultimately fails to prevent the transition of power after an electoral loss in October, doing so could still be worth it.

Pollsters agree that Bolsonaros chances of winning reelection in October against his likely opponent, leftist former Brazilian President Luiz Incio Lula da Silva, are relatively low. Current polls show Lula, who governed Brazil from 2003 to 2010, ahead by 9 percentage points. Yet despite the Bolsonaro governments numerous woesa pandemic response likened to a crime against humanity and a sluggish economic recoverypolls have started tightening in recent weeks, and even Lula allies publicly acknowledge that the presidents approval ratings are likely to improve as public spending increases ahead of the election. A narrow loss, then, would make Bolsonaros claims of voter fraud seem more credible in the eyes of supporters.

Granted, Brazils electoral system is not like the United States. Unlike the United States, Brazil has a Superior Electoral Court, which concentrates the authority to confirm electoral results and is less vulnerable to outside pressure. Due to the absence of an electoral college, Bolsonaro and his supporters also cannot bully lowly state officials into submission to sow confusion about an electoral results legitimacy. Moreover, the Brazilian president lacks firm control over a large national political party, which Trump has achieved. And Brazils multi- (rather than two-) party landscape may make it more difficult for Bolsonaro to monopolize his influence among conservative voters.

Still, if Bolsonaro loses Octobers election and refuses to accept the resultwhich I believe to be the most likely scenario as of nowhe may succeed in turning support for his narrative into a proxy for patriotism in the eyes of his followers. Erstwhile Bolsonaro allies in Brazil who broke with him to position themselves as center-right presidential candidates are so far faring just as badly as U.S. Republicans who questioned Trumps claim that the 2020 U.S. election was stolen. Both Sergio Moro, Bolsonaros former justice and public security minister, and Joo Doria, governor of So Paulowhose views are comparable to those of the Republican Partys moderate wingare currently stuck in a political no mans land, vilified by both the left and Bolsonaros supporters. Despite Dorias notable successes as governorincluding taking the lead on vaccine procurement while Bolsonaro embraced COVID-19 denialismpolls suggest fewer than 5 percent of Brazilians support his presidential bid.

Even without an insurrection, Bolsonaros quest to undermine public trust in the Brazilian electoral process poses a severe threat to the countrys democracy. Assuming he will cry fraud if he loses in October, millions of Brazilians will not consider the presidents successor legitimate. A poll conducted last year confirms that the percentage of Brazilians who share Bolsonaros concerns about electronic votingseen by the vast majority of specialists as baselessis on the rise, currently standing at more than 45 percent.

What is particularly worrisome in this contextand what makes copying Trumps strategy even more attractive to Bolsonarois that parts of Brazils armed forces are eagerly embracing Bolsonaros narrative about possible voter fraud and his call for electoral reform to reintroduce paper ballots. Last year, Brazils defense minister, Gen. Walter Souza Braga Netto, reportedly told the president of Brazils Chamber of Deputies, Arthur Lira, that the Bolsonaro government would not allow the 2022 elections to go ahead without the reform. The day before Brazils National Congress voted on the proposalintroduced by a Bolsonaro allythe armed forces organized a military parade outside the legislature, a gesture largely understood as another thinly veiled threat. Refusing to be bullied, lawmakers rejected the measures, which experts believe would have sown the seeds of chaos on election day.

Brazils armed forces are unlikely to support a classic self-coup that involves surrounding its National Congress and the Supreme Federal Court with tanks. However, provided that the elections are close, a narrative about voter fraud similar to that promoted by Trump in the United States may allow pro-Bolsonaro elements in the security forces to frame their support for the president as a defense of democratic order. This may involve appealing the results in court, asking for a rerun of the vote, or declaring a state of emergency should protests break out. Some generals have publicly criticized the president, yet generous budget increases and access to power assure most continue to support Bolsonaro, who likes to refer to the military as my armed forces.

There are currently more than 6,000 members of the armed forces working in the Bolsonaro government, about half of whom are on active duty, and some are concerned that Lula could adopt a revanchist posture vis-a-vis the armed forces if elected. The former presidents attempts to reach out to the armed forces have so far been unsuccessful. Lula recently commented that the armed forces would return to the barracks in his governmentmeaning many would lose their political appointments.

Just like in the United States, countless Bolsonaro supporters are thus susceptible to considering a violent post-election insurrection not as an attack on democracy but as a heroic attempt to defend a righteous leader from a corrupted system. In this context, Bolsonaros attempts to centralize power over the military could be interpreted as setting the stage for a coordinated uprising after the election, if needed. The Brazilian president has also overseen the deregulation of gun ownership in the country, which worries many observers.

Bolsonaro and his allies do not even need to study Trumps strategy from afar. Brazil has become a global battleground for the proliferation of U.S. alt-right values, and Trump strategists and supporters like Steve Bannon, Jason Miller, and Mike Lindell have established an ample dialogue with the Bolsonaro administration.

At a cyber symposium in August 2021 organized by Lindell and attended by Eduardo Bolsonaro, Bannon described Brazils upcoming presidential elections as the second most important election in the world (presumably after those of the United States) and predicted that Bolsonaro would win unless the election were stolen. Donald Trump Jr., who also attended the meeting remotely, argued that Brazil provided hope for the conservative movement.

Although its tempting to focus on Brazils risk of experiencing its own Jan. 6 in the aftermath of its 2022 presidential elections, the true lesson Bolsonaro derives from Trumps staying power is that eroding democracy is a long-term effort, involving years of systematically sowing seeds that may produce tangible results down the line. The specter of a Trump-dominated Republican Party triumphing in November could thus provide even greater inspiration to Bolsonaro and other populists with authoritarian tendencies than the 2016 election that brought Trump to poweror even the 2021 attack that saw him out.

Read more here:

Challenging an Election Trump-Style Looks Attractive to Brazil's Bolsonaro - Foreign Policy