Fascism in the USA: An Interview with Shane Burley

By Braden Riley

The following is an interview with Shane Burley, author of Fascism Today: What It Is and How to End It (AK Press) , regarding the modern fascist movement in the United States.

Braden Riley: Alt Right outlets like AltRight.com, the National Policy Institute, American Renaissance, and others have been putting out a lot of statements about their plans for 2018. What are their plans for 2018, and how successful do you think they are going to be?

Shane Burley: This is really hard to say because their success and failures are less because of their choices and more because of the social tides. They got a massive boost in 2015, a score that many attributed to Trump, yet came before Trump's real entry into the cultural landscape. Their biggest boost came actually by their own work and tapped into the same mood that Trump tapped into as well. That victory was the hashtag #Cuckservative, which ended up trending on Twitter and brought the popular white nationalist podcast The Daily Shoah onto the public stage. The were calling out beltway conservatives who worked against their own racial "interests" on immigration issues. This became popular long before the term Alt Right did, and that only became a trending hashtag after Cuckserative and other Alt Right memes had set the stage for it. The term Alt Right was actually a throwback, major Alt Right figures like Richard Spencer had actually traded it in for Identitarian, a word used by cultural fascist movements in Europe like the Nordic Resistance movement. He thought that the Alt Right phase of their development was over by this point, but a circle developing online, and without the direct control of Spencer, began using it again to describe their views.

All this is to say that there was a cultural force happening that was not completely in their control, but they certainly influenced discourse and rode the nativist insurgency into the public spotlight. 2015 and 2016 were huge for them. They were able to ally with the "Alt Light," the slightly more moderate nativist Civic Nationalists like Breitbart and Rebel Media, allowing a more mainstream channel to popularize their message without committing fully to their open fascism. They were able to get multiple more memes into the culture, gain huge media attention for their major figures, and kept their ideas relevant to the larger conservative culture with the Trumpian populist movement.

2017, on the other hand, got away from them. At this point they wanted to move into the world of IRL (In Real Life) activism and politics. Their movement, unlike most of the radical left, was not built on struggle and organizing, but instead on message boards, conferences, and streaming media. They had not had the impetus to put their politics into action, but as their organizations coalesced, groups like Identity Europa began to step out into the political scene. Alt Right organizations like the Tradtionalist Workers Party had been doing this for a few years, but they were more than just Alt Right, they also pulled from the more conventional militia, neo-Nazi, and KKK groups , all of which had a history of "activism." The Alt Right , the new Middle Class and pseudo-intellectual white nationalist branding, did not have that history, so it was trying to build it. Unfortunately for them, they began doing it very poorly since they did not have a good concept of movement building.

At the same time, enough antifascist momentum had built up that they were seeing massive opposition anywhere they appeared. This had grown throughout 2015 and 2016, and was being effectively organized in those years, but the less political general public had caught on heavily by 2017 with Trump's victory, the Women's March, and the Alt Right violence starting in 2016 . So any appearance is a major battle in urban centers, with the Alt Right effectively becoming persona non grata for every previous ally.

Charlottesville on August 12th of 2017 was the most apparent of these, and they lost every final bit of crossover appeal they had. Their Alt Light allies have all but completely abandoned them, and their public appearances are flashpoints for antifascist confederations to descend. The organizations that have formed in response are numerous, growing, and their nationwide networks have swelled. Antifascism is at a scale that we have no precedent for in recent U.S. memory.

Within that frame, they have seen their publishing platforms eradicated. Social media, web hosting, podcast hosting, and just about every other outreach tool has been pulled from them. They had grown thought their access to easy hosting and social media, but now almost every Alt Right institutions has been pulled from their online and financial infastructures. Their tools have been deleted, their venues pulled, and their public turned hostile. It isn't looking good.

What they are planning to do also has not been clear. Richard Spencer has been pushing for massive fundraising, something made even more difficult as platforms like Patreon and PayPal pull away from them. Bitcoin has still be useful for them, but as it enters the unstable Wall Street market it is better as a high cost investment than a crypto-currency. The Right Stuff and AltRight.com are hoping that they will be able to pull in enough income through pay-walls to keep a few figures on a living wage, but this is unlikely and it is simply shrinking their reach. Spencer will keep pushing his way onto public universities , but, honestly, this is creating more enemies for him on campus than friends. Organizations like Identity Europa are in turmoil as their leadership resigns, and the Traditionalist Workers Party seems more likely to try and appeal to neo-Nazis than to recruit from normal folks.

There is also a great bit of dissention in the ranks. There are disagreements of which way to go. Richard Spencer was a leader in building what he referred to as "meta-politics": a cultural movement that came before politics. Building off of the "Gramcscians of the Right" philosophy of fascist academics in the European New Right , he wanted to build an Identitarian culture that changed conscousness in the hope that it would alter practical politics down the line. In doing so, he tried to resurrect fascist ideas by giving them an academic and artistic veneer, something he did for years at AlternativeRight.com and theRadix Journal. But with his new friends and the publication AltRight.com, he has turned his sights towards vulgar white supremacy, snarky Internet jargon, and publicity stunts. White nationalist venues like Counter-Currents and Arktos Media have maintained their focus on meta-politics, and decry Spencer for his buffoonish behavior. There are also splits on what to do with queer members, how central the " Jewish Question " is to racial issues, and whether or not they should support Trump.

All of this is to say that their ship has a hole in it, but that only means that there are opportunities for antifascists. This shouldn't be interpreted as a prediction of their failure because even their own incompetence could be overcome by reactionary movements inside the white working class. This is why organizing, in the long-term sense, is key at all stages, especially when moments of decline in fascist fronts provide windows of opportunity.

BR: We have seen dissension in the ranks from women that were a part of the Alt Right movement now feeling denigrated by their fellow nationalists. Do you think that they will eventually split from the larger movement, or reject this entirely? What is the role for women, or femme people, in the Alt Right?

SB: This is complicated, and it has changed dramatically over time. In the earlier days of the Alt Right, there seemed to be a larger opening to female contributors, though it was never a very large contingent. The Alt Right is defined by its inequality and essentialism, so women who were willing to offer a perspective that essentialized femininity to their "femaleness" were generally welcomed. In the earlier days of AlternativeRight.com there were some women contributing, and in the first print edition of the Radix Journal they even had a women of color contribute a chapter.

This definitely changed as we entered the Second Wave Alt Right, which was defined more by the subcultural trolling behavior on message boards and social media. The ideas never really changed, but the attitude and behavior did. Women were always ascribed a traditionalist role, but as we headed into 2015 they were seen increasingly as suspect. Again, this suspicion about women was always an integral part of the Alt Right. People like male tribalist Jack Donovan wrote about deeply felt mysogeny, his mysogeny, towards women. It wasn't until the Manosphere and Gamergate scenes merged, to a degree, with the open fascists in the Alt Right that the virulent anger towards women took center stage.

Now we are seeing the Alt Right essentially openly declare that women need to take a back-seat in the movement , a concept that stems from their belief that only men have the mental and spiritual capacity to lead revolutions. They have, for years, argued that women have lower IQs than men, citing the same pseudoscience that they use to denegrate people of African descent and to single out Jews. They go further and, in trying to ascribe personality types to broad groups of people, say that women lack the "faustian spirit" necessary for revolutions. They believe that women cannot be leaders in the movement because they are bio-spiritually unable, it must necessarily be run by men.

This perspective was even reflected by some women in the movement. Wife With a Purpose, for example, was a white nationalist pagan-turned-Mormon known for her videos, blogs, and Twitter feed. She would often say that her primary role was having babies, but still created a community around herself. Lana Lokeff, the co-host of Red Ice Media and the owner of the conspiracy-laden clothing company Lana's Lamas, also towed this line, while expecting that the Alt Right would respect her in a leadership role. As Alt Right 2.0 continues forward, and the mysogeny becomes more and more pronounced, they continue to be sidelined. As the #MeToo campaign came forward many leaders in the Alt Right, especially Richard Spencer, have turned on their female counterparts even more. This has created an unviable situation between them, and Alt Light figures like Lauren Southern are standing up against their inter-group treatment. This will likely not lead to internal reforms, their mysogeny is foundational and runs deep into their ideology. They believe that femininity is implicitly liberal and in the preservation of the status quo, and therefore they cannot be trusted unless they put extreme limits on female sexuality and self-expression. They believe that women lack key aspects of morality and critical thinking, basically ascribing them whatever negative qualities they can identify at any point and time with silly psuedo-science. The Alt Right's line is then to re-establish orthodox patriarchy rather than the vulgar woman hatred of the Manosphere, that way they can create systematic controls on women. Quite literally putting them in their place.

Their reaction to women in their movement and women across the board is with anger, and the Alt-Right Politics Podcast at AltRight.com even named women, broadly, as one of the "turncoats of the year." They seem to be doubling down on this hatred of women, and we can expect them to further marginalize themselves as they cut down their ability to create alliances.

Their treatment of trans people goes a step even further where they refuse to even accept their existence as legitimate. They repeatedly try to make the claim that trans people are the invention of a modern society in decadence, that it is the material excesses of the contemporary world that "invents" them. This actually draws on very traditional transphobia, where special hate is given to men that they feel gave up their "maleness" by becoming gender non-conforming.

BR: With that in mind, you also had a mistake in the book you wanted to mention.

SB: Yes. I have made a big error of my own, and it is one that I want to openly take responsibility for. At two points in the book I use the phrase "transgendered people" rather than the correct "transgender people." The first phrasing turns transgender into a verb, this is an incorrect way to phrase this and is both antiquated and offensive. It is my responsibility to ensure that I am not erasing trans experiences when discussing these issues, and I should have checked the work to make sure that the phrasing was correct and did not perpetuate harmful language. The instances will be corrected in the next printing of the book.

BR: We have seen the first year of the Trump's presidency pass and it has largely been a set of blunders. While he seems to have trouble getting legislation passed, he is still towing the line on racial issues. How will the Alt Right relate to him in 2018 and forward?

SB: They will be relating to him one day at a time. There were many instances in 2017 where they declared complete abandonment of Trump and where they were having deep disagreements. Trump's bombing campaign in Syria was a key moment in this, and they especially have an affinity for Bashar Al-Assad and reject "compassionate conversative" interventionist foreign policy. Trump's antagonism with Kim Jong-Un was another one of these, and people like the Traditionalist Worker's Party's Matthew Heimbach find this especially offensive since he maintains that North Korea is a national socialist state . More recently, they had a huge problem with Trump's tacit support of the protest movements in Iran, and they instead want to see a "hands off" approach that does not try to port Western liberalism to foreign countries.

There is also a certain amount of ambivalence about what Trump has spent a great deal of time on. The tax bill, which is a massive transfer of wealth from working people to the rich, did not make many of them happy, especially the more down-the-line Third Positionists who dislike empowerment of banks. The focus on healthcare also felt like a distraction to most of them, and people like Richard Spencer really would prefer a completely socialized "post-office style" healthcare system.

At the same time, Trump's ongoing racial antagonisms do make them happy. This travel ban is a watered-down version of what they want, and the increased deportations, the attack on DACA, and the continued promise to "build the wall" keeps them tied. They, of course, loved his "shithole" comment. The most important of these moves by Trump in 2017 was likely his comments in support of Charlottesville white nationalist protesters, saying there were "good people on both sides." This was a subtle statement of support, and when mixed with the rest of his comments creates a cultural sphere of normalization for white supremacy.

All that being said, Trump is bizarrely incompetent and will likely not leave a good stain on the country in the name of right populism. It is difficult for many of them to maintain a purist support for Trump as he continues on and rejects his previous promise to "drain the swamp." His idiocy will spell his downfall, and the Alt Right will instead want to regain their key revolutionary aims. This will likely come from modeling themselves on European groups like France's Generation Identity rather than party politics like the British National Party or Front National , so they may simply de-emphasize Trump rather than reject him fully. At the same time, they are continuing to focus on analyzing and re-analyzing politics, so their singular focus could come at their own downfall.

BR: It seems like we are dealing with a situation that is entirely new in some ways, and entirely familiar in others. As Trump heads into his second year in office, what should organizers keep in mind when confronting this insurgent white supremacist movement?

SB: One of the first things is to see a distinction between Trump and white nationalists, that is one that is often difficult given the open white supremacy Trump displays. Trump has been a massive boon to white nationalists, more than they ever could have dreamed, but he is not the same as them. He has different motivations, different practical politics, and his allegiances and strategies are just going to be fundamentally different than what we find in the Alt Right. The far-right has used Trump as a way into the culture since Trump changed the conversation and pushed the overton window on race, but he is little more than a tool for them to accomplish things. So resistance to the Trump agenda and organized antifascism confronting these movements on the streets are not always one in the same.

That being said, both fields of struggle need to be considered. The consequences of Trump's agenda need to be confronted on their own terms. Increased deportations, persecution of immigrants, attacks on trans people in government venues, targeting of women's healthcare, dismantling of labor unions, and foreign policy blunders. The landscape is also different as we saw with the Draconian charges against J20 protesters for things as mild as broken windows and hurt feelings. These charges are not just happening in a single instance in the boundaries of Washington D.C., but have been seen across the country as cities prepare for four years of massive protests and confrontations between the left and the far-right. Out in Portland, there was massive criminal overcharging, where kids ended up with felonies and prison time for little more than some broken glass. This can have a chilling effect on mass movements, but it also means that there is a material crackdown happening on the left. This is the standard set by Jeff Sessions and judicial appointments, and that can really destroy movements at a base level. This needs to be considered when doing mass organizing.

The realities of the far-right needs to also be seen through sober eyes. Certain Alt Right groups are rising, some are waning, and some are irrelevant. For a long time the Alt Right was seen as a sort of fascism-lite rather than what it is, a fully formed fascist movement. Like all far-right actors, they foster a culture of violence. This is leading to organized violence against the left, but also to more seemingly random acts of "lonewolf" violence like street attacks and spontaneous murders. There is no reason to believe that is on the decline, and so community preparedness, close organization, and self-defense are all important.

It is also critical to avoid simply abandoning the struggles that were taking place before we entered this nationalist revival. We are still teetering on the edge of disaster with climate change, massive wealth inequality is destroying the lives of working people, and housing is become scarcer and scarcer for those of limited means. All of this intersects, all components of a hierarchical society that peaks in moments of crisis. So the same tools we use to fight back the Alt Right can be used to re-establish a strong community that is able to reframe our tactical position, to strengthen workplace, housing, and environmental organizing. So doing antifascist and anti-oppression work should not be seen as a side-note, but as part of a larger matrix of struggle.

Shane Burley is an author and filmmaker based in the Pacific Northwest. He is the author of Fascism Today: What It Is and How to End It (AK Press) His work has appeared at Alternet, Jacobin, Al Jazeera, Raw Story, In These Times, Waging Nonviolence, Salvage Quarterly, ThinkProgress, Upping the Anti, Gods & Radicals, and Make/Shift, among others. He can be found at ShaneBurley.net or on Twitter @Shane_Burley1

Braden Riley is an antiracist organizer from the Northeastern U.S., and has published work in a number of radical publications.

Fascist Performance Art: Looking Further at Augustus Sol Invictus and Trends in the Far-Right

By Shane Burley

Normally I would not be inspired to write something in response to someone else, which is why this is intended to stand on its own. On January 11th, an article was published by me called Imperium and the Sun, which outlined the fascist motifs in the Senate run of Florida Libertarian Party candidate, Augustus Sol Invictus. Scarcely a couple of days after its publishing Augustus sent us a letter and issued a statement about the article, mainly thanking us for doing a critical look at his campaign in a substantial way. This is largely because the coverage on him has focused primarily on sensational parts of his life, mainly his use of animal sacrifice as an unusual manifestation of his pagan faith. That aspect was not incredibly concerning to me when writing the article, nor was his paganism, which is not something to really turn into an oddity. It should also be noted that in his public statement he was both fair and gracious, which did not seem insincere or meant to provoke malice. Instead, it may actually drive at some of his motivating reasons for running in the first place, where he would prefer a well-grounded critique as much as any form of commentary.

In an effort to essentially continue the discussion that happened in the previous article, I am going to use this opportunity to ask questions that can go deeper than the previous article did. I am also going use a couple of comments that were made mainly because it provides an additional avenue to discuss the issues with more guarded parts of the New Right.

In Invictus' public statement, he mentioned that he actually did name his law practice after the book Imperium by Francis Parker Yockey. This was actually a bit surprising as I would have assumed that it was more the broad concept of Imperium rather than the book itself, though there are obviously reasons to think it was simply out of admiration for the book. The book by Yockey is sort of a popularization of the ideas of Oswald Spengler and his book The Decline of the West, which came out of the sense of "national humiliation" that came over German nationalists during the Treaty of Versailles in 1919. Imperium itself is less of a philosophical tome and more of an extended rant that discusses the decline of America as a decadent failed-state because of democracy, capitalism, egalitarianism, and Jews. This book was foundational to the later work of people like the Liberty Lobby's Willis Carto and is still sold as a primary text on many nationalist and traditionalist websites like Arktos, who generally deride more openly "white power" authors. Imperium is one of the most virulently anti-Semitic books in modern writing, blaming the perceived destruction of "Western man" on Jewish subversion, which happened through destroying "national consciousness" so as to achieve dominance. The book itself is largely incoherent and bizarrely structured, almost feeling as though it is the "off the cuff" belligerence of an angry madman protesting the failure of his own life.

Largely, when reading the book, I was reminded strangely of Juche. For people that look at North Korea and its development of its own nationalism based both on Korean national myths and Japanese Imperial Fascism, Juche is the state philosophy of "self reliance." The books, written by Kim Il-Sung, are in multiple volumes and in most Korean homes. When you read them, as very few in Korea have, they are largely filled with unreadable drivel lacking in depth. Brian Reynolds Myers, who wrote the analysis of North Korea's development of a paranoid, race-based nationalism in The Cleanest Race, often described it as the kind of work a professor receives from an undergraduate who wrote their term paper the night before and needed to fill up the page requirements. The books are instead meant to appear on the wall and to fill up libraries, owing to the perceived intellectual prowess of both Kim Il-Sung and the "ongoing" Korean revolution. Kim Il-Sung himself wanted to appear as a philosopher as Mao Zedong had, and so he filled up books with words just as he had. The difference was that it was largely vapid, plagiarized, and up to revision on the whims of the state. Myers maintains the Juche is not ideological in any real way since it does not contain enough substance to coordinate consciousness leading to actions. Instead, it inspires servility and elevates the leadership of the country. Imperium feels largely like Yockey's attempt to use pseudo-intellectual language in an effort to create a large volume and to create the sense that the far-Right had intellectual foundations just as the Left did.

One thing that did stick from Yockey, and we are seeing today in many sides of the New Right, is a call for unity between the Right and Left. Yockey called for a "red-brown alliance," which would be the association between fascists and anti-Zionist communists (since he saw the Jews as essentially the primary problem), and this has been much of the discussion of a Third Positionism that sees both capitalism and communism as problematic. Today, we see this incredibly present in National Anarchism, National Revolution, and National Bolshevism, as well as various strains of racialist Asatru/Odinism and parts of the Alt Right. It should be noted that they do not borrow from the Left in terms of underlining ideas, but just in tactical notions like opposition to capitalism and support of deep environmentalism.

The fact that Sol Invictus sees Imperium as such a central text is telling, primarily from a racial direction as he often eschews racial language in his speeches and interviews (though not entirely).

One criticism Augustus provides, which is much less of 'Imperium and the Sun' and more of some of the reporters who I use as sources, is using a former relationship of his who would like to remain anonymous. In this she said that Augustus had a "dim view of women," which he takes exception with because, as he says, "he worships a goddess." He notes several times is that he worships the "feminine," a point which he believes absolves him of sexism. This is one of the more transparent parts of his claims since this is essentially the religious version of "I have a female friend."

The distinction needs to be made between "worshipping the feminine" and being progressive towards, and affirmative of, women. Augustus' worship of the "feminine" is primarily a notion built on the idea that women are essentially feminine. This provides a narrative for women based on his perception of their natural essence, a notion that is both stifling and erroneous. To have relationships with women that reflect respect and equality, which is what is needed to not have the "dim" view, he would have to negate this idea that women are "essentially" feminine or any other quality. It would also require one to be critical of toxic masculinity and the oppressive nature of historic patriarchy, and this is certainly not a direction Augustus seems to go with his narrative. Some people are feminine, others are not, but this is a shifting personality characteristic that is not adequately rooted in biology or spiritual essences. This, I think, is largely something that Augustus is aware of, and something he would be unwilling to do as his conception of the "modern world" he opposes is one that believes gender is performative rather than natural. This is really the distinction between the "feminine" and "feminism," which is to say that a feminist interpretation of gender and support for female autonomy is not something Invictus sees as central to his worldview. If his perception of women as having a distinct nature that they must fulfill then this is a radically dim view of women, and one that is certainly not negated by providing a laundry list of women he respects.

Augustus took clear issue with my reference to his intended destruction of the public education system. He has said on more than one occasion that he would "gut the Department of Education," which is not unusual for a libertarian candidate; and most people, even on the moderate Left, would see as destructive for lower-income communities. The first objection he makes to this assessment is simply that he does not oppose "equal access to education," which I assumed would be the real victim of his plan. This could be an ideological assessment of this, but when looking at the proliferation of charter schools in privatized educational enclaves it is pretty clear what the results would be of demolishing the public education system in the current state of capitalism. He then mentioned that what he wanted to do was get rid of the "Marxism" that has infected our schools. He then said that I am a Marxist, which I am not, and so that this is likely not a point we could find common ground.

The problem with this line is that is lacks even a cursory understanding of Marxism as it has ever been understood, both by Marxists and by critical eyes. A term that floats around the far Right, which is not used by literally anyone outside of it, is Cultural Marxism. The term is used to designate the Frankfurt School Marxists who developed areas of critical theory and used revamped understandings of Marxism to discuss social systems. They often note that this Cultural Marxism is either created as a pseudoscience by Jews to destabilize Western man so as to support their own ethnic interests, or that Jews simply think in rash relativisms that lead the smarter ones to overly complex nonsense. This, on its face, is ridiculous anti-Semitic conspiracy theory, but it also reveals a real problem in the way that the Right (including even moderate Republicans) thinks about Marxism.

Marxism itself really did not branch extensively into social issues, and instead the ideas that they lend to "Marxist infiltration" have much different origins. In general, this broad social left sphere actually comes from the interactions of feminism, queer liberation, the civil rights movement, radical environmentalism, and other intellectual and social struggles with anarchism, which is the ideological center of this discourse, sometimes explicitly, but more often implicitly. The fundamental core of the anarchist project is an opposition to social hierarchy. This has its core in capitalism in the contemporary world, but it also intersects and has individualized hierarchies through oppressed identities and social experiences. This is a constantly evolving sphere of understanding and struggle, one that certainly owes some criticisms of capitalism from Marx, but really little else. Marx himself drew together a system of "base and superstructure." This meant that the foundations were economic, and culture and social systems derived from the relationships to material production. The Frankfurt School certainly tried to evolve it, but it did not actually catch on because of its alienating academic nature. I am often surprised that the far-right does not attack Autonomism or Situationism as they successfully evolved some of Marx's ideas for social revolution, and in fact the far-right often cites both of these threads in Marxism to support certain positions and to discuss the alienating condition of the "modern world."

Today, much of the far-right derives its discussions about Cultural Marxism in a much more specific form from former UC Long Beach professor Kevin McDonald's work. His book series, called the Culture of Critique, is supposed to be an "evolutionary psychological" look at Judaism as a "group evolutionary strategy" that is a result of Jewish ethnocentrism and high "verbal intelligence." He goes through different movements that he claims were dominated by "strongly identified Jews" and then essentially tries to prove that they were pseudoscience used to confuse and destroy the Gentiles. Cultural Marxism is one of these, where he sees it as an attempt by Jews to destroy white identity and racial consciousness as a way of protecting them from anti-Semitism. It should be said openly that he has almost no support for the radical wing of his claims, though the level of anti-Semitism increased as the volumes were released. Today, his ideas have been almost roundly rejected, where he is often accused of being misinformed about genetics, industrial history, and even what the realities of group evolution. Likewise, most of his theories involve basically counting people who may or may not be Jews, then assuming they have some coordinated conspiracy or subconscious drive to destroy white people, and then deciding that certain academic of political fields were more influential than they were. This is especially true of Frankfurt School Marxism, which he blames for just about every aspect of the progressive culture.

So then, really, why is Marxism still accused of having this effect? The reason seems to be that Marxism has historically been the dominant left revolutionary force when fascism was first developed, and a narrative about Jewish involvement in Bolshevism was so heavily relied upon during its interwar resurgence that it would be hard to create a continuity between the past and the present by rejecting Marxism as the dominant force of degeneration. Almost all levels of Marxism, from its Leninist interpretations to Trotskyist middle-road attempts to Maoist insurrectionaries and Situationist counter-cultures, are difficult to interpret for those looking to find a direct center of what they see as a force to destroy "nation and identity." This is especially difficult given the role that Marxism has played in third-world nationalism, much of which I would assume Augustus would favor. Likewise, Trotskyism seems to be an incredibly easy subsection for the far-right to highlight, often saying that it is synonymous with the Cultural Marxism that the Frankfurt School represents. This is embarrassingly misguided as there is almost no theoretical connection between the party-oriented political work of modern Trotskyist groups and the Negative Dialectics of Adorno. It is not just that they have different subsets; they are of a completely different world. Today, much of Frankfurt School Marxism has actually founded the basis for Primitivist thought, people like David Watson and John Zerzan, who are often derided for having parts of their analysis shared with those on the more esoteric "green fascist" Right. They certainly lack the "mass cultural orientation," as Zerzan calls it, that Augustus would find problematic in the global contemporary Left.

The key point here is that the effect that Augustus rails about in schools, which would be egalitarianism and general left-liberalism, has no direct correlation to Marx. I assume that I am going to receive emails in the next couple days with long citations that "prove" the correlation between transgender identity and 19th century Marxism, then to the Jewish Talmud, but beyond their racism, almost no evidence, scholarship, or political action supports this thesis.

Invictus makes an interesting note about the back and forth assertions regarding his own fascist politics and his family make-up. Without going into it too deeply, his partner is Latino/a, as are his children. This has led many to counter that he simply could not be racist, which is clearly not true, but also it drives at something more difficult about the correlation between white supremacy and fascism. Augustus himself wants to note that having Latino/a children does not mean he is not a fascist. This shows a couple of things. First, that he likes to take the label of fascist. For most looking at the far-right, this is both surprising and not surprising. While most on the Alt Right (Neoreaction, contemporary White nationalism, and other sub-divisions) think of themselves as ideologically different than fascism, which they believe is a specific politic lost in interwar Europe, they do not necessarily deride it either. Likewise, they often use the term as a semi-joke, calling each other "fashy." This is actually why I referred to Augustus' hair as "fashy," which he took exception to, which actually comes from the way that people like The Daily Shoah often call that hair style, now popular with the Alt Right after Richard Spencer chose it.

Second, he seems to be aligning himself with a sort of fascism that is primarily one of power and hierarchy rather than having its roots in race. This may seem confusing, and it is, but there have been fascist movements whose nationalism and ideals were less oriented on race (like that rising in Brazil). Augustus has made his image a very thought-out and well-crafted piece of performance art. He chooses aesthetics that would make people immediately step back in horror because of their perceived "fascist" roots. He uses a straight face, an almost ironic appearing pose, for making videos where he looks into the camera with a 10,000-yard stare. When speaking, he does the modern equivalent of screaming in front of an iron eagle, where he often uses contradictory language about "the system" while hailing from both the Left and the Right. As mentioned in the last article, he hams up his accent so much that you almost expect him to say, "I've always depended on the kindness of strangers." This is the ideological hallmark of Third Positionist fascism, while also being innately rhetorical. Over and over again he calls for revolution, then he even specifies that he does not mean to vote or volunteer for his campaign. He means revolution, and believes that he was born to lead a civil war. This is followed up by literally calling for people to support him as a candidate for office with relatively conventional political stances. It may seem like an act meant to make people feel as though they are doing more than voting; think of the 2007 Ron Paul campaign. This is likely true, but it is also driving at a fascist rhetorical strategy of fomenting revolution in spirit while not going as far as to stage actual insurrection. Instead, he wants to inject the political sphere with the feeling of revolutionary struggle with the hope that this will lead to a culture of "will to power." Augustus seems to want to recreate the feeling of fascism, the powerful speeches, the calls for unity and strength, the resurrection of the heroic motifs. He purposely references Rome in the same way that Mussolini did, which both has the same effect of dog whistling to his nationalist base while having plausible deniability when it comes to WWII tyrannies. In this way, his politics are clearly built more on the image of strength, which is backed up by his calls for natural hierarchy and eugenics, and it may or may not include race.

Augustus sent over a speech he gave at the University of Florida looking at fascism, before which he did a reading of three Cantos of Ezra Pound on usury at the Jack Kerouac house. Usury itself, the unethical lending of money, is often used as an anti-Semitic caricature of Jewish lending practices. Much of this comes from periods in European history where Jews were restricted from owning property and most professions and had lending sometimes as the only source of income, which led the anti-Semites to find another way to denigrate the Jewish community. The use of the term usury could, theoretically, mean lending with huge interest rates, but the term itself is chosen very carefully so as to bring up the Jewish caricature. Ezra Pound, who he is referencing in both speeches, was an undisputable fascist and virulent anti-Semite, and one of the few far-right intellectuals that they still have to draw on.

The racial issues are confusing in that he really does seem to shift with the environment. In a recent December 8th presentation at a small bar in Jacksonville, Florida, he stood in front of a Rock Against Communism flag as he derided the Federal Government. ROC is a punk movement that was the neo-Nazi equivalent of the growing non-racist Oi! scene, and created the foundation of the "white noise" music culture and racist skinhead gang community. One of the people helping him set up had, on his shaved head, the Heathen Mjonir and another runic symbol often associated with neo-Nazis. It could be argued, as I'm sure it will be, that these could theoretically be non-racist as well (I even own a Mjonir necklace myself), but in this particular situation it certainly would be a remarkable coincidence. Augustus then gave a speech with showed clear support for "nationalists and white racialists" and calls to "name our enemies." All of this was started with a story about a farmer being removed from his land by the federal government and another unnamed enemy. This draws heavily on the Posse Comitatus militia narrative that tries to inter-mix class struggle by re-orienting the enemy as various covert agents inside of the government, namely the Jews. He continues, throughout the speech, to accuse Marxism as seeping into the culture, which again re-orients the struggle as between near eternal enemies coming from deep in the past. He even mentioned Robert Matthews, a deceased member of the white racialist insurrectionary group The Order, who is radical even for Invictus to mention. When on shows like The Daily Shoah, he certainly seems to stand in support of their white nationalism, but he does avoid taking a clear stance on this.

I mentioned in the original article that he is a "left-hand path (LHP)" follower of Crowley's Thelema. He noted my mention, going on to let me know that he will be speaking at the Left Hand Path Consortium in Atlanta on April 10th with a lecture titled "The Nature of Power." I want to say clearly that I am far from an academic versed in esoteric traditions, but I do know my way around this discussion. The term, which is actually usually avoided in the academy, refers to two ways to possibly interpret esoteric and religious traditions. Most religions are Right-Hand Path, which sees things like universal ethical codes that are generally utilitarian. LHP rejects morality as a key dividing line, which is why it is often associated with black magick and relativism or nihilism. Iconoclastic in its roots, the most prominent forms of LHP magick is associated with Satanism, both of the metaphorical LaVeyan sensibility and the more theological type associated with organizations like the The Order of Nine Angels. The Temple of Set, Ordo Templi Orientis, some types of Hinduism and Sufi Islam, and some smaller tribal religions, could also be described as such. Much of the discourse inside of the LHP is about the attraction to power, and much of it is often associated with the desire to dominate over others and to instill hierarchies. Esoteric, elitist, and often focused on personal gain, LHP really does separate its traditions from most values associated with religion.

Many people on the Left love to joke around the Church of Satan because of its anti-Christian roots and its advocacy of sexual freedom. They often do not go deep enough to see its more ingrained right-wing ideas, where private property, personal power, and, as Crowley said, letting one's "will" be the whole of the law, are what they are founded on. This tradition plays almost perfectly into both Invictus' politics and public image, as well as the idea of Imperium that drives his life and program.

Augustus clearly liked the article about him, primarily because very few people got beyond gawking at his peculiarities so as to look at his politics. It is because of this that I think he would be willing to answer some open questions, which I am sure he would answer honestly and sincerely given his composure and penchant for honorable behavior. I put together a short list of questions, all of which are intended to be tough and revealing. A first glance, it may seem as though they are just sensationalistic, and, in a sense, they are. But they are also getting at something real, and I sincerely do not know the answers to them. The politics that Augustus is accused of, as well as those he happily embodies, have, for various reasons, not been incredibly clear to the general public. Therefore, I want to avoid any double-speak, "politician talk," or dodging that is so common even in smaller political races. Augustus has said many times that he wants a political discussion that is not simplified or dumbed down, so I think that he will appreciate being challenged in this way.

Questions for Augustus Sol Invictus:

1. Are you a racial or ethnic nationalist?

2. Do you share the view with many of the outlets in which you have spoke, that there are IQ differences that are biologically different between racial groups?

3. Do you share the idea in Imperium that the Jews are innately enemies of Western society?

4. Do you think that the Holocaust did not occur in the numbers and specifics of the standard narrative?

5. What kind of eugenics program would you want to see implemented in the U.S. if you were to have complete control over it?

6. Do you see men and women as having innately different natures?

7. In what way does Thelema influence your political ideas?

8. In this natural hierarchy that you spoke of, what types of people end up near the top, and what types of people end up towards the bottom?

9. Can you explain, in detail, what you think Marxism to be and how it has been a dominant force in Western society?

10. How would you rid society of the subversive elements, be them Marxist or Jewish or whatever you believe them to be?

11. Do you generally oppose mass democracy as a concept?

12. Do you think that people are generally equal, despite their own particular differences?

Institutionalizing Lone-Wolf Terrorism: How Fascist Organizations Inspire Mass Violence

By Shane Burley

As Mulugeta Seraw and a friend hopped out of their ride's car, they didn't notice the pack of three skinheads wearing tight Levi's tucked into leather boots, laces tied from toe to ankle. The gang were members of East Side White Pride, affiliated with the larger White Aryan Resistance. Seraw was a student who had come to Portland, Oregon from Ethiopia, likely expecting Portland's long reputation of diversity and liberal values. It has another history, one that is caked in the KKK revival in the Northern USA and would later be marked by white expansion and gentrification. When the three men saw him on the corner of SE 31st and Pine street, a flurry of racial slurs were thrown before they took a baseball bat and caved in his head. This was just one of the many violent attacks that marked the war on the streets of Portland in the 1980s and 90s, where Antifa and anti-racist skinheads went literally up in arms with Volksfront, Hammerskin Nation, and other white pride gangs. The blood was visible on the corner of that street for weeks, and some swear you can still see it at night.(1)

This story resonates as we are inundated with recent horrors like the Dylan Roof massacre of nine church-goers after reading the Council of Conservative Citizens website, or the two men who beat an older hispanic man in south Boston after listening to Donald Trump's speech of racial arson.

The radical right can fundamentally be dropped into two camps. There are the above ground operations that focus on propagating "ideas" or political programs. These would be things like the "HBD" scientific racist organizations like American Renaissance, Mankind Quarterly, and the Pioneer Fund. There are the neo-fascist cultural and "radical traditionalist" organizations like Traditionalist Youth Network, Occidental Observer, and The National Policy Institute. There are vague political parties and organizations like the American Freedom Party and Council of Conservative Citizens, but the time that formations like these had any mainstream power has shortly passed. There are many other subdivisions of these, but in most of them you are likely not to hear the N-word or see many iron crosses or swastikas.

The second type of organization you can likely call insurrectionary, vanguardist, revolutionary, or simply angrily racist. These are organizations whose prime mission is a right-wing racialist revolution of some sorts, or the use of direct action in the re-establishment of formal white supremacy. There have been versions of this type of organization that has formed often over the years. The uniquely American flavor of this type of confrontational white supremacist organizing has its deep history in the Ku Klux Klan. Formed first in 1866, the clan used a fraternal structure that places former Confederate general Nathan Bedford Forrest as its Grand Wizard. From 1867 forward the KKK founded its purpose to challenge the entry of freed slaves into public life during Reconstruction. In this way they acted as a sort of guerilla army attempting to, if not reverse the course of the Civil War, re-establish the kind of white hegemony that they had during the time of slave patrols. Northern politicians would essentially go to war with the Klan as they murdered seven of the first black legislators during the 1867-68 congressional convention. The real resurgence of the Klan came in the 1920s when they brought back an extensive leadership using the Greek fraternal system, and rose to the ranks of about four million people. This meant that they were a real political force, leading in Senators and Governors, as well as many that had to seek Klan endorsement if they were to be elected. This political clout certainly influenced policy of the time, but the real power was to terrorize communities of color with mass lynching and tortures of black people all across the south. This violence became institutional as the Klan infiltrated all areas of law enforcement, and lynching were so wide spread and accepted that people literally sold photos of dead black men hanging from trees as popular postcards. The political power it had in the 1920s was never again replicated, though it came out again as a powerful force for violence during the Civil Rights struggles of the 1960s. This helped to push forward the White Citizen's Councils that would evolve into the Council of Conservative Citizens that we have today. (2)

While the Klan is all but gone in the 21st century, the other element of white resistance was the neo-Nazi skinhead movement. This was much more inspired from their British punk-rock dissidents of the Rock Against Communism flair. This created an essentially "working class" urban racialist movement that was drawn from the organizing traditions of anti-racist Trojan Skinheads. The skinhead culture, with networks like Volksfront and Hammerskin Nation dominating the U.S. scene, operate like street gangs with initiations and requirements of members to engage in racist violence. Their connections to other essentially "white gangs," most notably different motorcycle gangs, has cemented their association with distributing drugs like Crystal Meth and Oxycontin, though on the more militant side there is also a straight edge tradition.

The main threat of organizations like this was never successful political organizing, though semi-skinhead organizations like the National Socialist Movement maintain delusions that they will someday have political influence through bridge topics like immigration and affirmative action. The real threat here was violence on an interpersonal level, often times resulting in random violence against targeted groups on the streets. This can appear as "random" violence, but is only random in as much as there is not an overarching political goal that can be seen with any coherence. Beyond the skinhead gangs and shrinking KKK locals, these will also include groups that do have an ideological framework and some sense of revolutionary organizing in the long-term, yet do not work with the more moderate kinds of above ground organizations. This includes many of the racialist Christian Identity churches that are tied to survivalist militias. The Church of Jesus Christ - Christian, otherwise known as Aryan Nations, was one of the largest and best known of these, residing in Hayden Lake, Idaho. There they had a large compound where they held sermons about how Jews were biologically descended from Satan, how people of color were literally the "Beasts of the field" and were animals that did not have souls, and that all white people are the people called Israelites in the Bible. They tied racial revolution to Biblical eschatology for a conspiracy-laden mix of Nazism and American conservative Christianity. After several members attacked a family driving by the compound, the church and its leader, Reverend Richard Butler, were sued and the land confiscated. Today Christian Identity still plays a major role in underground militia oriented circles, though Kinism, a slightly more mainstream appearing racist Christian interpretation, is stealing many converts.

The National Socialist Movement, National Alliance, and many other militant Nazi organizations have straddled the line between organizing and revolutionary violence for most of their life. While their stated goals are often just well organized propaganda, education, and political programs, their revolutionary rhetoric has seen more results with inspiring single individuals to commit homicidal acts than having any kind of political program of any value.

There are dozens, if not hundreds, of individual strands that all attempt to claim some serious legitimacy on political or ideological grounds, but they broadly can fall into the two categories and hold much of the same potential for inspiring singular acts of extreme violence. The violence that is exhibited is markedly different between groups based principally on the location and specific revolutionary vision of the organizations, but all the violence takes the form of singular acts of terrorism. What this means is that the kind of violent incidents that is seen from militia groups like The Order and Posse Comitatus is much different than the street skinheads of Vinland.

When it comes to the kind of racist violence that Anti-Fascist Action has staked much of its history on was confronting the random violence of the urban skinhead gangs. Much of the focus on these groups is that they tended to be one of the few groups that engaged in public acts of violent direct action into the 1990s, while the Ku Klux Klan and other groups had really receded or were attempting to moderate their politics. Skinheads, on the other hand, were mirroring other punk rock subcultures and creating a counter culture that engaged in gang violence in large cities. They were also coming into direct contact with left-oriented organizations by having some subcultural crossover in music venues, as well as having a high presence in drug running and prison gang culture. These were not heavily ideological groups, and those that had a stronger sense of white nationalism evolved into the more moderate path that many of the Klan splinter groups did in the 1980s.

Instead of being a more overarching political program, the myth about skinheads was based in their seemingly random targeting of minorities in public locations for incidental acts of incredibly cruelty. This has led to a consistent set of attacks since the mid 1970s, where people of color are often targeted in otherwise white areas, or young queer folks are "hunted" in areas where they might frequent. This has the effect of generalized fear since the attacks seem to be randomly selected, do not have a distinct pattern, and can essentially happen "anytime and anywhere."

People have always tried to see these gangs as part of a larger fascist movement or political vision, but this is difficult since there is not a lot of connection between them and the more mainstream intellectual movements and the violence itself would be hard to systematize. What occurs internally is to create a culture where violence is foundational to the community, and where prestige within the group is based on the history of engaging in violence. Since there is no outlet for this growing violent culture in anyway that can be a part of a larger political movement, as there would have been with the KKK in the 1920s, they instead wait in the wings for chances to let rage explode at random targets. Violence is the impetus for these groups, and recruiting often targets people who may have a history of violence and disaffection already, taking on an almost "cult like" structure of taking over a new recruit's world. This violence is stoked so effectively internally that it doesn't even require some type of antagonism from the left, as would happen at some kind of political protest clash. Instead, right from the start recruits are being emotionally prepared to engage in some type of violence as a way of securing a place in the social order that has chosen them.

As said earlier, the image that AFA and ARA organizers have of racist violence often comes from northern skinhead gangs because those are the street clashes that are common, the risk of larger incidents of violence are actually coming out of the woods instead of the alleys. The militia movement, though often associated with the far right, is not always considered a racialized group. While much of the rhetoric is made up of racial "dog whistle" language and vague discussions of "socialism" or "the federal government,", a large contingent of racial revolutionaries mix with these groups and have their own agenda. Over the course of the 1980s we have seen massive trends towards violence, some of it on an almost unbelievable scale. The Order, active through 1983 and 1984, took credit for the murder of Jewish radio talk show host Alan Berg as well as bank robberies totaling over $3.6 million. They were berthed out of groups like the Aryan Nations and National Alliance, which they kept in close contact with. The most famous of these men was David Lane, who went on to coin the Wotanist religion, which is essentially a hyper-racist version of folkish Asatru. He is best known for coining what white nationalists refer to at the "14 Words," which says, "We must secure the existence of our people and the future for White Children." The Order maintained a close relationship with Frazier Glenn Miller of the White Patriot Party. He went on to shoot several congregants at the Jewish Community Center and the Village Shalom retirement center. He killed several here in a moment of mass murder, several of which turned out not to be Jewish. Similarly, Aryan Nations member Buford O. Furrow, Jr. shot and killed several children at the Jewish Community Center in L.A., as well as murdering a Filipino postal worker. All of these different members discussed the need to engage in revolution against the Zionist Occupation Government, in which subversive Jews use "mud races" to destroy the purity of the white race.

The most dramatic example of these is obviously the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995 that killed 168 people while injuring an additional 680 others. A huge number of these were children since the Federal Building that was attacked had a childcare center in it. This was carried out by Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols driven by anti-Federal ideas that were heavily racialized. McVeigh was even found to have pages from the Turner Diaries in his car. The book, which is something of a Bible from the racist militia movement, is a novel written by National Alliance founder William Pierce that describes an incredibly violent race war where blacks and Jews are exterminated at will. Their connections to the fringes of these movements were clear, yet what they actually intended to result from their actions were not. In many of these cases, the idea is for the violence to trigger the subliminal racism of middle America to rise up against their "subversive Jewish masters."

These kinds of gun-based attacks have largely come out of the more militant groups dealing both with racialized ideologies and also having connections to broader militia groups, conspiracy theory organizations, and the new Sovereign Citizens movement. On the west coast the Posse Comitatus had been on the vanguard of this racist militia milieu for years, and more recently groups like the Northwest Front may be taking up that mantle. It would be nice to write these attacks up to a few disturbed people, and, in a lot of ways, you can. The organizations that do still exist that pushed these people into their moments of extreme violence often times denounce the actions, or passively support them. What we do see is that organizations like these use people with questionable social standing and emotional stability to commit the most violent acts against people of color, queer folks, Muslims, immigrants, and anyone else they have decided to hate that week.

What is important to also consider when thinking about these types of groups is that their lip service, and even attacks, against the government are not what is really at issue. The state is only a subject of attack because of its relationship to communities of color, Jews, and others. The real violence here is against random minority community members and, in the case of bomb attacks, low-level government workers. Their threat is still, no matter what they say they target, against individuals in our communities and not lofty government or corporate actors.

The acts of mass murder themselves have often taken on the "blaze of glory" format where the act itself is not always hidden very well, and the actor tends to see this as the culminating act of their life. This again has led many in the media and state agencies to list these people as just being emotionally disturbed, and this is a narrative that many of the larger revolutionary racist organizations have supported. Instead, it actually comes at the direct result of much of the organizing rhetoric that happens internal to these organizations.

Two primary organizing documents have led to help create the space for these acts of mass killings. The first is "leaderless resistance," which is the name of an essay written by white nationalist Col. Ulius Louis Amoss in 1962. The notion came from the idea that the top-down "pyramid structure" used by white vanguard organizations were easy to be infiltrated and instead advocated a "phantom cell" model that lacks any kind of centralized control. Many would actually see that this is similar to many "affinity group" models used in insurrectionary left-anarchist organizing, but while there are connections in the use of anti-organizational modes, the goals are radically different. As Simson Garfinkel writes in the journal First Monday, the goals of leaderless resistance in this context is in interpersonal violence.

Under many circumstances, the "resistance" advocated by Beam could easily devolve into random acts of anarchistic violence without any formal political objective. Indeed, the effects of Leaderless Resistance can easily be dismissed as the work of "wannabe terrorists", petty criminals engaging in copycat crimes, and angry loners participating in "sympathy attacks." That is, it could easily devolve into traditional forms of "resistance" or "cultural resistance" employed by the poor or powerless to impede or subvert a more powerful foe. The violence of Leaderless Resistance is different from what sociologists often refer to as "cultural resistance." While it is uncoordinated, Leaderless Resistance supports a common political goal: it is violence with an agenda. Typically, this agenda is set by political tracts or other documents that set forth objectives, demands, and classes of particular targets. Agenda-setting is also performed by specific individuals who take part in terrorist activities: when one Earth Liberation Front member attacks a dealership for sport utility vehicles (SUVs) that opens another "front" in the "battle", and gives others the idea and motivation of attacking SUV dealerships as well. (3)

He goes on to note that there actually is a kind of de facto leadership in this format in that there tends to be public figures who advocate these methodologies. These end up existing as leadership, and the constant media feedback loop creates a sense of validation in the actions.

The second concept that was important to this is that of the "lone wolf" type action. This concept was heavily popularized by people like Tom Metzger, whose group White Aryan Resistance was a major driving force in supporting neo-Nazi skinhead formations in the U.S. He saw the potential of these groups as the KKK went into decline, seeing them as vanguardist "brown shirts." Metzger's concept of the lonewolf is again a form of leaderless resistance, except specifically focused on assassination-ready targets. As he says in his famous essay "Laws for the Lone Wolf," "anyone is capable of being a Lone Wolf."

Always start off small. Many small victories are better than one huge blunder (which may be the end of your career as a Lone Wolf). Every little bit counts in a resistance. Knowledge is power. Learn from your mistakes as well as the mistakes of others. Never rush into anything, time and planning are keys to success. Never attempt anything beyond your own abilities, failure could lead to disaster. The less any outsider knows, the safer and more successful you will be. Keep your mouth shut and your ears open. Never truly admit to anything…I have never said their will never be a time when all small cells and lonewolves may evolve into a highly structure but ruthlessly militant organization with steel hard leaders. That time is not now and will not be for the foreseeable future. No present leader including myself will be leading that phase. We are only to prepare the way. Hopefully what we say and do now will make future victory possible. Remember, those who have come before you are counting on you, those who will come after you are depending on you. Think white, act White, be White! (4)

While Metzger tries to be vague, he is discussing the murder of high-level targets. This could be politicians that he sees as being a part of ZOG, or this could just be people in interracial relationships, anti-fascist and left-wing organizers, and people organizing the protections of LGBTQ people. This methodology has been a popular idea taken up in various KKK and neo-Nazi factions, the militia movement, and in some of the more violent racialist ideology, like the vile Creativity Movement. You can see this resulting in incidents like the recent targeting of the Sikh Temple members, the killing of the security guard at the Smithsonian Holocaust Museum, and the various Jewish Temple shootings.

Metzger's ideas often come under a free-speech caveat, and it would be unwise to head into a liberal "anti-hate speech" line of organizing as this would end up being counter-productive. But his words do have meaning.

After all three skinheads indicted for Mulugeta Seraw's murder, Morris Dees of the Southern Poverty Law Center thought that the case needed to go further than just those with literal blood on their hands. The SPLC is known for doing its research, education, and trainings around hate groups, as well as having different court cases and lawsuits targeting these organizations and individuals. Dees wanted to target one of the overarching organizations and individuals that had been pushing these neo-Nazi skinheads into acts of individual violence. Tom Metzger and WAR became the obvious culprits, and after Dees found a letter that John Metzger, Tom's son, had told the skinhead who committed to murder to show his town how this "Aryan Youth Movement worked." Dees won a $7 million lawsuit against Tom Metzger, functionally bankrupting him and his organization. Metzger's ideas have been central to the functioning of these bouts of skinhead violence, and this court case put him up for it. But he is still out there, legally allowed to keep publishing and the skinheads who continue to read his diatribes continue to stay inspired.

The question as to why violence seems inevitable from these organizations brings up a lot of complicated answers. The vanguard and revolutionary fascists groups do not have the political clout to ever engage in an actual military insurrection against the government. The fear of this type of action is much more theoretical and more based around the more organized above-ground groups since they have the potential to create a radical undercurrent that could be militant come periods of mass collapse and crisis. The current militia and skinhead groups, however, will not have enough pull in the contemporary world to actually mobilize against the state in any meaningful way. Even on their small scale, antifascist organizations, both liberal and radical, successfully shut down their growth and any resources they get their mitts on the second they do. At the same time, their rhetoric, often tied to movements so roundly reviled at this point, such as Nazi Germany, does not have enough palatability to ever be a dangerous political movement.

While they do not have the ability to put a person in congress, or even put enough people successfully in fatigues, they do tend to maintain the most radical elements in the insurrectionary racist ranks. These organizations attract and groom those prone to violence. While the people often engaging in the violence may be walking into the actions themselves with a mix both of ideology and interpersonal issues, there is still a political impetus that drives these organizations to groom people towards violence. It is actually this dynamic that reminds us of many debates on the left circles of insurrectionary anarchism, where by militant actions that may or may not be considered violent are often used to "break the spell" of the current order and inspire further action. This is the classic "propaganda of the deed" mentality that led to the assassinations of presidents and bombings of law enforcement strongholds. It is essentially this notion that actually drives many of these violent acts, the idea being that this will break the "spell of multiculturalism" and drive people to engage in RaHoWa (Racial Holy War).

The very nature of these organizations are in their dissent from the largest fascist milieu, and that point is usually on the basis of the necessity of violence. The larger organizations have differing opinions on whether or not to engage in the political system. Many still advocate running candidates in local elections, both inside open racialist parties like the American Freedom Party or through closely aligned political formations like the Tea Party or the Constitution Party. Others instead want to create a cultural and social milieu in challenge to the system, but is not advocating open insurrection. We see this in the Radix, Alternative Right, H.L. Menken Club crowd, where many actually do advocate revolutionary politics but would never openly associate with violent direct action. Groups like Aryan Nations exists, to a large part, because they are willing to acknowledge the need for violence in the here and now. It is what gives these organizations a modicum of individuality and a purpose to exist.

Because violence is at the heart of their reason to exist, it is inevitable that these formations will lead to violence. As mentioned before, since there is no chance at revolutionary militarism, this takes the form of random acts of violence towards target communities.

Outside of the existing organizations, there is one area where vanguardist fascists have made their way into that has seen a notable rise in violence. The movement against racist police violence has been given a steroid injection with Black Lives Matter rising out of Ferguson, Brooklyn, and Baltimore. It is here that the institutionalized biases lead police to use their positions as defenders of capital to lord over communities of color, engaging in lethal violence at inordinate rates against people of color. This is implicit to a racist society where capitalism and the state rely on racial inequality, and this is baked into the social order that gives police their queues as to who they see as being threatening.

In the now widely publicized FBI report of 2006 titled "White Supremacist Infiltration of Law Enforcement" gives us a sense of where much of the effort for state subversion could be for organized racists. Even the state itself acknowledges that its role as the monopolistic holder over the right to violence could allow fascists to use it to further wield violence.

White supremacist presence among law enforcement personnel is a concern due to the access they may possess to restricted areas vulnerable to sabotage and to elected officials or protected persons, whom they could see as potential targets for violence. (5)

The limitations of this report are obvious in the fact that the main threat they see is that those who would like to engage in the sort of "apocalyptic violence" may have access to otherwise "restricted" government officials. What they fail to address is the actual threat that racists who see people of color as subhuman will have access to them as subjects of lethal force.

Much of this draws from the obvious rise in racial extremism between 2008 and 2014, which also marked the increase for the more mainstream versions of these groups like the Tea Party. The reasons for this are obvious as Barack Obama is a bridge-too-far for many of them, but in general the changing demographics of the country is baiting those that simply cannot take the idea of a multi-ethnic society. Many of these organizations target law enforcement because they would like to personally aid in shifting towards a militarized pro-white avenue within policing, where they really do see people of color as violent threats to white society. Policing adds a lethal dimension to the existing inequality of a society, and as the vanguards of white privilege these organizations want to help further make the police force a violent protector of white hegemony. On the more interpersonal level, the petty power that many low-level police get mirrors the kind of white privilege that white nationalists and reactionaries desperately want to hold onto at the cost of the working class unity that could afford them a better position in the world. The same situation has proven true in many of the anti-Islamic threads in the military or, more appropriately, in the private military complex with companies like Blackwater. Here a racist ideological thread helps to aid in the career choice, where protecting the U.S. from "dangerous Muslims and foreigners" may seem like a morally positive choice.

The reality of this situation can only be heightened by its seeming impossibility. With the beauracratic state that essentially weeds out dissenting opinions through Human Resource apparatus, you would think that these kind of racial revolutionaries would be barred from employment. Then we see the high number of organized racists heading into the police force, or radicalizing within the police force due to the type of racialized policing methods that can warp their perception of the communities of color they engage with. We see in countries like Greece where Golden Dawn may only get a small percentage of votes from the general electorate, but have over fifty percent support from the Police. And we need to remember what kind of threat this actually holds even beyond the fact that we can expect for more racist violence from the police. In periods of revolutionary upheaval, the police can easily align themselves with reactionary direct action parties and embody the brown-shirt role they already socially hold.

One of the primary elements that anti-fascists have always confronted is that the dissemination of racist ideas will continue to increase racist violence, even if much racist violence on a daily basis are happening outside of the organized racist movement. This increase is not only due to the production of material from the revolutionary groups, but the intellectual organizing-focused fascist organizations play just as much into producing the material that eventually pushes "lone wolves" over the edge. As pointed out in Why We Fight I, the primary threat in terms of organizing is over the fate of radicalism, but there is also an intensification effect that these groups have over the violent wing of their movement. They continue to stoke racial hatred, the need for "revolution," and other ideas that lead to conscious acts of protecting white supremacy.

Notes

1. Denson, Bryan. "Legacy of a hate crime: Mulugeta Seraw's death a decade ago avenged." Oregonlive.com. 1998: Republished November 12, 2014. http://www.oregonlive.com/portland/index.ssf/2014/11/1998_story_legacy_of_a_hate_cr.html.

2. "Ku Klux Klan." History.com. Last accessed September 11th, 2015. http://www.history.com/topics/ku-klux-klan.

3. Garfinkel, Simson L. "Leaderless resistance today." First Monday, Volume 8, Number 3. 3 March 2003. http://journals.uic.edu/ojs/index.php/fm/article/view/1040/961.

4. Metzger, Tom. "Laws for the Lone Wolf." Resist. http://www.resist.com/Articles/literature/LawsForTheLoneWolfByTomMetzger.htm.

5. FBI Counterterrorism Division. "(U) White Supremacist Infiltration of Law Enforcement." Federal Bureau of Investigation Intelligence Assessment. 17 October 2006. http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/402521/doc-26-white-supremacist-infiltration.pdf.