Racial inequality remains deeply embedded within U.S. social and economic structures, even as its forms and justifications are in flux. Additionally, although the U.S. has long been considered “a nation of immigrants,” the question of who those immigrants are and where they come from, has provided fertile ground for exclusionary and bigoted policies for over 200 years. The projection that the U.S. will no longer be a majority white country sometime in the mid-21st century, along with the government’s massive post-911 campaign of racial profiling, has reinvigorated White supremacist anxieties present in the U.S. since its founding. 

A well-funded and organized constellation of organizations with direct ties to racist eugenics and White nationalism are now at the forefront of efforts to slow this demographic trend. Its current manifestations—workplace abuses, the separation of families, and the further expansion of mass incarceration, among other things—have wide-reaching and adverse effects.

Ahead of November Election, Trump Inflames His Vigilante Base

During the September 29, 2020 presidential debate, President Donald Trump gave his White nationalist and militia base a jolt of inspiration, refusing to condemn White supremacy and recent acts of violence and intimidation against widespread Black…

In January 2019, Rick Joyner, head of Morningstar Ministries, an important New Apostolic Reformation parachurch organization,[1] claimed to have received a prophetic vision in a dream in the form of a…

An Activist Field Guide to the Far Right

Why this Guide Since the murder of George Floyd by Minneapolis police, PRA has documented more than 150 incidents of armed far-right actors showing up at racial justice protests. They have threatened and harassed racial justice…

The murder of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, by Minneapolis police on May 25, 2020 marked the beginning of a dramatic surge in racial justice and politics accountability protests. The Black Lives Matter movement that was at the heart of those…

In response to the murder of George Floyd, an unarmed Black man, by Minneapolis police, racial justice groups have mobilized tens of thousands of protestors to take to the streets and demand justice nationwide. Local and State officials have…

In May 2019, a young man in Indiana was sentenced to three years in federal prison for a hate crime. Nolan Brewer, along with his then-17-year-old wife, Kiyomi Brewer, spray-painted a Nazi flag on a garbage shed at a Carmel, Indiana, synagogue and…

This wave of Second Amendment sanctuary resolutions and ordinances reflect the contemporary growth of CSPOA’s ideology.

The story on NPR’s website first introduces the Buckley-Becker family with a beautiful portrait of the young, middle-class, White couple and their children. In the photo, the father, Paul Buckley, holds their toddler son Mason, whom he and his wife…

Antisemitism, White Nationalism, and Anti-Immigrant Racism in the Era of Trump

As shocking as it was, it is important to understand that the Tree of Life attack was driven by an explicitly White nationalist ideology—an ideology that imagines that U.S. Jews are manipulating policy to use non-White immigrants as a weapon against…

Multiracial Organizing on the Contemporary Far Right

August 4, 2018, the day of the “Gibson for Senate Freedom March,” was a balmy day in Portland, Oregon. Patriot Prayer, a group loosely associated with the Alt Right, had organized the march, calling on like-minded people to “make history today” and…

How White Nationalists Are Infiltrating the GOP

In recent years, the most adept attempts at entryism have come from those trying to embed in the Republican Party a far-right ideology that calls for a rebirth of a nation’s mythic past in order to create a populist movement founded on…

Technological tools to increase law enforcement’s surveillance capacity will be showcased at this year’s annual National Sheriffs’ Association (NSA), Education and Technology Expo from June 14-18, heightening concerns regarding law enforcement’s…

Sheriffs are elected at the county level, and in most cases operate without any direct oversight. This presents an opportunity for White nationalists and other right-wing movements, particularly …

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced a new effort in May 2019 to expand the reach of its deportation machine. ICE’s new Warrant Service Officer (WSO) program allows local police officers to effectively become federal immigration…

A Roundtable on Gender and White Supremacy

In the early 1990s, when researcher and activist Loretta Ross was monitoring the White supremacist movement for the Center for Democratic Renewal, a national anti-Ku Klux Klan network, she realized that most fight-the-Right organizations were…

Q&A with the authors of Producers, Parasites, Patriots

A new book, Producers, Parasites, Patriots: Race and the New Right-Wing Politics of Precarity, offers a framework for interpreting and dismantling racist capitalist oppression without getting bogged down in this treacherous narrative of “makers and…

Although these state and federal officials tried to distance themselves from militia organizing, New Mexico’s constitutional sheriffs cumulatively have taken actions that signal that militias are welcome in the state.

The contemporary anti-immigrant movement, which has established influence at various levels of the administration, has promoted and attempted to litigate changing the census to reveal citizenship status for nearly 40 years.

The influence of organized anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim movements is readily apparent in policy changes over the last two years.

How New Atheism Feeds the Right

Over the last few years, incidents like these have created a deep rift that’s split the atheist community. At the root of these battles is a question of identity: should the atheist movement strive to be part of a progressive coalition and uphold a…

A Blind-Alley for the Alt Right

A large number of candidates with ties to the Far Right ran for office in the 2018 midterm elections, mostly as Republicans. They ranged from neonazis to mainstream Republicans who courted the Far Right for support.

Author Q&A with Matthew N. Lyons

This September, Lyons spoke to David Neiwert, researcher and author of Alt-America: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump, about his new book.

Ancient Greece and Rome are an origin point of sorts for the Alt Right: an imagined golden age of White supremacist patriarchy they can idealize and aspire to recreate.

The Right’s 50-Year Anti-City Agenda

It’s not by chance that the U.S. is full of hollowed-out urban centers. Residents are disproportionately poor and people of color, surrounded by wealthier and Whiter suburbs. It traces back to the Great Migration, which brought great numbers of…

I’m a pastor’s kid and I was raised to believe in Martin Luther King Jr.’s inspiring assertion that the arc of history may be long, but it bends towards justice. And, I was raised in a family that had to flee our country when Brazilian democracy…

This report seeks to document the effects of the rise of a White nationalist movement whose policy prescriptions and rhetoric on immigrant, refugee, and Muslim populations echo the White House’s, and to generate new thinking and strategizing to…

In August 2018, 16 of Oregon’s 36 sheriffs signed a letter in support of ballot measure 105, the referendum in the November 6 election to repeal Oregon’s 31-year-old sanctuary law.

Today, President Trump visited Pittsburgh, PA after a violently antisemitic attack at Tree of Life synagogue left 11 dead on Saturday. The shootings are the deadliest attack on Jews in the United States. Jewish leaders affiliated with Bend the Arc…

On Monday, October 22, reporting that someone had placed a bomb in the mailbox of billionaire George Soros dominated news coverage.1 Similar devices were subsequently discovered to …

How Christian Persecution Became White Supremacy’s Newest Disguise

On Election Day, White evangelicals turned out in force for Trump, with over 80 percent voting for the Republican ticket. Their game-changing status became undeniably clear, but so did an unsavory truth about their “values voter” identity. For all…

Immigration Enforcement and Solidarity in Ohio

The growth of immigration enforcement further north has led many within the immigrant and refugee communities to feel that they, too, live on the border.

One Year After Charlottesville

Introduction The “Unite the Right” rally was designed, over months, to be the largest gathering of its kind in at least a decade, and was successful in bringing together disparate elements of the Far Right on August 12, 2017 in Charlottesville,…

On July 17, the Oregon Secretary of State’s office approved signatures for Initiative Petition 22, a ballot measure that could repeal the state’s so-called sanctuary law. Oregon voters will now vote in November whether to keep or repeal the 1987 law…

The racism, nationalism, and misogyny driving the Trump administration’s assault on immigrants is evident to all but a willfully ignorant majority on the Supreme Court of the United States. Whether in exclusionary policies like the…

Hamid Khan, a coordinator with the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition—as well as a Political Research Associates board member—has long been active in the immigrants’ rights debate, having immigrated to the United States from Pakistan in 1979. As a board…

Drawing on government documents obtained through Freedom of Information Act requests and multiple archives of White Power publications, Kathleen Belew has written a comprehensive history of White Power vigilantism, paramilitary training, and…

In the small Oregon town of Cottage Grove, just south of Eugene, a sign on an empty storefront that used to house a local museum announces a new business: Wolfclan Armory. While most towns would welcome the new blood, instead protests have already…

Looking at Cas Mudde’s The Far Right in America

Donald Trump did not invent nativism or right-wing populism, but he did provide those ideologies a more prominent platform than it has enjoyed in many decades. And, as scholar Cas Mudde warns, its claws in American society will ensure that it…

Q&A with Elizabeth Gillespie McRae

Although historically, White women have supported the political, cultural, and social systems of White supremacy, there’s still a surprising level of confusion and shock when White women today do the same. Media narratives continue to assume,…

The ascent of Donald Trump to the presidency has dramatically worsened an already grave set of challenges confronting justice-minded people, and has presented the women’s movement in the United States with an historic opportunity to create a…

It should come as no surprise that President Trump disparages scores of countries while lamenting the lack of European immigrants coming to the U.S., as he reportedly did during a meeting with lawmakers in January 2018. In addition to his racially…

ACT for America describes itself as “the NRA of national security” and a non-partisan, national security organization dedicated to fighting terrorism. However, in practice it is the largest anti-Muslim organization in the United States, claiming to…

This week The New York Times reported that the uniforms of this year’s Norwegian Olympic Alpine ski team have caused a stir among those concerned about neonazi co-optation of Viking symbols. The Viking-themed uniforms include the runic Tyr symbol,…

The Far Right and Neopaganism

In 2014, a White supremacist leader, Frazier Glenn Cross, Jr. (also known as F. Glenn Miller), killed three people outside Jewish organizations in Overland Park, Kansas. Although all three were actually Christian, Cross’s intended target was clear,…

As we mark the 45th anniversary of Roe v. Wade, two facts about the current abortion patient population in the U.S. are especially striking. First, that patients are disproportionately poor, with half living below the official poverty line and…

In the United States, 2017 was a banner year for fascist and related far right activism. There were arguably the highest levels of public demonstrations by the Right since the last wave of Klan and neonazi activity in the 1980s and ‘90s. A main…

How Anti-Communist Conspiracies Imagine an Antifa Civil War on November 4

A conspiracy theory has spread like wildfire through the Far Right claiming that on November 4, “antifa” will start a civil war and attempt to overthrow Donald Trump. The date is supposed to precede the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution,…

AmRen, one of only two U.S. White-supremacist conferences open to the press, does all it can to project an image palatable to the unconverted, who might be turned off by people wearing Nazi regalia, issuing openly antisemitic rants, or flaunting…

Veterans Today, an online publication targeting U.S. veterans, came under fire this month when an Oxford University study revealed its ties to the Kremlin. The publication features overt antisemitic commentary. One of its editors, Kevin Barrett, is…

The Growing Divides in the Pepe Coalition

The relationship between the Alt Right and the Alt Light, as well as “patriot” organizations like the Oath Keepers, has often been more pragmatic than comfortable. And maintaining this coalition has not been easy, requiring compromises on language…

The Westboro Baptist Church of the Alt Right

Joey Gibson is a Far Right activist who, since March 2017, has made a name for himself by organizing confrontational rallies in liberal enclaves on the West Coast that have frequently descended into violence. Based in Vancouver, Washington (located…

Among the groups leading the recent Unite the Right march in Charlottesville, Virginia was the League of the South – an Alabama-based theocratic, neo-confederate group that has long advocated for southern secession. League leader Michael Hill was…

The Unite the Right rally, which will take place in Charlottesville, Virginia on August 12, 2017, looks like it will be the largest White Nationalist rally in the United States in more than a decade. Between 500 and 1,000 people are expected to…

My January report, “Ctrl-Alt-Delete,” was published at the beginning of Donald Trump’s administration. It dealt with the Alt Right’s ideological roots, major players, multiple internal currents, and complex relationships with both conservatives and…

The Republican Party of Multnomah County, Oregon (which includes Portland) disregarded public outcry when it passed a resolution last week to allow private, paramilitary groups to provide security functions at GOP events. Chairman James Buchal said…

How Antisemitism Animates White Nationalism

Antisemitism forms the theoretical core of White nationalism. First, it allows us to identify the fuel that White nationalist ideology uses to power its anti-Black racism, its contempt for other people of color, and its xenophobia—as well as the…

The media often portrays clean-cut individuals such as Alt Right leader Richard Spencer or members of Identity Evropa as proof of a re-branding of White nationalism and indeed, there is a long history of White supremacist groups re-inventing their…

On June 8, 2017, the California Board of State and Community Corrections announced the reallocation of $103 million in savings resulting from the passage of 2014’s Proposition 47 criminal justice sentencing reforms to drug treatment, mental health…

How “Bipartisan Criminal Justice Reform” Institutionalizes a Right-Wing, Neoliberal Agenda

More than an actual means of improving policy, “bipartisan criminal justice reform” has become a mantra signifying hope: that people of good will can come together across ideological divides and partisan gridlock to end our country’s overreliance on…

Trumpism is built on a split-screen image of life for the White middle and working classes: a contemporary view of economic suffering and “loss” to encroaching “others,” while in the background hovers a shimmering past of cultural and economic glory…

An online video call discussion on anti-racist resistance with Kentuckians For The Commonwealth, Political Research Associates, and Rural Organizing Project.

The most influential aspect of the rise of the Internet in the 1990s was the liberation of information from the constraints of the mainstream media—something expected to further democratize the globalized economy. After all, the more information…

Trump’s first week in office was punctuated by an executive order to ban travelers from Iraq, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen from entering the U.S. for 90 days, and refugee admissions for 120 days. Under the order, Syrian refugees are…

In a press release issued after last year’s Pulse Nightclub massacre in Orlando, Florida, where a Muslim-American gunman killed 49 people at a gay dance club, Donald Trump said, “Hillary Clinton can never claim to be a friend of the gay community as…

Stephen Bannon is the former CEO of Breitbart News Network—which he promotes as “the platform for the Alt Right”—and former chief strategist to Donald Trump. Bannon has a history of antisemitism and has been called “one of the foremost peddlers of…

Matthew Lyons’s “Ctrl-Alt-Delete,” is a thorough survey of the origins of the alt-right, a look at its constituent parts and beliefs at the present time, as well as observations about how its future relationship with the Trump administration may…

Before Richard Spencer came to town in 2011, the tourist destination of Whitefish, Montana, was known mostly to well-heeled aficionados of the sporting life for its splendid vistas and ski slopes. Now it’s making news as a battleground in the fight…

The U.S. Patriot Movement Today

Judging from his recent statements, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump seems to be making plans for post-election violence if he’s defeated. At the beginning of August he warned, “I’m afraid the election’s going to be rigged.”1)…

Sometimes Patriot movement groups reach out to progressive activists in an attempt to recruit them to their cause. As you would expect, they typically downplay their reactionary social views and stress the more libertarian parts of their …

“Coordination” is a process which allows state, county, and other lower-level governments to give input to federal agencies’ land use plans, in an attempt to achieve consistency. While this process is mentioned in a number of federal acts, the Hard…

Oregon Three Percenters are very active and seems to have eclipsed the Oath Keepers as the locus of Patriot movement organizing in the state.

Challenging the Policing Paradigm Rooted in Right-Wing “Folk Wisdom”

When protesters developed a platform to end police violence in the wake of the 2014 police shooting of 18-year-old Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, the first of their 10 demands was to end “broken windows” policing, the law enforcement paradigm…

Simone Browne, an associate professor of African and African Diaspora Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, describes her new book, Dark Matters: On The Surveillance of Blackness, as a conversation between Black Studies and Surveillance…

From the War On Drugs To The War On Terror

American political time is often rhetorically divided into before and after the attacks of September 11, 2001. In this model, “before” signals liberty and respect for individual rights while “after” brought increasing restrictions and surveillance…

The Criminalization of Black Women

Between 1990 and 2000, the number of people in U.S. prisons and jails increased from 292 per 100,000 to 481 per 100,000. But the number of women in prison rose even more sharply, doubling over the ten-year period.

Right-Wing Populism, Fascism, and the Case for Action

Debate over what we should call Trump’s vicious political movement should not stop us from organizing now to protect the people being demonized and scapegoated as targets of White rage. Our challenge is to expose the ideas and policies of Trump and…

Right-Wing Influence in APUSH Curriculum Update

On July 30, 2015, the College Board, creators of college-level curricula and testing for high school students, released an update to its Advanced Placement U.S. History (APUSH) course. The revision came after what had already been a two-year battle…

An Interview with Kay Whitlock & Michael Bronski

What is called “hate violence”—violence directed at vulnerable and marginalized groups—is not abhorrent to respectable society. On the contrary, respectable society has provided the models, policies, and practices that marginalize people of color,…

When NAFTA was passed two decades ago, its boosters promised it would bring “First World” status for the Mexican people. Instead, it prompted a great migration north.

As White supremacists shifted tactics in response to mass social movements, they needed a mass electoral base. Neoliberals helped build it for them—and colorblindness helped wipe out some inconvenient historical truths.

The Corporate Crusade Against Low-Wage Workers

Corporate interests have taken credit for reducing private-sector unions to afraction of their former strength, and for eroding public-sector collective bargaining, especially since the 2010 “Tea Party midterms.” A resurgence in low-wage worker…

Antisemitism and Islamophobia on U.S. College Campuses, 2007-2011

Antisemitism and Islamophobia on college campuses are manifested in a complex set of interactions among a number of different players. This report seeks to explore issues and incidents in a way that will ameliorate aggression, intimidation, and…

Every Friday, PRA brings you a monthly update on a different social justice issue. This week, we are recapping the last month in Racial and Immigrant Justice.

On June 25, in a 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down Section 4(b) of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965, which established a formula for determining whether states and jurisdictions need permission from the federal government to change…

Organizing & Advocacy in a Time of Struggle

Since 9/11, the New York Police Department’s Pre-Ramadan Conference and Breakfast has become one of the largest gatherings of Muslim leadership in New York City. Last July, I sat among a sea of suits and uniforms, colorful headscarves, turbans, and…

Looking at Michigan’s Fusion Centers

In the Winter 2009/Spring 2010 edition of The Public Eye, we reported on the rise of Intelligence Fusion Centers, created to coordinate the national security intelligence efforts of the Department of Homeland Security, US Department of Justice, CIA…

Everyone wants to be green. Fossil fuel companies tout their commitments to the environment, with BP sporting its green and yellow flower logo and Chevron scooping up a Green Apple award for promoting public-school energy efficiency. In 2009 Exxon-…

An Old Scare Tactic Re-Emerges

This February, a highly provocative series of 65 billboards went up around Atlanta, which featured an African American infant and the proclamation, “Black Children Are an Endangered Species.” The signs directed viewers to a website, TooManyAborted.…

Immigration advocates have long asserted that ICE raids at workplaces and in neighborhoods sweep people up based on race, rather than facts about individuals violating immigration laws. ICE’s internal investigation of a Baltimore sweep now reveals…

In 2008, ballot initiatives could impact races up and down the ballot, including the Presidential campaign, by elevating an issue and shaping the debate. Dissatisfied voters in particular may see ballot initiatives as a means to fill the leadership…

"Good" Latinos and "Bad" Latinos in the Age of Homeland Security and Global War

If you want to understand how Homeland Security influences us, go to south Texas and take a walk around neighborhoods whose streets were paved by the “clash of civilizations” in cities and towns at or near the border. One such street is San Antonio’…

In the spring of 2005, Georgia’s Republican-controlled legislature passed a law requiring all voters to appear at their proper polling place carrying either a Georgia driver’s license or an official photo ID issued by the Georgia Department of Motor…

Introduction “An eye for an eye” captures the conservative model of punishment in contemporary western societies. That is, when a wrong is done to an innocent person, the wrongdoer must be severely punished in order to “even the books” and stand as…

Low-Intensity Conflict Targets Non-Citizens

Since the attacks of September 11, 2001, the so-called war on terror has provided the U.S. government with a rationale for dramatically increasing state repression. This repression, linked with an upsurge of nationalism and nativist scapegoating,…

Exploring Racism in/and U.S. Foreign Policy

Introduction1 “Save U.S. Lives! Drop U.S. Bombs!” read the banner a woman held at a prowar rally outside the Huskies…

The Erosion of U.S. Democracy

Introduction Right-wing leaders often appropriate progressive themes by calling for rule by “the people,” equal opportunity, and “equality” feminism. Their rhetoric has convinced many voters that the Right offers a more fair and direct form of…

For those who have worked to further social justice and democratic values in the United States, the election of November 8, 1994 was a defeat. The election results indicate that the American public has repudiated the liberalism that has been the…

Garrett Hardin Living Within Limits: Ecology, Economic and Population Taboos Oxford University Press, 1993   Tomas Almageur Racial Fault Lines: The Historical Origins of White Supremacy in California University of…

In 1991, college students across the country were confronted with a shocking form of bigotry against Jews: full-page ads in college papers purchased by Bradley Smith, founder of a California organization called the Committee for Open Debate on the…