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      Today’s rightwing populists aim to disrupt, not to govern | Letters

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      LettersToday’s rightwing populists aim to disrupt, not to govern Readers respond to an article by Jonathan Freedland on the decline of politics on both sides of the Atlantic An excellent analysis by Jonathan Freedland on the problems with the far right and their inability to govern as grownups (After Brexit and Trump, rightwing populists cling to power – but the truth is they can’t govern, 7 January). Governance has been reduced to the anarchic whims of individuals who learn their trade on social media, a platform that fuels their infantilism. It is extremely dangerous when these people have access to power. Exhibit A: Donald Trump.Suppose that during the attack on the Capitol on 6 January 2021, the elected lawmakers and the police had rolled over and given way to the mob, let them take up residence in the Capitol and become the new lawmakers. What might have played out? Would one of them (the man in the horned helmet perhaps?) have declared himself a senator/congressman and the leader of the House? Would he have proposed some new laws to his comrades in arms, or laws to help fellow American citizens live happier and better lives? Alison HackettDún Laoghaire, Dublin, Ireland As ever, Jonathan Freedland critically analyses the descent of rightwing politics on both sides of the Atlantic. The deterioration, however, is not restricted to the right. In days gone by, politicians such as John Smith, Gordon Brown, Michael Heseltine and Ken Clarke sought to lead, not follow, the public. They said what they believed and tried to implement and convince. Today, politicians seem to follow rather than lead the public, following, no doubt, the latest focus groups in marginal constituencies.Politicians such as Keir Starmer and Jeremy Hunt undoubtedly know that Britain’s interests are best served by a closer relationship with (if not membership of) the European Union. Rather than be honest about this and try to persuade their fellow citizens, they coalesce around what they believe is the popular position.Brian RonsonSefton, Merseyside The truth is that today’s right wing is not motivated to govern. They have been complicit in, and echo, the rightwing media message that has droned on for decades – a message straight out of the anti-democracy playbook. This is nothing new in recorded human history. “My way or burn it down” has been a consistent theme in radical fascist or fundamentalist mentality. Concern for consequence or social justice is not a guiding principle here. In fact, there is no guiding principle other than a manic five-year-old’s ambition to control the household. When that ambition inevitably leads to a bad end, they blame everyone but themselves and/or reach for a match. Curt Chaffee Seaside, California, USTopicsUS politicsDonald TrumpThe far rightRepublicansBrexitlettersReuse this content More

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      Racism rebranded: how far-right ideology feeds off identity politics

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      Racism rebranded: how far-right ideology feeds off identity politics In an extract from his new book, the Observer columnist describes how substituting ethnic superiority with ‘cultural difference’ has allowed traditional racism to seep back into the mainstream. How can we get out of the box of racial thinking?‘The Negro is not. Any more than the white man.” So wrote Frantz Fanon, the Martinique-born revolutionary and intellectual, in his 1952 masterpiece, Black Skin, White Masks. He was making an argument about the illusory character of racial categorisation. And, yet, more than 70 years after Fanon wrote those lines, they still feel unsettling, as if they are a challenge not just to racialisation but also to our identity, our very being. That they should do so exposes the deeply conflicted relationship we still possess with race.We live in an age in which in most societies there is a moral abhorrence of racism, albeit that in most, bigotry and discrimination still disfigure the lives of many. We also live in an age saturated with identitarian thinking and obsessed with placing people into racial boxes. The more we despise racial thinking, the more we seem to cling to it.This paradox is at the heart of my new book. Not So Black and White is a retelling of the history both of the idea of race and of the struggles to confront racism and to transcend racial categorisation, a retelling that challenges many of the ways in which we think both of race and of antiracism.Most people assume that racism emerges when members of one race begin discriminating against members of another. In fact, the opposite is the case: intellectuals and elites began dividing the world into distinct races to explain and justify the differential treatment of certain peoples. The ancestors of today’s African Americans were not enslaved because they were black. They were deemed to be racially distinct, as black people, to justify their enslavement.We think of race today primarily in terms of skin colour. But that was not how 19th-century thinkers imagined race. It was, for them, a description of social inequality, not just of skin colour. It may be difficult to comprehend now, but 19th-century thinkers looked upon the working class as a distinct racial group in much the same way as many now view black people as racially dissimilar to white people. Only in the 20th century, as the working class was drawn into the democratic process, and as the new imperialism redrew the “colour line”, did the contemporary understanding of race emerge.Many today imagine, too, that identity politics is a new phenomenon, and one that is associated with the left. I show that its origins lie, in fact, on the reactionary right and its primary expression, long before it was called “identity politics”, was in the concept of race, the belief that one’s being – one’s identity – determined one’s moral and social place in the world.If much of the history of race has been obscured, so, too, has much of the history of the challenge to racism. Until recently, those confronting inequality and oppression did so in the name not of particular identities but of a universalism that fuelled the great radical movements that have shaped the modern world, from anticolonial struggles to campaigns for women’s suffrage.These struggles expanded the meaning of equality and universality. There has developed in recent years an impassioned debate about the Enlightenment, which both supporters and critics present as a peculiarly European phenomenon. For the one, it is a demonstration of the greatness of Europe; for the other, a reminder that its ideals are tainted by racism and colonialism. Both miss the importance of the non-European world in shaping many of the ideas we associate with the Enlightenment. It was through the struggles of those denied equality and liberty by the elites in Europe and America that ideas of universalism were invested with meaning. It is the demise of that radical universalist tradition that has shaped the emergence of contemporary identity politics.There have always been identitarian strands among antiracists, from 19th-century “Back to Africa” movements to Négritude in the 20th century. Only in the postwar world, however, have they come to dominate and to be seen as progressive. The reasons lie in a myriad of social and political developments, from the erosion of class politics, to the emergence of culture as the primary lens through which to understand social differences, to the growth of social pessimism, that have helped marginalise the universalist perspective.ProfileKenan MalikShowKenan Malik is a writer, lecturer and Observer columnist. His previous books include The Quest for a Moral Compass and From Fatwa to Jihad, which was shortlisted for the Orwell prize.The embrace of identity politics by the left has ironically opened the door for the reactionary right to reclaim its original inheritance, allowing racism to be rebranded as white identity politics. We have come full circle: the politics of identity that began as reactionary claims about a racial hierarchy has been regrasped by the reactionary right in the name of cultural difference.The following edited extract from my new book shows how the far right remade itself in the postwar world and how it has exploited the language of identity to pursue its aims. It shows, too, how mainstream conservatives have allowed far-right tropes to seep into our culture.As reactionary organisations, which had enjoyed the limelight in the prewar years, were pushed into the shadows in the post-Holocaust world, many on the far right were forced to rethink their views of race, identity and difference. Alain de Benoist became a key figure in this rethinking, the founder of the Nouvelle Droite in France, and a philosophical mentor of the contemporary far right.Benoist cut his political teeth within the traditional fascist milieu, most notably through the far-right opposition to Algerian independence. In the 1960s, after the French defeat in Algeria, he recognised the need to move beyond discredited arguments rooted in biological racism, and to engage in a cultural war to reclaim intellectual ground. In 1968, Benoist helped found GRECE, the Research and Study Group for European Civilisation, a thinktank to school the far right.The Nouvelle Droite drew in part from traditional themes and sources. It proclaimed its hostility to the Enlightenment, modernity, equality, democracy and liberalism, and insisted on the importance of tradition and hierarchy. It found sustenance in the French reactionary tradition from Joseph de Maistre to Charles Maurras, and from German rightwing thinkers, especially the interwar “conservative revolutionaries”, such as Ernst Jünger and Carl Schmitt.It drew, too, upon a very different tradition: that of the New Left that emerged in the late 1950s. From the New Left, the French New Right borrowed arguments about the significance of culture, its hostility to globalisation, its anti-Americanism and its embrace of the Italian Marxist philosopher Antonio Gramsci. Benoist took from Gramsci the belief that conquest of power comes only after conquest of culture. Liberalism was so entrenched that its values survived irrespective of who was in power. Anti-liberals, Benoist argued, had to fight battles not on the streets but in people’s minds, at the level of ideas, and of “metapolitics”. This he called the tactic of “rightwing Gramscianism”.At the heart of Benoist’s philosophy was the abandonment of racial superiority in favour of cultural difference, and the reworking of the relationship between community, identity and diversity. “The true wealth of the world”, he insisted, “is first and foremost the diversity of its cultures and peoples.” It is in being different that a people finds its meaning and identity, both of which are drawn, indeed in certain senses are inseparable, from its culture and heritage. “Different cultures provide different responses to essential questions”; hence “all attempts to unify them end up destroying them”. It was a völkisch vision: “Everyone inherits a ‘constituent community’ which precedes him and which will constitute the root of his values and norms.” The individual “discovers his goals rather than choosing them”, and builds his identity through that discovery. So, “to find out who I am, I first have to know where I am”.Such “ethnopluralism” seemed not to possess the taint of biological racism; but by fixing cultures to specific geographic locations and by insisting that to belong to a culture one had to be descended from the original inhabitants of that location, the Nouvelle Droite found in “culture” the synonym for “race”; a find later borrowed by many conservatives and “postliberals”.Immigrants, Benoist insisted, must always remain outsiders because they were carriers of distinct cultures and histories, and so could never be absorbed into those of the host nation. Citizenship should be reserved for those who are “one of us”. Immigrants could – or, at least, should – never be citizens. Democracy only works where “demos and ethnos coincide”.“We are Generation Identity… We have stopped believing that Khader is our brother, the planet our village and humanity our family. We have discovered that we have roots and ancestors – and thus a future. Our only inheritance is our blood, our soil, and our identity… This is not a mere manifesto, it’s a declaration of war.”It was a declaration of war on a YouTube video. But for all its comically dramatic music and overheated rhetoric, the launch in 2012 of Génération Identitaire, or Generation Identity, marked an important point in the development of modern reactionary identitarianism. Ten years earlier, a group of French far-right activists, many linked to the Nouvelle Droite, had formed the Bloc Identitaire, which became the heart of a network of far-right identitarian groups and of which Génération Identitaire was the youth wing. The movement was banned by the French government in March 2021 for “incitement of discrimination, hatred and violence”. By then it had spawned a dozen other groups across Europe, and its influence had crossed the Atlantic, too.The Bloc Identitaire drew on the Nouvelle Droite for both individuals and themes. Its key leitmotifs are familiar: opposition to globalisation, defence of ethnopluralism and white identity, hostility to immigration and Islam. The Identitarians feared that demographic change would sweep away white Europeans. “The cradle”, writes Adriano Scianca, a leading figure in the Italian identitarian movement, is “the most powerful weapon” and when “the baby cots are empty, civilisation dies”, an echo of future US president Theodore Roosevelt’s claim at the end of the 19th century that “competition between the races” reduced itself “to the warfare of the cradle”. For late-19th-century white supremacists, the declining birth rate of Anglo-Saxons created the alarming possibility of the only “true white race” in America being overrun by “the immigrant European horde”. A century later, the fear is of Europeans being swamped by hordes from beyond the continent – and in particular by Islam.Gisèle Littman, an Egyptian-born Jewish woman who wrote under the name of Bat Ye’or (Hebrew for “Daughter of the Nile”), coined the term “Eurabia”. It described a grand conspiracy theory in which the EU, led by French elites, implemented a secret plan to sell Europe to Muslims in exchange for oil. Europe, Ye’or told the Israeli newspaper Haaretz, “will become a political satellite of the Arab and Muslim world”. Europeans would be reduced to the condition of “dhimmitude” – the permanent status of second-class subjects of Islamic rule. The Israeli historian Robert Wistrich dismissed Ye’or’s fantasies as “the protocols of the elders of Brussels”. In the wake of 9/11, however, the fantasies took flight, and not just on the fringes of politics. The mainstream British writer Melanie Phillips has become an advocate of the “dhimmitude” thesis, as have influential figures such as Niall Ferguson and Bruce Bawer in the US.Generation Identity is no mass movement; membership of its various groups is tiny. Nevertheless, it has helped shape public debate, promoting an aggressive form of reactionary identitarianism that has percolated far beyond the far right. “Europe is committing suicide… by the end of the lifespans of most people currently alive, Europe will not be Europe and the peoples of Europe will have lost the only place in the world we had to call home.” That could be Alain de Benoist or Guillaume Faye or any number of Nouvelle Droite or Génération Identitaire polemicists. In fact, it is Douglas Murray, in the opening to his 2017 bestseller The Strange Death of Europe. Murray is a leading figure in British conservative circles, associate editor of the Spectator magazine and author of a string of popular books. He writes of “the replacement of large parts of the European populations by other people” and worries that “London has become a foreign country” because “in 23 of London’s 33 boroughs ‘white Britons’ are now in a minority”, again echoing Generation Identity.The main themes in Murray’s argument were steeped in traditional racial thinking. The term “race suicide” was coined in the late 19th century by the American sociologist Edward Ross, and popularised by Theodore Roosevelt, to express their fears that Anglo-Saxons were being out-bred by inferior immigrants from southern and eastern Europe. The white supremacist Theodore Lothrop Stoddard warned in the early 20th century that the white ancestral “homeland” of the Caucasus had become a “racially brown man’s land in which white blood survives only as vestigial traces of vanishing significance”. The same was happening in Europe, too. “What assurance”, he wondered, could there be “that the present world order may not swiftly and utterly pass away?” These ideas were for much of the postwar era pushed to the racist fringes. Sustained by the Nouvelle Droite and Génération Identitaire, these fringe arguments have now become appropriated by many strands of mainstream conservatism.The 2010s saw a series of books warning of Europe “committing suicide”, such as Thilo Sarrazin’s Germany Abolishes Itself and Éric Zemmour’s The French Suicide. Sarrazin, former SPD finance minister for the state of Berlin, and executive board member of Germany’s central bank, bemoaned the declining white population and the high level of immigrant fertility, the combination leading to Germany being both less intelligent, less moral and no longer Germany. For Zemmour, a television journalist who became a candidate in the 2022 presidential elections, Europe was committing “premeditated suicide”, the left having “betrayed the people in the name of minorities”.The “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, a staple of the far right, has also gained a foothold in mainstream conservatism. In 2011, the novelist and white nationalist conspiracy theorist Renaud Camus published Le Grand Remplacement in which he claimed that globalists had created the “replaceable human, without any national, ethnic or cultural specificity”, allowing “the replacing elites” to swap white Europeans for non-Europeans. He described non-Europeans in Europe as “colonists”, the “replacing elites” as “collaborationists”, and the process of replacement as “genocide by substitution”. Camus dedicated his book to the two “prophets” that had shaped his thinking, the British anti-immigration politician Enoch Powell and the French writer Jean Raspail, whose 1973 dystopian novel The Camp of the Saints tells of a fleet of immigrants from India overwhelming France, and its white population, and has become a cult hit for identitarians across the globe.In Britain, too, similar fears have become part of the conservative conversation. Like Douglas Murray, the London-based American novelist Lionel Shriver fears the de-whitening of London and projects her version of replacement theory. “The lineages of white Britons in their homeland commonly go back hundreds of years,” she writes, and yet they have to “submissively accept” the “ethnic transformation” of the UK “without a peep of protest”. Westerners, she adds, are being forced “to passively accept and even abet incursions by foreigners so massive that the native-born are effectively surrendering their territory without a shot fired”. The distinguished economist Paul Collier is another figure apprehensive about “the indigenous British” becoming “a minority in their own capital”. Political scientist Eric Kaufmann thinks it legitimate to promote white “racial self-interest” and to use such racial self-interest to limit immigration, so that in a majority white country, immigrants should be mainly white to enable “assimilation”.Identitarian arguments have become even more entrenched on the other side of the Atlantic, from the far right to mainstream Republicanism. The white nationalist and neo-Nazi Richard Spencer, who claims to have invented the term “alt-right”, replays many of the themes of reactionary identitarianism: white people as victims of cultural “dispossession”, immigration as a “proxy war” against white people. He advocates “peaceful ethnic cleansing” and the creation of “an ethno-state that would be a gathering point of all Europeans”, one “based on very different ideals than… the Declaration of Independence”.The presidential victory of Donald Trump in 2016 provided new opportunities, as alt-right identitarians such Stephen Miller and Steve Bannon entered the White House. Even before the Trump ascendancy, conservatives were humming to many of the European refrains. In the question at the heart of Christopher Caldwell’s 2009 book, Reflections on the Revolution in Europe – “Can Europe be the same with different people in it?” – is embedded the idea that Europe was made by a particular group of people and that immigrants – different people – would undo it. He echoes, too, the claim that migration is a form of “colonisation” and that migrants come to “supplant” European culture. Caldwell hails Raspail’s The Camp of the Saints as capturing “the complexity of the modern world”.After 2016, the Great Replacement theory became commonplace in Republican circles. “We can’t restore our civilisation with somebody else’s babies”, Iowa congressman Steve King tweeted. Fox News’ Tucker Carlson has constantly charged the Democrats with trying “to change the racial mix of the country… a policy [that] is called ‘the great replacement’, the replacement of legacy Americans with more obedient people from faraway countries”. Polls show that one-third of Americans and nearly two-thirds of Trump supporters believe in the Great Replacement theory and that a secret cabal “is trying to replace native-born Americans with immigrants for electoral gains”.One of the ironies is that many of the conservatives who fret most about “white decline” are also among the most strident critics of identity politics. According to Douglas Murray, identity politics “atomises society into different interest groups”, and its “consequences… are deranged as well as dementing”. But not, apparently, when worrying that “Only 44.9% of London residents are now white British” or that Europeans are being driven out of their homeland. Taking part in a debate in defence of the proposition that “identity politics is tearing society apart”, Lionel Shriver argued that she had been a “fierce advocate” of the US civil rights movement because its goal was “to break down the artificial barriers between us” and “to release us into seeing each other not as black or white… but as individual people”. “The colour of my skin,” she added, “is an arbitrary accident” and “the boxes into which I have been born are confinements I have struggled to get out of and I would wish that liberation to everyone else.” Except, it seems, if you are a non-white immigrant. Then, the “arbitrary accident” of birth becomes an essential feature of one’s identity, the “artificial barriers between us” need to be recognised as insurmountable impediments to assimilation, the “confinements” of ethnic boxes maintained and people seen not as “individuals” but as “black or white”.The reactionary right – Nouvelle Droite, Generation Identity, the alt-right in America – uses the language of diversity and identity as a means of rebranding racism. Many on the mainstream right rehearse elements of this rebranding, even as they castigate the excesses of white nationalism. Murray “unequivocally” condemns the “racism exhibited by people pursuing white ethno-nationalism” while also giving a nod to the Great Replacement theory and to the importance of whiteness. It is occupying the grey zone in which one can claim attachment to the moral framework of postwar antiracism but also maintain the freedom to replay perniciously racist arguments, helping to normalise them.
      Not So Black and White by Kenan Malik is published by Hurst (£20). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply
      TopicsRaceThe ObserverThe far rightPolitics booksHistory booksSociety booksUS politicsextractsReuse this content More

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      Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez reveals why she was talking to far-right Republicans

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      Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez reveals why she was talking to far-right RepublicansNew York Democrat was seen speaking with rightwingers, one of whom once tweeted an anime-style video depicting him killing her During a succession of votes for House speaker on Tuesday, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was seen talking on the House floor with the far-right Republicans Matt Gaetz and Paul Gosar, the latter who once tweeted video depicting him slashing her in the neck with a sword.McCarthy faces long battle for House speaker after he falls short on third vote Read moreThe New York Democrat, a progressive star, told MSNBC: “In chaos, anything is possible, especially in this era.”The chaos in Congress on Tuesday concerned the California representative Kevin McCarthy’s attempt to become House speaker, against opposition from the right of his party.Gosar, from Arizona, was censured in November 2021 for tweeting an anime-style video of violence done to Ocasio-Cortez and Joe Biden.On Tuesday, he was among 20 Republicans opposing McCarthy by the third ballot. So was Gaetz of Florida, a ringleader who nominated Jim Jordan of Ohio, a rightwinger loyal to McCarthy, to give the rebels someone to vote for.Ocasio-Cortez, popularly known as AOC, was seen talking to Gosar and Gaetz. She told the Intercept her conversation with Gaetz was a “factcheck”.“McCarthy was suggesting he could get Dems to walk away to lower his threshold,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “And I factchecked and said absolutely not.”00:28To be speaker, any candidate must reach a majority of representatives present. At one point on Tuesday, Ocasio-Cortez was absent when her name was called. She voted, for Hakeem Jeffries, the Democratic leader in the House, when those absent were called on again.Votes for speaker go on until they are resolved. The last multi-ballot process, in 1923, lasted three days. In 1855-56, it took months to resolve the issue.Ocasio-Cortez said she discussed adjournment strategy with Gosar.“Some of us in the House of Representatives are independent in certain ways from our party,” she told MSNBC. “And … these machinations are happening on the floor.“And sometimes the leadership of your party, in this case, the Republican party, will be making claims in order to try to twist arms and get people in line. And a lot of times, information and truth is currency.“So sometimes to be able to factcheck some of the claims that McCarthy is making, whether Democrats are going to defect or not, etc, is important in order to keep him honest and to keep people honest in general.”On Tuesday, the House adjourned after three ballots. It was scheduled to reconvene at noon on Wednesday.“I was honestly surprised,” Ocasio-Cortez said. “I did not think that Kevin McCarthy was going to have the votes in the first round, but I didn’t think that it was going to be as catastrophic for him as it actually was …“For him to have several months since the November elections and still not be able to clinch it, I think, is very much a testament to a lack of leadership.”McCarthy, she said, “failed as a coalition-builder, not once, not twice, but three times … And I’m not quite sure what he could or would do that would change the calculus between today and tomorrow.”TopicsAlexandria Ocasio-CortezHouse of RepresentativesUS CongressDemocratsRepublicansThe far rightUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

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      Highest-profile January 6 trial begins with Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio

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      Highest-profile January 6 trial begins with Proud Boys leader Enrique TarrioChairman of militia group and four others are charged with seditious conspiracy related to Capitol insurrection The January 6 committee investigating the attack on the Capitol may have issued its huge final report, but the wheels of the justice system in the US are grinding on and one of the most high-profile trials emerging from the insurrection is about to begin in earnest.Jury selection began last week with the seditious conspiracy trial against ex-Proud Boys national chairman Enrique Tarrio and four others involved in the far-right, often violent militia group.From Liz Cheney to Donald Trump: winners and losers from the January 6 hearingsRead moreTarrio and his co-defendants in the Washington DC federal court trial – Ethan Nordean, Zachary Rehl, Dominic Pezzola and Proud Boy organizer Joe Biggs – are charged with seditious conspiracy and other counts related to the attack that delayed congressional certification of Joe Biden’s election victory, injured dozens of police officers and is linked to multiple deaths. They have all pleaded not guilty to the charges.A fifth man charged in this case, Charles Donohoe, pleaded guilty in April to conspiring to attack the Capitol. Under Donohoe’s plea deal, he agreed to cooperate against his co-defendants. Approximately 900 people have now been arrested in the Capitol attack, with prosecutors securing convictions against hundreds.The start of the trial comes amid a wider reckoning with those responsible for the January 6 attack.Several hours after jury selection started on Monday in the Proud Boys trial, the House committee probing the deadly insurrection issued some of its findings – and made a criminal referral against Trump to the US Department of Justice, recommending charges. The trial also comes several weeks after two leaders of the Oath Keepers – another far-right group – were found guilty of seditious conspiracy for their involvement in the insurrection.Federal prosecutors allege that Nordean, Biggs, Rehl and Pezzola were among the 100 Proud Boys who convened alongside the Washington Monument at 10am on 6 January. They met around the time that Trump was addressing thousands of supporters in a park called the Ellipse.These soon-to-be rioters in that group then made their way to the Capitol. Around 1pm, one of them broke through police, spurring the violence that would consume Capitol Hill, court documents allege.Nordean, Rehl, Biggs and Pezzola allegedly led the mob and were among the first people to push past police. Biggs allegedly recorded a video where he observed the mob and said: “We’ve taken the Capitol,” per court documents.Tarrio was not in Washington DC during the insurrection, as he had been arrested two days prior for allegedly vandalizing a Black Lives Matter sign at a historical Black church during a December 2020 demonstration. Prosecutors contend that Tarrio was among the leaders of this conspiracy to thwart election certification.Several days before the riot, Tarrio posted about “revolution” on social media, prosecutors said in court papers. In an encrypted messaging group which prosecutors maintain was created by Tarrio, one member purportedly said: “Time to stack those bodies in front of Capitol Hill,” per the Associated Press.Despite being arrested several days prior, Tarrio heralded the rioters’ attack, writing “don’t [expletive] leave” on social media and later posting “we did this…” prosecutors said.While there appears to be extensive evidence against these men, much of which has long been in the public record, prosecutors must show more than their in-person or social media presence that day to prove seditious conspiracy.“They’re going to have to show an agreement between two people or more, they’re going to have to show a common scheme or a common plan,” said Los Angeles criminal defense and appellate attorney Matthew Barhoma, founder of Barhoma Law.“Showing up on January 6 at the same time doesn’t mean that a conspiracy indeed existed. They’re going to have to go a little bit beyond that to show there is a common agreement – basically a smoking gun in the sense that they intended to overthrow the government,” he added. “They’re going to have to show that they wanted to act in a common plan in furtherance of that plan to overthrow the government or to delay or hinder the United States government.”‘These are conditions ripe for political violence’: how close is the US to civil war?Read moreThat said, “seditious conspiracy is actually in some ways, much easier to prove than regular criminal conspiracy,” explained longtime attorney Ron Kuby, a longtime criminal defense attorney with a focus on civil rights.“Seditious conspiracy is the only conspiracy that does not require proof of an overt act on the part of participants,” Kuby said. “Generally speaking, a conspiracy is an agreement between two or more people to do something unlawful, and in all other conspiracy cases, at least one of the participants has to take a substantial step toward that unlawful purpose.”“Here, it’s really a sidenote, footnote, endnote and asterisk. They don’t have to prove an overt act, what they they have to prove there was an agreement to oppose the lawful authority of the United States of America by force.“There’s a tsunami of evidence, both in terms of what was said among the participants, which the FBI has obtained and decrypted as well as what they did, which is all well-documented on video.”Although evidence appears to abound, one possible defense strategy would be to portray the alleged plotters as buffoons. “These guys were angry knuckleheads but you know, they’re not planning to overthrow the government,” Kuby said of this possible approach.It’s unclear whether these Proud Boys members would go along with that, even if this could help their cases.“The natural impulse of every defense lawyer is to portray their clients in a fashion which is most likely to result in acquittal, but that’s not necessarily the way most defendants want to be portrayed,” Kuby said. “The Proud Boys may not want to be portrayed as loud-mouthed knuckleheads who were just egging each other on to say dumber and dumber things because they’re not that bright.”Tarrio’s attorneys have contended that he didn’t tell or encourage anyone to storm the Capitol or act violently, while Nordean’s lawyer alleged that justice department prosecutors were singling him out because of his political beliefs, the AP reported.In an email to the Guardian, Tarrio’s attorney, Nayib Hassan, said: “Mr Tarrio is looking forward to the start of the trial. We look forward to making our presentation of the evidence and acquitting Mr Tarrio of the governments allegations.”Rehl’s lawyer reportedly wanted the judge to dismiss the indictment on First amendment grounds, claiming the charges were rooted in free speech issues. Asked for comment, Biggs’s attorney, Norm Pattis, said in an email: “We look forward to the presentation of evidence in this case. We stand by his plea of not guilty.”TopicsUS Capitol attackJanuary 6 hearingsLaw (US)The far rightUS politicsJoe BidenDonald TrumpnewsReuse this content More

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      Revisited – Jon Ronson on Alex Jones: Politics Weekly America podcast

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      Politics Weekly America is taking a break. So this week, Jonathan Freedland revisits the conversation he had in April with the journalist and film-maker Jon Ronson about the far-right conspiracy theorist Alex Jones

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      Top US conservatives pushing Russia’s spin on Ukraine war, experts say

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      Top US conservatives pushing Russia’s spin on Ukraine war, experts saySome of the Kremlin’s most blatant falsehoods aimed at undercutting US aid are promoted by major figures on the right Ever since Russia launched its brutal war in Ukraine the Kremlin has banked on American conservative political and media allies to weaken US support for Ukraine and deployed disinformation operations to falsify the horrors of the war for both US and Russian audiences, say disinformation experts.Some of the Kremlin’s most blatant falsehoods about the war aimed at undercutting US aid for Ukraine have been promoted by major figures on the American right, from Holocaust denier and white supremacist Nick Fuentes to ex-Trump adviser Steve Bannon and Fox News star Tucker Carlson, whose audience of millions is deemed especially helpful to Russian objectives.On a more political track, House Republican Freedom Caucus members such as Paul Gosar, Marjorie Taylor Greene and Scott Perry – who in May voted with 54 other Republican members against a $40bn aid package for Ukraine, and have raised other concerns about the war – have proved useful, though perhaps unwitting, Kremlin allies at times.Pro-Moscow video materials from the network RT (formerly Russia Today), which early this year shuttered its US operations, have been featured on Rumble, a video sharing platform popular with conservatives that last year received major financing from a venture capital firm co-founded by recently elected Republican Ohio senator JD Vance and backed by billionaire Peter Thiel.As Republicans will control the House in 2023, the influence of these Ukraine aid critics in Congress and Moscow-friendly media on the right led by Carlson is expected to increase. But analysts say they’re unlikely to block a Biden administration request to Congress in mid-November for over $37bn in emergency aid for Ukraine, although they may try to pare it back.Republican House minority leader Kevin McCarthy, who looks poised to become speaker in January, threatened pre-election that if the GOP won the majority, it wouldn’t back a “blank check” for Ukraine.There are signs that the conservative wing of the Republican party and its media allies are already ratcheting up their criticism of US backing for Ukraine. For instance, Perry, the chair of the rightwing Freedom Caucus, in October floated the idea of Republicans using their anticipated control of the House to investigate the Biden administration’s efforts and policies involving Ukraine-Russia peace talks.Moscow’s political friends on the far right have also become more vocal in pushing falsehoods and have hosted some Freedom Caucus members to showcase their influence.Fuentes infamously dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago last month despite his long record of cozying up to Putin and his antisemitic and white supremacist remarks. Back in March, Fuentes said on his podcast: “We continue to support czar Putin in the war effort.” Fuentes also falsely claimed the Russian war in Ukraine was “not aggression” and its goals were “not unreasonable”, repeating the Kremlin line that Moscow is trying to denazify Ukraine.In a similar, albeit somewhat less inflammatory vein, Carlson’s pro-Moscow spin and distortions about the war have been palpable since the start and seem to have increased in recent months. Russian media often rebroadcasts the Fox News host’s comments and praises Carlson. “We’ve entered a new phase, one in which the United States is directly at war with the largest nuclear power in the world,” Carlson with considerable hyperbolic license warned his audience in late September.Disinformation experts note that in the run-up to the US midterm elections, conservative media stars such as Carlson, as well as Greene and other far-right members of Congress, became more vocal about blocking Ukraine assistance, and calling for audits of American assistance.“Marjorie Taylor Green’s introduction of a resolution to audit aid to Ukraine is entirely unsurprising given the pervasively negative messaging about Ukraine coming from the right flank of the GOP over the past three months,” Bret Schafer, a senior fellow with the Alliance for Securing Democracy, said.Prior to the 8 November elections, he noted that “of the 100 most retweeted tweets about Ukraine posted by GOP candidates for the House since August, roughly 90% opposed continued support for Ukraine. Though much of that messaging plays to simple pocketbook concerns – essentially saying, ‘Why are we supporting Ukraine when Americans are struggling to pay their bills?’ – there is also a strain of anti-Ukrainian disinformation that colors some of their commentary.”Schafer added that “although most members of Congress support Ukraine, the loudest members do not, and their voices are dominating online spaces”.John Sipher, who served in the CIA’s national clandestine services for 28 years with a stint leading its Russia operations, said that Putin is using a playbook that he honed during his long career with the KGB to influence policy and Russian opinion.“I think Putin’s weakness is that he is not a strategic thinker but reverts to what he knows – using covert means to influence and undermine others,” Sipher said. “He cannot win on the battlefield so he uses threats and intimidations to influence and scare western leaders into backing down or pushing Ukraine to the negotiating table.”Sipher noted that historically Putin “has weaponized energy, information, refugees, food and nuclear threats to get his way. I think his nuclear threats are just a means to sow unease and dissension among supporters of Ukraine, and suspect that the discussion of a ‘dirty bomb’ is meant to signal to his domestic audience that Ukraine is a real threat, and the population should support Putin’s tough measures.”In the US the audiences receiving pro-Putin messages have been boosted by Rumble, the video sharing platform, which has featured RT content including an interview with two Americans captured in Ukraine who were badly beaten by Russians and later released, as the New York Times last month reported.One of the two American men in the video clip told his interviewer while he was in custody that he had been deceived to fight in Ukraine by “propaganda from the west” that reported that Russians soldiers were “indiscriminately killing civilians”.Megan Squire, a deputy director for data analytics with the Southern Poverty Law Center, noted that Rumble has also been busy recycling pro-Putin and anti-Ukraine material from multiple figures on the right.“Alt-tech platforms such as Rumble are actively peddling the anti-Ukraine talking points of their heavy users, many of whom have been deplatformed elsewhere,” Squire said. “A simple search for ‘Ukraine’ in Rumble today shows that the top search results are for a Steve Bannon video where he promotes Marjorie Taylor Greene’s demands for an audit of Ukrainian relief funds, and junk news site Post Millennial, which is using Rumble to promote clips from a similar story from Tucker Carlson.”But for overall influence with American audiences, veteran Russia experts say Carlson’s big Fox megaphone still dwarfs other propaganda tools favorable to Moscow.“The audience for Fox News commentators like Tucker Carlson, who frequently spreads pro-Russian narratives, is obviously orders of magnitude bigger than that of new niche players like Rumble that often carry Russian disinformation,” said Andrew Weiss, a vice-president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “Such platforms are far more impactful than the more sneaky techniques that the Russian propaganda apparatus employs these days.”TopicsThe far rightRepublicansFox NewsUS politicsRussiaUkrainenewsReuse this content More

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      in US Politics

      Netanyahu: Trump must ‘condemn’ antisemitism after Kanye and Fuentes dinner

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      Netanyahu: Trump must ‘condemn’ antisemitism after Kanye and Fuentes dinnerLikely future Israeli PM, who has repeatedly praised Trump, says dinner with rapper and white nationalist ‘unacceptable and wrong’ Donald Trump should be “condemning” antisemitism following his meeting with the rapper Ye and Nick Fuentes, Benjamin Netanyahu said on Sunday.Trump had dinner with two avowed antisemites. Let’s call this what it is | Francine ProseRead moreThe former and likely future Israeli prime minister told NBC’s Meet the Press the former president’s recent dinner with the rapper formerly known as Kanye West, who has repeatedly made antisemitic remarks, and Fuentes, a white nationalist and Holocaust denier, was “not merely unacceptable, it’s just wrong”.Netanyahu was prime minister of Israel during Trump’s time in power and is expected to return to power in the coming weeks. He has repeatedly praised Trump for his support of Israel, which included controversially recognizing Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights. Speaking to NBC, Netanyahu also praised Trump for formally recognising Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, a move global and regional leaders said could destroy the peace process and strengthen extremists.But he criticized Trump’s November dinner with Ye and Fuentes.“On this matter, on Kanye West and that other unacceptable guest, I think it’s not merely unacceptable it’s just wrong. And I hope he sees his way to staying out of it and condemning it,” Netanyahu said.Trump met with Ye and Fuentes on 22 November at Mar-a-Lago, the Florida resort where he now lives. The former president has said he did not know Fuentes was attending, but has not condemned either Ye or Fuentes’ antisemitic views and statements.Asked if Trump’s apparent embrace of antisemitism would “wipe away anything good he did for Israel”, Netanyahu said: “If it’s systemic and continues, and I doubt that it will because I think he probably understands that it crosses a line.”Netanyahu won a majority in November, aided by ultra-Orthodox parties and an alliance with the far right. He is in the process of forming a government. He was previously prime minister from 1996 to 1999 and again from 2009 to 2021.Trump and Netanyahu were close allies but the relationship – at least from Trump’s side – has soured since he left the White House.In 2021, Trump reportedly told a reporter that Netanyahu “made a terrible mistake” in congratulating Joe Biden on his election win.“I haven’t spoken to him since,” Trump said of Netanyahu, according to Axios. “Fuck him.”Last week Netanyahu said in an interview with journalist Bari Weiss: “I condemned Kanye West’s antisemitic statements. President Trump’s decision to dine with this person I think is wrong and misplaced. He shouldn’t do that. I think he made a mistake. I hope it’s not repeated.”TopicsBenjamin NetanyahuDonald TrumpThe far rightAntisemitismUS politicsKanye WestnewsReuse this content More

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      in Elections

      Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes found guilty of seditious conspiracy

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      Oath Keepers founder Stewart Rhodes found guilty of seditious conspiracyJury convicts leader of rightwing group which supported Trump’s attempt to overturn 2020 election Stewart Rhodes, the founder of the rightwing Oath Keepers militia, has been found guilty of seditious conspiracy, a charge arising from the attack on the US Capitol by supporters of Donald Trump.Rhodes and co-defendant Kelly Meggs are the first people in nearly three decades to be found guilty of the rarely used civil war-era charge at trial. The trial was the biggest test yet for the US justice department in its efforts to hold accountable those responsible for the attack that shook the foundations of US democracy.US courts ruling in favor of justice department turns legal tide on TrumpRead moreOn social media, Harry Litman, a former US attorney turned legal analyst, said the guilty verdicts represented “a huge huge victory for the US [justice department] in a challenging and deeply important, even historic, case”.Rhodes is a Yale Law-educated former paratrooper and disbarred attorney. In an eight-week trial, he and four associates were accused of fomenting a plot to use force to stop Congress from certifying Joe Biden’s 2020 election victory.It was the most significant trial arising from the Capitol riot of 6 January 2021, which has been linked to nine deaths including suicides among law enforcement officers. A US district judge, Amit Mehta, presided. The 12-member jury deliberated for three days.Rhodes’ four co-defendants were Meggs, Kenneth Harrelson, Jessica Watkins and Thomas Caldwell.Meggs was convicted of seditious conspiracy. Harrelson, Caldwell and Watkins were acquitted.During the trial, Watkins admitted impeding police officers, and apologized. All five defendants were convicted of obstruction of an official proceeding, with mixed verdicts on a handful of other charges. Rhodes was acquitted of two other conspiracy charges.Rhodes intends to appeal, defense attorney James Lee Bright told reporters. Another Rhodes lawyer, Ed Tarpley, described the verdict as a “mixed bag”, adding, “This is not a total victory for the government in any way, shape or form.”“We feel like we presented a case that showed through evidence and testimony that Mr Rhodes did not commit the crime of seditious conspiracy,” Tarpley said.Rhodes, who wears an eye patch after accidentally shooting himself in the face, was one of the most prominent defendants of around 900 charged so far in connection with the Capitol attack.He founded the Oath Keepers, whose members include current and retired military personnel, law enforcement officers and first responders, in 2009. Members have showed up, often heavily armed, at protests and political events including demonstrations following the May 2020 murder of George Floyd by a white police officer in Minneapolis.Prosecutors said Rhodes and his co-defendants planned to use force to stop Congress from certifying Biden’s win.Rhodes did not go inside the Capitol but was accused of leading the plot. Through recordings and encrypted messages, jurors heard how he rallied followers to fight to keep Trump in office, warned of a “bloody” civil war and expressed regret that the Oath Keepers did not bring rifles on 6 January.Meggs, Watkins and Harrelson entered the Capitol wearing tactical gear. The defendants were accused of creating a “quick reaction force” positioned at a Virginia hotel and equipped with firearms that could be quickly transported to Washington.Fifty witnesses testified. Rhodes and two others testified in their own defense. They denied plotting an attack or seeking to stop Congress from certifying results. Rhodes insisted that his followers who went inside went rogue.Prosecutors sought to paint Rhodes as a liar, showing him his own inflammatory text messages, videos, photos and recordings. These included Rhodes saying he could have hanged the House speaker, Nancy Pelosi, from a lamppost.Watkins, a transgender woman who fled the US army, and Caldwell, a disabled navy veteran, were the others who chose to testify.Watkins admitted “criminal liability” for impeding officers inside the Capitol but denied any plan to storm the building, instead describing being “swept up” in the moment, just as enthusiastic shoppers behave when they rush into stores to purchase discounted holiday gifts.Caldwell, who like Rhodes did not enter the Capitol, never formally joined the Oath Keepers. He tried to downplay inflammatory texts he sent in connection with the attack, saying some of the lines were adapted from or inspired by movies such as The Princess Bride or cartoons such as Bugs Bunny.Four other Oath Keepers members charged with seditious conspiracy are due to go to trial in December. Members of another rightwing group, the Proud Boys, including its former chairman Enrique Tarrio, also are due for trial on seditious conspiracy charges in December.TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsDonald TrumpUS crimeThe far rightnewsReuse this content More