White Supremacists

Plot to kidnap Michigan’s governor grew from the militia movement’s toxic mix of constitutional falsehoods and half-truths

By John E. Finn | – The U.S. militia movement has long been steeped in a peculiar – and unquestionably mistaken – interpretation of the Constitution, the Bill of Rights and civil liberties. This is true of an armed militia group that calls itself the Wolverine Watchmen, who were involved in the recently revealed plot […]

France

Republican Food: French President Macron nails his colours to the Mast of Islamophobia

Open Democracy

By Chris Myant ( OpenDemocracy.net) – In the small Provençal town of Aups, where the local Catholic church declares République française: Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité [The French Republic: Liberty, Equality, Fraternity], above its main entrance, there is a plain and nondescript monument put up in 1881. Its plaque announces that it is there: A la memoire […]

Far Right

Who are the white Nationalist Wolverine Watchmen, who Plotted Kidnapping of Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer?

The Conversation

By Amy Cooter | – Details are still emerging about the men arrested on federal and state charges related to an alleged plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer. Federal prosecutions can take months and even years, so it will be quite some time before a full analysis of this situation becomes possible. But as […]

Donald Trump

How dangerous are the White Nationalists in the US Military?

The Conversation

By Jennifer Spindel, Matt Motta and Robert Ralston | – White nationalist groups, who make up some of the most serious terror threats in the country, find new members and support in the U.S. military. These groups believe that white people are under attack in America. In their effort to create an all-white country where […]

Far Right

For Insights into Michigan’s Toxic culture of Masculinity and Guns see Groundbreaking Director Arman Cole’s Short, “Small Arms” (4 mn Views)

Juan Cole

Arman Cole is a director and graduate of the University of Southern California film school. His dramatic short film, Small Arms stars Tyler Young and Dominic DeVere. Young later “starred as Philip Shea in the acclaimed USA Network limited series Eyewitness (2016), directed by Catherine Hardwicke and co-starring Julianne Nicholson. He also starred in the […]

Authoritarianism

The Mobster-in-Chief: Will the November Election Be Decided in the Streets?

John Feffer

( Tomdispatch.com ) – The white mobs didn’t care whom they killed as long as the victims were Black. They murdered people in public with guns and rocks. They set fire to houses and slaughtered families trying to escape the flames. In East St. Louis in July 1917, white vigilantes lynched Blacks with impunity. It […]

African-Americans

Trump doesn’t Understand History any more than he Understands Epidemics

Juan Cole

Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – Trump has a long history of proclaiming that he understands things better than the people who are experts in those things. When Dr. Robert Redfield, the head of the Centers for Disease Control, testified to Congress that mask-wearing is even more effective against Covid-19 than a vaccine is likely to […]

Donald Trump

Attacking even the Study of Slavery History, Trump is Running for President of White Nationalists

The Conversation

By Henry Giroux | – In what appears to be a blatant appeal to the white supremacists in his base, President Donald Trump has made clear his attempt to both defend and rewrite the history of racial injustice in the United States while eliminating the institutions that make visible its historical roots. As Peter Baker, […]

Far Right

19 years after 9/11, Americans continue to fear foreign extremists and underplay the dangers of domestic terrorism

The Conversation

By Jeff Gruenewald, Joshua D. Freilich, Steven Chermak, and William Parkin | – On a Tuesday morning in September 2001, the American experience with terrorism was fundamentally altered. Two thousand, nine hundred and ninety-six people were killed as the direct result of attacks in New York, Washington, D.C. and Pennsylvania. Thousands more, including many first […]