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I've written previously about how the Catholic historical experience with nativism can serve as a reminder that the church should be out front in confronting the racism and anti-Muslim bigotry that fuels contemporary strains of white nationalism. That experience is unusually relevant these days. Donald Trump won the White House in part by selling a restorationist vision for reclaiming America often rooted in racial appeals, and a nostalgic narrative that harkened back to a time when white hegemony, culturally, and politically, were assumed to be as American as eating apple pie and ice cream.

Several scholars, advocates, and researchers tackled this subject last week at an event, "How Catholics Should Respond to the Rise of the Alt-Right," co-hosted by the Institute for Policy Research & Catholic Studies at The Catholic University of America and Millennial, a journal and blog edited by young Catholics. Robert Christian, a fellow at the institute who edits Millennial, told me he hoped the forum would help draw attention to "the need for Catholics to express greater moral clarity on the nature of the alt-right and its fundamental incompatibility with Catholic moral and social teaching."

Maria Mazzenga, who manages the archives at Catholic University's American Catholic History Research Center, introduced the discussion with a helpful framework that contrasts two postures among American Catholics that have often been in tension. "Exclusionary Catholic Americanism is defensive, adopts a siege mentality, emphasizes persecution of enemies, views other religious traditions as threatening to its very existence," she said. "Inclusive Catholic Americanism seeks to reconcile American ideals of religious liberty and ethnic pluralism with the Catholic tradition. It sees continuities with its parent, Judaism, and commonalities rather than differences with other religions like Islam. It's time to put our inclusive Catholic Americanism to work."

Catholic University professor of history, Julia Young, noted that between the 1880s and the 1920s immigration policies became increasingly restrictive in the United States. (Read her recent Commonweal article on the topic here.) As a church of immigrants, Catholic leaders responded by creating an immigration bureau in 1919an office of the National Catholic Welfare Conference, a precursor to today's U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. "There was a movement by the Catholic Church, the bishops, to advocate for and speak out for immigrants being targeted," Young said. "The role of the Catholic Church was so important, and I hope that's the direction the church will take today." She acknowledged that bishops have opposed Trump's executive orders on refugees and immigration, but Young reminded the audience that plenty of Catholicsmany of whom helped elect Trumpaccept the new nativism directed at Muslim-Americans and people of color.

Panelist Jordan Denari Duffner, a researcher at The Bridge Initiative at Georgetown University, has found disturbing evidence that Catholics are exposed to a range of anti-Muslim views that are central to the alt-right ideology in various Catholic media outlets, blogs, and bookstores. The Bridge Initiative's detailed report, "Danger & Dialogue: American Catholic Public Opinion and Portrayals of Islam, even found that Catholics who read, watch, or listen to Catholic media have more unfavorable views of Muslims than those who do not. Duffner specifically named Robert Spencer (not to be confused with alt-right leader Richard Spencer), who runs a website called Jihad Watch that was designated an anti-Muslim hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center. Spencer is Catholic. He has been cited, according to Duffner, in a number of Catholic news outlets. His books are sold at the Catholic Information Center and the bookstore of the Basilica of the National Shrine of the Immaculate Conception in Washington, D.C. His speeches have aired on EWTN, the global Catholic media network.

Duffner also underscored how Breitbart News, formerly led by Donald Trump's advisor Steve Bannon, provides a potent platform for the alt-right's demonization of Muslims by perpetuating the idea that Islam is inherently violent and a political ideology rather than a diverse and complex global religion of a billion people. Christopher Hale, executive director of Catholics in Alliance for the Common Good, argued that along with denouncing the extremism and bigotry central to white nationalism and the alt-right there should also be an effort to engage with people drawn to this movement. "We need to understand better as Catholics how did Steve Bannon and the alt-right come to be?" he said.

But keynote speaker Michael Sean Winters, a fellow at Catholic University's Institute for Policy Research & Catholic Studies, highlighted the challenges of that approach. "The main difficulty in engaging the alt-right as if it were just another political movement is found precisely in its anti-democratic stance," said Winters, also a columnist for the National Catholic Reporter. "Normally, when we as Catholics engage those with whom we disagree, both sides accept democratic norms to shape that engagement. The alt-right derides democracy and openly states its desire to undermine democracy." Winters added:

Engage, but do so warily, and only when repeatedly noting the fact that the positions the alt-right espouses are not just wrong, but contemptuous of the means by which a liberal democracy sorts out the complexities of public policy, means that we value and celebrate, and which we accord to these provocateurs even if they wish not to accord them to anyone else.

Winters pointed to the church's intellectual and moral traditions as resources to contest the resurgence of white nationalism. "It is often joked that Catholic social doctrine is the best kept secret in the Catholic church," he said. "Let it be secret no more. The most sophisticated response to both these alt-right haters, and to the ever-present difficulties of democracy, is found in that doctrine. I often say and shall say again: There is no problem facing the political life of this country that is not leavened by an encounter with Catholic social doctrine."

There is no panacea to eradicate the diseases of white nationalism and Islamophobia. The church's manifold capacitiestheological, pastoral and propheticwill be required at different places and times. Catholics don't all need to speak with the same voice or use the same tone. But the message should be unambiguous and urgent. The alt-right movement is built on an edifice of racism, social sin, and exclusion that must never be tolerated.

See the rest here:
Catholics Stand against Alt-Right Wrongs - Commonweal (blog)

"We... never thought this could happen to us," they begin...

Given the setup, you might expect to read a steamy fantasy filled with tall, blonde, Teutonic cheerleaders who love the Fatherland and can unhook a bra strap without missing a note of Wagner.

But this is no fantasy. It's real, and the screwing these ultra conservatives are getting is not at all pleasurable.

They are pissed about the way their purpose, and their experience at the MIA, has been distorted by "media" -- meaning the Star Tribune, City Pages, and, as of last night, the New York Times.

These and other outlets covered a confrontation between left-wing protesters and these men -- one of whom, according to a witness, cried out "Heil Trump!" and made a Nazi salute -- whom the lefties called "Nazis."

That term, these guys complain, is now being ascribed to "everybody to the right of Stalin." They're not Nazis! They're merely members of this "exciting* new movement of the Alt-Right."

(*Note: The movement will be less "exciting" and more "terrifying" for certain types, including but not limited to immigrants, blacks, Jews, Muslims, liberals, historians, feminists, World War II veterans, and those who have trouble manufacturing misplaced hatred.)

Now that they've cleared up that misconception, "AltRight MN" -- whose "About" page is literally just a "Minnesota for Trump" button -- can explain what happened at the museum on Saturday. First, they were hacked. Someone from the left-wing Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) sneaked into their secret chat room "by pretending to be a Trump supporter."

Then, they were attacked. Two AltRight MN guys were jumped inside the museum "simply for how they looked."

If you are attacked for "how you looked," and "how you looked" is "like a neo-Nazi," and you are a neo-Nazi... is it still "simply"because of how you looked?

Another "Trump supporter" was "violently attacked and maced." Cops called to the scene found "an illegal knife" on one of the IWW side, though they didn't arrest him.

"Why not?" AltRight MN asks. "Are they supporting the actions of these leftist thugs?"

Probably not!

This was all an unnecessarily violent response to what was supposed to be a fun little outing for a few well-meaning, white-leaning -- oops, right-leaning patrons of the arts. Specifically, the old stuff.

"We were there only to meet a few new faces and enjoy the Minneapolis Institute of Arts collection of traditional art."

And who doesn't love "traditional art"?

Anyway, at last, the media's "lies" about what happened at the museum are corrected.

Pay no mind to this blog post write-up from the IWW point of view, which claims it was one of the AltRight MN guys who had a "large folding knife," and who "started a physical brawl with the anti-fascists when they questioned him about his [Nazi flag] shirt."

Or to the photo of a guy who appears to be giving a Nazi salute. That's out of context. He is actually just demonstrating that the men of AltRight MN care a lot about "traditional art," and they... have high standards.

See the rest here:
Alt-Right museum-goers respond: We're not Nazis, we just like 'traditional art' - City Pages

At last weeks Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC), the annual conservative confab that in recent years has hosted a growing number of American extremists, organizers made the unexpected step to take a hard stance on the white nationalist Alt-Right seeking to inject itself into the conservative mainstream.

Organizers disinvited gadfly provocateur Milo Yiannopolous before the conference began when video surfaced showing the former Breitbart tech editor casually dismissing pedophilia. Then, on Sunday, as Richard Spencer was speaking with reporters about the so-called deep state being opposed to the president and creating something like a civil war, security guards interrupted, stripped Spencer of his credentials and escorted him from the building.

Spencer was quick to attack the conservative establishment as out of touch with the rising Alt-Right. But tucked in his comments was that mysterious phrase the deep state.

Spencer was tapping into a term that has grown in popularity in news coverage over the last month, as well as on the radical right, as the Trump administration appears to make good on chief strategist Steve Bannons promise to destroy all of todays establishment. Foreign Policy,Salon, andGlenn Greenwalds investigative website The Intercept have all discussed the idea. Even neoconservative Bill Kristol, founder of The Weekly Standard, recently referenced the deep state.

Perhaps it is no surprise, but many oftheAlt-Right figures even if they feel they are increasingly at odds with the GOP now point to the deep state as the principal enemy of Trumps America.

The concept of the deep state is not new. Historically associated with countries such as Turkey, and sometimes called a state within a state, the term refers to government bodies like the armed forces, political foundations, police and administrative agencies that work to undermine a countrys civilian leadership, regardless of party affiliation.

The entire idea took root when the Trump administration, stumbling amid leaks to a news media it has named as the opposition party, accepted the resignation of retired Army Gen. Michael T. Flynn, who had been named national security adviser. It was revealed that Flynn misled Vice President Mike Pence and other top White House officials about his conversations with the Russian ambassador to the United States.

Within days, pundits and extremists alike responded. Global affairs journals like Foreign Policy declared, The Deep State Comes to America, while extremists, including Eric Striker on the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer, sounded an age-old racist alarm.

In an article titled America vs [sic] ZOG: Ex-NSA Official Promises Rogue Agents Will Overthrow Donald Trump, Striker defined the deep state as a Jewish attempt to attack the president. And mirroring the style of site founder Andrew Anglins increasingly bold requests of Trump, Strikercalled on the administration to respond with force.

"Will the deviants and Jews in the deep state succeed? Trump must immediately start cleaning house with grand juries, massive purges, and make examples of Jew journalists like Michael S. Schmidt and Adam Entous currently making the cable news rounds bragging about committing a felony (publishing illegally procured intelligence). The only way the people of America can take back control of our government is through Trump taking an iron fist to the criminal network that wishes to retain its rule over some evil globalist mongrel empire, and restoring power to the executive branch as it was meant to be. If the President relents for even five minutes, they will destroy him."

Even in the paranoid universe of conspiracy theories on the far right,the deep stateis now being referred to by progressive and conservative commentatorsas a known reality in Trumps America. It is a simultaneousfaith in the future and fear of the present.As southern white nationalist Brad Griffin summarized theidea on Occidental Dissent, We have two governments, one elected and the other unelected, which are at war with each other.

In his 2016 book, The Deep State: the fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government, veteran congressional staffer Mike Lofgren warned that the deep state was rising in the United States and argued it was the big story of our time. Thedeep state, he said,was the red thread that runs through the war on terrorism and the militarization of the American economy.

In a separate essay Anatomy of a Deep State published last week, Lofgren added:

There is the visible government situated around the Mall in Washington, and then there is another, more shadowy, more indefinable government that is not explained in Civics 101 or observable to tourists at the White House or the Capitol. The former is traditional Washington partisan politics: the tip of the iceberg that a public watching C-SPAN sees daily and which is theoretically controllable via elections. The subsurface part of the iceberg I shall call the Deep State, which operates according to its own compass heading regardless of who is formally in power.

It is difficult to say what will come of such a bizarre political theory as the Trump administration enters its second month in office. The progressive left, and even some conservatives, hope the deep state will be the ultimate guardrail to slow Trumps unique brand of scorched earth politics. But to dismiss the deep state in America as merely a passing fad is to dismiss just how deep the idea has migrated into the mainstream.

It is there, after all, that the idea is increasinglypitting the radical right and the slowly acquiescing conservative mainstream against anyone who disagrees.

As Republican consultant Ed Rogers, a political consultant and a veteran of the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush White Houses, warned in an op-ed published in The Washington Post, To me, the deep state is real. The alt-right is not.

[A]s best I can tell, the alt-right is just a new way for the left to call Republicans racists and Nazis without actually having to say those terms out loud. To me, the deep state is real. The alt-right is not. The deep state may not be fully developed quite yet, but as the Democrats regain their footing and begin to coordinate and try to further and further damage the presidents credibility, it will have a detrimental impact on how our democracy functions and will further erode the publics trust in government.

Original post:
'Alt-Right' Fears 'Deep State' Retribution Against Trump - Southern Poverty Law Center

I had never heard of Milo Yiannopoulos until recently, perhaps because I dont visit some of the websites where his musings are published.

Milo, as he calls himself because of the difficulty some have pronouncing his last name, was disinvited from this weeks Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC) annual gathering of the right in Washington. Apparently the organizers were not bothered by Milos association with the so-called alt-right. CPAC withdrew the invitation only after a video surfaced showing him apparently endorsing man-boy relationships that qualify under the definition of pedophilia. Yiannopoulos has resigned as an editor at Breitbart.com and apologized for his remarks.

The editors of National Review, as well as other traditional conservative publications and individuals, criticized CPAC for inviting Yiannopoulos to speak. The conservatism of Russell Kirk, William F. Buckley Jr. and Ronald Reagan was about ideas, not emotion and exclusion. Reagan, whom the modern right likes to claim as one of its own, was an optimist. Even when he criticized the lefts policies, he almost always presented a superior alternative. He wanted to attract as many people to his worldview as possible by winning the argument and converting opponents, whom he always regarded as fellow Americans and friends, even when he disagreed with them.

Today, conservatism has become known in the eyes of many for what and who it is against, not what and who it is for. Yes, part of this is due to media stereotyping, but not all. Traditional conservatism has been a positive we can do better, an inspiring and uplifting philosophy that motivates rather than denigrates.

In his 1993 book The Politics of Prudence, Russell Kirk set down principles he believed should define conservatism. Among them were the following: an enduring moral order; an adherence to custom, convention and continuity guided by the principle of prudence; the principle of imperfectability, meaning we dont look to government to create perfect men and women, or a perfect society, thus rejecting utopianism; the belief that freedom and property are closely linked; conservatives uphold voluntary community and reject involuntary collectivism; the need for prudent restraints upon power and upon human passions; permanence and change must be recognized and reconciled in a vigorous society.

That last one bears elaboration, and Kirk offers it: The conservative knows that any healthy society is influenced by two forces, which Samuel Taylor Coleridge called its Permanence and its Progression. The Permanence of a society is formed by those enduring interests and convictions that give us stability and continuity; without that Permanence, the fountains of the great deep are broken up, society slipping into anarchy. The Progression in a society is that spirit and that body of talents which urge us on to prudent reform and improvement; without that Progression, a people stagnate.

One sees this in the debate over the Constitution between liberals, who believe it to be a living document, subject to constant change and updating, and conservatives, who believe it a rock of stability that serves as a guide even in the face of rapid technological and cultural change. Just as a GPS must have a starting point in order to arrive at an intended destination, so too must America have a source from which it can plot its direction and not get lost on the journey.

In 1962, William F. Buckley Jr. denounced the John Birch Society as far removed from common sense and urged the Republican Party to purge the movement from its ranks. So too must todays conservatives separate themselves from the alt-right white supremacists and anti-Semites and reclaim traditional conservatism as the authentic brand.

Conservatives can win elections and govern without beyond-the-fringe types like Milo Yiannopoulos. If they cant, they dont deserve to win.

Follow this link:
Conservatives must oust 'alt-right' | Opinions | thepublicopinion.com - Watertown Public Opinion

The Atlantic

White House sees damage from 'alt-right' Hamilton Spectator President Donald Trump can no longer dodge and distract from the cold reality that his administration has granted a platform for white supremacists and anti-Semites to advance their twisted causes. His failure to lead has helped members of the "alt ... At Las Vegas confab, Republican Jews gingerly find reasons to celebrate Trump's presidencyJewish Telegraphic Agency all 42 news articles »

Read more:
White House sees damage from 'alt-right' - Hamilton Spectator