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A group that believes the COVID-19 pandemic is part of a plot for elites to seize global power is bringing a host of conspiracy theorists to speak this weekend at the Cajundome Convention Center.

The Red Pill Expo 2021, a creation of author and conspiracy theorist G. Edward Griffin, will meet in Lafayette Saturday and Sunday and is expected to draw 750 visitors. The event, which includes discussions on topics such as Follow the patents and you will understand COVID and Vaccine resistance, a global movement, is billed on its website as helping truth seekers understand how the world really works.

Admission ranges from nearly $400 for VIP tickets to $215 for both days, $125 for one day or $45 to live stream.

The event has been held in other cities around the country in recent years with a mission to bring people together to discuss fake narratives, fake history and fake news, according to its website.

It showcases many of the alt-right theories, a Southern Poverty Law Center spokesman said prior to the 2018 event in Washington.

The event is a marketplace for conspiracy theories, said Ryan Lenz with the SPLC.

The red-pill reference can be traced back to the film "The Matrix" in which the main character is encouraged to "take the red pill," which will open his eyes to the truth.

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Griffin, according to published reports, believes cancer is a nutritional deficiency that can be cured by taking a certain compound, and that HIV does not cause AIDS. He is a longtime member of the conservative John Birch Society.

A notable speaker planned is Dr. Lee Merritt of Nebraska, who made the claims that getting vaccinated increases your risk of death from COVID, something data does not support. Published reports indicated she claimed the pandemic is a global conspiracy aimed to exerting social control.

The presentations at the event will be based on documented information, said event director Dan Happel.

One of the things we work on very diligently is we do not provide false information, Happel said. We only provide verifiable, documented information.

The event landed in Lafayette, he noted, due to the efforts of local businessman John Cambre, who attended two previous Red Pill Expo events. Cambre is owner of one of the Ground Pati Grill and Bar, which is listed on the expos website as an exhibitor.

In a prepared statement, Cajundome officials said they do not discriminate on the basis of political agenda, music genre or artist. The event had been booked within the last six months, director Pam Deville said.

We are merely a venue, the statement read.

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Red Pill Expo at Cajundome this weekend to discuss COVID-19 conspiracy theories - The Advocate

All the signage and branding is forest green, decorated with a leaf emblem, for the Heartland Institutes International Conference on Climate Change. Its being held in an event room at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas, and attendees most of them white-haired, older gentlemen chat animatedly as they saunter past the Roman columns and statues at the famed hotel, talking about science and climate and energy.

There are retired teachers, scientists, engineers, members of ultra-conservative think tanks and lobby groups. The books being handed out for free look a little fringe or inflammatory with covers featuring war scenes and explosions but its not until the speeches begin at the opening dinner that it becomes abundantly clear that science and climate are not the primary focus of this conference.

Within about an hour, booming, charismatic speakers both at the podium and through video rope in rants about everything from critical race theory and the media to mask mandates and Marxism.

It feels like a low-level, alt-right rally which reaches its peak with a video appearance by Naomi Seibt, the young, blonde, German rock star of the climate-denial movement. Shes often referred to as the anti-Greta, as she is known for pushing views diametrically opposed to those of Swedish teen climate activist Greta Thunberg.

Research published last week revealed that 99.9 per cent of studies now show that the climate crisis is human-driven, on a par with scientific certainty about evolution. The world is on track for temperature rises in excess of 3C this century despite a safe limit of 1.5C set by the Paris Agreement. At 3C, the world will see more hurricanes, fires, ice-cap melting and other extreme weather conditions.

This years UN climate summit, Cop26, is widely seen as the moment when countries must raise their ambitions and goals to avert climate disaster by reducing global carbon emission by roughly half by 2030.

Books, pamphlets and other literature at the Heartland Institutes October climate-change conference in Las Vegas sought to deconstruct mainstream arguments and established research

(Sheila Flynn)

It is a goal that the oil and gas industry is not taking lying down, despite its overtures to transitioning to a greener future. Since the Paris Agreement, the five largest publicly traded oil and gas majors ExxonMobil, Royal Dutch Shell, Chevron, BP and Total have invested more than $1bn of shareholder funds on misleading climate-related branding and lobbying, according to InfluenceMap.

And then theres Vegas.

The Heartland Institute was traditionally funded by fossil fuels but says most financing now comes from private donations.

Dr John Cook, professor at the Centre for Climate Change Communication at George Mason University and founder of the Skeptical Science website, told The Independent last year that Heartland was one of the particularly prolific producers of climate science misinformation, whereas a lot of others tend to focus on policy.

The Chicago-based right-wing think tank bills itself as playing an essential role in the national (and increasingly international) movement for personal liberty and limited government, saying it has been the subject of unfair criticism and even libel by various liberal advocacy groups, elected officials and even Wikipedia.

At the keynote breakfast speech on the closing morning of the three-day conference, Ms Seibt, a Heartland favourite, echoes this position.

The climate debate has been driving a narrative of fear and delusion for years but now we find ourselves in a cluster of fear porn, not only from a climate crisis but also from a global health apocalypse, allegedly, Ms Seibt tells the conference, her long hair flowing over a silver jacket, her glamorous eye make-up flawless.

I find myself in a community of heroes who will not succumb to the pressures of defamation, because they know how important the truth is, she continues. We dont believe in instant gratification. We know that we need to go through a dark and dangerous tunnel to get our true freedoms back, because whats the alternative? Lying to ourselves? Putting on a mask and living the same meaningless matrix, pretentious, Marxist lives like everybody else?

The tone of Heartland literature and many presentations is persecuted but defiant and provocative. The Vegas weekend involves the presentation of the combatively-named Dauntless Purveyor of Climate Truth award, for example.

Try as they might, governments couldnt keep us locked down forever, Heartland president James Taylor proclaims in the institutes quarterly performance report being distributed at the conference.

The branding at the Heartland Institutes International Climate on Conference Change gave no hint as to the events diametrically-opposed views to mainstream climate science

(Sheila Flynn)

Now that we are regaining some of our freedoms, Heartland is sticking it to the environmental left ... The worst of the lockdowns are over, and freedom is rising again.

With Heartlands powerful impact on the global warming debate, its no wonder the Big Government left fears returning to a free and open society!

The overarching messages during the conference at least the ones related to climate posit that the Earth has always undergone extreme weather cycles. Speakers claim that climate changes are happening so gradually that a catastrophe lies only far in the future and shouldnt be cause for alarmism right now.

They argue that the cause has been hijacked by the media and the left, among other influences, to enforce an agenda of misinformation that will lead to worldwide tyranny.

I spent the past 18 months compiling iron-clad evidence about the Great Reset and about those behind it, says Justin Haskins, Heartlands editorial director, in a recorded video message.

Leaning into the camera, the bookcase behind him featuring items including an American flag, a Glenn Beck book, and a black-and-white pendant proclaiming Liberty or Death (both the colours and the phrase are associated with the alt-right movement), Mr Haskins looks every inch the zealot.

Is it a conspiracy theory? he asks of the climate crisis and left ideology. Well, there is a conspiracy. At this point, I dont think its a conspiracy theory; I think its a conspiracy fact.

Ms Seibt builds upon these ideas, proclaiming in her recorded message that social justice is a euphemism.

We believe in true, individual social connections hugging each other, being there for each other, not this cold-blooded second-hand welfare slave system, she says.

Eco-fascism is a prime example of that. We win, because we are greater than our grudges, more adamant than our adversaries, more truthful than our tormentors, and more compassionate than the cowards who want to control us with their ... censorship.

Truth is uncontrollable. The scientific method will prevail, because politicised science is not science at all. It is stagnation, and stagnation is the death of science.

Ms Seibt and other speakers call for open scientific discourse and demand their voices be heard while slamming the media repeatedly. One panellist shows to applause a photo of himself throwing a journalist out of an event. Another exhibits a political cartoon declaring the death of capitalism.

Heartland Institutes Justin Haskins delivered an impassioned video message that spoke less about climate than it did about combatting socialism, Marxism and misinformation from the left'

(Sheila Flynn)

On Saturday, one speaker and filmmaker showcasing his own documentary Climate Hustle 2 doesnt help the causes arguments for open discourse as he lambasts a reporter in the hallway outside the booked conference rooms.

Youre just an uneducated reporter, he shouts at a British television journalist querying him on scientific points, his voice rising.

Mr Morano runs a climate-change denial website in addition to directing and starring in Climate Hustle 2, narrated by Hercules: The Legendary Journeys actor Kevin Sorbo, which mocks celebrities who speak about climate.

The filmmaker himself has no scientific credentials. He does, however, have a demeanour reminiscent of Anthony Scaramucci.

Now whos the one spreading misinformation? he shouts at the journalist when she tries to delve into statistics from research. He drowns her out: You obviously have no source. Youre just repeating [yourself].

Heartland Institutes vice-president and director of communications, Jim Lakely, looks vaguely stricken by the exchange as it escalates though he later tries damage control by telling The Independent that he kind of likes a bit of argey-bargey, and the more animation the better.

Not everyone at the conference is antagonistic, though. One attendee is an investment manager from Connecticut who, while sceptical of certain climate-crisis claims, says he came to the event because climate and energy are so intertwined with financial markets.

Another, George Taylor, tells The Independent he has PhDs in both mathematics and computer science and is more interested in exploring energy sources than listening to diatribes unsupported by facts.

The whole point is to get your message to the other person and have them actually understand something they could walk away with, Mr Taylor, based in Reno, tells The Independent describing the previous nights volatile scene between filmmaker Mr Morano and the journalist as unproductive.

Rather than yelling and screaming and making it political, lets get down to some numbers and some facts, he tells The Independent, after detailing how a Nevada friend gave him grief about attending the conference. (She only reads liberal sources like The Washington Post, he adds.)

There may be a significant amount that we dont know, so were actually taking a guess and deciding to what degree are we going to take preventative action to ward off what may be a problem ... sometimes, you have to act in the absence of perfect knowledge.

Amidst that uncertainty, however, Mr Taylor concedes that it would be more beneficial to impart the facts without yelling and screaming and ranting.

The Heartland Institutes October Climate Conference in Las Vegas seemed more focused on political aims than environmental concerns

(Sheila Flynn)

Regardless of what some consider the fringe element of climate science, however, many of the attendees the ones less concerned with politics and more interested in research do seem to have their hearts in the right place. They feel they genuinely are environmental activists but on a whole different plane from the mainstream.

Everyone here is smart and everyone is sincere, the wife of one panellist tells The Independent.

What that sincerity might lead to, however after the weekends near-palpable undercurrent of right-wing ideology remains in doubt.

Heartlands Mr Haskins says: Beneath the glowing stars-and-stripes veneer is a terminally ill superpower teetering on the edge and the worst part is our most disruptive, dangerous days still lie ahead.

At lavish cocktail parties in European resort towns and in the boardrooms of the worlds largest corporations, powerful and influential leaders are putting the finishing touches on the vast infrastructure need to alter our communities forever.

The calls to action over the weekend are repeatedly spelled out: Run for office. Push back.

Resist.

Our open, free minds are untouchable in the end therefore panic will persist until we resist, Ms Seibt tells rapt listeners.

And we resist now.

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Welcome to anti-Cop26: The climate-change denial expo in Vegas where attendees talk anything but science - The Independent

The Daily Stormer website advocates for the purity of the white race, posts hate-filled, conspiratorial screeds against Blacks, Jews and women and has helped inspire at least three racially motivated killings.

It also made founder Andrew Anglin a millionaire.

Anglin has tapped a worldwide network of supporters to take in at least 112 Bitcoin since January 2017 today worth $4.8 million according to data shared with The Associated Press. Hes likely raised even more.

Anglin is one very public example of how radical right provocateurs are raising big money through cryptocurrencies. Banned by traditional financial institutions, theyve turned to digital currencies, which theyre using in ever more secretive ways to avoid the oversight of banks, regulators and courts, an AP investigation has found, based on legal documents, Telegram channels and blockchain data from Chainalysis, a cryptocurrency analytics firm.

Anglin owes more than $18 million in legal judgments in the United States to people he and his followers harassed and threatened.

Among them, he owes Muslim comedian Dean Obeidallah $4 million. And hes supposed to pay Taylor Dumpson, the first Black student body president of American University, $725,000 all the results of litigation over libel, invasion of privacy, inflicting emotional distress and intimidation via the Daily Stormer.

His victims have tried and failed to find him to collect. He has no obvious bank accounts or U.S. real estate holdings.

Online, hes highly visible most days, dozens of stories on the Daily Stormer homepage carry his name. In the real world, though, Anglins a ghost.

We were able to sue the Ku Klux Klan, a terrorist organization, in essence out of existence, said Beth Littrell, a lawyer for the Southern Poverty Law Center whos helping represent one of Anglins victims.

But its harder, Littrell says, to use the legal system to stamp out hate groups today because theyre operating via online networks and virtual money.

In August 2017, a week after the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, Anglin received 14.88 Bitcoins, an amount chosen for its oblique references to a 14-word white supremacist slogan and the phrase Heil Hitler. Worth about $60,000 then, it was his biggest Bitcoin donation ever and is worth over $641,000 at todays exchange rate.

The source remains a mystery.

Anglin now faces federal charges for conspiring to plan and promote the deadly march.

By the time of Charlottesville, Anglin had been cut off by credit-card processors and banned by PayPal. Bitcoin was his main source of funding.

Ive got money to pay for the site for the foreseeable future, he wrote last December as Bitcoins price surged.

Bitcoin was developed in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis. It doesnt depend on banks. Transactions are validated and recorded on a decentralized digital ledger called the blockchain, which derives its authority from crowdsourcing rather than bankers.

As one white nationalist cryptocurrency guide circulating on Telegram puts it: We all know the Jews and their minions control the global financial system. When you are caught having the wrong opinion, they will take it upon themselves to shut you out of this system making your life very difficult. One alternative to this system is cryptocurrency.

Richard Spencer, a white supremacist, has dubbed Bitcoin the currency of the alt-right.

Its hard to tell how large a role cryptocurrency plays in financing the far right. Merchandise sales, membership fees, donations in fiat currencies, concerts, fight clubs and other events, as well as criminal activity, are also sources of revenue, government and academic research has shown.

Early adopters of Bitcoin, like Anglin, have profited handsomely from its increase in value. Bitcoin prices are notoriously volatile, though. Since April, the currency has shed a third of its value against the dollar, then took a further drubbing recently when China declared cryptocurrency transactions illegal.

Chainalysis collected data for a sample of 12 far-right entities in the United States and Europe that publicly called for Bitcoin donations and showed significant activity. Together, they took in 213 Bitcoin worth more than $9 million at todays value between January 2017 and April 2021.

These groups embrace a range of ideologies and include white nationalists, white supremacists, neo-Nazis and self-described free-speech advocates, united by a shared desire to fight the perceived progressive takeover of culture and government.

These people have real assets. People with access to hundreds of thousands of dollars can start doing real damage, said John Bambenek, a cybersecurity expert who has been tracking the use of cryptocurrency by far-right players since 2017.

Andrew Weev Auernheimer, Anglins webmaster for the Daily Stormer, has taken in Bitcoin worth $2.2 million at todays values. The Nordic Resistance Movement, a Scandinavian neo-Nazi movement thats banned in Finland, Counter-Currents, a U.S. white nationalist publishing house and the recently banned French group Gnration Identitaire have each received Bitcoin now worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, Chainalysis data show.

Two social media platforms that have been embraced by the far right Gab and Bitchute saw Bitcoin funding surge ahead of the Jan. 6 U.S. Capitol insurrection.

Since 2017, Bitchute has gotten Bitcoin worth nearly $500,000 today. About a fifth of that rolled in last December.

Gab has gotten more than $173,000. Nearly 40% came in during December 2020 and January 2021, Chainalysis data show.

On Aug. 1, Gab announced it was stepping up its fight against financial censorship and creating its own alternative to PayPal to fight against the tyranny of the global elites.

While cryptocurrencies have a reputation for secrecy, Bitcoin was built for transparency. Every transaction is indelibly and publicly recorded on the blockchain, which enables companies like Chainalysis to monitor activity.

Individuals can obscure their identities by not publicly linking them to their cryptocurrency accounts, but, with Bitcoin, they cannot hide the transactions themselves.

Because of that, Anglin abandoned Bitcoin n November 2020 just as Donald Trump lost the presidential election and asked supporters to send him money only in Monero, a privacy coin designed to enhance anonymity by hiding data about users and transactions. He published a new guide in February on how to use Monero, with instructions for non-U.S. donors.

Every Bitcoin transfer is visible publicly. Generally, your name is not attached to the address in a direct way, but spies from the various woke anti-freedom organizations have unlimited resources to try to link these transactions to real names. With Monero, the transactions are all hidden. Anglin wrote.

Monero, Anglin wrote, is really easy. Most importantly, it is safe.

Others have reached the same conclusion.

Thomas Sewell, an Australian neo-Nazi facing criminal charges, is soliciting donations in Monero for his legal defense.

Jaz Searby, a martial arts instructor who headed an Australian chapter of the Proud Boys, is seeking donations Monero only to help spread our message to a generation of young Aryan men that may feel alone or fail to understand the forces that are working against us.

The Nordic Resistance Movement and Counter-Currents also solicit donations in cryptocurrencies including Monero, and NRM has experimented with letting supporters mine Monero directly on their behalf.

Do you really think how we operate our economy is any of your business? Martin Saxlind, the editor of NRMs magazine Nordfront, said in an email to AP reporters. Swedish banks have abused their control of the economy to deny us and others regular banking accounts for political reasons. Thats why we use cryptocurrency ... You should investigate the corrupt banks . . .

The Global Minority Initiative, which calls itself a prison relief charity for American white nationalists, also takes donations only in Monero or by postal money order.

And Frances Democratie Participative, a racist, anti-Semitic, anti-LGBTQ website banned by French courts in 2018, solicits donations in Monero only.

Money is the sinew of war, the site says. Thanks to your support we can continue to prevent Jews and their allies from sleeping soundly.

The AP sought out each of the groups and individuals named in this story. Most didnt reply to requests for comment. A few were unreachable. Others replied anonymously, sending anti-Semitic and pornographic content.

Shortly before his suicide, in December 2020, a French computer programmer named Laurent Bachelier sent 28.15 Bitcoins then worth over $520,000 to 22 far-right entities.

The bulk went to Nick Fuentes, a white nationalist influencer who graduated from Lyons Township High School and was banned from YouTube for hate speech. Fuentes would spend the coming weeks encouraging his tens of thousands of followers to lay siege to the Capitol. One bitcoin went to a Daily Stormer account.

I care about what happens after my death, Bachelier wrote in his suicide note. Thats why I decided to leave my modest wealth to certain causes and people. I think and hope that they will make a better use of it.

Since getting Bacheliers money, Fuentes ramped up recruiting for his America First livestream and expanded the reach of his America First Foundation, which says in corporate registration documents it advocates for conservative values based on principles of American Nationalism, Christianity, and Traditionalism.

The transactions became public only because of a tip to Yahoo News and the fact that Bachelier left digital traces that linked his Bitcoin address with his email. The money trail offered clear evidence that domestic extremism isnt purely domestic and showed how wealthy donors can use cryptocurrency to fund extremists around the world with little scrutiny.

Bacheliers money slipped into the United States without triggering alerts it might have had it landed via traditional banking. Thats because much of it notably the Bitcoin donation to Fuentes, then worth $250,000 passed through accounts that werent hosted by regulated cryptocurrency exchanges, according to Chainalysis.

Those exchanges, which can convert Bitcoin into dollars and other currencies, generally are regulated like banks, allowing authorities to get access to information or funds.

But cryptocurrency wallets can be unhosted, which means users control access. Unhosted wallets like Fuentes are akin to cash. They dont have to go through banks or exchanges that could flag suspicious transactions, verify a users identity or hand over money to satisfy a court judgment.

he Financial Action Task Force, a Paris-based organization that sets global guidelines to protect against money laundering and terrorism financing, in June released its first report on far-right fundraising. It highlighted the groups use of cryptocurrencies and warned that transnational links among such actors are growing.

Similar to their jihadist counterparts, many of these groups have used the internet and social media to share propaganda and recruit ideologically-aligned supporters from around the world, the report said.

As the COVID-19 pandemic sealed borders, white nationalists continued to gather in virtual communities that allowed them to connect with people from around the world.

On Telegram, posts tagged with different flags stream together. Theres a burly White Boys Club in Kyiv, nationalists in Minnesota and men with pixelated faces in Greece, each posing around White Lives Matter banners. Images of people stomping on or burning colorful LGBTQ buttons and flags roll in from Poland, Slovakia, Russia, Croatia. Men with skull masks and rifles pose after tactical training in the woods in Poland. A person with a fascist flag stands in the rain in France. A man draped with a swastika banner looks out from a hill somewhere in the woods of America.

The transnational links make people feel they are part of a much larger community, said Marilyn Mayo, a senior research fellow with the Anti-Defamation Leagues Center on Extremism. They can inspire each other and network.

Blockchain data show Anglins donors are part of a global community of believers who sent money to entities in multiple countries. Since 2017, donors to Anglin also have given Bitcoin to 32 other far-right groups and people in at least five countries, according to Chainalysis data.

The data also show money flowed into the sample of 12 far-right groups from cryptocurrency exchanges that serve customers all over the world, with Western and Eastern European-focused exchanges playing a growing role. Chainalysis uses web traffic data and economic activity patterns to estimate where the customers who use a given exchange are located.

European groups like the Nordic Resistance Movement and Gnration Identitaire also received donations from North America-focused exchanges. Similarly, U.S. entities like American Renaissance, Daily Stormer and WeAreChange got money via exchanges that serve customers in Western and Eastern Europe.

Kimberly Grauer, director of research for Chainalysis, said the shift to global exchanges certainly could be in order to obfuscate detection, but it could also be a sign that increasingly donations are coming in from all over the world.

While Anglin remains hidden, his money virtually untouchable, his debt grows. Each day that ticks by, he owes Tanya Gersh, a Jewish real estate agent in Montana, another $760.88 interest on a $14 million judgment he has failed to pay.

After Gersh got in a dispute with the mother of white supremacist Spencer in 2016, Anglin published her contact information and used his website to whip up trolls against her.

She got death threats, threats against her as a Jew and threats against her child. Shed sometimes pick up the phone and hear a gunshot. Gershs hair started falling out. She had panic attacks, sought counseling and considered fleeing.

The balm for all that came in 2019, when a federal court made clear that targeted anti-Semitic hate speech isnt protected by the First Amendment. But since that fleeting moment of victory, nothing has happened. Gersh has yet to see a penny of her $14 million.

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Cryptocurrency has become currency of the alt-right, white supremacists, hate groups - Chicago Sun-Times

BENNINGTON University of Michigan professor Alexandra Stern was not all that surprised by the storming of the Capitol building on Jan. 6, since armed white nationalists had earlier entered the capitol in her state during protests over Gov. Gretchen Whitmers COVID-19 regulations.

Stern was the guest speaker Thursday during the fourth in a series of six forums on the events of Jan. 6 sponsored by the Center for the Advancement of Public Action at Bennington College.

She spoke on The Alt-Right and White Nationalism on the American Landscape.

Stern, the author of Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate: How the Alt-Right is Warping the American Imagination, said she sees the events in Lansing, Mich., in 2020 as a dry run, both in terms of ideology and in networking for the groups involved.

At one point, armed protesters entered the state capitol in Lansing while lawmakers were speaking on the floor. Later, multiple arrests were made, including over a subsequent failed plot to kidnap the governor.

While Stern said she understands the threats posed by the proliferation of white nationalist and supremacist groups around the country, she is possibly more concerned about the spread of their ideologies throughout mainstream society.

Unlike in the 20th century, she said, the expansion of the internet and social media provided these groups with myriad new channels to spread their messages and not only to group members.

The messages usually are spread one image at a time, one idea at a time, one meme at a time, she said.

As the internet grew, for the alt-right, It was very much about changing culture, Stern said.

Former President Donald Trumps slogan, Make America Great Again, is an example of an effective political message that is benign on the surface, she said, but also connotes a familiar call for a return to an earlier, supposedly better era.

For these groups, that means before the post-World War II civil rights movement, the Voting Right Act of 1965; a relaxation of immigration quotas around the same time; the rise of feminism, gay rights, transsexual rights; and a focus on and recent celebration of diversity in American culture.

Often, Stern said, internet messages aimed at the general public contrast a supremacist nostalgia image of America that is akin to a Norman Rockwell painting or a Leave it to Beaver episode from the 1950s, with divisive social issues today.

Stern said her principal concern about the future is the effect these messages have on many young people and how that might be countered.

In combating the current rise of white nationalists, supremacist and similar ideologies around the world, Stern said new forms of social media regulation is absolutely essential.

She pointed to social media platform bans imposed on Trump and talk radio host Alex Jones as examples of effective measures that had to be considered.

Other media also are being used to spread the white supremacist ideologies, she said, including video games, which have been used to reinforce similar messages.

A 2019 survey by the Southern Poverty Law Center listed 940 hate groups the organization was tracking around the U.S., Stern said, showing that the number is on the rise.

Beyond the United States, she said, most European nations now have groups with supremacist and/or ethnocentric views that are reflected in the significant minority support for far right political parties registered in the polls.

During her research, Stern said she found white supremacist or nationalist ideology in the post-war era tends to have theoretical roots dating to the mid- to late-1960s.

The year 1965 marked passage of the federal Voting Rights Act that barred states from enacting discriminatory laws to keep minority groups from voting. That is a milestone year for many of the white nationalist groups, she said, in that they see the beginning of a decline in white-dominated government and culture.

In addition, that period also saw a loosening of immigration quotas on people coming from non-European nations that had been imposed in the 1920s.

Another crisis year noted as critical by the alt-right, she said, was 1968, when sometimes violent protests over the Vietnam War and favor of broad societal change erupted here and in Europe.

In France, a New Right movement stressing traditional values emerged, she said, and many of the writers involved in that movement or their themes proved influential to later nationalist or supremacist groups.

Living in France just two decades after the four-year German occupation, the French movement tried to express their views so as not to evoke those of the hated Nazis, she said, providing a blueprint for many others since then.

Among the common themes, Stern said, are that these groups hold anti-egalitarian beliefs that run counter to democratic values and traditions.

And at the heart of white supremacist beliefs, Stern said, are anti-Semitism and racism, even though other groups also are targeted, including women, gays, other minorities, other ethnic groups and transsexuals.

Today, there also is a rightward trending populism, she said, which is focused on anti-elite grievances, such as being violently in opposition to pandemic lockdown requirements like masking or vaccine orders, or in Europe, in opposition to the European Union.

Conspiracy theories like QAnon are in turn one of the fuels of the rise of the far right, Stern said.

In addition to the internet and social media since the early 2000s, the election of an African American, Barack Obama, as president in 2008, coupled with a major economic recession just before he took office, spurred the growth of far-right groups, she said, as did disruption from crises like climate change and the pandemic.

Prior to 2016, when Trump was unexpectedly elected, the alt-right was primarily focused on local political issues, power on the local level, such as on school boards, and with promoting their views as culturally dominant, Stern said.

By the end of Trumps presidency, she said, during which he frequently resorted to white identity politics, an already growing white nationalist/supremacist movement in the U.S. had been building for decades, making something like the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol almost inevitable. Today, she said, people holding similar views can likewise be found in many local and state governments and in Congress.

A central question for Americans going forward, she said, is how to we tackle as a society the fact that these ideologies have become so mainstream, are circulating daily, minute by minute, second by second, on social media?

The far right, which increasingly is also involved with paramilitary organizations, conspiracy theories, deliberate misinformation and hate group ideologies, has become a multiheaded hydra for the country to confront, Stern said.

One approach, she said, is to remain vigilant in tracking and maintaining awareness of these ideologies, and understanding how they can influence people and in seeking options to counter those messages.

Stern, a professor of history, American culture and womens and gender studies at the University of Michigan, also is the author of Eugenic Nation: Faults and Frontiers of Better Breeding in Modern America.

Her book Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate applies the lenses of historical analysis, feminist studies, and critical race studies to deconstructing the core ideas of the alt-right and white nationalism.

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Forum speaker describes the rise of alt-right nationalism - Bennington Banner

A network of podcasts, including one which featured former President Donald Trumps eldest son as a guest in 2016, fueled the rise of one of the core leaders of the modern white nationalist movement.

Richard Spencer, a prominent white nationalist figurehead during the Trump era, was one of dozens of up-and-coming extremists who leveraged a network of far-right podcasts to mobilize followers and turn his movement into a household name. This movement, known as the so-called alternative right or alt-right for short, encompassed a loose set of far-right ideologies, groups and individuals under the mantle of white supremacy. While early coverage of the alt-right emphasized its members and leaders fluency with internet culture specifically forums and social media the role of podcasts as a vehicle for propaganda and leadership development has not yet been examined.

The Southern Poverty Law Center analyzed Spencers breakthrough into the upper echelons ofthe white power movement through the lens of a web of 18 different podcasts popular with the extreme right between 2005 and 2020. The SPLC found that Spencers earliest efforts to market his movement to the broader extreme right were facilitated in large part by The Political Cesspool (TPC), a podcast and radio show hosted by longtime white nationalist propagandist James Edwards. Though the show has featured a variety of far-right extremists from the United States and abroad, Edwards has brushed shoulders with members of the more mainstream right, including Donald Trump Jr.

This is part two of the SPLCs four-part report examining 15 years of podcasting data across 18 different shows produced by far-right extremists. While Spencer is but one of the 882 cast members who appeared on 4,046 different episodes of these shows, he figures prominently in the web of far-right extremist content makers.

Spencer emerged as one of the most prominent white nationalist figureheads during the flurry of extremist activity around the 2016 election, although his involvement in the white power movement extends well beyond the Trump era.

In 2008, Spencer began promoting the term alternative right while an editor at the paleoconservative online publication Takis Magazine. In December of that year, Takis published a speech from far-right political theorist Paul Gottfried outlining his vision for a new independent intellectual Right. Though the speech itself never used the term, it was key to Spencer's nascent movement.

In 2011, Spencer became president of the National Policy Institute, a think tank founded by William H. Regnery II, a mega-donor to various white nationalist outlets. Under Spencers tutelage, the National Policy Institute, dedicated to ensuring the biological and cultural continuity of white Americans, rebranded age-old racial bigotries for a younger generation of extremists. It did so through a variety of media, including blogs, journal articles and podcasts. NPI also held dozens of conferences with other white nationalist figureheads. In the run-up to and aftermath of the 2016 election, these gatherings drew scores of younger attendees, in part because the institute offered discounted admission for those under 30.

Likewise, Spencer was one of a core cadre of white nationalist organizers behind the flurry of far-right rallies in the first half of the Trump era. This included the August 2017 Unite the Right rally, which brought hundreds of white supremacists and other far-right extremists to Charlottesville, Virginia. The event devolved into violent skirmishes, culminating in the murder of antiracist activist Heather Heyer by James Alex Fields Jr. A few months later, at Spencers Oct. 19 appearance at the University of Florida as part of his brief college tour, three of his supporters were arrested on charges of attempted homicide for allegedly firing at protesters.

Today, he is one of over a dozen defendants named as organizers of Unite the Right in the Sines v. Kessler civil lawsuit. NPI has remained largely dormant in the years following the fracturing of the alt-right in 2018. Spencer made at least two attempts to launch new podcasts, including The McSpencer Group and Radix Live, named after one of NPIs publications, Radix Journal.

On Oct. 24, 2009, less than a year after beginning to promote the term alternative right, Spencer made his first appearance on The Political Cesspool (TPC), a podcast and radio show hosted by James Edwards. Over the course of Spencers next two dozen or so appearances on TPC, Edwards used his prominent platform within the broader far-right movement to promote Spencer as a core member of the white nationalist intelligentsia.

Edwards, a board member of the Council of Conservative Citizens and a principal member of the white nationalist American Freedom Party, started TPC in 2004 as a terrestrial radio show, though it has since branched out to internet broadcasting. TPCs mission statement includes white nationalist rhetoric, claiming that it stands for the Dispossessed Majority and is pro-White.

As part of TPCs five-year anniversary special, Spencer appeared alongside Paul Gottfried to discuss the failure of the conservative movement. Edwards introduced Spencer as the Managing Editor of TakiMag.com and an intellectual heavyweight. Within the first ten minutes of the interview, Spencer began promoting his vision for a new far-right movement.

Weve got to find a new tactic that isnt just about kicking the neoconservatives out of the [conservative] movement. I dont think thats possible or desirable. Weve got to find a new right wing, he said during the interview. Spencer added that he had begun to refer to this movement as the alternative right, a collection of different groups or individuals who are basically not falling into that lesser-of-two-evils logic that he claimed was used by some far-right extremists to justify voting for Republican candidates such as the late John McCain.

The discussion was notable in two regards. First, Spencers efforts to introduce the alternative right as a concept to TPC listeners came long before the term had begun to take root among far-right extremists. Spencers TPC appearance came less than a year after Gottfried presented his vision for a nationalist, populist right-wing in a speech at the H.L. Mencken Club. Spencer published Gottfrieds speech on Takis Magazines website, under the title The Decline and Rise of the Alternative Right, in December 2009. The term stuck, and over the course of the next year, Takis Magazine, under Spencers editorship, would publish several articles laying the groundwork for this alternative right.

Second, Spencers appearance on TPC allowed him to reach a broader constituency within the far right. Edwards, a Tennessee resident, had long tailored the show for a Southern white nationalist and neo-Confederate audience two audiences that would become crucial partners for Spencer and other organizers during the 2017 Unite the Right rally. Throughout the episode, both Edwards and Spencer urged far-right activists to come together, with Edwards emphasizing that their survival depended on it. Likewise, throughout the segment, Spencer and, later, Gottfried sought to draw listeners to their causes. Spencer, Gottfried and Edwards encouraged listeners to attend the H.L. Mencken Clubs second annual meetup.

Between 2009 and 2020, Spencer appeared another 29 times on TPC broadcasts. The bibliographical details of each appearance provide a timeline for his development as a white nationalist leader, as well as for the alt-rights rise.

Most of Spencers 30 appearances on The Political Cesspool pre-date his notoriety in the popular press by several years. Through The Political Cesspool, he was able to use the airtime to establish himself as an intellectual leader within the broader extreme right, while also drawing listeners deeper into the world of far-right activism through attendance at in-person events. Spencer continued to organize, promote and attend white nationalist meetups and conferences, including infamously in 2016 when he catapulted into the public eye after yelling Hail Trump! and Hail victory! an English translation of the Nazi chant Sieg Heil during an event in Washington, D.C.

During this time, too, Spencers appearances on the show coincided with a range of notable guests. Representatives from the Council of Conservative Citizens, a white nationalist group with roots in the efforts to oppose school desegregation in the 1950s, were frequent guests, joining Edwards show some 58 times between 2005 and 2020. It also featured a variety of racist thinkers who figured into the alt-rights growth during the 2016 election. These included Jared Taylor, editor of the white nationalist publication American Renaissance, who appeared on the show 52 times during this period; Sam Dickson, a former lawyer for the Ku Klux Klan who appeared 36 times; and Kevin MacDonald, a retired university professor and author of several antisemitic tomes. MacDonald appeared 35 times. Many of these figures had, like Spencer, nurtured a deliberately more mainstream image to hide their extremist views.

But Edwards also hosted politicians, from the United States and abroad. In 2012, Rep. Walter B. Jones, a Republican from North Carolina, went on the show to discuss troop withdrawal from Afghanistan. (He later claimed he was unaware of the shows political leanings.) Rep. Nick Griffin, of the far-right British National Party, made multiple appearances on the show, joining Edwards program five times. Finally, Edwards interviewed Donald Trump Jr. in March 2016 on a sister program, Liberty Roundtable. There, the two disparaged immigrants, particularly undocumented ones. Trump Jr. later claimed Edwards was brought into the interview without my knowledge.

While Spencer continued to appear on The Political Cesspool throughout the 2010s, an array of newer white nationalist podcasts provided him a variety of different platforms from which to promote and grow the alt-right. These shows, many of which were produced by and for a younger generation of white supremacists, tended to appeal to a younger, more digitally savvy, audience.

Spencer became a regular fixture on The Right Stuff podcasting circuit in fall of 2015. On Oct. 13, 2015, Spencer joined The Daily Shoah for the first time. The show was recorded in the runup to NPIs annual conference, held around Halloween of that year. It included a brief promotional segment, dubbed the NPI Conference Haircut Contest, where Spencer judged TRS listeners undercuts a type of hairstyle where the sides of the head are shaved or buzzed, and the top is left at a longer length. NPI awarded the winner a free ticket to its annual conference, held that year in Philadelphia.

After this initial appearance on The Daily Shoah, Spencers involvement with other shows in the podcast network grew. While Spencer appeared on 95 episodes of nine different podcasts from 200920, his appearances on five of these nine shows coincided with an upswing in street mobilization between 2016 and 2018 by far-right extremists throughout the country. Spencer used many of these appearances to either promote future events or shape the narrative after a high-profile event, such as Unite the Right or press conferences.

Richard Spencers podcast appearances, over time. Each blue dot in the timeline represents one episode in which he appeared.

Some of these discussions brought together other prominent organizers as well. The diagram below shows Spencer's diverse set of co-appearances with dozens of cast members from multiple podcasts over an 11-year period, from 2009 to 2020.

Richard Spencer (green circle at center) co-appeared with dozens of guests on nine different podcast series between 2009-20

In 2016, Spencer appeared with Andrew Anglin of The Daily Stormer on an episode of Between Two Lampshades a spin-off of The Daily Shoah, named after the Zach Galifianakis talk show Between Two Ferns to promote a speaking engagement at Texas A&M University. Following the deadly Unite the Right rally in 2017, Spencer joined two TRS podcasts to break down what happened in Charlottesville. In an episode posted Aug. 13, 2017, Spencer joined Matthew Gebert, then a State Department official and TRS organizer known in white supremacist circles as Coach Finstock; fellow Unite the Right organizer Elliott Kline, who used pseudonym Eli Mosley; and the rest of usual cast of The Daily Shoah to unpack what happened at Unite the Right. A few weeks later, on Aug. 21, 2017, Spencer joined the Fash the Nation podcast, along with Third Rail host Norman Asa Garrison III. In the first 10 minutes of the two-hour episode, Spencer and Garrison sought to shift the blame for the violence at Unite the Right from the far right to antiracist protesters.

Spencers extensive cooperation with other prominent alt-right podcasts declined in the aftermath of Unite the Right. In 2019, he launched The McSpencer Group, a podcast and talk show. While the show has managed to attract a small number of rotating cast members, Spencer himself has appeared on just two other podcasts in the SPLCs data set between 2019 and 2020, signifying a retrenchment back into his own work and away from other figures in the movement.

Link:
Inside the Far-right Podcast Ecosystem, Part 2: Richard Spencer's Origins in the Podcast Network - Southern Poverty Law Center