How Deep Does Right Wing Extremism Go In The Republican Party - With Teddy Wilson
Co-hosts Jared Yates Sexton and Nick Hauselman discuss how the far right ideology is winning elections in Europe as French president Emmanuel Macron has called for a snap election as he fears he'll lose control of the parliament. Next, they analyze why Benjamin Netanyahu is visiting the United States to speak in front of congress. Then, Teddy Wilson, who is a researcher of the Extreme Right, writes at Radical Reports, and created a new podcast called The Insurrectionist Cookbook, joins the show to talk about his latest research.
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You know, just trying to get along and make it through the day.
You're growing a beard?
For anybody who wants to look on YouTube?
Yeah, you've got a beard type situation going on.
I am.
I didn't like shave it, so I guess I am.
I don't know.
Why not?
I like it when you grow a little bit of a beard.
I used to have beards all the time.
And then, um...
I don't know.
Maybe some gray started popping up and I was like, eh, I'm not going to do it.
But you know what?
I'm letting the gray out.
As somebody who embraces the gray beard, I'm inviting you along on this journey.
Yeah, let's see what happens.
You never know.
It's the mystery of life.
It's the mystery of life.
People, we got a lot of stuff to cover today, actually from around the world.
We're going to look at the EU elections as well as what's going on in Israel.
We also are going to have on the show Teddy Wilson, an extremism researcher.
He publishes at Radical Reports on Substack.
He has a new podcast called Instructions Cookbook, highly recommended.
We're going to talk to Teddy about the extremism situation in America here in just a second.
Before we get to the news of the day, Nick, a reminder for people to go to patreon.com slash Montclair podcast, subscribe, support the show, keep us ad-free, editorially independent.
On top of that, when you do that, not only do you get to come hang out with us for exclusive Post-event analysis for things like the upcoming presidential debate and major events, but things like this Thursday.
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It's always a great time, and please come on over.
You really would enjoy it, and we opened up a couple weeks ago for our full show of a live show, what it sounds like, and you'll get more of that stuff.
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Before we get to Teddy, before we get to our interview about extremism in America, Nick, we gotta venture around the world.
We're globetrotters today.
Over in where the history comes from, Europe, the European Union elections were held and the results were...
Mixed?
I'll say that.
It was a little bit tough.
The center-right European People's Party maintained control over the EU, but there were massive, massive gains made by the far right in both France and Germany and other locales, especially in France.
Marine Le Pen's national rally, which for people who don't necessarily keep track of these things, we've talked about on the show previously, Nick, This is a group of people who are not only far-right, they're not only white supremacist, they're not only authoritarian, but they have roots that can be traced back into proto-fascism.
For anybody at home who doesn't understand that, that means before fascism finally came around, National Rally's roots were firmly, firmly entrenched in the same type of authoritarian ideas.
They had an incredible showing in the EU elections.
It looks like Le Pen has an opportunity to be the future president of France as well.
Emmanuel Macron, the current president of France, reacted to the disappointing results by calling for a snap election.
He dissolved Parliament and said later on in the summer Then that's going to be June 30th.
So just around the corner, there are going to be snap elections for Parliament, which could lead to a whole hell of a lot of weird results.
I'm going to go ahead and give you some analysis, Nick.
I find this troubling.
That's some interesting analysis.
You know, I guess, I'm trying to figure out what McCone is trying to get at here, because in theory, like, remember when Britain voted to exit for Brexit?
And everyone's like, oh, don't worry about it.
Everything's fine.
Please don't worry about calling this vote.
Yeah.
Right.
And then like, you know, a few weeks later, like a lot of people kind of didn't even understand what they had been voting for.
Did that portend anything that happened a couple of months later?
You know, we don't have to get back into that.
Oh, we don't have to talk about 2016 anymore.
We're just going to pretend that didn't happen.
Yeah, it's the wrong timeline.
So, it's possible that he's thinking there will be some like, you know, sort of not violent remorse, maybe like literally the shock like, oh no, we are under attack by this incredible crazy right wing stuff.
Let's get everyone rallied for a quick vote and put this thing down.
But the timing is tough because it's happening very quickly.
And there is a big push and it seems to me that it's all really rooted in anti-immigration.
Is that safe to say?
Well, it's anti-immigration, xenophobic sort of energies, rising right-wing authoritarianism, which is something that we unfortunately always have to tell people about.
There's a couple of things that are happening.
First of all, this is a gamble.
The idea of going ahead and holding snap elections.
If this doesn't happen, and for people who don't know this, Macron's term, the next full election, is supposed to be in 2027, which according to my math is three years from now.
The idea, I think, is that if this isn't done, there will be the specter of national rally that will be like sort of hanging over his presidency and his term as well.
I think he looks at a couple of things that are just like coming up.
Of course, we have the Olympics that are going to take place in Paris there.
And by the way, like if that's part of the gamble, There are major, major rumors and fears of terrorism taking place at this year's Olympics, which probably could help, you know, National Rally possibly win some votes.
We could be looking at a circumstance.
Where National Rally could gain popular support in France in these elections.
You would have Emmanuel Macron as president and you could have Jordan Bardella who is this 28 year old phenom within the National Rally who is incredibly scary.
He's already being positioned as the future far-right ruler of France.
This is a guy who doesn't even shy away from white replacement theory as one of his major ideological sort of narratives.
The possibility is that he could become the Prime Minister of France.
So you could have, theoretically, a divided government in France between Emmanuel Macron, who is not only a neoliberal, but has moved further and further to the right, a center-right president, the far, far right National Rally, which part of the analysis I wanted to talk about before we moved on from this, Nick, is that centrists like Macron Are becoming more and more comfortable working with the far right?
So yes, we could have a divided government, but we could also have a France that is going along with the trajectory of what you and I have been talking about, which is the beginning of a right-wing momentum that is starting to influence not just politics, but to bring the center further and further right.
Yeah, and again, I cannot belabor the point necessarily of, you know, of immigration into other people's countries, because we're dealing with it here as well.
It's a very intoxicating argument, right?
You can prey on people's fears, how people are just pouring into our country, they're changing the culture, all these different things.
And you can get someone who is not connected to politics to get behind something like that, right?
And, oh, I don't want that in my neighborhood.
I don't want that, you know.
That's so weird that Syria and Afghanistan would be supplying a bunch of immigrants.
I don't know of anything that Western democracies have done to increase immigrants from Syria or Afghanistan.
that is causing so much of this hand-wringing.
And it was interesting 'cause it seems like Syria is the number one place and then Afghanistan's also- - That's so weird that Syria and Afghanistan would be supplying a bunch of immigrants.
I don't know of anything that Western democracies have done to increase immigrants from Syria or Afghanistan.
That's weird. - Yeah, well, or Syria itself and the leadership there, what have they done to lead to an exodus that people need to leave from there as well, right?
Like, that's the other issue.
And so, you know, I guess I'm always looking at this as, like, what is the solution?
What are you supposed to do to try and tamp this down?
We're going to talk a little bit about this with our guests in terms of, you know, right-wing extremism.
But I'm not exactly sure, you know, because again, if you wanted to address the notion of people immigrating to your country, I suppose we're supposed to welcome that and be able to maximize that as a cultural thing anyway, and instead it's becoming this lightning rod that has led to extremism and the other side.
You know what I mean?
Well, the truth is that immigration is sort of the false thing that we're talking about.
The problem isn't immigration.
Like, when you actually take a look at cosmopolitan liberalism, like, you're supposed to have quote-unquote melting pots.
We're supposed to bring people in, we're supposed to become a larger society, change and evolve, progress, all of that.
That's not the issue.
The issue is that in an age of austerity, where people feel more and more like they can't get ahead, they can't afford homes, their work is constantly becoming more and more exploited.
By the way, in the background of all this, not just in France, but in the United States, that social safety net is being absolutely shredded, right?
The line between you living a life and you falling into abject poverty and falling behind is getting smaller and smaller and eventually destroyed.
As a result, what happens?
White supremacy and chauvinism, they grow.
Well, okay, so can we have a society where we're all living and sort of striving and changing?
Or is it group versus group versus group?
And in France, for instance, you have a lot of the social safety net that's going away.
Emmanuel Macron has like spent most of his tenure getting rid of that social safety net and sort of the You know, the programs in France that are supposed to make people feel more and more comfortable, which is what happens with neoliberal globalism.
And so as a result, immigration becomes the cause célèbre, right?
It becomes the thing where all of a sudden it's like, oh, it's dog-eat-dog already.
We don't need more people coming in.
We need to get rid of them.
And you see that white supremacy starting to come out.
Which is why you have right-wing authoritarianism not just growing around the world, France, United States, we're looking at Germany, we're looking at Great Britain, all these Western democracies, but what you're actually watching Is that the focus is that the terms of the competition that we're talking about, these elections, it changes.
Instead of talking about making the world better for people, you're talking about who deserves what scraps are remaining.
So it's sort of a false question that unfortunately it's where national rally, they prevail.
It's where the Republican Party prevails.
We even see in America now, Where liberals are like, oh man, immigration really needs to be shut down and maybe we need to close the border.
Like, you're starting to see this becoming a bipartisan push because you're not actually addressing the conditions that are leading to the supposed problem in the first place.
I also wonder if this is also a an incumbency problem, whereas if you're a sitting duck if you're already in power and you're just right to be criticized to no end for and without much recourse.
And the problem with that is is that it seems like if a authoritarian comes into power in that manner.
They become the incumbent, but it takes longer for that spell to wear off.
You might end up being 15 years worth of authoritarianism before you can maybe finally get to move on to something else, which we've seen.
But that's a huge chunk of a lot of people's lives to have to deal with that until it's over.
Well, if you ever get on the other side of it.
I mean, you know, it's one of those things and, you know, actually we talked to Teddy Wilson a little bit about this in the interview later.
He was talking about how a lot of right-wing extremists saw Trump saying, you know, I fixed the border problem.
I built the wall and they're like, no, you didn't.
You didn't take care of this.
For a lot of people, though, Trump's saying, I built the wall, I took care of immigration, and by the way, you have these scenes of, like, brutality of, like, children in camps and cages.
That makes people feel like the problem's being taken care of.
But when you, like you said, the incumbency problem, I mean, Joe Biden could not be reached for comment on this.
This is not a good time to be in charge because none of the powers that be are particularly interested in solving this.
They're going to continue to do some of these right-wing things, whether it's executive actions on immigration or all... I mean, Macron is shameless in this stuff.
And I guarantee you, if National Rally wins, he is going to be more than happy to work with them in this government.
We're going to talk about Netanyahu in a second.
He's the same way.
He was more than happy to reach across to the far right and, you know, make common cause with them.
So yeah, it ends up in a place where authoritarians say, listen, everything is absolutely screwed up.
Give us full power.
And then they create the fantasy that things are being taken care of.
They don't actually take care of things, but it feels good because your enemies are upset and because you're getting sort of that cathartic feeling of the clash of civilizations, which is what they base their appeal on in the first place.
Speaking of clashes, of cultures, in Israel we have a whole lot of stuff going on.
We had a raid just the other day that freed four hostages.
I would be remiss if I didn't point out that it killed over 200 people and injured maybe 600 more.
But in the wake of that, Benny Gantz, who was a part of Israel's war cabinet and is one of Netanyahu's chief rivals and maybe one of the few people who could defeat him in an election, he resigned.
Uh, he labeled Benjamin Netanyahu as a hindrance to peace and said that Israel cannot possibly win its war with him at the helm.
He has now called for Netanyahu to set elections in the fall.
This is kind of a pretty big deal and based on the politics that are taking place in Israel and also the ongoing sort of Sure of death and destruction taking place in Gaza.
It's not clear whether or not Gantz's resignation or challenge of Netanyahu is going to push things into the next level, but it certainly feels like things are beginning to move a little bit.
Oh, absolutely.
This is the beginning of something and how long it might take.
We have no idea, but it's something.
I mean, even if you want to take the numbers you're reporting, Cut those in half.
Let's just say that they're not exactly accurate.
It's still preposterous to think that that many people would suffer for hostages, even though obviously the people in those families of the hostages are as happy as can be to have their family members back home.
So I wonder if this is almost like, you know, it's becoming more of a of a problem in terms of tactics.
And we've said this before, it's like, you know, the indiscriminate killing of innocent people, no matter what the ratios are from enemy combatants to innocent people, it's just, it's where no one has confidence that they're doing this competently and there are better ways to do this.
And obviously the fear that the rest of the hostages would just get killed at this point is high, because at this point, like, you know, what else are the Hamas going to do with their hostages if they're going to be under fire like this?
Is this time to talk about what the negotiations are really just about at this point and why they can't get a ceasefire?
I mean, it sounds like it's really just about they want to get the hostages back, but they want a permanent ceasefire and Israel does not want to do a permanent ceasefire.
I also have a feeling Israel wants no part of a deal that has Hamas still in power in Gaza.
And to me, that would be the one thing that I think a lot of people in the world would Would at least be able to agree to is that Hamas shouldn't be empowering Gaza anymore.
But I'm not so sure anymore if that would even be a compelling argument for a lot of people.
Well, I want to go ahead and replace Israel with Netanyahu and the people around him because, you know, I think a lot of Israelis are wanting this thing to come to an end.
They want permanent peace.
They want to live in peace.
Meanwhile, Netanyahu going back into divided governments, you know, the only reason he's in power is because he formed a coalition back in May of 2022 with the far right in Israel.
And it's not necessarily that they want new leadership in Gaza.
They don't want Palestinians in Gaza.
Like, the far right, if you listen to them, you look at what they say, you look at their entire political positions, like, they embrace aggressive settler colonialism as well as a project that more or less clears this thing out and wants ethnic cleansing.
I mean, it depends on the person, it depends on the time of day you talk to them, but a lot of them are very open about this.
Add on top of that the fact that Netanyahu, and we've talked about this on the show, Nick, if he's not in power, he could very well go to jail.
Like, he doesn't want this to end.
He doesn't want this to go away.
So the question here is whether or not, first of all, he will call for elections.
And by the way, going back to the Macron thing and now the Netanyahu thing, maybe it's not a good idea to have governments that call for elections.
Maybe it'd be a good idea to have a system where like, oh we're going to have an election now and that's how this stuff's going to go.
Maybe we're past that because now we're looking at, I mean Netanyahu would literally have to make a decision that would put his political and legal life in jeopardy.
Like he has to make a decision but his entire basis of this coalition government is to work with the people who What?
It's not about fighting a smart war.
They're doing what they want to do.
You know what I mean?
Like a lot of these people, they want to go ahead and quote unquote, finish the job and finish them off, you know, to borrow Nikki Haley's parlance.
But like, you can't look at this from a like a rational standpoint of like, why would they not want these deals?
Why would they not want this to happen?
And then you have to wonder, Is Gantz the one person who can put together something of a push or momentum to put more pressure on Netanyahu?
And we don't know.
We're not really sure if that can happen.
We've known that Gantz was going to leave for a while.
He has been signaling and telling everybody who would listen.
But on top of that, and Nick this is something we have to talk about, Netanyahu, despite consistently flipping off the United States of America and Joe Biden and rubbing their face in the dirt, he basically rules right now with the okay of the U.S.
administration, right?
Like, the fact that they haven't pushed back, they haven't taken things away from him, that might make the difference of lever.
Meanwhile, he's set to come to America on July 24th, address a joint session of Congress.
And what's he want?
He wants to come in, influence American politics.
And who's he want to be president, Nick?
Trump.
His buddy.
He absolutely wants Donald Trump to be president.
And authoritarians like Netanyahu, they want Trump to be president.
So what we have now is a situation where we do have a rival in Gantz who could possibly gain some popularity and momentum and take power away from Netanyahu.
But Netanyahu is holding on to this thing for dear life.
Well, if you understand, like, even with the Russian influence and what the goal of Russia is in terms of creating chaos here politically, then it makes perfect sense that Netanyahu was going to play by that same playbook and want to come and speak.
And that's exactly why Mike Johnson invited him, OK?
So I understand that.
Mike Johnson is a Republican, and they need to sow chaos with a Democrat in the White House.
But why in the fuck is Chuck Schumer signing off on the invitation to Netanyahu as well?
And that makes no sense to me.
There are going to probably be Democrats who boycott this speech, but for the life of me, I have to imagine Chuck Schumer must be thinking he's playing some weird version of chess where he's going to sit down with Netanyahu when he's in America and then convince him to somehow agree to a ceasefire.
And we've already heard Schumer criticize him, you know, pretty strongly.
So, by the way, that whole thing isn't going to happen.
Schumer is not going to be able to talk to Netanyahu and then Netanyahu is going to hit his head and be like, oh, Chuck, gosh, you're so right.
I can't believe I didn't think of that.
So he's going to end up being steamrolled too.
It's going to be ugly.
And I really, it's just, they're playing right into the hands.
It's unfathomable how they're allowing this to happen.
Yeah, it's, first of all, it's a smattering of congressional Democrats who have absolutely no sway whatsoever on the party.
I think what we're looking at, and this is unfortunate, Nick, I really hate this, like there was the moment where Chuck Schumer started saying, you know, there need to be elections in Israel and maybe new leadership is necessary.
Meanwhile, what are we seeing from prominent Democrats?
We're seeing them like continue to support Israel in their actions in Gaza.
And I think what we're basically looking at going into November as a party decision is that the party is going to rally around Israel.
They're not going to criticize it very much.
And basically, we're going to have two parties in the country.
One party is going to say we have to support Israel, continue selling them weapons and supporting this action in Gaza.
And the other party is saying you're not supporting them enough.
We need to go all the way.
We need to carry this thing out, which again, it's not a coincidence.
You brought up Russia.
You know, we just talked about what's happening in Europe.
We're now talking about what happened and is happening in Israel.
This right-wing movement around the world, they're on the same page.
Like, they're all interested in one thing, which is increasing the chaos and violence and, for the record, white supremacy that we've talked about so far, and we're also going to talk with Teddy Wilson about here in just a minute.
It is a project that has the same notes and denotations, which is why not only did Mike Johnson invite Netanyahu to Congress, but why the Republicans going into November are going to go after the Democrats for not being supportive enough for Israel, even though they have been the party that has supplied the weapons and continually supported them. even though they have been the party that has supplied So it's only going to lead to more and more escalation and more and more escalating rhetoric while it goes.
Yeah, and the Democrats can kiss goodbye to a huge chunk of the 18 to 25 year old vote.
And possibly Michigan, Wisconsin or Georgia.
Yeah, right.
Exactly.
And all their hope is, is that it's not in those states, but it probably will be because there's there's universities there and a lot of college students.
But, you know, talking to a bunch of them recently in and around my house, it's like, you know, none of them are going to vote for Trump.
It's not a this is not a binary thing, but they're simply not going to get any support from a huge chunk of that.
And then it becomes a thing.
How important is that demographic?
Generally, it is on a close election.
I don't think it matters.
And I remember I had been saying, well, you know, maybe before the election at some point, they're going to be able to get a ceasefire down and hopefully Biden will get credit for forcing Netanyahu to do that.
But you had felt like it wouldn't matter now.
At this point, it's too late.
And I think I agree with you at this point.
It doesn't sound like it's something the cat's out of the bag on that one or in the bag.
You know, you brought up the incumbent problem, and whoever was going to be president as this thing happened was, I mean, let's be frank about it.
If Donald Trump were president during, you know, what has happened in Gaza, I mean, liberals would be lining up after him, getting after his ass, you know, it would, it would be, it would be completely reversed, which I think is actually very telling about our political culture, but that's neither here nor there.
Joe Biden has been dealt a lot of bad cards and has played those cards terribly.
I don't know how else to say it, and I think, unfortunately, we're in agreement about what that's going to look like going into November, whether or not the damage is already being done.
But the last thing that we need, Nick, is Netanyahu coming here in the summer, in the midst of this thing.
It's not going to be over.
I can't imagine there's going to be a ceasefire at this point, and or anything even approaching a future for Gaza.
I mean, Gantz, for his credit, you know, he cited the fact that there is no plan There just isn't, because the only plan is to continue this war and continue the brutality.
I mean, Netanyahu has no other political or legal choices, really, to make here.
The only thing would be sort of a really, I guess, courageous stand against him that says we need new leadership, we need new elections, which I was a little bit, tiny bit hopeful whenever Chuck Schumer called for that, but I haven't seen anything move that direction.
And this address and this visit, it just feels It feels bad.
I don't know how else to put it.
You have to be a little bit careful about them calling for some sort of war plan that has a beginning, middle, and end because If Smotrich and those guys have any sway, the plan will be what you described.
They'll just level Gaza and nothing will be left of it, right?
So that is what's really troubling on that end, if they're the ones who end up prevailing and getting their way.
And then West Bank would probably be next, because they've already allowed it to be the Wild West.
And you could argue that Palestinians in the West Bank get worse treatment than Gaza.
Well, and by the way, you bring up the West Bank and that is sort of, uh, it's downstream and, and, uh, of what's going on with this, uh, political coalition.
It's this settler mentality that is about getting, you know, violent with it.
And, and what are the, what's the far right in Israel want?
They want more of that, you know?
And, and for the record, you know, we, we were talking a little bit about, uh, Macron and France and this fear of terrorism.
People need to start to understand.
Extremism with terrorism and the far right, they work together.
It doesn't mean they're on like Zoom calls, but each one of them relies on each other.
I mean, if you need evidence of that, go back to 2001.
Go back to George W. Bush and the neoconservatives and Al Qaeda.
Like, they helped each other politically.
George Bush gained power and Al Qaeda got a lot of its political objectives.
Simply because they knew what the neoconservatives in the far right were going to do.
Netanyahu has not only, like, relied on Hamas for his political survival, he's helped them!
I mean, like, and that's not a conspiracy theory.
He's literally helped them.
He doesn't want a post-Hamas Gaza Because he needs to either have them in power in order to keep power, or he needs to get rid of them in order to realize his political operations and agenda the way that he wants it.
So it can't be something that gives us a ceasefire that is conducive or constructive.
It's basically destructive in any way, which is what he relies on.
And for the record, it's what the far right relies on.
Yeah, just to flesh it out a little bit more, the notion that Netanyahu helps Hamas or helped Hamas would have been, well, here's all this money we want you to give to the Gazans and help them in infrastructure, for instance, you know, because you're going to use this for that, right?
Sure.
Here you go.
Here comes, you know, and so that was sort of like the main thrust of a lot of that help.
But certainly, Netanyahu never really had any sense of holding them accountable for actually using the money the way it was supposed to be used.
And that was probably what he didn't mind.
at that point right so that was uh yeah it's it's all he just needs to go and they need but again there's a an old adage never root for a new king because the next guy could be you know the next day worse but they got to find someone who can actually have a humanitarian version of this and get them out of this situation uh and then you know i i will pray that hamas is not no longer in power i think that they've they forfeited that that right to be at the No, it'd be a better world if Hamas wasn't in power.
And I'm glad that you brought this up.
I in no way, shape, or form believe that Benny Gantz would be like, some kind of huge upgrade over Netanyahu.
Like somehow or another he's, you know, Mahatma Gandhi ready to take over the reins, right?
Like, he's part of the same sort of project.
But the point is, Netanyahu, again, and not that Americans can, you know, take any lessons from this, you don't want someone in power who's facing legal ramifications and the only way for them to survive is to hold on to power at all costs.
I don't know if Gantz is necessarily the answer.
On top of that, Nick, one thing that we learn looking at history, militarized culture, the way that Israel is right now, who do they end up having as leaders?
Military leaders.
They end up having people who want to use the military in sort of a muscular and sort of aggressive stance.
So I think you're right.
Wishing for a new king will only get you so far.
There needs to be something else that takes place.
There needs to be leadership that takes place outside of Israel that works within parts of Israel that don't want this.
And right now, there is no clear view of how that happens.
It's a quagmire, the likes of which I don't know that we've ever seen before.
On that note, we're now going to talk with Teddy Wilson, the author of Radical Reports and the podcast Insurrectionist Cookbook.
We'll be back in just a second.
All right, everybody, as promised, we have actual friend of the pod.
We say that sarcastically all the time.
But listen, Teddy Wilson is an actual friend of the pod.
And for those who don't know already, he is a researcher of the extreme right.
He writes at Radical Reports and his new podcast is called The Insurrectionist Cookbook.
It's a it's an immediate follow for me.
Excellent, excellent stuff.
Teddy Wilson, welcome back to The Muckrate Podcast.
Hey, y'all, thank you so much for having me.
It's a real pleasure to get to be on the show again.
Teddy, you know, I wish that we could have you on here and basically this could be a follow-up where we're like, hey, guess what?
The extreme right is done.
We don't really have a threat anymore.
Things are great.
How are things with you?
How's life?
All of that good stuff.
Unfortunately, we are living in an escalating crisis.
We are watching the extreme right, as we've talked about earlier in the show, not only start to gain sort of acceptance in political circles, but also to continue to buttress themselves in paramilitaries and groups and just the threat continues to grow.
Can you start us off, Teddy, and tell us in your research and what you've been looking at, where are we with this current problem?
Right.
Well, it's a busy time, to say the least, I think.
We, or at least what I've been tracking over the past several weeks, include several things, including the far-right's reaction to the conviction of former President Donald Trump and his upcoming Sentencing hearing in July, and there was quite the reaction from various corners of the far right.
And.
I will say that 1 silver lining from that reaction is that we haven't seen any real types of what I would call call to action or, um, any types of planning and logistics.
Uh, related to the reaction from the far right since Trump's conviction.
Um, there hasn't been any wild wide, wide scale plans for protest or any other actions as of yet.
Now that of course can change over time, especially as, um, we get closer to the January 11th, January, uh, 11th sentencing hearing.
Um, but that is.
One piece of what I'm monitoring, another piece of what I've been monitoring, is the far-right and various anti-LGBT actors' response and their targeting of Pride and various Pride events around the country.
As I'm sure your listeners know, Pride began on June 1st and goes throughout the rest of the month, and Um, again, another silver lining we haven't seen as of yet, although this again might be changing.
Um, as I speak, we haven't seen the kind of widespread kind of extremist violent actions that we saw last year.
Now this may change as the month goes on.
And of course, as I say this this past weekend, there was two, um, Drag show events that were forced to be cancelled because of bomb threats in Texas and New York.
We had various foreign actors specifically target locations around the country because they were holding pride, including the Christian Nationalist Fute, who, and I probably pronounced his name wrong, but I don't care, who held a huge rally in Sacramento, California this past weekend.
And then we saw the neo-Nazi white supremacist group, Blood Tribe, hold a rally at the Capitol in South Dakota.
So, There's been quite a bit of action and, um, surrounding pride.
Um, and it's going to be interesting to see what happens in the coming weeks and months, especially in regards to kind of how the far right reacts to the sentencing of Trump and as we move further into the presidential election cycle.
Um, so I think.
Um, one of the things, um, and I'm sure we'll talk about it, um, in more detail, but one of the things.
From my podcast that examines the January 6th insurrection that I think many experts that I've talked to have highlighted is just how long those seeds were sown leading up to the presidential election and after the election leading into January 6th.
I think one of the first times that the Trump campaign and spokespeople for the Trump campaign started mentioning Um, the idea that the election would be stolen or rigged or what have you was in, in February of 2020.
And so I think we should look at these activities to the far right as part of a continuum as we head into the presidential election.
So that's the kind of long and short of what's been on my radar over the last couple of weeks and months.
You know, I'm curious to hear your thoughts on how activated or how motivated the far right, and it's hard to use the far right as a general term like this, but are they activated and motivated to get to the ballot box and actually vote and have an effect on the election in November?
Well, that depends on Which part of the far right you're talking about?
I think if you're talking about.
Um, maybe 1 way to describe them is the partisan far, right?
The people that are.
Um, kind of actively engaged within Republican and right wing.
Partisan politics I think they are highly motivated to to.
Vote and to participate and get out the vote campaigns and to seek to ensure that Trump gets a second term.
I think the picture is a little murkier when you talk about other areas of the far right, whether you're talking about kind of anti-immigrant extremist groups or even white nationalist groups.
Not all of those areas of the far right have been very pleased with Um, the former president, as far as the policy achievements he made or that didn't make or, um, even with the tone of his rhetoric, they don't believe it went far enough.
I think one example of, of that is, um, every time you see a video clip or any mentioned by Trump of his quote unquote success of building the wall, you will, um, Always see people on the far right complain about that and say that he's lying to us and that he didn't actually build the wall.
So there is some discontent within the far right when it comes to Trump.
So it, I think it just remains to be seen.
I think there's just so many different elements at play, especially kind of thinking about this now we're in June and what Is kind of animating the right-wing media and kind of various parts of the conservative electorate will likely look very different come October and November.
So yeah, I think it's it's it's complicated, but I mean all that saying I would suspect that you would see as we get close to election the the election in November.
I think you will start to see even those that are not particularly fans of The former president kind of get on board with getting him elected for a second term.
Teddy, you brought up not just Trump's sentencing, but January 6th.
And one of the things that I've noticed in my research, and I talked about this immediately after Trump's conviction, I was, I was going to, my guess is a lot of the same places where you're going in order to sort of watch these people, research them, sort of lurk and see what they're talking about.
I noticed that a lot of them were saying that they were not necessarily planning on committing violence themselves, but they expected that the soil was already fertile for either Trump supporters to go ahead and do it or to see what happens in November.
I think a lot of people have come to see Trump, like you said, you can't paint it with too broad of a stroke.
A lot of these far-right people, they see Trump as sort of the embodiment of their dreams and hopefully a second term.
We'll be able to see the authoritarian energies that they're interested in.
Others see him as sort of a catalyst.
They think he doesn't even go far enough and, you know, that, you know, the system is fundamentally broken.
I think we're in an incubation period right now where we're watching not just Trump's legal peril sort of come into full view.
And I think so many Americans are sort of, um.
They sort of have their doubts about whether or not he's going to be held accountable for his crimes anyway.
And you know that even him going to jail could be very, very useful.
And a lot of other people who are waiting to see what happens in November and what that could possibly lead to.
Does it feel like an incubation period for you?
I think that seems like a accurate way to describe it.
I think that The idea that we're kind of in an incubation period seems like the right analysis.
I think when you look at the rhetoric in various kind of far-right extremist spaces online, I think you do see that there is a tendency for those folks to almost view political violence or even the idea of a quote-unquote kind of Civil War as a foregone conclusion.
And so at this point, it's almost as though there are a lot of folks within that, when that kind of broad spectrum of the far right that are almost just waiting for a match to strike, or waiting for, you know, some other inciting incident to push them out and push them forward.
And I think It could also be, I think, as I said, we'll probably get into this even more when I talk more about the podcast.
But I think one of the other kind of elements that I've come to kind of discern is whether or not something like January 6th could happen again.
I think it's useful to think about whether or not something like January 6th could happen again at a more localized level.
I think where we look at the amount of threats that are directed towards Election officials from, you know, everyone from secretaries of state that administer the elections in states all the way down to county clerks that handle the day-to-day of the process of voting.
I think there's a just been a extraordinary volume of threats against people that do the work of making elections.
Uh, or run smoothly.
So I think that I am one of the things I'm most concerned about it is kind of the possibility of extremist violence targeted at whether it's local elections or even something like school boards or Even state legislatures and state capitals.
And we have seen things like that happen before.
We've seen far-right extremists attempt to take over state capitals in places like Michigan and Oregon.
And so I think it's useful to think about how this might play out on local levels, especially as we head into the election.
Well, you know, don't you think that that kind of focus is a lot more inviting to far-right extremists than, for instance, like the Capitol on the day they want to count the votes?
Because in my mind, now that it's already happened once, I don't think it would be able to happen again, because it seems to me that the powers that be would just end up having so much security and support at that point with law enforcement, right?
That wouldn't that kind of scare away a lot of the principals who would want to create havoc?
I think that's right.
I also think one of the reasons I think that is less likely is how these far-right extremist groups have changed their strategies and tactics around organizing.
I think so when you look at a group like the Proud Boys or even the Oath Keepers, you know, how many members of those organizations have been arrested and sentenced to prison for their actions.
In and around January 6.
And what we've seen within those groups, those types of groups, is a strategic kind of decentralization of leadership.
There is no more kind of national organization of the Proud Boys.
It is gone.
It is now very localized, is very decentralized.
You know, a group like the Oath Keepers, Um, which was heavily structured towards national leadership basically doesn't exist anymore.
There's a few chapters in a few different places around the country, several of whom have kind of renamed themselves and rebranded themselves.
But I think one of the impediments to kind of.
A big national kind of action or an action on kind of the capital would be that kind of lack of national kind of coordination across multiple groups.
So that also makes it more likely that you'd see kind of a more localized action.
In part because, because these groups are much more decentralized, they're also can be very different in the way that they function and the kind of tactics and how, how extremist and violent they can be.
Again, with the group like the Proud Boys, the Proud Boys, kind of the chapters in Ohio, Look much different than the chapters in South Texas.
The ones chapters in Ohio, they do attend public demonstrations, but they are much less prone to extremist violence as the as are the ones in South Texas who have a much longer history of actually trying to physically attack people and engage in kind of the street level extremist violence.
You know, so far we've talked about some of these paramilitaries and sort of the far-right organizations.
And, you know, I think it's important to take a look at them, but also to take a look at the extremism that has been more widespread culturally.
And, you know, one of the things that Nick and I have covered on this show is that you have more and more right-wing influencers, commentariats, like personalities, who are now saying the authoritarian things out loud in a way that they They've only sort of hinted at before.
I think you used to see a lot of posts, you used to see a lot of things about using the power of the presidency or state power in order to, you know, persecute, prosecute and execute enemies.
Recently, we had a clip, of course, from Tim Pool and Laura Loomer.
And, you know, we covered that, but we also need to make sure that people understand that this isn't new.
I mean, Charlie Kirk and his gaggle of assholes that he keeps around himself were just basically fantasizing about public executions and trials as a way of sort of reinvigorating, I don't know, national spirit or law and order.
Can you talk a little bit about how this extremism is spreading more culturally and politically as opposed to sort of these small pockets of groups and some of these bad actors?
Right.
Well, recently, actually, I wrote on on my newsletter highlighting within the past five or six years, about a dozen examples of either Right-wing social media influencers, various far-right commentators, even Republican politicians explicitly calling for the death penalty or the execution of their political opponents.
And so I think there has been a mainstreaming of this kind of not just extremism, but violent extremism.
And I think one of the places that you can see Kind of how that has seeped into the mainstream is also when you see clips like Laura Loomer calling for the execution of Democrats go viral.
If you go and look at the replies or the comments on where those videos are posted, whether they're on Twitter or Telegram or Facebook or what have you, I think one of the astonishing things is the amount of people that you see essentially agreeing
With what these people are saying and endorsing this kind of political violence, you don't see as many people in those far right spaces saying, essentially, you know, let's tone it down a little bit.
We don't actually want to do this, do we?
You don't really see a lot of that.
And the ones that do say those kind of things are quickly shouted down by most of the people within those kind of comments within that community.
So I think.
Yeah, I mean, there's many ways in which I think the far right and various extremist ideas have been accepted into the mainstream.
I mean, I don't necessarily want to keep talking about them, but I think they're kind of a good example of all this is the Proud Boys.
The amount of members of the Proud Boys of various chapters around the country that have associated with Local Republican parties or other right-wing activists like Moms for Liberty is pretty astonishing.
I mean, there's an, there's a acceptance of, of these groups within just mainstream Republican party politics.
I just wanted to follow up on that very quickly because, you know, when we talk about Proud Boys or we talk about Oath Keepers or we talk about paramilitary groups, I think, unfortunately, we have some stereotypes in our minds that these are sort of like a small group of sort of unhinged individuals who find each other.
They end up, you know, doing their things.
But I think it's also important to talk about, like, where these people come from.
How they end up, you know, performing violence, how they end up doing these sort of things.
And one of the deals that I always like to get into is there are a lot of people around this country who may not be members of Proud Boys or Oath Keepers or any of these other right-wing groups who are already fantasizing About the type of activities that these people are engaged in.
And one of the most dangerous parts, I think, about this moment is not just Republican and right-wing rhetoric that is mainstream at this point, but how that makes the difference between who fantasizes about it and who participates in it.
And right now we're in like this weird period where there are a lot of people who are like right on the verge of not just extremism, but radical extremism.
No, I think that's right.
And in addition to that, I think one of the things that is most challenging about kind of studying these groups and these movements is the fact that you can't really predict what individuals associated with this movement are going to take part in extremist violence, particularly kind of mass casualty type extremist violence.
If you look at the history of of extremist violence in this country, particularly, I think, a good example is anti-abortion extremists and the people that have engaged in assassinations and even bombings of clinics.
And for the most part, they were people that were on the fringes of the movement.
They weren't leaders in the movement.
They weren't very prominent voices within the movement.
There are a few exceptions.
I think his name is Timothy Gunn, who gunned down Um, three or four people in Pensacola, Florida.
I think this is in the early nineties.
Um, he killed a, uh, abortion provider and some nurses.
And he was someone that was always present at the protest of the clinic, but that is, um, not typical for what we've seen.
And so I think, um, I think when you think about like the, the amount of people that are marinating.
In this kind of extremist hate online, it's just really difficult to kind of figure out like who will get radicalized to the point that they'll take kind of real world violent action.
And that's a real challenge that we have to, I don't know of a solution for how we can meet that moment.
Does that mean like you couldn't necessarily give us an answer as to like just how many people are In the far right in that general sense, or is that going to be too hard of a question or too hard of a number to come up with?
Well, well, that's I think.
Yeah, that's I think you can.
You can come up with estimates on.
Who, what number of people might be in particular groups or particular sectors of the movement?
I think you can come up with an estimation of how many members of the Proud Boys there are.
You can come up with estimations of how many members of a white nationalist group like Patriot Front there are.
But as far as just how many people out there are, you know, either adhere to or are sympathetic to far-right extremist ideologies, I think that's really difficult to put a pin a number on.
I would suggest that it's probably higher than most people would expect.
I mean, I don't think we're talking about thousands of people.
We'd be talking about hundreds of thousands of people, if not a few million people.
Wow.
I was also going to ask you how far, we talk about local politics, but how deeply penetrative is having the far right gotten into national politics and the Congress?
You know, this is the Marjorie Taylor Greene question, I suppose.
But, you know, how do you think that's, how deep has that gotten?
Well, I think one of the most concerning things for me isn't necessarily kind of the number of Far right politicians that have been elected to Congress, and you can debate who you would categorize as a far right politician, whether it's somebody like Marjorie Taylor Greene or Paul Gosar.
Or others, but I think one of the concerning things that, um, that I've seen, and I think a lot of other extremist researchers, um, have also seen is kind of the infiltration of the far right within the Republican staff members of.
Of, uh, of Congress, there are a significant amount of people that, um, would call themselves grippers.
Um, those are basically like fanboys of the anti-Semitic white nationalist, um, neo-fascist, um, Nick Fuentes.
And so when you kind of understand just exactly kind of how, how, how many of the people that are working for members of Congress that are probably, um, Adherence of really far-right extremist ideologies.
I think that's pretty concerning.
I think when you look at like a group like the young New York young Republicans, which is essentially been kind of overtaken by far-right fascist ideologues.
That's really concerning too.
So I think I think when you scratch the surface below just the people that are appearing on C-SPAN, that's when you see there is a real problem within the Republican Party.
Teddy, I got good news and bad news.
I'm about to give you a thought experiment.
You've just been named the anti-extremism czar that is going to absolutely clean this thing up and make everything work better.
You know, you're not even held back by the bureaucracy of things.
What needs to be done in your opinion in order to clean up this mess?
I think we can look at a few things, including Internet moderation, making sure that these tech companies aren't spreading these things for profit.
But what else do you see?
Like just sort of reverse engineering what you see in terms of like how people are being radicalized.
These ideas are being spread how this stuff is being cultivated.
What needs to be done to start to clean up this mess?
Well, that's a really difficult question.
I think.
There's a couple of things that I would be concerned about as far as, as far as exerting kind of power, the power of the state to try to fix this problem.
I think there is, there has been a lot of acceptance within kind of the progressive liberal community of using federal law enforcement and other federal state agencies to To attack violent extremism.
And I think while there are some uses of that, that also presents some problematic issues.
And I think as far as content moderation and things like deplatforming people and organizations, I think that's a conversation worth having.
I think it's a tool.
So there's several tools that you can use, but I think one of the Most useful things isn't probably kind of thinking about this from like, what can the federal government do?
What can law enforcement agencies do?
What can social media platforms do?
I think a lot of it amounts to what resources are we going to think about using as far as ensuring that people don't get radicalized in the first place?
I think, and this may Dovetail into content moderation, but I think when you look at who are the people that are radicalized into extremist ideologies, particularly kind of when you talk about kind of white supremacists, white nationalists, and other extremist ideologies, it's almost entirely made up of young white men.
And that's the same thing when you think about kind of Who is radicalized into kind of the incel culture or who has been influenced by this so-called manosphere, right?
There are a lot of young white men, although there's a lot of men of color that also get involved in the various aspects of this.
But there's a real problem with kind of the amount of how easily basically like teenagers can get radicalized online.
And so part of that might be content moderation, but I think part of it is education and kind of in that, you know, that might take the form of numerous different things from nonprofit organizations to faith-based groups to Um, uh, even local organizations, uh, local, uh, community organizations working to ensure that people aren't radicalized in the first place.
I think that's kind of, I think, um, might be the answer to ensure people, um, don't spend, you know, 10 hours on YouTube and Another 10 hours on telegram every day getting radicalized by all these extremist ideologies.
That's as far as I'm concerned, that's kind of where the this the root of the problem is, is ensuring that people don't get radicalized in the first place.
I just want to say I don't have a confirmation vote, but you just got it.
I mean, I think a lot of people want to use state power to go ahead and sort of squash this thing or add to it.
But we already have, first of all, we already have all the power on the books necessary in order to make sure that like legitimate threats are taken care of.
It just so happens that law enforcement doesn't actually believe that extreme white people are the main problem in the country.
They tend to go after people of color and immigrants.
But on top of that, I think what you just said is important, which is we need to get at the root of why people are radicalized, which is to start looking at what kind of conditions and mindsets lead to this.
Right now, I mean, you brought Nick Fuentes.
Nick Fuentes coming out on social media and being re-platformed or whatever, it's the equivalent in Ghostbusters of them opening the containment unit and just letting it go wild.
Right?
I mean, it was starting to make a little bit of a difference starting to moderate this type of stuff, but like a lot of this is already out of the bottle.
And if I was going to say, and if you're someone that's like our age, if you're in your late thirties, early forties, you know, if you're part of the generation X or Even a millennial generation, you probably don't understand the appeal that someone like Nick Fuentes has.
I mean, if you've ever watched his live streams and his videos, he doesn't come across as particularly charismatic to kind of our generation, but he is really speaking directly to Young men that are currently in their teens and early 20s.
I think it's really important to understand just how appealing voices like Nick Fuentes are to younger, particularly white men right now.
He is really speaking their language, and I think that's really important to understand.
You know, I was looking at when you're talking about education and trying to get kids to get them there before they are radicalized.
Look at the reaction the right had to simple, you know, educating kids on accepting of people.
You know what I mean?
Like, I can't picture any future in our country where we would be able to successfully implement a curriculum You know, that would help keep people from being radicalized based on the fact that they're burning books over the most simplest things even now.
Right.
And I think I think one of the good kind of ways to understand that is when you look at the so-called parents rights movement, this kind of these right wing and far right activists that want to control various aspects of education.
They're also the same movement that wants to Believe that parents should have the right to homeschool their children without any interference from the government or any regulation.
They believe that parents should have the right to not have their children vaccinated from any kind of disease or what have you.
But they also believe that.
Parents shouldn't have the right to take their kids to a pride event or take their kids to any kind of LGBT activity.
It's very much the kind of school of thought that, you know, the idea that the government and the legal system is meant to restrain certain people and not others, right?
And so I think But for a large swath of America, I think that they still find that kind of rhetoric, maybe not appealing, but I think there's still a lot of fear around things that people don't understand.
And there's a lot of people that are still motivated by fear of the LGBTQ community, particularly the trans community, in part because they have been Viciously targeted by the far right and right-wing media over the last few years.
So yeah, there's a whole lot of elements at play there.
Teddy Wilson, one of the best researchers of extremism for my money.
Radical Reports is the substack.
The Insurrectionist Cookbook is the podcast.
I can't recommend them highly enough.
Teddy, tell the good people where to find you.
Yeah, you can find me on Substack if you go to RadicalReports.org, where I publish several times a week.
And then you can find the podcast at Patreon slash Insurrectionist Cookbook.
It's available wherever you get your podcast, whether it's Apple Podcasts or Spotify or SoundCloud.
Teddy, thanks so much for joining us.
Of course.
All right, that was Teddy Wilson, friend of the pod, extremism researcher.
Again, the Substack is Radical Reports.
The podcast is Insurrectionist Cookbook.
It was really good getting to talk with Teddy and getting an idea where the pulse is.
I agree with him, Nick.
I think that this is an incubation period.
I think we're still under a lot of threats and we'll see where things go.
I was going to ask you, and we didn't get a chance to talk with Teddy about this, You know, I mentioned on a weekend, or I want to say it was either last week or maybe the week before, that leading up to 9-11, there was sort of this angst about a major attack on America, not that people were predicting it or that it was being planned, but there was a cultural sort of a feeling.
You know, we talked about the Olympics sort of has a shadow over it, the idea of like terrorism, possibly, you know, I think even some extremists have been sort of putting out propaganda about an attack on the Olympics.
Doesn't it feel a little bit like something is in the air that something big and bad is sort of like coming down the line?
I mean, I'm not I'm not predicting that, but doesn't it feel culturally a little bit like that that's in the air a little?
I mean, yeah, I think that since 9-11, since these attacks, like it's probably always in your mind, even when you go to like the mall.
You know, which is really that's why the terrorists win is because they've changed the mindset of people now.
Like, for instance, I was in Buenos Aires coaching a Maccabi team, which is related to Israel, and they arrested three guys who were about to do some terrible terrorist attack at the games.
So, um, I just haven't gone through that.
Uh, yeah, it's, it's definitely on my mind.
I was trying to think about if I could somehow get attached to the, you know, Team USA basketball team and maybe help them do something.
And I was like, you know, that would be amazing.
The incredible experience there also would be in the back of my mind.
Uh, yeah, the notion that that could happen.
Um, and heck I'm supposed to go to Israel next year, uh, for, for the coach more.
And, uh, I'm severely worried about that and have no idea if it's even going to happen.
And I just want to point out based on what we were talking about with the momentum that's taking place in Europe and you know everything else and the the far right and and the way that they work with uh you know extremists basically and and fighting this sort of like feedback loop we need to be aware that like if anything like that occurs like that that that does change things in a hurry you know and and we need to be aware that a lot of the energies that are sort of percolating in the United States and around the world
They're they're like completely and utterly manipulatable.
And I mean a spark could set them off and I just hope for all of us that like we can stay away from that we can start to deal with authoritarianism and maybe start to turn the temperature down a little bit.
Please.
Please.
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