By Geoffrey R. Skoll

Fear has long served elites. They rely on fear to keep and expand their privileges and control the masses. In the current crisis of the capitalist world system, elites in the United States, along with other central countries, promote fear of crime and terrorism. They shaped these fears so that people looked to authorities for security, which permitted extension of apparatuses of coercion like police and military forces. In the face of growing oppression, rebellion against elite hegemony remains possible. This book offers an analysis of the crisis and strategies for rebellion.

New York: Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.  247p.

By Robert M. Zecker

Race was all over the immigrant newspaper week after week. As early as the 1890s the papers of the largest Slovak fraternal societies covered lynchings in the South. While somewhat sympathetic, these articles nevertheless enabled immigrants to distance themselves from the "blackness" of victims, and became part of a strategy of asserting newcomers' tentative claims to "whiteness." Southern and eastern European immigrants began to think of themselves as white people. They asserted their place in the U.S. and demanded the right to be regarded as "Caucasians," with all the privileges that accompanied this designation. Immigrant newspapers offered a stunning array of lynching accounts, poems and cartoons mocking blacks, and paeans to America's imperial adventures in the Caribbean and Asia. Immigrants themselves had a far greater role to play in their own racial identity formation than has so far been acknowledged.

New York; London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2011. 360p.

Edited by A. L. Beier and Paul Ocobock

Throughout history, those arrested for vagrancy have generally been poor men and women, often young, able-bodied, unemployed, and homeless. Most histories of vagrancy have focused on the European and American experiences. This is the first book to consider global laws, homelessness, and the historical processes they accompanied. Vagrancy and homelessness are used to examine the migration of labor, social and governmental responses, poverty through charity, welfare, and prosecution. Cast Out includes discussions of the lives of the underclass, strategies for surviving and escaping poverty, the criminalization of poverty by the state, the rise of welfare and development programs, the relationship between imperial powers and colonized peoples, and the struggle to achieve independence after colonial rule.

Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2008. 409p.

By Brooke Kroeger

In her provocative book, Brooke Kroeger argues for a reconsideration of the place of oft-maligned journalistic practices. While it may seem paradoxical, much of the valuable journalism in the past century and a half has emerged from undercover investigations that employed subterfuge or deception to expose wrong. Kroeger asserts that undercover work is not a separate world, but rather it embodies a central discipline of good reporting—the ability to extract significant information or to create indelible, real-time descriptions of hard-to-penetrate institutions or social situations that deserve the public’s attention. Together with a companion website that gathers some of the best investigative work of the past century, Undercover Reporting serves as a rallying call for an endangered aspect of the journalistic endeavor.

Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press. 2012. 518p.

Edited by Guy Elcheroth and Neloufer de Mel

This volume bridges two different research fields and the current debates within them. On the one hand, the transitional justice literature has been shaken by powerful calls to make the doctrine and practice of justice more transformative. On the other hand, collective memory studies now tend to look more closely at meaningful silences to make sense of what nations leave out when they remember their pasts. The book extends the scope of this heuristic approach to the different mechanisms that come under the umbrella of transitional justice, including legal prosecution, truth-seeking and reparations, alongside memorialisation. The 15 chapters included in the volume, written by expert scholars from diverse disciplinary and societal backgrounds, explore a range of practices intended to deal with the past, and how making the invisible visible again can make transitional justice - or indeed, any societal engagement with the past - more transformative. Seeking to combine contextual depth and comparative width, the book features two key case analyses - South Africa and Sri Lanka - alongside discussions of multiple cases, including such emblematic sites as Rwanda and Argentina, but also sites better known for resisting than for embracing international norms of transitional justice, such as Turkey or Côte d’Ivoire. The different contributions, grouped in themed sections, progressively explore the issues, actors and resources that are typically forgotten when societies celebrate their pasts rather than mourning their losses and, in doing so, open new possibilities to build more inclusive processes for addressing the present consequences of past injustice.

London; New York: Routledge, 2022. 257p.

Edited by Marco Castrignanò, Carolina Mudan Marelli and Teresa Carlone

Analyzing with an ethnographic approach The Wire, one of the most important TV series on American ghettos, to understand and question the sociological perspective that emerges from the series, positioning it into the broader scientific debate. This is, in a nutshell, the work presented in the book It's all in the Game, the outcome of a laboratorial research activity carried out in 2020 by students and teachers of the Sociology of Communities and Urban Neighborhoods class, at the University of Bologna. The text is structured into four chapters, resulting from the four topics used to analysis the TV series: forms of social capital, the relationship between structural forces- culture of poverty and individual agency, neighborhood effects mechanism and the relationship between statistics and political action. Four subjects that are the core of many neighborhood- studies related researches and on which the TV series makes a clear stand. We analyzed those topics through a critical perspective, not considering them as a truth about ghettos, but as a very precise way of thinking about life in the American suburbs.

Milan: FrancoAngeli, 2022. 158p.

Edited by Dominique Grisard, Annelise Erismann, Janine Dahinden

Violence is a persistent element of modern history and it always has been gendered. Today’s violent times have politicized and mobilized new publics, generated creative forms of resistance, incited the most unlikely coalitions, and emboldened to live life differently. The systemic use of rape as a strategy in war fare, nationalism, and settler colonialism, the persistency of intimate partner violence, and the increasingly open racist, sexist, transphobic, and homophobic discrimination are just a few examples of violence’s omnipresent gender dimension. The contributions of this volume analyse violence and multiple forms of resistance from an interdisciplinary gender perspective. They show that violence is not just a central and powerful structuring principle of gender, sexuality, ethnicity, race, and class, but that it is also part of the fabric of nation states and structures all social relations. In addition, the contributions depict manifold strategies and tactics of confronting gendered violence.

Zurich: Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), 2022. 155p.

By Jon Lewis, Seamus Hughes, Oren Segal and Ryan Greer

“Basically, they’re domestic terrorists. That's why we’re here,” stated a Georgia Assistant District Attorney on February 14, 2020. The prosecutor was attempting to explain to a judge why two members of The Base, a violent white supremacist group, should not be let out on bond. Prosecuting domestic terrorists through the state court system instead of the federal system may seem unusual, but it is a result of the mosaic of different approaches federal and state prosecutors use to address the increasing threat of domestic extremism. Cases like these demonstrate the need to examine whether the government is using all the tools at its disposal to address the threat of white supremacist violence. It also underscores the need to ensure that government and law enforcement officials have the resources and knowledge they need to track the criminal activities of violent extremists and, whenever possible, prevent terrorist acts. The United States has struggled to adapt to a changing domestic terrorism landscape. In the last two months alone, more than a dozen Americans were arrested as part of wideranging investigations into a growing domestic terrorism threat stemming from individuals and groups that have a number of international ties. In response to the upsurgence of these groups, the seriousness of the threat they pose, and the manner in which they operate, U.S. officials have raised alarms. For example, Elizabeth Neumann, the Assistant Secretary for Threat Prevention and Security Policy at the Department of Homeland Security, recently told a Congressional committee that, “it feels like we

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  are at the doorstep of another 9/11…we can see it building and we don’t quite know how to stop it.” This policy paper focuses on the recent arrests of domestic extremists, as well as current efforts by law enforcement to disrupt and counter the growing influence of racially motivated violent extremist ideology—specifically white supremacy—and analyze the current state of enforcement actions against two domestic networks: The Base and Atomwaffen Division. In the accompanying policy recommendations, the authors outline administrative actions, legislative and policy changes, and other possible federal and state legal and prosecutorial powers that could allow for a more comprehensive and effective approach to countering these threats.   

Washington, DC: George Washington University, Program on Extremism, 2020. 35p.

By Pete Simi

A hypothetical “lone gunman” walks into a reproductive health care clinic spraying bullets from his assault rifle screaming that “abortion is murder!” and “the Army of God seeks revenge for the unborn fetuses murdered every year!” The shooting rampage leaves three individuals dead and 11 others injured. Additional weapons and explosives are discovered in the shooter’s van parked outside the clinic. Inside the van, a slew of literature explains how abortion is part of a liberal, feminist initiative to “enslave white Americans.” During the shooter’s interview with law enforcement later that day, he explains his motive was to “intimidate the general public by enforcing God’s law while sending a message to any other abortion killers that they might want to find another line of work.” In the days following the attack, scattered media coverage describes the gunman as “deranged,” “crazed,” and “unstable.” Few, if any, note the clear political and religious motivation nor do any of the articles describe the incident as “terrorism” or the shooter as a “terrorist.” What should we conclude about this scenario? The fact that the shooter was driven by ideological concerns seems obvious, yet the response suggests the link is apparently not so obvious. Understanding the relationship between ideas and violence presents several substantial challenges. These challenges are magnified given our tendency toward employing a highly inconsistent assessment of when and how ideas influence violence.

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  We tend to perceive a close connection between ideas and violence when the incident involves a Muslim perpetrator, while relying on a far different metric when the perpetrator is not Muslim. And the consequences are tremendous with major differences in terms of public perceptions and legal treatment.

Washington, DC: George Washington University, Program on Extremism, 2020. 12.

By Alexander Meleagrou-Hitchens, Blyth Crawford, Valentin Wutke

Salafi-jihadism and right-wing white supremacist extremism are two of the most visible, active, and threatening violent extremist movements operating in the West today, responsible for dozens of attacks throughout North America and Western Europe. With the increased threat of white supremacist terrorism in the West have also come questions about its relationship to jihadist terrorism. This study provides an assessment of the ideological similarities between the two movements, concluding that they share key traits and political outlooks, some of which have become increasingly widespread over recent years in the Western world and beyond. Firstly, these forms of extremism are the most violent iterations of their respective movements. Jihadists are the ideological fringe of the wider Islamist movement, while white supremacist extremists emerge from more mainstream, right-wing white identity and supremacist politics. They are both reactionary political movements. They treat any form of social or political progress, reform, or liberalization with great suspicion, viewing these chiefly as a threat to their respective ‘ingroups’. In this sense, jihadists too are extreme right-wing actors even if they are rarely referred to in such terms. Both movements share a similar underlying diagnosis for the ills of their respective societies, placing blame primarily on the forces of liberal progress, pluralism, and tolerance.  

Washington, DC: George Washington University, Program on Extremism, 2021. 103p.

By Everytown for Gun Safety

The boogaloo movement has risen to national prominence as a new and dangerous subset of the extreme right in the United States. Boogalooers focus on and fantasize about a supposedly imminent second civil war, referred to as the “boogaloo,” wherein the corruption they see in the political system will be overthrown. This is still an emergent movement, but its ideological core centers around guns and distrust of authority, whether that be the government, police, or political institutions. The movement originated on the internet forum 4chan, and adherents to the boogaloo movement continue to be active online in various forums and social media platforms. Many media portrayals have focused on the seemingly quixotic traits of boogalooers, like their habit of wearing Hawaiian shirts, communicating via internet memes, or their name being derived from the 1984 break-dancing movie Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo. But make no mistake, the boogaloo movement is inherently violent, well armed, and organized around preparations for a civil war purportedly coming to America’s streets. Individuals tied to the boogaloo movement have already plotted attacks and committed violence, and intelligence and law enforcement agencies have pointed to a growing threat emanating from the movement. As previous research from Everytown has demonstrated, an entire extreme-right ecosystem serves as a breeding ground for individuals aliated with far-right movements such as the boogaloo, providing both inspiration and motivation—whether political, conspiratorial, or racist—for them to act.

New York: Everytown for Gun Safety, 2021.   10p.

By Hans-Georg Betz 

Radical right-wing populist parties have been a fixture of Western European party systems for several decades. Once considered “flash parties” they have become part of the political establishment. A number of factors account for their staying power. For one, radical rightwing populist parties offer an attractive mixture of anti-establishment rhetoric (populism) and an exclusionary policy program (nativism) which appeals to a diverse range of constituencies. At the same time, they evoke and play to a range of strong emotions engendered by large-scale structural changes, which threaten to disrupt the lives of a substantial number of citizens in advanced capitalist societies. When in a position of power, however, these parties largely fail to meet the needs of their core constituencies.  

London, UK: Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right, 2020. 42p.

By Jason Xidias 

In the past two years, Spain’s far-right party Vox has gone from no representation in the Spanish parliament to 52 seats, making it the third most representative political force nationally behind the People’s Party (PP) and the Socialist Party (PSOE). This has radically transformed Spanish politics, leading to a level of polarization not seen since the Spanish Second Republic (1931-9). Until Vox’s recent electoral success, Spain was considered immune to the far right because of its Francoist past and relatively favorable attitude toward globalization, the EU, and immigration. However, as this article shows, Franco has never completely gone away—Vox is both a modernized version of Spain’s ultraconservative past and a condition and manifestation of international neoliberal and authoritarian trends. The article analyzes Vox’s ideological roots, emergence, political program, voter base, and influence in Spanish politics in relation to key events—notably the Great Recession, the success of far-left party Podemos, corruption scandals in mainstream politics, and Catalonia’s pursuit of independence—and speculates about the party’s future against the backdrop of COVID-19.   

 London, UK: Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right, 2020. 23p.

By Jason Xidias

While 85 years have now passed since the end of the Spanish Civil War, and 46 since the end of the Franco Dictatorship, historical memory continues to be a great source of political and social tension in Spain today. In comparison to nations such as Germany and Greece, the country remains an outlier insofar as it transitioned to democracy without ever achieving legal justice. This is due to deeply-embedded myths of reconciliation and equal accountability created and maintained by the ruling class, the royal family, the education system, the judiciary, and the mainstream media. Since the 1990s, the Socialist Party, motivated by political opportunism and pressure from the far left, regional parties, and domestic and international human rights organizations, has fractured “the pact of forgetting”; however, as the article argues, its own ideological shortcomings and institutional constraints have prevented a full rupture. As such, while the newly-proposed Law of Democratic Memory, which the current leftist coalition government (PSOE-Unidas Podemos) foresees passing this year, does represent significant progress, the Socialist Party’s own limitations prevent justice—in the form of an independent truth commission and the prosecution of Francoist crimes—and contribute to promoting a cultural of impunity, which is one of Spain’s principal deficiencies in terms of democracy.

 London, UK: Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right, 2021. 29p

By Gary LaFree

In this overview, we report on the purpose of the grant, the data collected, the project design and methods, the data analysis, the findings and the implications for criminal justice policy in the United States. The grant proposal included three data analysis sections: (1) a large-N analysis of extremist hate offenders and other political extremists from the Extremist Crime Database (ECDB) and the Profiles of Radicalization in the United States (PIRUS) data; (2) a set of original case studies on individuals either connected to hate crime or politically motivated extremism; and (3) the social media experiences of more than 25 offenders who have engaged in violent and non-violent activities in hate groups and more than 25 offenders who have engaged in either violent or non-violent activities in extremist political groups. We review the contributions of each before closing with a brief set of conclusions.

College Park, MD: National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START), 2019. 13p.

By Anti-Defamation League, Center on Extremism

While there are almost certainly more, the following is an inventory of white supremacist prison gangs that the ADL Center on Extremism has created by working with correctional institutions and law enforcement, reviewing case files and news stories and tapping its own extensive body of information of white supremacist prison gang activities. Key Points: ■ For nearly four decades, white supremacist prison gangs have constituted one of the primary segments of the white supremacist movement, though they are different in many ways from “traditional” white supremacist groups. ■ Though they typically originate and are active in jails and prisons, most of these gangs are just as active on the streets as behind bars—including involvement in violence and other criminal acts. ■ Though they are white supremacist in nature, these prison gangs are usually a form of organized crime and frequently prioritize profit over ideology. ■ Most white supremacist prison gangs allow only men as full members, but women play important roles in most such gangs, including in criminal activity. ■ There are currently more than 75 different white supremacist prison gangs in at least 38 states and the Federal Bureau of Prisons, as well as in major county jails. They range from relatively small local gangs all the way to multi-state gangs with a thousand or more members. ■ The crimes committed by white supremacist gang members include traditional criminal activities such as running major drug dealing operations as well as ideologically motivated crimes such as hate crimes. Most white supremacist gangs also

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  have a high association with violence—which includes violence directed even at their own members and associates.

 New York: Anti-Defamation League, Center on Extremism, 2022. 46p.

By Daniel L. Byman and Mark Pitcavage

White supremacists have been a leading source of terrorist violence in the United States in the last decade, responsible for 40 plots or attacks from 2011 to 2020. We argue that the threat is dangerous but also that the white supremacist movement as a whole has many weaknesses, some of which can be exploited. In contrast to jihadist groups like al-Qaida at its peak, American white supremacists lack a haven from which to operate; their international ties are also weaker than those of jihadist organizations. The white supremacist movement is also highly divided, and members disagree as to who their primary enemies are and how they should attack them. In addition, they enjoy little public support, and their violence usually backfires, making the movement less popular. Overall, the movement’s capabilities are low, unable to match its grandiose ambitions. These weaknesses hinder recruitment and operations, make movement members vulnerable to prosecution and disruption, and otherwise limit their strength. Many of these weaknesses stem from existing counterterrorism and civil society pressure; continued and at times increased efforts by government, technology companies, and civil society officials is vital. Political leaders of both parties must also consistently condemn white supremacy, ensuring that the movement remains marginalized.  

Washington, DC: Foreign Policy at Brookings, 2021. 12p.

By Blyth Crawford, Florence Keen, Guillermo Suarez-Tangil

Several violent far-right attacks in recent years have revealed an apparent connection with ‘chan culture’, not just in the tangible examples of attackers uploading manifestos, final messages, and live streams to chan sites themselves, but in the widespread community support exhibited in some corners of this online subculture where violence is both trivialised and glorified. Commonly, this is manifested in the visual culture present on chan sites, particularly memes, which may be used to promote extreme or even violent narratives under the guise of humour and irony.

We sought to understand how the visual culture of chan sites was contributing to, and/or encouraging violent discourse. To do this, our team combined quantitative data scraping, ethnography, and visual analysis across 12 chan sites ranging in popularity between March and June 2020, in addition to conducting 12 interviews with experts over this period.

London: The International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation (ICSR),2020. 50P.

Daniel L. Byman and Mark Pitcavage

White supremacists have been a leading source of terrorist violence in the United States in the last decade, responsible for 40 plots or attacks from 2011 to 2020. We argue that the threat is dangerous but also that the white supremacist movement as a whole has many weaknesses, some of which can be exploited. In contrast to jihadist groups like al-Qaida at its peak, American white supremacists lack a haven from which to operate; their international ties are also weaker than those of jihadist organizations. The white supremacist movement is also highly divided, and members disagree as to who their primary enemies are and how they should attack them. In addition, they enjoy little public support, and their violence usually backfires, making the movement less popular.

Overall, the movement’s capabilities are low, unable to match its grandiose ambitions. These weaknesses hinder recruitment and operations, make movement members vulnerable to prosecution and disruption, and otherwise limit their strength. Many of these weaknesses stem from existing counterterrorism and civil society pressure; continued and at times increased efforts by government, technology companies, and civil society officials is vital. Political leaders of both parties must also consistently condemn white supremacy, ensuring that the movement remains marginalized.

Washington, Dc:Brookings Institution,2021. 12P.

By Richard Milner and Christina Milner

Originally published in 1973, Black Players was the first book to do a thorough examination of the urban pimp culture. Social anthropologists Richard and Christina Milner were allowed access to the secretive and controversial world of pimps and prostitutes. Black Player guides the reader through every aspect of this unfamiliar world, allowing the Players to describe themselves, and the rules of the game in their own words. The Milners interviewed many of the top pimps in the Bay area and other parts of the country during the late 60's/early 70's. There is even a rare interview with legendary pimp-turned-author Iceberg Slim in this book. Out of this experience, has come one of the most fascinating journeys into a secret culture ever written.

Chatsworth, CA : King Flex Publishing, 2010. 362p.