FALL 2020 The Public Eye Book Review: Spectres of Fascism • Could Anti-Government Militias Become Pro-State Paramilitaries? No Sanctuary: Anti-Abortion “Abolitionists” Go to City Hall • Conservative, Christian, Corporate: COVID-19 Opportunism and Betsy DeVos’s Education Agenda FALL 2020 Total Life Reform: The Real Consequences of the Far Right’s Self-Help Grift editor’s letter We’re closing this issue of The Public Eye on the eve of Election Day. Whatever this week THE PUBLIC EYE will bring, Political Research Associates will continue to bring sharp, relevant analysis and QUARTERLY insight to the trends shaping our country and world. PUBLISHER In our book review (pg. 3) this issue, Matthew N. Lyons reads Spectres of Fascism, a Tarso Luís Ramos collection of essays considering the rise of right-wing authoritarian and populist move- EDITOR ments across the world, from the U.S. and Hungary to India and the Philippines. “One Kathryn Joyce of the challenges in trying to understand fascism is that it touches on so many different COVER ART aspects of human experience,” writes Lyons, “from the brutality of mass imprisonment Shea Justice and killing to the pageantry of a political rally; from the calculations of geopolitics to the PRINTING intimacies of family life.” Park Press Printers In a piece encompassing original data research, “Could Anti-Government Militias Become Pro-State Paramilitaries?” (pg. 5), Jaclyn Fox and Carolyn Gallaher look at the The Public Eye is published by concerning possibility of overlap and collaboration between various sectors on the far- Political Research Associates right and the Trump administration. While militia movements have traditionally defined Tarso Luís Ramos, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR themselves in opposition to government, this year has shown a worrying trend of these groups’ potential alignment with the state—“engaging in extra-judicial violence states Kevin Chinn, OPERATIONS COORDINATOR desire but can’t or won’t formally sanction.” As Fox and Gallaher write, “By embracing Frederick Clarkson, SENIOR RESEARCH ANALYST Trump, the new generation of militias has accepted, however tacitly, that the power of the federal government, in the ‘right’ hands, may deliver bigger rewards.” Cloee Cooper, RESEARCH ANALYST Cloee Cooper and Tina Vasquez team up for our next feature, “No Sanctuary: Anti- Ethan Fauré, RESEARCH ANALYST Abortion ‘Abolitionists’ Go to City Hall” (pg. 13), to look at the trend of anti-abortion Steven Gardiner, ASSISTANT RESEARCH DIRECTOR advocates engaging in hyper-local activism in support of abortion “sanctuary cities.” In states across the country, activists co-opting the legacy of both anti-slavery activists and the Heron Greenesmith, SENIOR RESEARCH ANALYST immigrants’ rights movement are lobbying for municipal and county-level ordinances that Olivia Lawrence-Weilmann, PROGRAM COORDINATOR purport to criminalize abortion locally. While for the most part, these ordinances are still largely symbolic, they nonetheless have significant repercussions both locally and nationally. Isabelle H. Leighton, DEVELOPMENT DIRECTOR In “Conservative, Christian, Corporate: COVID-19 Opportunism and Betsy De- Ben Lorber, RESEARCH ANALYST Vos’s Education Agenda” (pg. 18), Alex DiBranco dives deep into the ways that Trump Koki Mendis, COMMUNICATIONS MANAGER Secretary of Education DeVos has taken advantage of the pandemic to advance her career- long goal of school privatization and taxpayer support for religious education. As DiBran- Anne Murphy, FINANCE DIRECTOR co writes, “Since her deeply contested confirmation hearings, DeVos has been criticized Charles Ocitti, DIRECTOR OF OPERATIONS, for incompetence and ignorance regarding the public education system. But this lens ob- scures the extent to which DeVos’s decisions as secretary are less inept bungling than in- Greeley O’Connor, MANAGING DIRECTOR tentional right-wing strategy.” Aidan Orly, DONOR PROGRAM MANAGER Finally, in “Total Life Reform: The Real Consequences of the Far Right’s Self-Help Harini Rajagopalan, OMMUNICATIONS OORDINATOR Grift” (pg. 25), Shane Burley delivers an in-depth report on Operation Werewolf, an en- C C trepreneurial lifestyle brand created by the co-founder of the far-right pagan group Wolves FELLOWS of Vinland, which uses a self-help model to radicalize men into White supremacist politics. Dan Atkinson • Zoé Samudzi • Tina Vasquez This “Amway for ethno-nationalists” has developed a following among various intersecting INTERNS subcultures, reflecting “an intentional strategy of post-war fascist circles to decontextual- Cat Gonzales Fergesen • Rodrigo Pimental ize far-right politics as cultural and artistic—a means of influencing culture and identity Ava Sasani-Kolori more than immediate politics, with the hope of changing politics further down the line.” Board of Directors In advance of Election Day, PRA published a memo online, “Paramilitaries at the Polls: Jeyn Levison, Chair Fatema Ahmad • Cathy Albisa • Saqib Bhatti What to Expect Around the 2020 Elections,” with key takeaways and thoughts on how to Ginna Green • Ellen Gurzinsky prepare for far-right militancy. Our Winter issue, forthcoming in January, will be a special Orson Moon • Mandisa Moore-O’Neal Mohan Sikka • Zeke Spier post-election issue, looking forward to the various movements and themes that will be im- Carla Wallace • Susan Wefald portant in the coming months. Founder In the meantime, as always, we will be publishing fresh research, reports, and analysis Jean V. Hardisty, Ph.D. online, so be sure to visit us at politicalresearch.org. 1310 Broadway, Suite 201 Thank you, Somerville, MA 02144-1837 Kathryn Joyce Tel: 617.666.5300 [email protected] © Political Research Associates, 2020 All rights reserved. ISN 0275-9322 ISSUE 103 www.politicalresearch.org 2 • The Public Eye FALL 2020 BY MATTHEW N. LYONS Book Review Spectres of Fascism ne of the challenges in trying that today’s fascism is shaped by other to understand fascism is that it factors, such as the dominance of finance Otouches on so many different capital, automation, climate change, and aspects of human experience, from the international mass migration. brutality of mass imprisonment and kill- Some of the book’s range of disciplin- ing to the pageantry of a political rally; ary approaches can be seen in the three from the calculations of geopolitics to the essays that I consider to be its strongest, intimacies of family life. Spectres of Fas- at least from the standpoint of helping us cism: Historical, Theoretical and Interna- understand today’s authoritarian Right. tional Perspectives (London: Pluto Press, In “The Outsider as Insider: Steve Ban- 2020) approaches this challenge by tak- non, Fourth Turnings, and the Neofascist ing an interdisciplinary approach. Edited Threat,” philosopher Joan Braune de- by Samir Gandesha, a scholar of Frank- tails the far-right ideological influences furt School critical theory—a dynamic that have helped shape former Trump school of radical thought that coalesced administration strategist Steve Bannon. in the 1930s—the collection takes in- Notable among them are the apocalyptic spiration from that tradition in two re- mysticism of the Traditionalist School spects. First, the book follows the Frank- (whose ranks included neofascist phi- furt School’s recognition that analysis losopher Julius Evola) and Jean Raspail’s of class struggle and crisis in capitalism racist novel The Camp of the Saints. The ti- is only part of understanding fascism’s tle of Braune’s essay highlights her argu- rise, and that an analysis of subjective ment that Bannon’s populism is rhetori- factors, such as culture and psychology, cal cover for an elitist, anti-egalitarian is also needed. Second, like the school’s worldview. organizational home, the Institute for In contrast to Braune’s ideological fo- Social Research, the book assembles ippines. (See the Winter/Spring 2020 cus, Gandesha’s own essay, “‘A Compos- scholarship from many different fields, “international” issue of The Public Eye ite of King Kong and a Suburban Barber’: with contributors representing political to read more about some of these coun- Adorno’s ‘Freudian Theory and the Pat- science, philosophy, economics, sociol- tries.) In the introduction, Gandesha ar- tern of Fascist Propaganda,’” explores ogy, anthropology, law, history, psycho- gues that today’s authoritarian populist the social psychology of fascism. As Gan- analysis, and aesthetics. Right represents not a simple return to desha relates, Adorno argued that adula- Spectres of Fascism grows out of the lec- fascism as it emerged in Europe in the tion of and identification with the leader tures and discussions in a year-long “free 1920s and ’30s, but a reworking of fas- caused people to give up their individu- school” of the same title that Gandesha cist elements in new forms and under ality and even their interest in self-pres- organized in 2017 as director of Simon new conditions. For example, while clas- ervation. (Think mask-less Trump rallies Fraser University’s Institute for the Hu- sical fascism attacked liberal democracy in the age of COVID-19.) Adorno empha- manities. The collection seeks to make head on, contemporary fascism erodes sized the role of mass-produced culture sense of the recent upsurge of right-wing or suffocates it gradually from within. (at the time, radio and film) in promoting authoritarian populist movements, par- And while 1930s fascism emerged as a “the authoritarian personality” by teach- ties, and governments in countries as