Whose crime & whose punishment? Identity and retribution for extremist violence

The average health outcomes in the US are not as good as the average health outcomes in other developed countries. However, whether high-income US citizens have better health outcomes than average individuals in other developed countries is unknown. To assess whether the health outcomes of White US citizens living in the 1% and 5% richest counties (hereafter referred to as privileged White US citizens) are better than the health outcomes of average residents in other developed countries. This comparative effectiveness study, conducted from January 1, 2013, to December 31, 2015, identified White US citizens living in the 1% (n = 32) and 5% (n = 157) highest-income counties in the US and measured the following 6 health outcomes associated with health care interventions: infant and maternal mortality, colon and breast cancer, childhood acute lymphocytic leukemia, and acute myocardial infarction. The study used Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development data, CONCORD-3 cancer data, and Medicare data to compare their outcomes with all residents in 12 other developed countries: Australia, Austria, Canada, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Japan, the Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland. Statistical analysis took place from July 25, 2017, to August 29, 2020. Infant mortality; maternal mortality; 5-year survival of patients with colon cancer, breast cancer, or childhood acute lymphocytic leukemia; and 30-day age-standardized case fatality after acute myocardial infarction. The infant mortality rate among White US citizens in the 5% highest-income counties was 4.01 per 1000, and the maternal mortality rate among White US citizens in the 5% highest-income counties was 10.85 per 100 000, both higher than the mean rates for any of the 12 comparison countries. (The infant mortality rate for the top 1% counties was 3.54 per 1000, and the maternal mortality rate was 10.05 per 100 000.) The 5-year survival rate for White US citizens in the 5% highest-income counties was 67.2% (95% CI, 66.7%-67.7%) for colon cancer, higher than that of average US citizens (64.9% [95% CI, 64.7%-65.1%]) and average citizens in 6 countries, comparable with that of average citizens in 4 countries, and lower than that of average citizens for 2 countries. The 5-year survival rate for breast cancer among White US women in the 5% highest-income US counties was 92.0% (95% CI, 91.6%-92.4%), higher than in all 12 comparison countries. The 5-year survival rate for White children with acute lymphocytic leukemia in the 5% highest-income US counties was 92.6% (95% CI, 90.7%-94.2%), exceeding the mean survival rate for only 1 country and comparable with the mean survival rates in 11 countries. The adjusted 30-day acute myocardial infarction case-fatality rate for White US citizens in the 5% highest-income US counties was 8% below the rate for all US citizens and was 5% below the rate for all US citizens in the 1% highest-income US counties; these estimates were similar to the median outcome of other high-income countries. This study suggests that privileged White US citizens have better health outcomes than average US citizens for 6 health outcomes but often fare worse than the mean measure of health outcomes of 12 other developed countries. These findings imply that even if all US citizens experienced the same health outcomes enjoyed by privileged White US citizens, US health indicators would still lag behind those in many other countries.

There has been a rise in far-right extremism (FRE) globally, with a related rise in white nationalist and white supremacist violence. In all this, places connected to white supremacist violence remain less well-studied. This article reflects upon the politics of commemoration at the largest Confederate memorial in the world, Stone Mountain, Georgia in the United States. We analyse visitor reviews on TripAdvisor and YouTube videos about commemorative events to illustrate how visitors to Stone Mountain erase its and, more broadly, the United States’ history of white supremacy. Instead, there are claims that this is a tourist site, a place for leisure where violence and politics have no place. Such claims evade the issue of white supremacist violence that was foundational to the Confederate cause and to the production and development of memorials like Stone Mountain. Such erasure means understandings of “violent extremism” in the United States – wherein events like the Confederacy and its aftermath in relation to racial injustices are not discussed – is limited and incomplete. This article argues that before debating what is or is not “violent extremism”, this history of white supremacist violence needs to be reckoned with, especially regarding its presence and its traces on the landscape.

In critical terrorism scholarship, structural aspects of white supremacist violence remain understudied. In this paper, I argue anarchism offers a way to resist and counter structural white supremacist violence, especially the violence of the state, by providing examples and lessons to act against white supremacist violence at the everyday level. After discussing common understandings of anarchism in International Relations (IR) and terrorism studies, I draw upon James C. Scott’s “somewhat anarchist” approach as it is a useful methodology in the context of an increasingly authoritarian state. Scott’s “somewhat anarchist” framework is then used to briefly analyse practices that led to the removal of historical statues in Charlottesville in the United States. An anarchist seeing notes anarchism as a tactic of building networks and solidarity outside the gaze of the state that can then act against white supremacist ideas and practices. The paper concludes by reflecting upon a “somewhat anarchist” framework’s relevance to the future of Critical Terrorism Studies (CTS) in three areas: responses to state violence, illustrating and acting against structural white supremacist violence, and building horizontal networks. An anarchist seeing also focuses on praxis, including a call to action against white supremacist violence in our communities.

This article addresses backlash from white academic gatekeepers to research on the white far right and white supremacist violence. Centrally, I interrogate how whiteness shapes the field’s response to a seeming shift in patterns of political violence towards white supremacist activity. Taking white supremacy in the study of white supremacist violence seriously, I contend, would shift our attention to larger social patterns of oppression and opportunities for liberation. However, this does not happen due to a concept I call “whiteness as expertise.” Building on Charles W. Mills’ white epistemologies of ignorance, I argue that the attributes of transferability and disconnection both obscure and perpetuate how scholarship on white supremacist violence can further whiteness. First, I review the backlash experienced by the academic and policy turn towards white supremacist violence, even if scholars and practitioners may not call it “white supremacist.” I then introduce the concept of whiteness as expertise in more detail, highlighting how insistence on “terrorism” as a unitary and unifying category leads to backlash against research on white supremacist violence. I conclude with examples of academic backlash to open discussion into the complexities of studying whiteness within a white-majority academy.

How does attachment to the nation influence one’s perception of white nationalist terrorism in the United States? Whereas terrorism has traditionally been understood as attacking the interests of the State, the recent increase in white supremacist violence in the United States is also deeply connected to the country’s history. An emerging body of literature has begun to examine the subjectivity of what is considered terrorism, often finding that respondents are less likely to identify white perpetrators as terrorists compared to non-white perpetrators for similar crimes. We engage a survey experiment to extend the ‘relational theory of terror perception’ to one’s attachment to the nation. We test how national attachment, an ostensibly positive disposition and distinct from patriotism and nationalism, shapes how racially motivated violence is perceived. We find that those with a stronger attachment to the nation are less concerned by hypothetical incidents of white supremacist violence than those with a weaker attachment to the nation. These biases that minimize concern for white supremacist violence are held across the political spectrum and are not simply a function of race, party affiliation, or political ideology. In fact, national attachment is a stronger predictor of attitudes toward white supremacy than respondent race; we find no support for our hypothesis that white respondents would be less concerned by violence committed by white perpetrators. Recognizing the link between positive attachment to the nation and tolerance for white nationalist violence is crucial for shaping America’s response to this threat to national security and civil peace.

Currently, White supremacy is the greatest terror threat, domestic or international, for the United States, accounting for 73 percent of domestic terror fatalities between 2009 and 2018. As such, this unique aspect of terrorism demands the attention of not only society but also researchers. The first section of this chapter examines the historical roots of White supremacy and White supremacist violence. The second section examines the underlying ideologies that drive these movements and the violence they engage in. The third section explores many of the White supremacist groups that operate within the United States, organizing them by the group’s motivations such as political influence, religious, or youth culture. The fourth section focuses on the current empirical research on White supremacy, specifically the extent of this violence, entry into these groups, and desistance from White supremacy. The chapter concludes by noting areas for future research on White supremacy and domestic terrorism.

In recent decades, the discussion of terrorist threat in the United States has focused almost exclusively on radical Islam. Now, progressive politicians increasingly talk about white supremacy as a form of terrorism. We explore reactions to this new rhetoric using two survey experiments, in which non-Hispanic white respondents are exposed to real tweets of Democratic and Republican politicians discussing white supremacy and radical Islam as security threats. We formulate two alternative expectations: after seeing messages from Democratic politicians linking white supremacy to terrorism, whites may either diverge in their assessments of Republicans’ anti-Muslim appeals depending on their own partisanship or they may uniformly rate anti-Muslim rhetoric as more acceptable. Both experiments show significant increases in the perceived acceptability of anti-Muslim appeals when they are presented after messages about white supremacy, and these results are driven by white Democrats. Our results highlight the potential side effects of political communication about terrorism.

Although overall colorectal cancer (CRC) incidence rates in the United States are declining, rates among younger persons (age < 55 years) are increasing, particularly among US whites. We assessed how these trends will impact the future burden (up to 2040) of CRC among US blacks and whites using an age-period-cohort model. Over the last four decades (1973 to 2014), CRC incidence rates for all ages (both sexes) have dropped by 6.6% and 33.9% in US blacks and whites, respectively. Yet we predict an upward turn in CRC cancer incidence rates over the next quarter century, particularly among US whites. The age-standardized rates of CRC were 55.4 and 43.2 per 100 000 among US blacks and whites in 2014, respectively, and are projected to be 49.5 and 43.1 in 2040, respectively. Future interventions are needed to reduce the striking differences in CRC incidence between blacks and whites.

Revolutionary Suicide

On January 27, 2017, President Donald Trump signed an executive order (EO) banning citizens of seven Muslim countries—Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, and Yemen—from entering the United States. In addition, the EO suspended the already anemic refugee program for ninety days and banned Syrian refugees indefinitely. Chaos ensued as two hundred inbound travelers with valid visas, green card holders, and dual citizens were detained in US ports of entry. Some unfortunate few were deported, while others remained in limbo as the American Civil Liberties Union and other organizations contested the constitutionality of the ban before Judge Ann M. Donnelly of Federal District Court in Brooklyn. Donnelly subsequently ordered that the detained travelers not be deported. Another US District Court judge, James Robart of Washington State, halted the ban altogether on February 3, 2017.At the heart of what later came be known as the "Muslim ban" is an attempt to vilify Muslim bodies, ban their mobility, and invade their privacy by activating the invading, terrorist other narrative. Trump's ascendancy to the presidency was the culmination of a fearmongering rhetoric that pitted disenfranchised white Americans against minorities and immigrants of numerous ethnicities or faiths (Mexicans, Arabs, South Asians, and Muslims). It portrayed a dismal picture of a vulnerable America in crisis—one whose borders are constantly penetrated by immigrant invaders looking to steal American jobs and inflict harm on unsuspecting civilians. The old Cold War rhetoric has been reactivated, only this time the Soviet/Russian enemy is supplanted by the Muslim enemy. The "invading" Muslim bodies have to be invaded in return, disrobed, prodded, questioned, and forced to leak information pertaining to matters of faith and its practice. Some travelers report being asked if they pray regularly and to what extent they subscribe to shariʿa law. Others were ordered to surrender their smartphone passwords, subsequently being detained further if any Quranic verses appeared in their chats or Facebook posts. To be admitted into any US port of entry, Muslim bodies have to submit to various forms of physical and digital inspection, X-rays, and questions violating their privacy to the point of eliminating their dignity and essence. They have to be transparent, self-erasing to the point of nonexistence. Only then can their perceived threat be neutralized.This Muslim hunt did not stop at citizens of the seven countries referenced in the EO but extended to American citizens of all ethnicities. There are reports of twenty-five American citizens who were stopped at the border, asked about the relevance of their names to the Muslim faith, and ordered to surrender their smartphones and passwords. On February 7, 2017, Muhammad Ali Jr., the son of the late boxer Muhammad Ali, and his mother, Khalilah Camacho-Ali, were detained at Fort Lauderdale–Hollywood International airport (Vales 2017). Camacho-Ali was released upon showing her picture with her late ex-husband. However, Muhammad Ali Jr. was detained for another two hours and asked whether he was a Muslim, and what was the reasoning behind his unabashedly Muslim name, Muhammad, despite his African American ethnicity. On March 9, 2017, he was prevented yet again from boarding a flight, this time in Washington, DC, because of his name.The most pernicious aspect of profiling and targeting the Muslim citizens of the seven nations in the EO travel ban is the way that it normalized prejudice and gave license to hateful rhetoric and violent extremists. On February 22, 2017, two Indian engineers were shot at a bar in Olathe, Kansas, by Adam Purinton, who hurled racial slurs and shouted, "Get out of my country!" (Eligon, Blinder, and Najar 2017). The subsequent death of thirty-two-year-old Srinivas Kuchibhotla and the deafening silence of the Trump administration in condemning this hate crime speak volumes to the challenges minorities and immigrants face in the era of Trump. The unseen benefit of this unprecedented attack on our constitutional and civil liberties is the mobilization of US citizens from various backgrounds against prejudice and tyranny. Uniting in collaborative resistance, residents of New York organized an "I Am a Muslim Too" rally on February 19, 2007. Thousands of people filled Times Square in protest of the Muslim ban, declaring that an attack on one Muslim American is an attack on all Americans. Non-Muslim women donned the hijab as they listened to Linda Sarsour, the former executive director of the Arab American Association of New York and cofounder of MPower Change. Invoking their shared humanity, she stated, "While you are saying, 'I am Muslim too,' I say to you, 'I am unapologetically Muslim all day, every day.'" (Chow 2017). The focus on resisting through an intersectional coalition that brings men, women, and members of various ethnic and religious communities together is key to defying the encroachment on American civil liberties. Indivisible movements sprouting all over the country are the best forms of civil and feminist advocacy in defiance of Trump's Muslim ban. Akin to the millions of Arabs who protested tyrannical autocrats by occupying public squares during the Arab Spring, American citizens invading city squares and congressional offices represent the antidote to Trump's poisonous, divisive rhetoric, and the triumph of American democracy.

The Kids Are Alt-Right: How Media and the Law Enable White Supremacist Groups to Recruit and Radicalize Emotionally Vulnerable Individuals

This guide accompanies the following article: Matthew W. Hughey, ‘The Janus Face of Whiteness: Toward a Cultural Sociology of White Nationalism and White Antiracism’, Sociology Compass 3/6 (2009): 920–936, 10.1111/j.1751‐9020.2009.00244.x Author’s introduction Over the past 20 years, the study of white racial identity has received in‐depth, interdisciplinary attention. Under sociological scrutiny, the study of whiteness has traversed quite a few stages: from understandings of whiteness as a category replete with social privileges, as a mere reflection of non‐racial (often class‐based) dynamics, to its most recent turn that emphasizes the contextual and intersectional heterogeneity of whiteness. Because of the increased attention to context and political disputes, the study of whiteness has never been more amenable to cultural analysis than it is today. Hence, an emphasis on different white racial formations that span a political spectrum – from conservative to liberal and racist to antiracist – is now dominant. In this vein, white nationalists and white antiracists represent the distinct polarities of contemporary inquisitions into white racial identity. Motivated by this academic milieu, this guide offers an overview of the major scholarship that address white nationalism &amp; white antiracism, appropriate online materials, and examples from a sample syllabus. Together, these resources aim to assist in understanding the general processes and contexts that produce ‘whiteness’ and imbue it with meaning, the social relationships and practices in which white racial identity identities become embedded, and how whiteness simultaneously possesses material and symbolic privileges alongside diverse and seemingly antagonistic experiences. Author recommends The complexity of whiteness McDermott, Monica and Frank L. Samson 2005. ‘White Racial and Ethnic Identity in the United States.’ Annual Review of Sociology 31 : 245–61. Any contemporary apprentice of the sociological study of white racial identity should read this essay. Monica McDermott and her student Frank Samson combine to provide a robust overview of the literature. They walk the tightrope of balancing both a broad coverage of the literature with the depth that key studies necessitate. In so doing, they put a finger on the key dilemma of studying white racial identity today: ‘Navigating between the long‐term staying power of white privilege and the multifarious manifestations of the experience of whiteness remains the task of the next era of research on white racial and ethnic identity’ (2005: 256). Duster, Troy 2001. ‘The ‘Morphing’ Properties of Whiteness.’ Pp. 113–33 in The Making and Unmaking of Whiteness , edited by E. B. Rasmussen, E. Klinenberg, I. J. Nexica and M. Wray. Durham, NC: Duke University Press. In this essay – part of a larger volume on whiteness that I also recommend – Duster synthesizes disparate approaches to the study of whiteness. Demonstrating how some scholars understand white racial identity as a contextual and cognitive category (‘fluid’), while some frame whiteness as a structural and fixed category of material privileges (‘frozen’), Duster asks ‘who is right?’ He answers via the metaphor of whiteness‐as‐water. In one moment, whiteness can morph into vapor as a contextual and unstable identity, while the next moment it can instantly transform into a harsh and unyielding form of ice‐like privilege. Duster’s essay is an excellent retort for those who argue that we should move ‘beyond’ race to the utopian realm of color‐blind individualism. Duster demonstrates, although the example of the supposedly egalitarian New Deal, that while race is socially constructed, the legacy of racism remains a historically reproduced and real social fact – denying the existence of race perpetuates racial inequality. Duster closes the chapter with a personal anecdote that grounds the historical example in modern, interactional, and everyday life. Perry, Pamela 2002. Shades of White: White Kids and Racial Identities in High School . Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Perry gives us two ethnographic studies in one – that of two northern California high schools: one located in a predominantly white, if economically diverse, suburb, the other situated in a multiracial urban community. Perry persistently and systematically probes the complexities of white racial identity in the practices and discourses of the youth attending these high schools. She finds that whites in the predominantly white, suburban high school do not see themselves as a unique race and take their racial identity for granted – they understand distinctly white practices as normative rather than as constitutive of a subjective worldview. In contrast, the whites at the multiracial, urban high school possess a more critical and comparative view of race and their own place in the racial order. In sum, Perry argues that whiteness is a set of complex, contradictory, and multiple subject positions. Wray, Matt. 2006. Not Quite White: White Trash and the Boundaries of Whiteness . Durham, NC: Duke University Press. Matt Wray brings the tools of cultural sociology viz‐á‐viz ‘symbolic boundaries’ to the interrogation of the moniker White Trash . Wray problematizes this relatively normalized term to question its origins and how it persists. Drawing upon literary texts, folklore, diaries, medical articles, and social scientific analyses from the early 1700s to the turn of the 20th century, Wray documents the multiple meanings that were projected onto poor rural whites in the United States. Of particular import, Wray demonstrates how white supremacist ideas about class and region became dominant through public health campaigns and eugenic reformations. Impoverished whites found themselves the targets of officials and activists who framed them as ‘filthy’ or “feebleminded,” and thus a threat to the purity and supremacy of the white race. This text is particularly informative for its demonstration of how white supremacist logic was not only focused on racial ‘otherness’ but used the axes of class and location to directly demarcate and attack those seen as ‘white’ yet somehow racially deficient and unworthy. Winant, Howard 2004. ‘Behind Blue Eyes: Whiteness and Contemporary U.S. Racial Politics.’ Pp. 3–16 in Off White: Readings on Race, Power, and Society , edited by Michelle Fine, Lois Weis, Linda C. Powell and April Burns. New York, NY: Routledge. In applying his now classic approach formulated in concert with Michael Omi ( Racial Formations , 1986), Howard Winant applies the ‘racial projects’ thesis to whites: ‘I think it would be beneficial to attempt to sort out alternative conceptions of whiteness, along with the politics that both flow from and inform these conceptions. … focusing on five key racial projects, which I term, far right, new right, neoconservative, neoliberal, and new abolitionist ’ (2004: 6). Hence, Winant maps a theory of white identity formation onto a bifurcated ‘culture war.’ Labeling this phenomenon ‘racial dualism as politics,’ Winant advances a paradigm in which whiteness is undergoing ‘a profound political crisis.’ Winant’s essay is especially important for those that wish to emphasize the heterogeneity of white racial identity, as he provides Weberian‐like ‘ideal types’ for the comprehension of the racial‐political landscape. Hughey, Matthew W. (forthcoming 2010). ‘Navigating the (Dis)similarities of White Racial Identities: The Conceptual Framework of “Hegemonic Whiteness.”’ Ethnic &amp; Racial Studies. In this work, I build upon many of the aforementioned studies. Like Pamela Perry (2002) I dive into two ethnographic sites, but of much different breed. To interrogate how whiteness might be akin to ‘vapor and ice’ (Duster 2001) and to provide a robust answer to the dilemma of the ‘long‐term staying power of

White supremacists today are often violent, but they are rarely able to achieve their expansive political objectives. White supremacists face a variety of problems: they often find it difficult to recruit without being discovered; they are usually broke, and as a result cannot sustain their organizations; the decentralization of the movement makes it difficult for them to follow any strategy and leads to constant infighting; and, in most countries, law enforcement and weak popular support limit their activities. Governments are able, if they try, to fight white supremacist violence effectively. Nevertheless, they are able to kill many people, and many strands of the movement are more violent than in the past. The threat of terrorism, moreover, should be measured beyond the lives lost. White supremacists often have a more profound political and psychological impact than their numbers suggest.

THE HISTORICAL CONDITION OF FILIPINO AMERICA Suspended Apocalypse: White Supremacy, Genocide, and Condition by Dylan Rodriguez. Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press, 2010. Pp. 272, including 5 blackand-white photographs. $75.00 cloth, $25.00 paper.Ever since United States purchased Philippine Islands from Spain at turn of twentieth century, status of Filipinos in relation to United States has dynamically reflected America's anxiety with race and empire. Oscar V. Campomanes points to this unease in his pivotal 1995 essay on representations of Filipinos in American discourse by arguing that Filipinos suffered from an inherent unrepresentability and unassimilability because of absence of discussions of American empire in American academic and cultural discourses.1 Similarly, Luis H. Francia observed enfolding complexity of in his exhibition essay for 1997 visual art exhibition, Memories of Overdevelopment:True children of electronic age, objects of America's Asiatic thrusts, we know all about America even before we come. Remembering future, we arrive here strangers in a familiar land, revisiting places we had never set foot on, renewing friendships that had never begun.2Both Campomanes and Francia describe logic of strangeness that structures Filipinos' epistemologica! framework as a recursive matrix that defines condition in relation to an imagined and deferred America. Suspended Apocalypse extends Campomanes's argument about epistemological condition of Filipinos to a broader on tological inquiry. Dylan Rodriguez's text addresses underlying alienation identified in Francia's observation through a theoretically engaged and critical genealogy of American discourse. Arguing that previous analyses of the neglect a broader theoretical approach, Rodriguez's central argument is that the production of 'Filipino American' is defined - essentially and fundamentally - by a complex, largely disavowed, and almost entirely undertheorized relation to a nexus of profound racial and white supremacist violence (11). Rodriguez's intent is to provide precisely this broader theoretical engagement.3 He shifts our attention away from characterization of condition as residing solely within a binary of Philippine and US historical experience to a broader concern for disparities of power that are transhistorical and global, from benevolent assimilation to white supremacist genocide. Interdisciplinary and wide-ranging, Rodriguez's polemical text deepens our understanding of ontological status of the Filipino and, more broadly, reproduction of epistemologies of dominant ideologies against and within those of oppressed.In each chapter, Rodriguez engages with insightful examples of condition to illustrate ways that Filipinos have confronted and addressed pervasive power of white supremacist genocide. Chapter 1 explains Rodriguez's key concern about ways that production of condition disenables engagement against very ideological discourses that create condition. Rodriguez juxtaposes Pilipino Cultural Night, popular cultural performance and event held annually by students on many campuses, with a student-led protest by Third World Liberation Front at University of CaliforniaBerkeley against Proposition 209, California's 1996 anti- affirmative action measure. For Rodriguez, American students' conscious practice of Americanism was a form of identity politics that illustrates normative condition. Rodriguez asserts that individual subjectivity and shared community that Pilipino Cultural Night offered is inherently aligned with state power and, consequently, Americanism negates possibility of engaging in critical political practices.Chapter 2 elaborates on Americans' conflicting affiliation with America. …

Winning the Right War