Morning Briefing: Synagogue Arsonist's Journal Reveal 'Deep-Seated' Hatred for Jewish People
Morning Briefing: Synagogue Arsonist's Journal Reveal 'Deep-Seated' Hatred for Jewish People
A sentencing memo filed by prosecutors cited the writings of the college student who pleaded guilting to setting fire to the Congregation Beth Israel synagogue in Austin, Texas.
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Morning Briefing: A sentencing memo filed by prosecutors related to the college student who plead guilty to hate crime and arson charges after setting fire to the Congregation Beth Israel synagogue in Austin, Texas, reveal that in diary entries he wanted to join the Texas State Guard because it would "would give him access to like-minded people who shared his hate."
A man “accused of shooting and wounding three college students of Palestinian descent in Burlington, Vermont,” has pleaded not guilty to attempted murder charges and local law enforcement is investigating the shooting as possibly “hate-motivated.”
Joshua Martinson, the police chief of the water patrol in Dover, Wisconsin, reportedly “signed up for membership with the Oath Keepers.”
The public release of thousands of hours of video footage recording during the Capitol Riot has “fueled a renewed effort by Republican lawmakers and far-right activists to rewrite the history of the attack that day and exonerate the pro-Trump rioters who took part.”
Eric Glen Harrower, who is accused of “helping protesters scale a banister that led to the doors they breached during the Capitol riot,” has reportedly “pleaded guilty to a single misdemeanor count.”
Must Reads
Alberto Toscano writes that “we must recognize that we’re witnessing a global phenomenon: a far Right that’s more than happy to combine revanchist nationalisms with international coordination. With summits like the pan-Christian Right World Congress of Families, through joint proclamations like the red-baiting Madrid Charter, with entrepreneurs of resentment like Steve Bannon jetting around the globe to build nationalist networks, or through the international outreach of proudly ’illiberal’ academic institutions like Hungary’s Mathias Corvinus Collegium, the contemporary far Right has little truck with cultural isolationism. And, inspired by the 1970s French “New Right,” this coalition commonly celebrates ethno-national identities in all their sovereign difference and plurality — so long as those identities are Western, white, traditionalist or settler-colonial. That the Left has no monopoly on making common cause across borders is a fact we ignore at our peril.” [In These Times]
Scott MacFarlane reports that there are a “growing series of alarms being issued about the prospects of violence, conspiracy theories and election denialism during the 2024 campaign cycle. Some of the alarms are being sounded by judges, others by prosecutors. At the Nov. 20 sentencing of Jamie and Jennifer Buteau, it was their daughter's letter that warned of the danger of ‘conspiracy theory rabbit holes.’ …Other federal judges have been more specific about their warnings. Hours earlier on November 20th, during arguments over the gag order issued in Trump's 2020 election conspiracy criminal case in Washington, D.C., appeals court Judge Bradley Garcia pressed Trump's attorney about connections between Trump's social media posts and the risk of harassment and threats ahead of Trump's forthcoming trial date in March next year.” [CBS News]
Moira Weigel writes that Christopher Rufo “tries to distinguish America’s Cultural Revolution by expanding its purview. While stressing his credentials as an originator of the anti-CRT panic, he also insists that CRT is about much more than CRT. Early on, Rufo promises to show “the campaign to embed critical race theory in American life was only one facet of the radical Left’s ‘long march through the institutions.’” He traces the left’s purported schemes to impose a “hideous” form of social control, from Herbert Marcuse’s youth in Weimar Germany, to Mao Zedong’s Long March to the caves of Yannan, to Angela Davis’s travels in the USSR. But the interest of the book does not lie in this scattershot history. Its main interest is as an exemplar of a popular genre on the right: the adversarial intellectual history animated by envy, as well as antipathy.” [The New Republic]
What to expect from Radical Reports: Morning Briefing provides a daily round-up of reporting on the Radical Right; Extremist Links offers a weekly round-up of extremists activities including the white supremacist and militia movements; Narratives of the Right delivers weekly analysis of the current narratives in far right online spaces and promoted by right-wing media; and Research Desk provides monthly highlights research and analysis from academia on the Radical Right.
Your "Must Reads" listing of Moira Weigel's review of Rufo's book at The New Republic, alone is worth the price of my yearly subscription!
It is certainly timely and most useful to me.
Thank you.