You probably know about the Southern Poverty Law Center, but do you know about South Asia Citizens Web or the Association for Women’s Rights in Development? There are lots of groups out there that monitor right-wing political forces and the struggles against them. In this post I highlight eight of them. I’ve picked sites that may be lesser known, and that target various branches of the right, in various parts of the world, from various political perspectives. I don’t necessarily agree with their politics, but I’m grateful for the reporting and analysis that they provide.
Anton Shekhovtsov’s blog is written by Ukrainian political scientist Anton Shekhovtsov, whose research interests center on far right politics in Europe, particularly central and eastern Europe, as well as red-brown alliance-building. A number of related resources are available via Shekhovtsov’s website. Here are some examples of recent articles on his blog:
- “Whither the Ukrainian Far Right?”
- “The ‘National-Bolshevik’ alliance is again at work in the European Parliament”
- “Aleksandr Dugin and the SYRIZA connection”
- “Russian extreme right White Rex organisation engaged in training of British neo-Nazi thugs”
Association for Women’s Rights in Development (AWID) is a global feminist member organization with offices in Capetown, Mexico City, and Toronto. One of their areas of focus is their Challenging Religious Fundamantalisms program, which shares information about fundamentalist movements and supports efforts by women’s rights activists to combat them. Some recent articles in AWID’s Facing Fundamentalisms Newsletter have included the following:
- Review of Men In Charge? Rethinking Authority In Muslim Legal Tradition
- “Women’s Rights Activists Resist Myanmar’s Proposed ‘Law on Protection of Race and Religion’”
- “Armenia’s Far-Right Pitting ‘The Family’ Against Fundamental Rights”
- “Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity Activists Challenge Regressions In Croatia”
Autonomous Action (Avtonomnoe Deystvie, or AD) is a libertarian communist federation with branches in Russia, Ukraine, and Belorus. Its Manifesto includes an emphasis on anti-fascism and anti-nationalism, among other themes. AD reports on far right activities, anti-fascist activities, and state repression against anti-fascists.
- “On racism in the Russian antifa and hardcore subculture”
- “The End of Antifa?” (about anti-fascists fighting on both sides of the conflict in Ukraine)
- “Russia: Parents of arrested anti-fascist Alen Volikov threatened with violence by police”
Center for New Community is a Chicago-based liberal social justice organization that places special emphasis on countering anti-immigrant nativism and related forms of bigotry. Its Resources page (http://imagine2050.newcomm.org/resources/) features a series of brief articles and charts on topics such as eugenics and Islamophobia. Here are some recent articles from its Nativism Watch section:
- “Geert Wilders in Washington: ‘The less Islam, the better’”
- “Nativist former Rep. Tom Tancredo to speak at Oath Keepers rally”
- “FAIR state group: Immigrant workers prone to gun violence, resemble sheltered animals”
South Asia Citizens Web (SACW) is a left-leaning secularist website that provides reports and commentary on a wide variety of topics related to Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and South Asians in the diaspora. SACW devotes a lot of attention to Hindu nationalism, the Islamic right, and other forms of “communalism” (ethnoreligious bigotry and violence). Here are some of their recent publications:
- “Hindu Nationalism in the United States: A Report on Nonprofit Groups”
- “Daily Life of Segregation and Ghettoisation in Modi’s Gujarat”
- “Video report: In Pakistani Schools, Jihad Is Back”
- “Bangladesh: editorials and commentary following the killing of the blogger Avijit Roy”
Tahrir-International Collective Network (Tahrir-ICN) is a an online network whose tagline is “bringing together anarchist perspectives from the Middle East, North Africa and Europe.” Tahrir-ICN’s Manifesto notes that radical movements in all of these regions face “similar challenges: the implementation of a liberal economy and the threat from the extreme right, whether Christian or Islamic.” Recent posts have addressed events in Syria, Palestine, Morocco, Kurdistan, Iraq, Bahrain, Egypt, Germany, France, and Israel.
- “Syria’s multi-party conflict and multi-way war”
- “Fathers of ISIS”
- “FRANCE: Weekend of anti-fascist resistance in Calais, 5-7 September and Defence Of Migrant Squats”
- “PALESTINE: Sexual Violence, Women`s Bodies, and Israeli Settler Colonialism”
Talk To Action is a leading forum for research and analysis on the Christian right in the United States, covering topics such as Christian Reconstructionism, the New Apostolic Reformation movement, Opus Dei, the Left Behind book series, biblical patriarchy, and the ties between Christian rightists and the neo-confederate movement. Regular contributors include Rachel Tabachnick, Frederick Clarkson, Bill Berkowitz, Frank Cocozzelli, and others. Here’s some of their recent work:
- “Whither the Christian Right in the Democratic Party?”
- “The Duggar Family, the Girl Scouts, and the Christian Right’s War on Transgender People”
- “Could Support for LGBTQ Rights Disrupt the Coalition of Jews and Evangelical Christian Zionists?”
We Hunted the Mammoth (WHTM) is freelance writer David Futrelle’s blog about the “Manosphere” — an online antifeminist subculture that has exploded in recent years, largely outside traditional right-wing patriarchal networks such as the Christian right. In Futrelle’s words, “WHTM tracks and mocks the New Misogyny online, focusing especially on Men’s Rights, Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW), and Pickup Artist (PUA) sites.” The phrase “We hunted the mammoth” comes from an old Men’s Rights quote about all the unappreciated things men had supposedly done for women since the Stone Age. (Futrelle used to call his blog Manboobz, which he concedes was “kind of a dopey name.”)
- “You Won’t Be Shocked by This Crappy Return of Kings Post Telling Men Not to Date ‘Girls Who Claim They Were Raped’”
- “Toronto police investigating PUA who posted video saying a woman should be ‘stabbed and cut up into tiny pieces’”
- “‘Women enjoy being forced to do things, just like children,’ creepy-as-hell Red Pill Redditor observes”
Photo credit: By Reategui12 (Own work) [CC BY-SA 3.0], via Wikimedia Commons.
The archetypal conflict between political opposites is labeled, quite simply, as the struggle between the left and the right. Scores of professional left wing political parties around the world “struggle against” far-right-wing political forces.
Matthew's informative and interesting post here does something different: it pulls 8 quite different groups together. They are cast as allies in monitoring the right-wing: they, without outside coordination, “target various branches of the right, in various parts of the world, from various political perspectives.”
Thousands of right-wing, conservative, and “extremist” citizen groups exist. Access to the Internet makes theoretically possible the timely “monitoring” of individual and group websites on both the left and the right. One individual cannot take on them all, but anti-right-wing activists can take on a branch, even a twig.
Matthew mentions the Southern Poverty Law Center. This popular group monitors a selection of “right-wing” issues, but not with the same emphasis, and selection of issues, as this threewayfight website. The SPL Center reportedly tracks more than 1,600 “extremist” groups.
A group named “The People for the American Way” has also sponsored a right-wing organization watch.
The diversity and great number of political, religious, and social issues, and the international scope, even in Matthew's selection of 8 websites, are noteworthy. Matthew writes: “I don’t necessarily agree with their politics.” I suspect that activists from these 8 websites don't necessarily agree either, with the politics of all the other websites/links in this selection. But some “empathic listening” can be helpful to building understanding, acceptance, and trust between such groups on the left, even when they don't agree with all the political issues of the others.
The unbending classifications of the opposites of "left" and "right" IMHO seem less useful and meaningful when dealing with this complex spectrum of many political, economic, religious, and social issues. But we can learn something by empathic listening to some of these issues.
Matthew writes: “There are lots of groups out there that monitor right-wing political forces and the struggles against them.” We might better wish that lots of groups were highly effective in their struggle.
We might struggle to understand those that are somewhat politically foreign to us, only then to be understood by them. When we use empathic listening to be genuinely influenced by another, we invite them to reciprocate the listening and, with an open mind, allow themselves to be influenced by us.
https://www.stephencovey.com/7habits/7habits-habit5.php
We might become, as Matthew writes, even “grateful for the reporting and analysis that they provide.”
The diversity of political issues, and the international scope, in Matthew's selection of 8 websites are noteworthy. Matthew writes: “There are lots of groups out there that monitor right-wing political forces and the struggles against them.”
Hundreds of right-wing and conservative groups certainly exist. Access to the Internet makes timely monitoring more possible.
http://crws.berkeley.edu/resources/archives
http://www.rightwingwatch.org/category/organizations
The struggles against right-wing political activism involve a complex spectrum of political issues that, apparently, are not all necessarily related to, or allied with, each other. These political issues also change over time. In the distant past, the opponents of the right-wing in France were opposing the restoration of the French monarchy!
Matthew writes: “I don’t necessarily agree with their politics” Anti-right wing activists don't necessarily agree with the politics of other groups that also struggle against the right-wing.
These struggles may (or may not) support multi-culturalism, grass roots democracy, voting rights, women's rights, gay rights, gay marriage & adoption, labor union rights, civil rights, the rights of indigenous people, sexual diversity, the right to abortion, school sex education, anti-fascism, anti-imperialism, anti-settler-colonialism, anti-theocracy, social justice, etc. A struggle against right-wing political forces might, more specifically and more simply, be a struggle that opposes war, colonialism, the excesses of capitalism, religious fundamentalism, creationism, antisemitism, Islamophobia, racism, racial discrimination, heterosexism, patriarchy, male chauvinism, racial supremacy, ethno-religious violence, anti-immigrant nativism, neo-fascism, neo-Nazism, union busting, government use of torture, global warming, etc. The political diversity is enormous.
ooooo
The highlights in Matthew's post above include a blog that monitors the Christian religious right in the USA.
Since this topic was developed elsewhere at this website, note these 2 links to comments on the Talk2action blog about the Charleston Church shooting on June 17, 2015:
Historian Gerald Horne on Charleston, Church, & Slave Resistance
An Assassin's Motivation?