Politics is everywhere whether we notice, like it or not. Apart from the common misconception that politics is a game controlled by only a few and ambitious groups, politics serves as a key tool to transform society and regulate conflicts without the use violence upon groups that don’t share from the same worldviews. In the past couple of years, right-wing extremism has been on the rise in the United States, posing several challenges to the country’s modern democratic institutions. These groups have captured the public’s fear over societal changes and their socioeconomic dissatisfactions with inequalities and poverty.

^{Supporters of the National Socialist Movement, a white nationalist political group, give Nazi salutes while taking part in a swastika burning at an undisclosed location in Georgia, U.S., April 21, 2018. REUTERS/Go Nakamura}

The extreme right-wing has been on the rise in the United States and it is already considered the biggest category within extremist fatalities in the country. “Whether right-wing terrorism is rising or simply getting more media attention is fiercely contested, but its political impact does indeed seem to be growing. In both the United States and Europe, violence on the right intersects with traditional politics and exacerbates political divides, giving it far more influence than it had in the past.” (Daniel Byman). The Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism says that 2018 was a fatal year for the United States, with at least 50 people being killed by extremist-related murders. That is more deaths than any other year since 1995 when Timothy McVeigh bombed the Oklahoma City Federal building, killing 168 people in the second-worst violent attack in US history after September 11. The ADL’s report also demonstrates that domestic right-wing extremists accounted for 73.3% of all extremist-related fatalities in 2018 whereas 23.4% were attributed to radical Islamic terror, with 3.2% not fitting either of the categories.

Right-wing groups are not homogeneous and they do not possess a common agenda. Usually, they opt for general white supremacist, racist, nationalist and derogatory language towards minorities to capture the public. However, Professor Carlos Gustavo, at the International Relations Department at Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo (PUC-SP), describes commonalities among them. First, they seem to understand politics through a “nativism approach”: the idea of conceiving native inhabitants’ interests and lifestyles as superior to immigrants’. He also claims that the State is seen as a pathway to return to an “idealized” and “racially pure” past, that could be achieved through violent authoritarian manners.

Communications Professor Ruth Wodak at Lancaster University addresses that fear is key to understand the rise. Fear of losing national autonomy, old traditions and values, along with a rise in popular discontent with mainstream politics, in democratic institutions, and a widespread societal perception of corruption. Conspiracy theories also play a big role on radicalizing people. The Great Replacement Theory, for example, says that Europeans worldwide are being replaced by mass immigration and immigrant’s high fertility rates. The theory is the base for the spread of (mis)information regarding minorities thus building a negative, racist and prejudiced image around them that encourages hate and fear in the overall public imagination.

In the United States, two voices have been encouraging these movements with derogatory speeches that sparks hate and violent attacks. Richard Spencer, the National Policy Institute’s president, a white supremacist think tank, says that the goal for the United States is to construct a society based on an ethno state for all Europeans. When asked about his views on immigration, he describes it as a “proxy war” and a “last stand” for White Americans. When questioned on Martin Luther King Jr’s role in American politics, he claims that one of the Civil Rights Movement’s leaders is a sign of “White Dispossession” and “Destruction of Occidental civilization”. Additionally, Richard Taylor, author of White Identity and New Century Foundation’s president, describes immigration, homosexuality, abortion and diversity as a threat to America and says that when blacks are left on their own “Western civilization or any kind of civilization disappears.”

According to the United Nations, economic and political exclusion, limited opportunities for social mobility and perceptions of injustice and corruption are drivers of radicalization. Professor Daryna Grechyna at Middlesex University (London) shows that mistrust and high levels of inequalities are the strongest proxies for political polarization that leads to extremists’ attacks. Considering this strong correlation between inequality and extremism, the latest report from the United Nations’ Human Rights Council is eye-opening and brings insightful reflections on how the American Dream has been reserved to only a few percentages of the population.

It is described that the United States has one of the highest poverty rates and inequality levels among countries in the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (the OECD), with the Stanford Center on Inequality and Poverty placing the country in the 18th position out of 21 wealthy nations in areas such as labor market, poverty rates, safety nets, wealth inequality and difficulties for upward economic mobility. Currently, approximately 40 million people are living in poverty, 18.5 in extreme poverty (meaning one lives with or with less than U$1.90 dollars per day) and 5.3 million households living in developing world conditions of absolute poverty. Surprisingly enough, the country had 25% of the world’s 2.208 billionaires in 2018 alone.

The American Dream, idealized under the equality of opportunities, is far from many realities in the country. The inability of being achieved by society’s poorer classes, including middle-class workers, is exploited by extremist figures that seem to communicate to the public that complex and structural socio-economic issues are rooted in immigration, homosexuality or diversity in society. What is left out of the equation is the political and economic gap between the elites and the poor ones, and the precarious socio-economic conditions of households in one of the world’s wealthiest nations, completely neglected from any system of social protection. The equation does not acknowledge the highly uneven distribution (or perhaps, lack of) political power that goes along with the discrepancies in economic conditions. If the situation persists, the fear is that many more people will join these extremist right-wing movements as a way of releasing the frustrations of an unequal system.

An all-in-one solution for the problem probably does not exist. From improved national intelligence forces to educational reforms based on a civic curriculum that promotes tolerance and respect among different groups. Notwithstanding, it is time to rethink the role of politicians, traditional and social media and ourselves. First, politicians (from all political positions), public officials, and other law authorities need to speak out against hate and extremism. It is extremely important to communicate to the public that any sort of extremism is unacceptable and that these movements are a threat. Second, mainstream media must work on the coverage of its content and contribute to strengthening an inclusive democracy. Third, big tech companies (eg. Facebook, Google and Twitter) should review their policies and improve their systems to track extremist propaganda and violence on social media. Lastly, coalitions between different social movements must find new ways of engaging the public in the democratic political sphere and find platforms to speak out against inequalities and question the socioeconomic gaps between the rich and the poor. There is no way of addressing the issue without challenging the inequalities and unequal distribution of power reproduced by the system itself.

Lucas Martins Carvalho: International and Global Studies – Sewanee: The University of the South (Tennessee)