Featured – U.S. Law Enforcement Failed to See the Threat of White Nationalism. Now They Don’t Know How to Stop It. For two decades, domestic counterterrorism strategy has ignored the rising danger of far-right extremism. In the atmosphere of willful indifference, a virulent movement has grown and metastasized. Shown is the “alt-right” leader Richard Spencer speaking at the University of Florida in Gainesville on Oct. 19, 2017. Janet Reitman / NYT Read more
Trump administration decides to stop funding efforts to counter far-right extremism. Just a few days after the nation was rocked by a Trump supporter’s attempted bombing spree and an anti-Semitic shooter killing 11 people in a Pittsburgh synagogue, the Trump administration has reportedly decided to end an Obama-era program dedicated to countering domestic terror. Casey Michel / Thinkprogress Read more
‘Saviors of the white race’: Perpetrators of hate crimes see themselves as heroes, researchers say. Mourners walk in a procession Wednesday outside Congregation Beth Shalom in Pittsburgh for the funeral of Joyce Fienberg, who was killed in the shooting at Tree of Life synagogue Saturday in the same city. Terence Mc Coy / Wash Post Read more
Is this the most racist US midterms campaign ever? As Trump tweeted a clip on Wednesday stoking panic about migrants, the 2018 elections have revealed a surge in extremist rhetoric that passes for political campaigning. Oliver laughland / The Guardian Read more
The Long Struggle for America’s Soul. Trump’s bluster about denying birthright citizenship to immigrant children; and his pledge to send federal troops to intercept a dwindling caravan of frantic refugees, sounds eerily familiar. This is not the first time America has been torn apart over how to respond to people of color desperate to escape inhuman conditions. Nor is it the first time a president has threatened to deploy federal troops to return them to the horrors from which they fled. Andrew Delbanco / NYT Read more
This Little-Known Case Is Why Trump Can’t Easily End Birthright Citizenship. Wong Kim Ark, a restaurant cook who was born in San Francisco, was barred from reentering the U.S. after a trip to visit his parents in China. Wong was arrested, and his case eventually made it to the Supreme Court, where judges ruled that under the 14th Amendment, anyone born in the U.S. is automatically a citizen. Kimberly Yam / HuffPost Read more
Crazy Brash Asians. An “undercurrent of racial panic” lurks in American discussions of Asians, reports Wesley Yang in his National Magazine Award–winning essay, “Paper Tigers.” Yang, a columnist for Tablet, places “Paper Tigers” as the second essay in his stunning collection, The Souls of Yellow Folks. Elliot Kaufman / Commentary Read more
Who Was Don Shirley? ‘Green Book’ Tries to Solve the Mystery. Mahershala Ali, right, portraying the virtuoso pianist Donald Shirley in “Green Book.” This movie, to be released on Nov. 21, tells the unlikely but basically true story of the friendship between Shirley (Mahershala Ali) and Tony Vallelonga (Viggo Mortensen), a working-class Italian-American from the Bronx who was hired to chauffeur the New York musician on a 1962 tour of the Jim Crow South. Giovanni Russonello / NYT Read more
Russian Propaganda Veterans Push Candace Owens’ ‘Blexit’ Campaign. We’re not saying that Russia helped make #Blexit trend, but Twitter accounts with a history of pushing Kremlin fake news are playing a disproportionate role in amplifying the call for African-American voters to hop on the Trump Train. Blexit, the brainchild of right-wing personality Candace Owens, is a nascent movement meant to urge black voters to leave the Democratic Party. Kevin Poulsen / The Daily Beast Read more
‘Shut Up and Dribble’ recalls long history of activist athletes. LeBron James serves as producer, and former ESPN anchor Jemele Hill wrote and narrates the documentary, which begins with Bill Russell, who became player-coach of the Boston Celtics at a time when the league still sought to restrict the number of African-Americans on rosters. ” Shut and Dribble” premieres Nov 3 on Showtime. Read more
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