Who's Fanning the Flames of Far-Right Extremism?

The systems of power that have long manipulated and fueled the very extremism we’re now being told to fear. An inspiring call to rise above fear and polarization regardless of who's elected.

The enemy is fear. We think it is hate, but it is fear. — Mahatma Gandhi

Drones, snipers, razor wire, panic buttons, sniffer dogs, body armor, bulletproof glass. These are some of the security measures American election officials are implementing for Tuesday’s vote.

Fear is useful for avoiding danger, yet it is too often used to hijack our thinking and obscure the bigger picture. The militarization of our elections, driven by official warnings about right-wing extremists, shows just how deeply fear has infected society. What we need is a more complete and nuanced understanding of the political forces shaping American society. More than that, we need narratives that turn our attention to what might bring us together—regardless of our political differences and who gets elected in office.

While far-right extremism is undoubtedly a concerning reality, political violence is actually very rare—representing just over 1% of violent hate crimes in the United States. In a recent poll, the majority of Republicans identified white supremacist extremism as a “problem,” yet mainstream media continues to portray Republicans in general as extremists. A groundbreaking 2022 study by More in Common revealed that Americans significantly overestimated the extremity of the beliefs held by those with differing viewpoints, with Democrats and Republicans each “overestimating the proportion of their political opponents holding immoderate views by about 20 percentage points or more.”

Contrary to fearful mainstream media narratives, these are a few of many examples that show we’re not as divided and polarized as we are led to believe. “We call this the “perception gap” in American politics,” the More in Common study says, “the yawning chasm between Americans’ suspicions and reality.”

The reality may be more complex than we think, and the threat of political violence may be overblown. Going deeper, who’s really behind the rise of far-right extremism? We’re all familiar with the MAGA effect, but could there be deeper forces at work? Can we exclusively fear far-right political violence without acknowledging the historic role that the American empire has played in fueling right-wing extremism? Below, we take a look at the systems of power that have long manipulated and fueled the very extremism we’re now being told to fear.

Through Operation Paperclip, the CIA, NASA, and many other branches of government provided aliases for top Nazi officers and scientists to enter and be employed by the US after World War II. More than 1,500 Nazis were secretly embedded in the US scientific community and intelligence establishment. A top watchdog at the Social Security Administration even found that the agency paid $20.2 million in social security benefits to more than 130 suspected Nazi war criminals.

While attempting to stop the spread of communism during the Cold War, in an operation dubbed Gladio, NATO and the CIA worked with far-right extremists throughout Western Europe, arming and equipping fascist groups that carried out terrorist attacks in Italy, Turkey, and elsewhere.

A report from the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism recently warned that ignoring the threat of post-election, far-right political violence in the US will only exacerbate election denialism and anti-democratic sentiment. Yet it's crucial to recognize that the issue of election integrity is not a partisan issue. In the US, election corruption happens on both sides of the political aisle.

Internationally, the US government—under the leadership of both political parties—has manipulated elections and governments all over the world. This manipulation has installed and propped up right-wing regimes, supporting fascists, drug lords, and terrorists. And let’s not forget US support for neo-Nazis in Ukraine. Throughout the global war on drugs, US ties to right-wing extremism was on full display. Ironically, the very forces within our intelligence agencies that have engaged in these covert foreign policy actions are the ones warning us that far-right extremism poses the greatest threat to the United States.

It was also discovered that the Democratic Party fueled the very extremism they claim to oppose by financing the most prominent figures in election denial to the tune of tens of millions of dollars during the 2022 Republican primaries. Democrats in nine states worked to amplify more extreme Republican candidates, believing they would be easier to defeat in the general election compared to Trump. This approach ultimately increased the reach of the most extreme voices and further radicalized the electorate.

FBI Involvement in Terrorism

The gigantic catastrophes that threaten us today are not elemental happenings of a physical or biological order, but psychic events. To a quite terrifying degree we are threatened by wars and revolutions which are nothing other than psychic epidemics. At any moment several million human beings may be smitten with a new madness, and then we shall have another world war or devastating revolution. Instead of being at the mercy of wild beasts, earthquakes, landslides, and inundations, modern man is battered by the elemental forces of his own psyche.
— Carl Jung

The Oklahoma City bombing in the 90s was one of the most impactful terrorist attacks on US soil. The attack was carried out by far-right extremists with suspicious ties to the FBI, as evidenced by a sworn declaration from Terry Lynn Nichols, the only surviving convict in the case. Nichols claimed that his co-conspirator, Timothy McVeigh, revealed he was taking orders from a high-ranking FBI official, raising serious questions about the extent of government involvement in the bombing plot.

We were told to believe that January 6 was a violent insurrection aimed at overthrowing legitimate government and staging a coup. The events of that day received extensive media coverage, with a group called the Proud Boys held largely responsible for organizing the rebellion. But it was barely reported that the leader of the Proud Boys, Enrique Tarrio was an FBI informant. In fact, the FBI had as many as eight informants within the Proud Boys during the Capitol storming.

Yet as New York Times reported, “despite the vast amount of evidence the government collected in the case — including more than 500,000 encrypted text messages — investigators never found a smoking gun that conclusively showed the Proud Boys plotted to help President Donald J. Trump remain in office.” The FBI found "scant evidence" that there was an organized plot to overturn the presidential election result. In fact, a senior law enforcement official emphasized that the majority of those arrested acted independently, driven more by personal grievances against the political establishment than by any coordinated effort to undermine the electoral process.

There is little that unites me with those who occupied the Capitol building on Jan. 6. But that does not mean I support the judicial lynching against many of those who participated in the Jan. 6 events, a lynching that is mandating years in pretrial detention and prison for misdemeanors. Once rights become privileges, none of us are safe. The vast majority of those caught up in the incursion of the Capitol did not commit serious crimes, engage in violence or know what they would do in Washington other than protest the election results. We are exacerbating the growing tribalism and political antagonisms that will increasingly express themselves through violence. We are complicit, once again, of using the courts to carry out vendettas. We are corroding democratic institutions. We are hardening the ideology and rage of the far-right.
— Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Chris Hedges Chris Hedges, Lynching the Deplorables

While the Oklahoma City bombing led to far greater loss of life than the events on January 6, both incidents share a troubling similarity: the involvement of the FBI with the perpetrators. After all, the FBI has had a notorious history of manufacturing terrorist plots, often targeting vulnerable minors who have significant cognitive and intellectual disabilities yet no history of harming anyone. Prosecuting innocent teenagers like this not only pads the FBI's arrest and prosecution statistics but also helps justify its budget by misrepresenting the threat of terrorism. National security expert Sahar Aziz reflects on the nature of the FBI's tactics, saying, “If there were genuine terrorist threats in America, the FBI wouldn't be diverting its resources to ensnaring a mentally ill minor.”

A Call to Rise Above Fear and Polarization—Regardless of Who’s Elected

I want there to be a place in the world where people can engage in one another’s differences in a way that is redemptive, full of hope and possibility. Without an ethic of love shaping the direction of our political vision and our radical aspirations, we are often seduced, in one way or the other, into continued allegiance to systems of domination. The ability to acknowledge blind spots can emerge only as we expand our capacity to care about the oppression and exploitation of others. A love ethic makes this expansion possible.
— poet and social justice activist bell hooks

Far-right, white supremacist extremism is a legitimate threat, and we need to find ways to heal the cycle of violence and hate in our communities. For example, Black musician Daryl Davis befriended hundreds of KKK and white supremacists with love and acceptance, leading these individuals to disavow their allegiances and thus unravel generations of hate.

The work of Smith college professor Loretta Ross provides a constructive alternative to the dehumanizing cancel culture widespread in our society. As a social justice activist, she lived through COINTELPRO, a secret FBI program that sought to destroy lives, ruin reputations, and disrupt socially progressive organizations that challenged establishment interests. Over the years, she’s built unexpected yet transformative relationships with KKK members and incarcerated men convicted of serious crimes against women. In response to the growing polarization in our society, she once said "if you're more wedded to destabilizing than unifying, part of me is gonna think you're naive, and the other part of me is gonna think you're a plant. And neither one of those is going to look good on you." She lives by a motto that was shared with her by her mentor Reverend C. T. Vivian: “When you ask people to give up hate, you have to be there for them when they do.”

Perhaps a greater threat to society is the misrepresentation of extremism to make people afraid and easier to manipulate. Who benefits from creating mass fear in the public about right-wing extremism? Politicians and government agencies consolidating their power, the national security and surveillance state profitably expanding its reach, and corporate media capitalizing on strong emotions. After all, the fear of Communism benefitted Adolf Hitler, and made people more willing to conform to harsh militant rule and turn a blind eye to genocide. The fear of terrorism following 9/11 benefitted war profiteers, despite a failed 20-year war that costed $8 trillion and killed 4.5 million people.

Here’s the good news. Humanity is more peaceful than ever before compared to past centuries. More and more people find less and less value in the two-party system, which is driving a shift towards alternative viewpoints that transcend the tribalistic partisan polarization flooding our media systems and poisoning our conversations. In fact, a recent poll revealed that a record 49% of Americans see themselves as politically independent — the same percentage as the two major parties put together.

Regardless of who’s elected in office, the biggest challenges we face will persist, far outweighing the threat of far-right terrorism. If we really wanted to protect the American people, we could save millions of lives by dismantling the corporate cartels controlling our food and healthcare systems. We could also hold our intelligence agencies accountable for their longstanding history of funding and supporting repressive far-right regimes all over the world. Most importantly, we could begin addressing the predatory corporate practices and government policies responsible for the extreme levels of financial inequality holding our entire society back.

Labels like "election deniers," "far-right white supremacists," and "conspiracy theorists" reduce humans to ideological constructs, sabotaging authentic communication by stripping away context and nuance. The end result is that we’ve become more counter aggressive, defensive, and fearful of each other.

No matter who we vote for, each of us has the responsibility to work with our fears in the face of complex issues that lack clear answers. Destabilization, chaos, and polarization may provoke deeper questions that could help us turn to one another—across our echo chambers and political differences. It seems as though any societal shift begins with a consciousness shift in how we think and relate to ourselves, others, and the world.

With faith in a transforming world,
Amber Yang for PEERS and WantToKnow.info

Special note to our readers: Recently, we’ve been focused on finding constructive approaches to address this year’s election and the other complex challenges shaking up society. Polarization is a sign that our socio-political structures have become too rigid and simplistic. We need a new story to safeguard democracy amidst the massive societal challenges we face. Tune into our latest 7-min Mindful News Brief for more:

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