Augusta DellÕOmo: Welcome to Right Rising a podcast from the Center for the Analysis of the Radical Right. I'm your host Augusta DellÕOmo. Today I'm joined by Dr. Alexander Ross, an adjunct professor in Geography at Portland State University. He's here with us today to talk about why geography in the places and spaces the radical right operates matters. Alexander, thanks for being here. Alexander Ross: Thanks for having me Augusta. AD: So let's start off with why is geography important when studying the radical right? AR: Well, geography is important because, um, it adds the spatial element to all other forms of study. You can, um, combine different, uh, aspects of interlinked movements, Uh, people. And you can really kind of position them where they exist and, um, really get a sense also of some of the localized determinants for, uh, the development of certain strains of the radical right. So you can see where are these groups based from the sort of small scale to the large scale. So you can say, you know, these neighborhoods in say Portland, Oregon, where I live, are particularly attractive to right-wing organizers. Whereas, you know, you can also say, uh, in the scope of the United States, the Pacific Northwest is drawing these types of, uh, far-right organizations. So by taking the, the spatial approach, you can understand clustering, uh, where it happens and why it's happening to some degree with some degree of certainty. AD: I think that makes a lot of sense and it contextualizes my next question of what kinds of radical right organizations do you map in your research? Are they typically focused more locally, nationally, or even internationally? AR: So I do a little bit of both. I usually take a multi-scale approach. So I'll look locally to my area in Portland. Um, But I'll also kind of zoom out and get a broader look. For example, recently I've been researching the vigilante counter demonstration actions and intimidation, harassment, and violence against, uh, recent anti-racist protests throughout the United States. And so doing that, we're able to look into statistical probabilities and Uh, correlations between vigilante attacks, um, and manifestations, uh, and local spatial variables. For example, whether or not this state has open carry laws and. I, I take those kinds of approaches on an international scale, looking at patterns in particular. So correlations between voting patterns and demographics, uh, including different kinds of religious indicators, uh, human development, index, indices, and so forth. So, I'm tracking the growth of the international far, right in terms of populist radical right parties. And, uh, right-wing authoritarian conservative regimes around the world, as well as localized manifestations of right-wing violence in the United States AD: And how do you do this in practice? What kinds of cartographic tools do you use in your research? Again, for, you know, our listeners, they may not be super familiar with what geography as a field is. So what kinds of tools do you use to actually conduct this research? AR: Well, so people have actually gotten mad at me a little bit because I just usually rely on open source tools, which can be a little bit rough for the viewer. Sometimes it's not, you know, as polished as, AD: So when you say an open source tool, what does that mean? AR: So for cartography, for example, I'll use a tool called QGIS, which you can just download off the internet. It's free. Um, if you are really into technology, you can probably add some kinds of tools and adjust other kinds of tools, um, and join in the forums that are online for people who are trying to, you know, manipulate the software in order to get it, to do what they want. Um, and that basically has the same functionality as a highly expensive and, and very functional, uh, well-functioning tool like ArcGIS. Um, but you know, it's free, so it's, it's, it's easier. Uh, and so I'll use that for web mapping and that kind of thing. And then also there's a there's a whole programming language that is basically built for statistics. Actually there's a couple, uh, R and Python. And so I'll use R in order to create multi-variate regressions and spatial regressions, map the different you know, uh, instances, uh, and their correlations to, um, different spatial and demographic variables. Um, and that sort of like statistical programming language, you know, again, it's really cool because it can give you, you know, Uh, a readout, on the confidence that you can have in your conclusions or rather in your hypothesis. Um, but at the same time, again, it's a little bit sort of tough to, to read through sometimes because it just kinda, it spits out the numbers and it lets you kind of, uh, fill in the blanks with your writing. Um, but it does, it does allow you also to create some really cool maps. Um, Uh, after you've already done the, the number crunching, uh, or rather allowed it to do the number crunching for you. So, um, so those are kinda my go-to tools. And then when I, uh, when I can, I can use ArcGIS to do some of the like finer tuned kind of, uh, kernel density mappings like a heat mapping type of thing. Um, but you could do that on R, using R as well. So it's kind of a toss-up as to whether or not people even need ArcGIS anymore. AD: That's really helpful in thinking about the kinds of statistical backing that you use when you're creating these sophisticated maps. But what is this look like in practice? So as a scholar, that's based in Portland, who writes about white supremacy in Oregon at large, from your research, what is driving white supremacist activity in the Pacific Northwest? AR: I think a lot of it is historically embedded. And that's another thing about geography is that there is a field called historical geography and, um, I've written in it. I wrote a piece with my friend and coauthor Shane Burley about the history of the far right in Oregon. Um, particularly looking at the implications and influences of interwar fascism, and, and yeah, I think so much of it has to do with the history of Oregon as a, you know, a white, um, it's been called, like Oregon was founded as a white utopia, you know, black exclusion, and then, um, the Asian exclusion or Chinese exclusions specifically, as well as the genocide of native peoples out here. Um, also, you know, it being far away from Washington DC, it's kind of seen as this, you know, uh, frontier, almost libertarian type of area anyway, and, uh, out so much of that you know, history and tradition of vigilantism as, um, of, you know, uh, attempted home rule of sort of county rights and, and populism, um, influence the path that Oregon remains, uh, uh, kind of tied to today. And the same is true in Washington and to perhaps a greater extent, Idaho. Um, the whole Pacific Northwest really. AD: Yeah. And what is this phenomenon look like over time? So you have on one hand the transformation in the 1920s with the KKK and then moving to more contemporarily, we have federal forces in Portland right now. So what does that look like? AR: I guess, you know, the KKK was out here, it was a sort of like a, maybe I would say like lower middle class community sort of help organization for white people, you know? Um, it wasn't the same extreme violence of the first generation of the Klan in the American South and Appalachia. Um, but it was still, uh, incredibly intimidating and, and way more influential in terms of political, uh, reach and it effectively dissipated because the Klan itself dissipated because they had serious organizational issues with their leader, uh, being implicated in a murder and so on and so forth, a lot of corruption, but at the same time, um, They had their influence stuck and in the thirties, once fascism came around, um, it sort of manifested a different beast. It was a, um, It was a really, maybe a lot weirder. It wasn't so tied to Protestantism as it was to like the mythical sort of, um, British Israelism and all of these kinds of weird sects and groups like, uh, uh, specifically like German expatriates and stuff like that. So, so fascism in Oregon was always weirder and it didn't really stick as well as the Klan did. But after the war, because of the United States went to war against the fascists and Italy and Germany, the, um, the fascists and the far right in general, especially in Oregon was really clarified in their objection to the liberal government, the federal government. And that is especially when civil rights came around, really the turning point where, um, where the far right, uh, sort of becomes a militia-ized. You have the minute men running around, you have, after that Posse Comitatus emerging in the early seventies and then the militia movement coming out of the woodwork in the, in the early nineties really. And it was that kind of turning point of World War II that transformed the United States and really sort of distilled a far right that opposed the federal government and sort of saw the Pacific Northwest as, as. the place to regroup, right? As the readout against, um, multicultural liberalism and the sort of, um, the breeding ground for, uh, white power. And, uh, and so you have in the eighties, you know, uh, this big skinhead movement, uh, fascist skinhead movement in Portland, um, going into the nineties and then you also have these big militias, uh, cropping up with these bizarre ideas that the real Jews are descended from, you know, Anglo-Saxons and, uh, people who call themselves Jews are the spawn of Satan and stuff like that. Um, so, so, yeah, I guess, to, to sort of, um, give the, the, the blurb or the one sentence thing it's like fascism was this weird warped mirror that transformed the far right into a bizarre representation of itself, that then became almost hegemonic after, and for the reason of the United States going to war against the fascists and that's sort of drawing a line in the sand that they could, um, they could use to oppose liberal governance and support a kind of, uh, white male sovereignty. AD: No, I think that context is incredibly important. And I wanted to ask, especially considering the influx of federal troops into Portland on the 18th and 19th of July of 2020. How you think far right groups are going to respond to the federal government, especially because the federal government with Trump in charge has really played to and used white supremacists and white nationalists language. So I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about the potential overlap and potential conflict between the right wing in Oregon and federal troops in Portland? AR: Well, I think that the Trump administration has managed to do, um, some significant, um, strategic turns that have opened up a front for the far right against the federal government within the government. Um, Trump kind of running as an outsider candidate, uh, always blaming the deep state for, um, his own, you know, mistakes have, has really fostered this notion on the far right that, you know, their guy is in power and he's using it to sort of liquidate the, um, the swamp, right. He's he's using that power to, um, to exterminate his enemies, uh, and their enemies within the federal bureaucracies, um, you know, the liberals and do nothings or what have you, uh, leakers and journalists and so on. And so, um, so for the far, right, they, they, they, they kind of think that Antifa is closer to the federal government than Trump is. Um, they often think that mayor Ted Wheeler here in Portland is basically Antifa himself. They think that Antifa is being paid by Soros and that Antifa members are often Democratic Party staffers. Um, they have a whole conspiracy theory around Trump, you know, QAnon, um, which, you know, fosters this sense of, um, of having a revolution against a conservative revolution against the liberal deep state. Um, and so the federal, when, when federal troops are sent in, uh, they are sort of supine. They, they actually sort of appear to tacitly support the federal, uh, intervention here in Portland on the grounds that this is Trump, who is opposing local liberal politicians. And of course this is extremely paradoxical because the nature of the federal system, uh, is such that the executive shouldn't have this sort of, uh, intervention, uh, authority, uh, over the heads of local officials without some form of due process and, um, Department of Homeland Security is saying that they will leave if local officials condemn the protest actions and depose their own citizens. Um, And so, you know, political theater is one term I've heard used by an NLG member, um, National lLwyers Guild member about, uh, what's going on here in Portland, particularly violent political theater, but you know, when, when it comes to the far right, Uh, their whole state's rights, you know, focus of, you know, state and county authority over and against the federal government sort of flies out the window when it's their enemies who are being brutalized and shut down. So a lot of that, you know, also goes into the police, right? The far right has mobilized in support of the police with the Back the Blue rallies and so forth. And in many instances Back the Blue rallies are sort of fostering these connections between the far right and the police, as we saw recently in New York City, uh, with the, with the police effectively, uh, I don't want to say leading the Back the Blue march, but certainly pushing back its counter protesters and, uh, and I guess chaperoning it. So we see a sort of common authoritarian tactic with Trump of supporting the police rank and file against local officials who might oppose Trump's own policies, which creates a solidarity between the police and the federal uh, forces in opposition to, um, to local policymakers who are attempting to sever those ties and to block, uh, collaboration between the federal, uh, imposition of border patrol and U.S. marshals specifically in this case. AD: I think that's absolutely critical context that you've provided here, especially when you're talking about this tension between state and local authority and autonomy with right-wing groups in contrast to a federal government that seems to be overtly supporting them. So how then does geography influence coordination between these radical groups and uh, in what ways has that changed, particularly after 2016? AR: Well, I think that geography, you know, looking on the spatial level, uh, there, isn't just a, a sort of, um, uh, demographic dynamic or regional economic dynamic that influences the development, the growth, the change of, uh, localized far-right parties or organizations, but there's also a sort of, um, not just transnational, but, um, in intranational, uh, organizing capacity, you often see bikers becoming, uh, kind of like a leading actor in far-right protests these days, which is partly because they're so mobile, right? They're not necessarily tied to a specific place. So if there's a you know, a protest in Bethel, Ohio, you know, you get a bunch of bikers from all over the area converging there and so this is kind of an interesting phenomenon and you see it elsewhere in the world as well. Um, in Ukraine, there's Misanthropic Division, in Russia, there's the Night Wolves. There's the Soldiers of Odin. You know, there are a lot of interesting, uh, far right biker groups that have emerged over the past. Joey Gibson's Patriot Prayer came out of American Freedom Motorcycle Club. Um, so, so I think that's, that's an interesting issue in terms of mobility, the mobility of far-right protests and protestors. And with regards to Trump, I would say not even 2016, but even going back a little bit further to 2015 um, and the years leading up to it. I say 2015, because this was a year that, um, there was a conference in Russia called the World National Conservative Movements, um, led by Rodina, and the Russian Imperial Movement. And they, uh, brought far right groups and parties together in one place and effectively, uh, established, uh, a nexus for coordination and material support. Um, what Trump has done is, um, kind of converted or reconfigured aspects of American foreign policy in order to effectively support the multipolar objectives that has been postulated through these far right networks that meet at conferences and, um, and such gatherings. So, so Trump has effectively been able to sort of shoehorn this kind of maybe I could say like para-fascist or authoritarian conservative, or, you know, for Aleksandr Dugin and he would say populist, um, Alain de Benoist would call it illiberal populism, but anyway, he has been able to sort of privilege those forces, um, as well as the economic, um, and political machinations that uh, that sort of stimulate them and they themselves, are then able to sort of convert that capital, whether it's political capital or actual capital or social capital into, you know, um, their organizing efforts uh, in locally. And so we've seen groups, uh, all over the world, uh, growing as a result that sort of lie on the authoritarian part of the axis. Some of them are even somewhat left-wing, you know, Duterte and people like that. But, um, they're all extremely authoritarian and that's the sort of, um, you know, um, the, the configuration that, that Trump is, uh, facilitating, uh, and that has been also facilitated with, um, with Putin's, uh, uh, support for the far-right. Um, so. Ah, there was one more thing. Oh yeah. Also we've seen, uh, you know, the extreme right, members of the extreme right from the U.S. group, the Base, to the Brazilian Integralistas actually finding refuge in Russia. So, um, so the scope of, of far right geographical matters also includes that form of sort of locating sanctuary, uh, for, uh, violent fascists. Um, so I guess that would be three things really are the first is, um, is local groups integrating using these kinds of conferences and, and, and, um, and tactics. Uh, the second would be this so-called geopolitical axis, uh, that Trump has helped facilitate, which sort of, uh, includes those kinds of far-right actors that are involved in the first. And then the third, I suppose, would be a kind of, um, uh, transnational solidarity, which pans out to violent fascists finding, uh, um, sanctuary in far-right states in a way that I don't think that they had before. AD: Alexander, those are absolutely critical takeaways. And thank you so much for summing up such a complex and disparate topic in three ways that radical right groups are now organizing. So where can people find you on social media? Can they find you on Twitter? Where can we read more about the kinds of projects that you're working on? AR: Sure. Um, thank you for having me Augusta, I'm, uh, @AReidRoss on Twitter and, um, I'm working on the geographies section of the Center for the Analysis of the Radical RightÕs, um, uh, website. And, uh, I'm working on finishing this book that I've been trying to get out the door for like ten years now about populism and the sovereignty of the people um, looking historically at the sort of long range, uh, development of populism. So, so hopefully that will come out, uh, by the end of the year. AD: Fantastic. We will all definitely be looking forward to reading that when it comes out. So thank you again, Alexander for being here, this has been Right Rising, a podcast for the Center for the Analysis of the Radical Right. See you all next time.