NOTE: Faculty, if you are interviewed and quoted by news media, or if your work has been cited, and you have an online link to the article or video, please let us know. Contact us at news@csusb.edu.  

The partisan, gender and generational differences among Black voters heading into election day
FiveThirtyEight
Sept. 23, 2020

Meredith Conroy, CSUSB associate professor of political science, and Perry Bacon Jr., FiveThirtyEight senior writer, co-wrote an article that took a detailed look at where Black voters stand on a number of issues leading up to the Nov. 3 presidential election.

The wrote: “Because most national and state polls include only a small number of Black voters, we rarely get the opportunity to take a detailed look at how preferences and opinions vary within the Black community. Too often, the national political discourse never gets beyond ‘the Black vote,’ full stop.

“But this year, at least four different groups — the Democracy Fund + UCLA Nationscape polling initiative, Morning Consult, the African American Research Collaborative and HIT Strategies — are conducting surveys with bigger samples of Black Americans in the run-up to the 2020 election. And issues of race and systemic racism have dominated stretches of the campaign.”

Read the complete article at “The partisan, gender and generational differences among Black voters heading into election day.”

Congressional candidate's apparent ascent to Congress could be a 'bellwether' for QAnon, CSUSB professor says
CNN
Sept. 23, 2020

The apparent inevitable ascent to Congress of a Georgia Republican, Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has promoted the outlandish conspiracy theories of QAnon could be a bellwether for American politics, in which extreme views creep increasingly into the mainstream, experts on extremism, including CSUSB professor Brian Levin, told CNN.

Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, said he believes Greene's success may mark the beginning of a larger trend in American politics.

"She is a bellwether," he told CNN.

"While most people who run under the QAnon banner will be rightly laughed out of the voting booth, the fact of the matter is that a movement this broad, with this many followers, is bound to elect QAnon participants," Levin added. "They are growing, they are engaged, and unlike other fringe movements, they are fielding candidates, at all levels from local to national races."

QAnon adherents believe in a baseless conspiracy theory that there is a cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who have infiltrated the highest reaches of American government and are working hand-in-hand with other elites in business and Hollywood. They believe President Donald Trump is secretly fighting to destroy this cabal and that messages are being delivered to them in code by an anonymous central character called Q.

Read the complete article at “Congressional candidate's apparent ascent to Congress could be a 'bellwether' for QAnon.”

The news site The Daily Kos picked up from the CNN quote in its Sept. 23 article, “Marjorie Taylor Greene is the logical next step for a Republican Party that elevates its fringe.”

CSUSB professor interviewed for article on allegations of racism marking the Trump presidency
The Washington Post
Sept. 23, 2020

Brian Levin, director of CSUSB’s Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism, was interviewed for an article about allegations of racism that have marked Donald Trump’s presidency, and how it has become a key issue as the Nov. 3 election nears.

The news report said that a surge of activity by white nationalist groups, and a concern over the potential danger they pose, has happened during the Trump administration. FBI Director Christopher A. Wray testified Thursday that “racially motivated violent extremism” accounts for the bulk of the bureau’s domestic terrorism cases, and that most of those are driven by white supremacist ideology.

Major rallies staged by white nationalist organizations, which were already on the upswing just before the 2016 election, increased in size and frequency after Trump took office, according Levin. That included the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville in August 2017.

“Charlottesville backfired,” Levin said. Many of those who took part, especially the alt-right leadership, “were doxed, sued and beaten back,” he said, using a term for using documents available from public records to expose individuals.

“When the door to the big political tent closed on these overtly white nationalist groups, many collapsed, leaving a decentralized constituency of loose radicals now reorganizing under new banners,” Levin said.

Read the complete article at “Allegations of racism have marked Trump’s presidency and become key issue as election nears.”

CSUSB professor writes on Ethiopia’s prime minister’s decision to change the country’s legal currency
The Habesha
Sept. 21, 2020

Alemayehu G. Mariam, CSUSB professor emeritus, political science, wrote an opinion column about Ethiopia’s prime minister, Abiy Ahmed, demonetizing the country’s “current notes and introduction of new Birr notes for 10, 50 and 100 denominations and a novel Birr 200. Within 90 days, the old notes will no longer serve as a legal tender.”

Mariam wrote, “demonetization is the equivalent of cleansing the Ethiopian Temple from the merchants of death and economic doom and casting out parasitic dens of thieves and thugs who have been bleeding dry the poor people of Ethiopia for decades.

“Woe to the TPLF that stole and counterfeited over 100 billion Birr!” he wrote, referring to the Tigray People's Liberation Front, the ousted ruling party.

Read the complete article at “PM Abiy Ahmed’s Project X(cellent) Thunderbolt.”

These news clips and others may be viewed at “In the Headlines.”