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As 2024 Looms, neo-Nazis are returning to the streets
VICE News
Sept. 14, 2023
Experts, such as Brian Levin, former director of Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at California State Univ. San Bernardino and a national expert in hate crimes, say that there’s a direct correlation between aggressive, conspiratorial, and bigoted rhetoric in the mainstream, and how emboldened extremists feel to take action.
“The fringes are a carnival mirror reflection of the aggression that’s in the mainstream,” said Levin. “These groups are showing up to where immigrants live, they’re showing up to synagogues and harassing congregants, they’re attacking transgender folks at school board meetings. There’s a mainstream component to all of that.”
“When the mainstream is ignited, those flames, even a flicker, will be like jet fuel in the fringes,” Levin added.
International Day of Democracy a good time to examine what works … and doesn’t
Los Angeles Daily News/Southern California News Group
Sept. 15, 2023
Teri Sforza’s column on International Day of Democracy included comments from Brian Levin, recently retired director of CSUSB’s Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism. Sforza wrote that Levin “is buckling up for a very bumpy ride. He expects political violence in the very near future. A rise in hate crimes. Political tribalism. Racial polarization. Rampant distortion and misinformation amplified by ‘high transmitters who subscribe to the very worst undemocratic methods,’ employing conspiracy theories, bigotry, scapegoating. Degradation not just at the top, but at the local level (been to a school board meeting lately?), further eroding trust in our institutions.”
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