Martin Durham

Evangelical Protestantism and foreign policy in the United States after September 11

Much that has been written on evangelicals in the United States concerns their impact on domestic politics. But the election of George W. Bush has resulted in a new importance for the relationship between evangelicals and US foreign policy. This has become particularly clear following the 11 September 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Three issues deserve further study. One is evangelicals’ attitude to Islam. The second involves the relationship between evangelicals and Israel. The third concerns the stance of evangelicals towards war with Iraq. Through an examination of these three issues, Durham explores a number of important questions, ranging from the relationship of evangelicals’ theology and their politics to their partly supportive, partly critical attitude towards an administration itself led by an evangelical. Many evangelicals see the ‘war against terror’ as a war against Islam and unreservedly approve of Israeli policy, and many supported the launch of war in Iraq. Yet evangelicalism is not a monolith and, with regard to its disputes over how to respond to the ‘threat’ of Islam or what view to take of the Israel–Palestine conflict, Durham offers new insights into a powerful voting bloc and source of pressure within US politics.

Preparing for armageddon: Citizen militias, the patriot movement and the Oklahoma city bombing

The devastating explosion in Oklahoma City on 19 April 1995 has drawn attention to the existence of citizen militias and the Patriot movement of which they are part. Opposed to gun control and taxation and strongly influenced by claims of concealed foreign troops, concentration camps and plans to impose a New World order, Patriots are the inheritors of a radical rightist conspiratorialism dating back to the 1960s. Believing American liberties to be as threatened by Oliver North as by President Clinton, the movement is a diffuse subculture which encompasses both racist adherents of what is termed Christian Identity and more traditional Christian fundamentalists (and even includes some members of ethnic minorities). The Oklahoma bombing, it believes, was the work of forces seeking to demonize the movement but while it argues that the creation of militias is purely defensive, there is a constant danger of confrontation with the state in the rhetoric of a second American Revolution.

The American far right and 9/11

On 11 September 2001, over 3000 Americans were killed in terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. But the attacks do not only shed light on radical Islam. Far-right groupings in America reacted to 11 September in very different ways, and an exploration of their responses can offer fresh insights into a constellation of groupings which stretch from the militias to the neo-Nazi National Alliance.

From Imperium to Internet: the National Alliance and the American extreme right

Led by William Pierce, a former officer in the National Socialist White Peoples Party, Americas National Alliance has achieved particular notoriety as a result of Pierces authoring of a genocidal political thriller called The Turner Diaries. Pierce argues, both in his fiction and elsewhere, for the recruitment of an elite that will one day lead to an armed struggle against The System. The argument of others on the extreme right in the United States, however, that only individuals or at most small cells can successfully overthrow the state represents a grave challenge to the Alliances groupuscular logic.

Women and the British union of fascists, 1932–1940

While much has been written on the British Union of Fascists, very little attention has been given to the role of women both in the movement and in its ideology. Yet the BUF put a great deal of effort into recruiting women and developed policies that were disconcertingly different from our usual picture of Fascism. In the Corporate State of the future, its propagandists claimed, women would not be confined to the home but would achieve full equality. Closer examination suggests a more ambiguous attitude, especially towards married women, and the movement remained very much male‐led. But women played an important part in BUF activity including, surprisingly, campaigning against war, and the article concludes by exploring the different factors that drew women to the movement.

Christian Identity and the Politics of Religion

Abstract Since the end of the Second World War, one form of religion has been especially evident on the American extreme Right. Tracing its roots to nineteenth‐century Britain, Christian Identity emerged in the USA in the 1940s. Anglo‐Saxons, it claimed, were the original lost tribes of Israel, and the Bible was written not for the Jews, but for the white race. Taking a wide variety of organisational forms, Identity has experienced a number of bitter disputes. While some adherents argue that the Bible justifies vigilante violence, others insist that it does not, and where the doctrine has long been associated with the claim that Jews are literally children of Satan, in recent years leading Identity preachers have insisted that this is a false reading of scripture. As with other disputes among Identity believers, these arguments do not disrupt the foundational anti‐Semitism of the doctrine. It draws our attention, however, to the centrality of religion for a movement which envisages the coming of a sacralised new order and which, in some forms, has argued that a divine state has already come to pass, in the twelve years of the Third Reich.

The BNP: will it stay or will it go?

influence, new practical and theoretical experiments of tying fascist ideology to youth movements in other countries. This, in fact, might point us to one of the few shortcomings of the book. By treating the autonomous nationalists as a primarily German occurrence, despite the chapters charting their appearance in the Czech Republic and elsewhere in Europe, the editors have neglected the very pan-European political outlook of the movement. An additional study into the political claims and contradictions of the autonomous nationalists as a European movement, proclaiming, as it were, Europe as a bulwark against an increasingly globalizing, multicultural world, would have added an even more powerful and critical aspect to the study of extreme-right movement politics on the continent today.

A Review of: “George Michael. Willis Carto and the American Far Right.”

mented by three case studies (Aum Shinrikyo in Japan, FMLN in El Salvador and the fate of al Qaeda in the province of al Anbar in Iraq). The study ends with recommendations on how to counter al Qaeda more effectively. For the statistical analysis, the researchers coded the start and end years of each group, their peak size, type of ideology and type of goal. They also added information on the country the groups operated in (economic conditions and the regime type). Finally, the prime reason for a group’s demise was identified. Based on previous literature, they defined five alternatives ways for terrorism to end: policing, military force, splintering, politics and victory. The authors’ main conclusions of the analysis are that while victories are rare (10 per cent), most campaigns end either because of joining the political process (43 per cent) or policing (40 per cent). The more limited the group’s goals are, the likelier it becomes that a political solution is achieved. What comes to the use of military force, it can be cited as the prime reason for the demise only in 7 per cent of the cases. It seems to have been most effective against larger insurgent groups. While the idea of putting together a statistical analysis is great, an academic reader cannot help thinking that its contribution to our understanding of how terrorism ends is rather modest. More nuanced conclusions might have been produced by limiting oneself to a smaller data set and coding also the secondary and tertiary reason. The categories that are used for coding the reason for ending seem also rough. The most troubling one is the category ‘‘policing’’ which inevitably includes a plethora of different approaches from discrete intelligence gathering to mass arrests and repression. Complementing the analysis with comparative case studies is also a good idea, but the studies could have easily been more in-depth. Towards the end, a lot of space is used essentially for repeating the same general arguments that have already been presented. However, a reader judging the value of the study in purely academic terms might be missing the point. The extensive statistical analysis shows that the use of military force has seldom been the reason for the end of terrorist groups. The following chapters elaborate on this and other conclusions with their implications for countering al Qaeda in mind in such way that may speak to a wider audience. The study argues that the United States should change its strategy, abandon the war on terror rhetoric and direct its energies on countering terrorism by means of police and intelligence work. For many, this might be a study that proves this.

George Michael. The Enemy of My Enemy. The Alarming Convergence of Militant Islam and the Extreme Right

deterrence environment and more focus on this could have further improved the chapter. After offering proof that his theories of the new deterrence dynamic are evidenced in actual events involving Iraq and North Korea, Smith undertakes to explain in Part III how the US has reacted to its deterrence limitations. He addresses the so-called ‘‘Bush Doctrine’’ of preemptive and preventive war and other aspects of the Administration’s counter-proliferation policies. Part III appears to be designed to progress from identifying the current limitations of nonproliferation and counter-proliferation policies to what Smith believes is an opportunity to internationalize the effort through a global quarantine against WMD proliferation. He provides the basic tenants of how this quarantine will support and strengthen the efforts of the US-led Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) as well as the quarantine’s institutionalization through its foundation as a multilateral effort coordinated by the United Nations and its sister organizations such as the International Maritime Organization. Deterring America is overall an excellent effort at exploring WMD deterrence in the post-Cold War environment. However, one issue that is not fully clarified is the distinction between rogue states pursuing WMD as a tool to achieve other goals aside from deterrence, and pursuance in a more traditional sense such as deterring offensive US actions. For example, it can be argued that North Korea realizes that the US is not necessarily deterred from attacking it due to the threat of WMD retaliation, but rather mostly by the potential destruction of Seoul by DPRK conventional military forces. While Smith addresses this DPRK conventional military threat, the emanation of deterrence – whether conventional or WMD – is a bit muddied. Iran is another example of the US being somewhat deterred not directly from its WMD but rather from its ability to respond to US aggression through other means, namely proxy groups and terrorist activities. Nuances involving the threats of WMD to regional US allies instead of aimed directly against the United States and the distinction between a rogue state’s coercion and deterrence strategy regarding WMD would have also strengthened the work. Perhaps Smith will address these issues in more depth in a subsequent publication. Topical critique aside, Deterring America should be considered essential reading for students of deterrence theory and practitioners alike. Near East policy analysts will also strongly benefit from the read as it provides an essential level of analysis for viewing the actions of all the key actors in the region, including non-state groups. Practitioners of even such a specific subfield as terrorism analysis are beginning to understand that strategic maneuvering regarding WMD proliferation is affecting their struggle to constrict the operational environments of terrorists. The work is informative, concise and will be thought provoking even for those who already possess a thorough understanding of deterrence.

The upward path: palingenesis, political religion and the national alliance

Since its emergence in the 1970s, the National Alliance has become the leading organisation of the American extreme Right. It was led (until his death in July 2002) by William Pierce, formerly a leading figure in the National Socialist White Peoples Party and author of The Turner Diaries. Committed to palingenesis and a total revolution, the Alliance calls for a racial revolution and the creation of an Aryan New Order, and is an exemplar of Roger Griffins definition of fascism. But is it also a political religion? In Emilio Gentiles terms, fascism sacralises a secular entity, placing it at the centre of the beliefs and myths which define existence. For the Alliance, however, the secular would not be consecrated but transcended, and the new state would be ruled by adepts of a new religion.