“If we aren’t organizing white people around their suffering...” contesting the politics of Rightwing extremism

• In Event: 30480 - Mobilization and Contemporary Democratic Elections: Coping with Violence & Extremism

Abstract

The emboldening of extremist politics, undergirded by rank nativism, anti-Blackness and misogyny, has become a feature of election cycles around the world. In the U.S., large portions of the white electorate continue to at least tacitly endorse such politics along with the erosion of democratic norms. Yet what white people think and do in relation to the seductions of Rightwing extremism is neither uniform nor sedimented. In this essay, I establish how a liberal, middle-class approach to antiracism has been insufficient to the political project of challenging white extremism. I then draw on four years of field work and interviews with the largest U.S.-based organization seeking to organize white communities away from Right capture and towards intersectional racial and economic justice. I offer two examples from the field to show what effective organizing with white people might entail. This includes centering poor and working-class white people and situating antiracist learning in the service of collective action.

Author

• Chandra Russo, Colgate University