Extremism Rising
Extremism is on the rise in the United States, and there are several factors that are feeding into this position. Many of these factors are predictable, and its not the first time extremism has risen before, but the Internet seems to have made this process easier and terrifyingly faster.
The COVID pandemic is the most recent disaster to affect turmoil both in the U.S. and the World. The resulting government imposed quarantines, vaccines and economic disruptions have created a huge number of disaffected people all across the world.
Prior to COVID, the housing crash of 2008 was another moment which had monumental effects. This financial disaster was one of the first in the Internet era and gave people a window into the widespread economic disparity and required significant government intervention.
Both crisis created scenarios of powerlessness among wide swaths of people, while at the same time, requiring significant amount of government intervention.
The
One of the issues with the Internet is that foreign actors now have unprecedented access to influence any group of people around the world. The Russian Federation has taken this seriously. Russian intelligence has made known attempts at influencing our elections, our political processes, and all of us in its attempts to sow discord in the United States for its own advantage.
This strategy can be found in the book Foundations of Geopolitics written by Alexander Dugin, a Russian neo-fascist. [1]
...Within the United States itself, there is a need for the Russian special services and their allies “to provoke all forms of instability and separatism within the borders of the United States (it is possible to make use of the political forces of Afro-American racists)” (p. 248). “It is especially important,” Dugin adds, “to introduce geopolitical disorder into internal American activity, encouraging all kinds of separatism and ethnic, social and racial conflicts, actively supporting all dissident movements – extremist, racist, and sectarian groups, thus destabilizing internal political processes in the U.S. It would also make sense simultaneously to support isolationist tendencies in American politics…” (p. 367).
Does this sound familiar to American politics today?
The Russian disinformation campaign hasn't just targeted the United States either. The UK's Brexit campaign, occurring several months before the 2016 US Presidential election, was also targeted by Russia. [1]
There are also ties between the far-right party Rassemblement National, their leader Marine Le Pen in France and Russia, [2] going so far as to echo "official language of Putin's regime". [3]
In Germany, the far-right Alternative for Germany party (AfD) has also been called out for having candidates with links to Russia and China and taking money from them. In one case, there is an additional charge of spying for China. [4]