T

he global ascent of the far right has become an alarming phenomenon, amplified by the distressing normalization of right-wing extremism. From the U.S. to countries across Europe, far right movements have branched out by displaying variation while retaining their core foundations of violence and hatred, and have adeptly aligned themselves with contemporary political issues, exploiting the expansive reach of online platforms to propagate their ideologies.

Right-wing terrorism has swiftly emerged as the rapidest growing and, in some cases, the most prominent domestic security menace, as underscored by the UN Security Council Counter-Terrorism Committee—not to mention the far right’s harmful everyday rhetoric towards migrants and people of color.

In the United States, the number of far right extremist attacks has surpassed other acts of terrorism. The reverberations of heinous incidents like the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting and the Christchurch mosque shootings remain indelible reminders of the terror wrought by far right militants. From eco-fascists to white supremacists, this month’s book bundle encompasses various prominent and influential far-right movements.

By examining the complexities of far right ideologies, their metamorphosis over time, and the necessary measures to confront them, this collection presents an invaluable resource for comprehending and engaging with this pressing global concern.

In Spreading Hate: The Global Rise of White Supremacist Terrorism, Daniel L. Byman presents a comprehensive analysis of the global white power movement, its appeal, and the imminent threat it poses. Byman’s authoritative account spans the movement’s evolution in the United States and worldwide, shedding light on its multifaceted nature.

Drawing from a wide array of sources, Byman dispels prevalent myths surrounding white power terrorism and exposes critical deficiencies in current policies. This negligence towards growing far-right terrorism has resulted in shocking acts of violence, corroding trust in democratic institutions. Byman emphasizes that mitigating this threat necessitates swift and resolute action from governments, treating white power terrorism with the same urgency as jihadist violence.

Byman highlights how white power terrorists exploit mainstream debates, amplifying polarization and yielding significant political impact, even if the death toll remains relatively low. Contrary to popular belief, the movement is not entrenched in a rigid ideology: it is dynamic, draws inspiration from global sources and leverages cutting-edge technologies, particularly social media.

While white power terrorists exhibit vulnerabilities, such as internal divisions, lackluster leadership, and attracting not only dangerous and deluded individuals but also the inept and criminal, their potential for harm remains potent.

Mitigating the dangers of right-wing terrorism entail measures such as robust law enforcement, international intelligence cooperation, stringent regulations imposed by technology companies, and other forceful interventions. Byman not only examines policy solutions but also synthesizes extensive scholarly research, making Spreading Hate essential reading for those concerned about an increasingly interconnected movement that in the years to come harbors the potential to escalate in perilousness.

Daniel Byman, Spreading Hate: The Global Rise of White Supremacist Terrorism (Oxford University Press, 2022) ISBN: 9780197537619, 288 pages

The Rise of Ecofascism: Climate Change and the Far Right delves into the connection between the climate crisis and the rise of the far right, examining their historical roots and contemporary manifestations. By exploring the far right’s evolving stance on the environment, Sam Moore and Alex Roberts reveal a shift in strategy as they come to recognize the impending crisis as an opportunity for resurgence, moving beyond climate denial to conspiracy.

Far right ecologism is brewing within online circles and manifesting as violence on the ground. The authors argue that ecofascism’s dangerous ideology, steeped in hatred is not the answer. Instead, a genuine commitment to climate justice is crucial to combat both the far right and the environmental challenges we face. A must-read for anyone interested in learning about the trend in right-wing extremism or advocating for climate justice, this book offers a powerful critique of emerging ecofascism.

Sam Moore and Alex Roberts, The Rise of Ecofascism: Climate Change and the Far Right (Polity Press, 2022) ISBN: 978-1-509-54537-7, 160 pages

When the Hood Comes Off: Racism and Resistance in the Digital Age is a timely and comprehensive exploration that delves into the manifestations of racism in the digital realm, shedding light on the emerging antiracist strategies deployed to combat it.

Rob Eschmann skillfully weaves together meticulous research and captivating personal anecdotes to uncover how racism thrives online, challenging the notion of a colorblind society. From viral videos capturing police violence against unarmed Black individuals to the exposure of racist messages and hurtful comments on social media platforms, online communication lays bare the workings of racism in our world.

In this thought-provoking study, Eschmann not only examines the impact of online racism on communities of color and society at large, but also uncovers the unexpected ways in which digital technologies facilitate innovative tools of everyday antiracist resistance.

By drawing from a vast array of data, including insightful interviews with students of color and meticulous analyses of millions of social media posts spanning a decade, Eschmann delves into the influence of online communication on face-to-face interactions.

When the Hood Comes Off underscores the internet’s potential as a powerful organizing tool, exposing the transformative power it holds. Furthermore, the book serves as a poignant reminder that online racism can serve as a profound wake-up call, prompting us to reflect on our own responses and actions.

In a world grappling with the implications of pervasive online racism, When the Hood Comes Off: Racism and Resistance in the Digital Age invites readers to contemplate the crucial question of how we will collectively respond to this urgent challenge. Eschmann’s work is a vital contribution to the ongoing conversation surrounding racism and provides valuable insights into harnessing the potential of the digital landscape for meaningful antiracist efforts.

Rob Eschmann, When the Hood Comes Off: Racism and Resistance in the Digital Age (University of California Press, 2023) ISBN: 9780520379749, 312 pages

Ukraine’s Azov Movement has emerged as one of the most audacious and perilous far-right movements worldwide. What are its core values and goals? From the Fires of War: Ukraine’s Azov Movement and the Global Far Right is groundbreaking as the first book to be written in English about Azov. Michael Colborne unveils the origins and rapid evolution of the movement, transforming from a militia composed of marginal far right individuals and football hooligans fighting against Russian-backed forces to a multifaceted social movement that has attracted global far-right admiration.

Colborne delves into the intricate mechanisms through which the Azov Movement emerged and adeptly exploits Ukraine’s fragmented social and political landscape, including the ongoing conflict following Russia’s invasion. From the Fires of War astutely reveals the movement’s grand ambitions and the threats it poses.

Michael Colborne, From the Fires of War: Ukraine’s Azov Movement and the Global Far Right (ibidem Press, 2022) ISBN: 9783838215082, 200 pages

Why is it that white Australians still refuse to acknowledge the past and can’t talk about racism in the present? I thought. Oh, this denial of white privilege is hegemonic. Yes, the invisibilization of white privilege is that. I recall the white Australian founding fathers designed and wrote a political entity and constitution that excluded women, people of color, and First Nations to render a white patriarchal possession.

I remember the colonists designed the police force and prisons during British colonial and then (after Federation 1901) Australia’s frontier wars. I think to myself, disavowed still, when will we discontinue incarcerating First Nations out of the way of the white nation? Are not most people in jail there for poverty-related issues? Shouldn’t they be alleviated of poverty or given housing instead of locked up? My stomach burns as I envision abolition, a world without prisons.

My indeminably helpful cousin who sent me the photograph of our white great grandfather did so while assisting his mother, Elizabeth, my paternal aunt, pack up her home of thirty years to move into a nursing home.  Melbourne and surrounding areas, as far out as my country cottage rented in West Gippsland, was ninety days into a one-hundred-and-twelve-day strict lockdown at the time. We are back in lockdown again as I write (June 2021).

I think of my aunt’s brother, John Koerner, my deceased father, and I turn my attention back to the photo of their grandfather, John Heithersay, leading the gold prospecting expedition in Coolgardie in 1893. The image transports my senses to the land and skies from my childhood in Tennant Creek, Alice Springs, and Katherine, camping with my family and, when I was old enough, bushwalking with my father.

The four Indigenous men sitting on the ground at the front of the photograph capture my attention, sidelining happy childhood memories, safe with my father experiencing the bush’s magic he deeply loved.  We were camping on stolen ground, under land rights claims in the 1970s and 1980s.

All the Indigenous men look at the camera. Their physique reminds me of my now deceased father, John Koerner (1930–2005), grandson of John Heithersay. Like the two middle-aged Indigenous men in the front row, my father was very fit in his middle age. Unlike these men, he ran marathons, kayaked, played tennis, hiked right up until his death. Of course, my father was a free man and a white Australian, but I recognized the quality of that lean, fit physique familiar to me. Dam, I miss him, I thought. I recall our last hike together on the Milford track, Aotearoa, where he died.

Did my father know about his grandfather’s prospecting expedition to Coolgardie? During the 1970s and 1980s, Dad was a public-school teacher who advocated for Indigenous children to attend and complete school. I remember he visited some of the small Aboriginal communities around Katherine, N.T., to connect with Elders and parents. Dad returned, feeling hopeful that as Principal of Katherine State High (KSH), my school, Dad, could do more.

The rights for whites aggressively desired to keep the school for their white children and keep out the Blacks.

In the process, he accrued many enemies in the N.T.; those who were quite content with Indigenous non-attendance and low graduation rates would have much preferred Dad to have let sleeping dogs lie. The rights for whites aggressively desired to keep the school for their white children and keep out the Blacks. They campaigned hard and secured government support against the Jaowyn land claim encompassing Nitmuluk Gorge and rivers. I relax as I remember the stunning Nitmuluk where Dad taught me how to swim and canoe, as families have done since the beginning of time.

If his actions mean so many people died as a direct result? We find people guilty of manslaughter if they accidentally run over someone. The land theft is intentional. The environmental degradation is intentional and was never remedied. And who sold you the mining licence? That would be the British before Federation 1901 and Australian Governments after 1901. There was no treaty. They had no legal grounds to seize land and sell mining licences or land leases, I logicize.

I knew that John Heithersay had gone on to prosper from his gold mining activities. My great-grandfather had twelve children, including my grandmother, Elsie May. My grandmother told her daughter, Aunty Elizabeth, that when she (Elsie May) was a small girl, she used to wrap up gold nuggets as toy babies and push them around the house in her doll’s pram.

With that gold, John Heithersay bought a family home in Adelaide’s elite areas, sent his children to the best public schools through scholarships, and put his sons (not daughters) through university via scholarships. They became renowned for their academic abilities in engineering. John Heithersay mined gold in South Australia until the Great War in 1914, where, sadly, four of his sons died.

I look at the second photo sent of John Heithersay with his four sons in 1914. I think of my grandmother (Elsie-May) who grieved her four brothers’ deaths at war. My great grandfather never returned to mining. White patriarchy kept his daughters and granddaughters from completing their education. The wealth flows to the patriarchal line designed to keep white women dependent on white men to benefit from white privilege. First Nation women, however, form matriarchal societies the sophisticated design ensure no social hierarchies, political autonomy and no poverty. Never achieved under patriarchy.

In the last week of October 2020, Victoria emerged from its 112-day lockdown response to the COVID-19 pandemic. While Victoria celebrated coming out of lockdown, I hear on The Saturday’s 7 am podcast (29/10/2020) that the Andrews Government organised the forced removal and evacuation, including arrests of Djab Wurrung people in Victoria. Djab Wurrung had held a tent embassy site in protest for several years against the Victorian Government designated removal of ancient sacred ancestor trees to make way for a highway.

1200 Australian academics sign a petition to the Victorian State Government to stop this unjustifiable travesty with more ancient trees in danger. During a climate crisis, it is nonsensical. Indeed every sacred site destroyed is further proof that the Uluru Statement from the Heart needs to be the foundational document of a new Australia. To survive the climate catastrophe, First Nations must be in the centre of everything we do. They managed this place as the first human civilizations more than 100,000 years ago, I contemplate.

I watch people march under Black Lives Matter (BLM) around the globe. Trepidation arises in my stomach from my concern for the people’s safety from COVID-19 and associated police powers, each equally unwanted during a protest. An ironic smile slightly touches my lips, about extended police powers under the guise of ‘health’ cast against those who advocate an end to racialized policing.

The ‘ping’ sound of a new email draws my attention. I see it is from my cousin, titled ‘old family photos.’ My cousin saved the electronic file as: ‘Heithersay Prospecting, 1893, Coolgardie’. Curious, I open the photo that takes me to a significant moment. My white great grandfather; Afghan cameleers, and Aboriginal trackers, each embody an impressive end-of-nineteenth-century poise.

It strikes me that this is one of those uncanny timeless moments etched in history that play out before my very eyes in the present.  A moment where personal family stories – represented in the photograph I open – are writ large across national and global political landscapes.

I contemplate the way my personal family history entangles with race relations enacted past and present. The family photo encapsulates the essence of why the BLM movement came to be and its current relevance both globally, to Australia, and for me, a white Australian citizen. I think about the centuries of persecution against Black people and how the privileges attributed to white people are yet to reconcile in many countries, including Australia.

A matrix of time and place yawns wide before my very eyes.

In this suspended matrix moment, photographs of the activists who campaigned against the nine-minute choke-hold of George Floyd, an unarmed African American man who called out ‘I cannot breathe’ until he asphyxiated, murdered by Derek Chauvin police officer flood traditional and social media celebrating the first guilty verdict of a police officer. In Australia, 475 First Nations peoples have died in custody since a Royal Commission to Aboriginal Deaths in Custody 30 years ago. The Government continues to ignore the recommendations.

The pictures my cousin has sent me vexed me in a way I’ve never experienced. I feel gut-wrenching sadness and compassion for what I see. Who are these people? Whose country are they on? I start to notice the details before my eyes and feel my breathing return with the usual passing of time. The caption says ‘The Annisfield Prospecting CPY LTD’ to the left and toward the right-hand bottom is ‘Coolgardie.’ On the back of the photo is ‘1893’.  My cousin notes that one of the images is on an expedition party led by the Heithersays. John Heithersay is my great grandfather.

The image taken in Coolgardie has the soft browns of its time, 1893. The quality of this old photograph that had lasted 200 years with little fading, although there is some damage from wear and tear, draws me. The image is still clear enough to view the people, to see the red shades of fine powder-granulated dirt upon which people and animals stand and sit. Hand-sized rocks are scattered here and there to the horizon.

Two large white-trunked trees stretch a few ghostly gangly arms up and across beyond the frame. Smaller saplings as far as the eye can see emerge from the land as if a hand has cast their seeds and is gently caring for them under the expansive, bright sky. In the timeless pause, I feel the dirt granules underfoot, smell the trees’ slightly sharp eucalypt scent, and hear the soft whispering of the leaves.

The scene reminds me of Gammage’s book The Biggest Estate on Earth: How Aborigines Made Australia how the oldest continuing culture developed carefully pan-continental environmental and agricultural management that sustained all natural resources. Brown marks from sticky tape smudge the sky of the photo. This picture represents an era that catastrophically disrupted this ancient care of the country.

Four First Nations men sit cross-legged at the feet of their master, my great grandfather John Heithersay. My breath stifles. I look in turn at each man. The thought arises: here it is. I wondered if my family was ever directly involved like this. Simultaneously I am aware of curiosity: who are you? From where do you come? … My grandfather had slaves! Were your family harmed or killed? What happened to your country?

I look at my great grandfather with misgiving. What have you done? 

I look closely at each person’s clothing in the photo as if doing a virtual pat-down security check for weapons. I expel a deep sigh of relief; there are none. No tell-tale bulge in clothing. Nor is there a ‘saddle gun’ visible on the camels. If they were the hunter/killer type, wouldn’t they proudly brandish their weapons? I look again at the cameleers. Is this a package deal of camels, cameleers, and Indigenous trackers to service what became the Kalgoorlie gold-vein craze? 

I remember going to school with Afganni Descendents in N.T. Their families had been Australian for many generations like mine. Perhaps the Aboriginal men astutely evaded death through their arrangement with the cameleers. Maybe they are family through marriage. After all, the camels, cameleers, and Aboriginal trackers must have worked together before my great grandfather procured their service.  

Now, as I look at the Indigenous men in the photograph, I again have the thought: Who are you? I have to find out. Mmm, to find out about these Indigenous men in the photo, I first have to know where the hell is Coolgardie?

Online I find the Wangka Goldfields Aboriginal Language Centre Aboriginal Corporation (GALCAC) based in Kalgoorlie, Western Australia (WA). Sue Hanson, a Senior Linguist, promptly emails me back. The photo is of immense importance to the Centre. Sue tells me that three main activities decimated the Coolgardie region’s Indigenous people: the mining industry, the railway installation between Perth and Kalgoorlie, and the pipeline from Mundaring to Kalgoorlie.

Sue writes that by 1910 only twenty to thirty people had survived. The descendants of those survivors are currently trying to prove their relationship to the land through Native Title. She is sure the descendants will be delighted to see this photo as they have no images that date back to the 1890s.

I wish I could send The Uluru Statement from the Heart, written by First Nations to the Australian Government and people, through the matrix of time to my great grandfather. I think about how the story of my great grandfather, the Afghan cameleers, and the four Indigenous men on Wangka Country is just one of the thousands of moments. It could have been different in 1893 if there had been Voice and Treaty with First Nations People. Instead, that era brought genocide.

We need people’s movements such as BLM to march and demonstrate on the stolen ground never ceded that First Nations Sovereignty and Black Lives Matter. Daily, during a global Climate Crisis, governments and big business destroy sacred sites for fossil fuels and roads, right across Australia such as the Stingray Sisters in Maningrida, N.T., Wangan and Jagalingou in Queensland by Adani, Jukkan Gorge Caves, in Western Australia by Rio Tinto, and the Djab Wurrung trees by Victoria State Government because we don’t have a document such as the Uluru Statement from the Heart as our nation’s spiritual constitution. This document is our shared cultural and spiritual understanding for the benefit of all Australians.

Last week, Donald Trump’s unhinged term as president came to a terrifying crescendo as he incited an insurrectionary mob of thousands of cult-like devotees to storm the Capitol in a last-ditch bid to overturn the will of the people and prevent Congress from ceremonially counting the Electoral College votes which officially make Joe Biden the next president.

Trump, who entered office pledging to end “American carnage” will unceremoniously depart the White House next week for his contrived ostentation of Mar-A-Lago, leaving in his wake the most carnage done to democratic institutions in the United States since the Civil War.

Most aspiring fascists plan their coups behind closed doors. Not so with the bombastic, delusional, and egotistical Trump, who, even before he lost the November 3 election by more than seven million votes, declared that he would not accept the results if he lost, and told a white supremacist militia to “stand by” for further instructions.

After the magnitude of his loss was evident, Trump claimed without a shred of credible evidence that the vote was rigged, and mounted a farcical attempted legal coup, which was epitomized by his deranged lawyer Rudy Giuliani hosting a bizarre press conference at Four Seasons Total Landscaping in Philadelphia, a family-owned business wedged between a sex shop and crematorium. In a flurry of nearly 100 lawsuits, Trump’s attempts were laughed out of court as being meritless even by some judges who were appointed by Trump.

Having failed to overthrow democracy in the courts, Trump egged on his rabble of die-hard supporters to come to Washington to “stop the steal” by themselves. The more ridiculous of them stormed the Capitol bare-shirted, wearing furs and horns and with faces painted with the American flag, in a preposterous coup cosplay get up.

The more deadly serious of them planted pipe bombs, packed their trucks with explosives, erected gallows on the Capitol, killed a Capitol Hill police office with a fire extinguisher, packed zip ties to take hostages, and sought to hunt down Vice President Mike Pence and execute him for refusing to go along with Trump’s coup attempt.

The mob of enraged fanatics flew flags bearing Trump’s name alongside banners proclaiming that Jesus saves. Others charged the Capitol with Confederate flags unfurled, mere weeks after Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s statue was removed from the Capitol in the midst of a long-delayed national racial justice reckoning. Still others proudly displayed Nazi-inspired shirts invoking the horrors of Auschwitz. A more vile concatenation of white supremacy and Christian nationalism is difficult to conjure.

The mob of enraged fanatics flew flags bearing Trump’s name alongside banners proclaiming that Jesus saves.

Finally, after four excruciatingly long years of an unceasing torrent of white supremacy, misogyny, high crimes and misdemeanors, fatal incompetence and dereliction, lies and pomposity, many Republicans have had enough of Trumpism. One of Trump’s erstwhile most stalwart allies, Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC), abandoned the sinking ship with a galling, self-serving, revisionist speech on the Senate floor. And a PBS NewsHour/Marist poll found 88 percent of people in the United States opposed the insurrection at the Capitol.

However, even after the coup attempt, 7 Republican Senators and 138 Representatives still voted to overturn the election results. And the same PBS NewsHour/Marist poll found that 8 percent of people approved of the attack, translating into an astonishing 26 million people, most of whom are presumably heavily armed and who would presumably be ready to march with Trump to his fascist endgame.

Since last week’s coup attempt, many Republicans have been quick to advocate for unity and reconciliation, and dispense with accountability and justice. Rounding up the foot soldiers of the riot is insufficient. U.S. law on insurrection is clear: “Whoever incites, sets on foot, assists, or engages in any rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof, or gives aid or comfort thereto, shall be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than ten years, or both; and shall be incapable of holding any office under the United States.”

Fascism and white supremacy must be uprooted, not appeased and emboldened. For everyone from Trump–who urged his supporters to “fight like Hell” before instructing them to storm Congress–all the way down the line to the other incendiary inciters like Giuliani (“trial by combat”), Donald Trump, Jr. (“we’re coming for you”), and Rep. Mo Brooks (R-AL) (“taking down names and kicking ass”), prosecution and imprisonment for inciting insurrection and permanent disqualification from holding public office is an apt consequence.

Fascism and white supremacy must be uprooted, not appeased and emboldened.

But this should only be the start. As provided for in the constitution, Congress must expel the ringleaders of the attempt to subvert the Electoral College results such as Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) and Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), and, at the very least, censure every Member of Congress who connived in the plot.

This week, Congress began its accountability process by passing a resolution yesterday calling on Mike Pence to invoke the 25th Amendment and immediately remove Trump from office. The treacly Pence ruled out that option before the vote, so the House will vote today on articles of impeachment, making Trump the first president to be impeached twice.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY), who retains his position until Georgia’s Democratic Senators-Elect Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff are sworn into office and Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris is inaugurated as the tie-breaking vote, is a wildcard. Yesterday, he unexpectedly came out in favor of impeachment and if he supports convicting Trump either before or after he leaves office, he could bring along enough of his Republican colleagues to muster the 2/3 needed vote.

These accountability procedures are necessary even if Trump does not face tangible consequences for his seditious acts until after his term ends. Unaccountability breeds impudence, a debasing of norms, and a lowering of standards. It’s why President George W. Bush, a war criminal, a torturer, a person who should have been impeached and convicted for fabricating evidence to lead the U.S. into an illegal war of aggression, is now the voice of reason for the GOP.

Until Trump was elected, it was difficult to fathom a more incompetent and evil president than Bush. There is a direct line between Congress failing to hold Bush accountable and what we are witnessing today.

It is not possible nor reasonable nor democratic to sanction the 74 million people in the United States who voted for Trump in 2020 or even the estimated 26 million who supported the coup attempt. But it is an urgent moral necessity to hold accountable all those who incited the coup attempt through their mendacity and vitriol.

The U.S. has now chosen its new president: Joe Biden. But despite a united front against Donald Trump, Democrat’s victory was on a razor’s edge. In the U.S., many pessimists claim that Donald Trump lost but Trumpism reigns regardless of the election outcome. Nihan Duran interviewed Human Rights Advocate and the former Vice President of World Council of Indigenous Peoples (WCIP) Poka Laenui (Hayden F. Burgess) on the future of the U.S. democracy after the Trump administration, rights of the indigenous people, and finally the root causes of Trumpism as another form of populism in the Western world.

When we compare the 2020 U.S. election with the one in 2016 when Donald Trump was running against Hillary Clinton, back then, people were associating Trump’s victory with a reaction to something called “the establishment.” Yet this issue was never raised during the current election. Why do you think it is so?

It is so because, after four years in the White House, Trump’s finger-pointing at the “Establishment” would be a self-critique. Biden did not make an issue about the “Establishment” because he had much bigger fish to fry, Trump’s absolute failure in the Corona Virus war!

Was the debate on “the establishment” baseless?

Yes, as promoted by Trump. His “draining the swamp” of those establishment crooks during Trump’s administration showed that he brought in the dredges into his administration, directly counteracting his accusations against “the establishment.”

So, what did happen to “the establishment”? Simply evaporated?

It is a matter of whose establishment we are trying to address. Trump’s new Republican establishment will evaporate. The Democratic establishment will assert itself, especially in areas where the Republicans will have abandoned as a result of the loss of the White House, the loss of the House of Representatives in 2018, and the loss of its strength in the Senate, still undetermined the extent of their Senate loss.

There have been efforts to recognize the rights of indigenous people both locally and internationally. This paved the way for what you refer to as decolonization. What makes “Trumpism” so peculiar and worrisome for the future of the U.S. democracy and the rights of indigenous people?

I see Trumpism over the last four years as an aberrational swing of the political pendulum to the extreme right, almost to the extent of the early days of Adolph Hitler, who is also elected to lead his country. In the case of the U.S., the election process was able to hold strong and finally oust Trump. But the swing to the Right has left its mark. The pendulum will now swing to the Left.

How extreme will that swing go is questionable, but the center of that question is the character of Joe Biden and the administration he puts together, as well as the team of Pelosi Schumer, as well as the influence of Kamala Harris.

If you ask whether there will be a greater movement to the decolonization of Hawaii to the extent of Independence, I will say, not immediately. But under the Democratic administrations, there has been a loosening up of the present colonization. In 1979, the formation of the Office of Hawaiian Affairs in Hawaii, in 1993 the public confession in the form of the U.S. Apology Resolution, and in 2016, the adoption of Federal Rules for the recognition of a Native Hawaiian nation. All of this falls short of the call for decolonization, but it shows that under Democratic control, this progress has occurred.

Under Trumpism and his “America First” mantra, the rights of indigenous peoples throughout the world and within the current borders of the United States had no room in the Trumpist master plan.

What were the root causes of Trumpism to reign over the last years?

Power! The office of the Presidency, but a fluke of U.S. structure which allows the “electoral college” to select not the most popular but one who managed to collect a majority of the college. Once Trump possessed this power of office, he was able to threaten the weak-kneed Republicans to go along and violate long-established norms in American political life. Those Republicans did so and continued to do so as long as Trump held the power.

How do you connect Trumpism with the overall rise of populism in the Western world?

It is part of the pendulum swing from the threat of non-Western populations and countries. It is a fear of the rise of China especially, as well as Vietnam, India, and North Korea in the East. As Europe looks to the Middle East, they see those countries and peoples whom Europe had reigned over, now bursting forth and not willing to kowtow to European/American influence.

While these events are occurring, the Western world is seeing the decline of their economy, culture, and unity. Trump’s call for “America First” has many pessimists claim sound to the United Kingdom, as well as many other European countries.

Instead of embracing the changing face of the world, the European/American approach is to “circle the wagons” and take a defensive posture against the “barbarians”. They turn to build walls to keep them out, such as Trump’s wall along the U.S. Southern border which never materialized, or his immigration policies which will soon be reversed. European countries have also followed the same approach.

What would embracing the changing world mean? It could mean shared prosperity for all, through the enrichment of peoples’ cultures, religions, economy, and humanity. It could mean denuclearization among a more trusting community of nations, of decolonization allowing all peoples to guide their own futures which would allow for wiser governance and use of resources, and a wider and deeper appreciation of the peoples of the world and all of the treasures they can offer the world.