Heidi Beirich

[00:03:18] Host: Will you give us a little, for those who don't know, just a little history and explanation of what the Southern Poverty Law Center is and does?

[00:03:28] Beirich: Sure. So the SPLC was founded in the early 70s, 71 or 72, I can't remember, by two lawyers, Morris Dease and Joe Levin. Its purpose at that time was to actually desegregate things that still remain segregated even though the Civil Rights Act had passed in the 1960s. For example, SPLC sued the Montgomery YMCA to desegregate their swimming pools. They were still in the early 70s not letting black kids swim in the pools. They desegregated the state troopers. These were some big landmark civil rights cases. And then in the early 1980s, there was what is often called the last lynching in America. This young man, Michael Donald, black man, was lynched in Mobile, Alabama on a public street. The perpetrators were from a Klan group that had chapters in multiple parts of the country, United Klans of America. And Morris Dease came up with this idea that, yes, there were criminal prosecutions for such horrible acts, but what he wanted to do was put the Klan out of business. And so he came up with this strategy to sue them civilly for damages. And that was the first, and the case was won, and I don't remember the exact judgment, but it was enough so that the SPLC was able to seize Klan buildings. They literally had buildings like Kiwanis Club buildings, they had Klan buildings where they held meetings, seize that stuff, convert it into cash, and allow Michael Donald's mother to buy her first home. So it's a very inspiring story.

SPLC would go on to sue multiple hate groups of different kinds, including other Klan groups. But during the case, another thing that the staff there realized is there was no kind of database place where you could go to see where hate groups were functioning in the U.S. There was like no information about it. And so they started researching chapters of the Klan and created what was called originally Klan Watch, which produced these kind of not very good maps back in the day, but they would have little marks that there's a Klan group in this town, in that town, or whatever. And that information was shared mostly with law enforcement and public officials and obviously donors to the organization. That evolved into what's now called the Intelligence Project, which I led from, oh God, like around 2010 until I left. And they still produce what's now called the Hate Map, which lists extremist organizations all over the country from various ideologies, white supremacists, neo-Nazis, anti-Muslim, anti-Semitic, anti-LGBTQ. It's a long list because there's unfortunately a lot of hate groups in the country. So that's part of their work, a bedrock part of the work still of the Southern Poverty Law Center. And I don't know, I've been gone for a few years, I'm not sure if they have any civil cases against hate groups right now. But when I left, we were still in the midst of suing some neo-Nazi groups, collecting damages, those kinds of things. I should say SPLC is a big organization, they do all kinds of civil rights work for children, for black and brown communities. So what I'm describing is just the piece that I was most involved in.

[00:07:05] Host: So you had said that over your 20 years there, you noticed this exponential increase in not just numbers of members, but also in new groups being created. Can you talk about what you saw and maybe kind of elaborate on why you think that increase was so exponential?

[00:07:32] Beirich: Yes. More or less, there was a doubling in the number of hate groups from around 600 when I started to around 1,200 when I left. And I think it's still, the numbers are still more or less like that today. It was a big shift from the 90s where the numbers would go up and down, actually, year by year. So it was something different, right? Something different was happening. I think the first thing that led to this kind of upward march of the number of hate groups was when the Census Bureau said in 2000 that the United States would not have a white majority anymore sometime in the 2040s. In other words, there'd be no majority population in the United States. And that set off a panic among white supremacists that, obviously, if you think delusionally that you're going to run the country and it's going to be an Aryan homeland, if whites aren't going to be the minority, that's a problem. So at that moment, the number of groups getting active grew in response to that. And the messaging began to focus more and more on immigrants as the threat as opposed to black people, which had been historically the case. That's not to say they weren't still disparaging black people, but that was the immigrants that were growing. The Latino community was growing and was going to dominate. And that's what they were concerned about. And anti-immigrant sentiment began rising.

There were several, not what we listed as hate groups, but nativist groups focused specifically on immigration that came out of the woodwork at the time, groups like the Minutemen and others. And we started seeing also a diversification in the targets of hate groups. Historically, it had been an anti-black movement, the white supremacist movement in this country. But after 9-11, for example, anti-Muslim groups arose. As the LGBTQ community gained more rights, marching its way towards when gay marriage was legalized by the Supreme Court, we saw a rise in anti-LGBTQ groups. So there was this demographic pressure, which was helping them recruit. And then there was this kind of diversification of bigotry, reactions to various other communities achieving more and more civil rights. And then there was the internet, which is really, really important here. If I wanted to try to find a Klan group in the 1990s, how would I find them? They're not in the phone book. I don't have their phone number.

[00:10:15] Host: Yeah. Flyers.

[00:10:15] Beirich: A flyer, maybe. Exactly. A flyer somewhere. It would have been hard unless you had some kind of family connection. But that all changed. White supremacists are early adopters of technology because they know they can't get their message out through regular channels. So the web and then later social media was a gift to them. In fact, the first hate site was put up in 1995, a site called Stormfront. It still exists. So especially with social media, the ability to put information out about your group, spread your propaganda, recruit, talk to recruits because you have that ability on the web, that was a game changer. And in the early 2000s, I would say all the way up until the Charlottesville hate rallies in August of 2017, the internet was the complete Wild West. There wasn't terms of service. And I'm talking about on places like Facebook. You know, the Charlottesville rallies were organized on Facebook, for example. You know, who knows how many people were radicalized into various kinds of hateful ideas and ideologies. It's unknown. And it's, of course, not just domestic, it's international. And the truth is, nowadays, it's not just that you have organized hate groups like the ones SPLC is counting. You just have millions of people who are involved in hate chats and, you know, online, on Telegram channels and whatnot. Millions and millions of people who, across the world, who were involved in neo-Nazism, white supremacy, and other kinds of, you know, terrible things because of the internet. So that's fuel for this fire as well.

[00:12:04] Host: Is there an element of increase or fear that happened when President Obama was elected, especially with these white supremacist or white nationalist groups?

[00:12:17] Beirich: Yeah, he could be another thing I could point to is fueling this. I mean, the idea that a black man had won the presidency was, you know, the demographic information from the Census Bureau back in 2000 was a hit. Obama's election was another hit. There were huge spikes in the number of hate groups in the time that Obama, in those eight years that Obama was in office. And also the rise of lots of conspiracy theories like birtherism, the idea that Obama wasn't born in the United States, and threats. When you really start to see white supremacist terrorism happening much more regularly in tandem with Obama coming into office. There were multiple terrorist attacks of various kinds while he was in office. The Tree of Life shooting of the synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018, the killing of an abortion doctor in April of 2009 in Kansas, the El Paso Walmart shooting. I mean, the list is really, really long and basically culminated in the FBI and other federal agencies early in the Trump years, actually, the first Trump administration, saying white supremacy is the number one domestic terrorist threat to this nation, which was a huge 180 from the way terrorism was conceived of, which was basically Islamic extremists like Al-Qaeda or ISIS, whatnot. So yeah, Obama was fueled to the fire for sure.

[00:13:50] Host: I guess we should explain what the qualifying factors of a hate group are in this counting. What is it that determines the specifics and what is it that makes one separate from the other? Or is there a bleed over between them as well?

[00:14:12] Beirich: Well, there can be a bleed over, but let me describe how we did this documented hate groups. And at my new organization, Global Project Against Hate and Extremism, we do this research on these kinds of groups in a whole bunch of different countries where there isn't an SPLC, essentially. That was part of the thinking for creating the new organization.

So the basic idea behind a hate group is, does the organization have a set of beliefs as expressed by its members or on its website, sort of official statements, that denigrate an entire other population for who they are? In other words, all black people are stupid, and I'm going to use much lighter words than they do. Sure. All Muslims are terrorists. All Jews are trying to control the world. These kinds of denigrating statements that encapsulize an entire community is what gets you on the SPLC's hate list. This is about ideology, right? This is about the thinking of the group, not whether or not it's violent, which is sometimes a mistake people make, right? They say, oh, why are you calling that group anti-LGBTQ? They've never committed any violence. Well, our view was that the propaganda, the hateful propaganda, is what leads to the violence and needs to be called out. It would be absurd not to say that an organization that says all gay men are pedophiles is a hate group just because nobody had engaged in violence. So it was about ideology, and we use, at my new organization, a similar definition.

We would look at SPLC, and I know they're still doing it, thousands of groups to see if they were bigoted in various ways, and yes, there was bleed over. A white supremacist group is probably going to hate all black and brown people, probably Jews as well, certainly Muslims, right? The categories, there's a big FAQ on SPLC's website that describes all these categories. They do have some groups that are very targeted on one thing, like, for example, hating women, male supremacy groups, or just hating gay people and not really caring about racial issues. So the categories are sort of broken down in that way on the website, and each group is labeled with what ideological formation they're in, and sometimes it's more than one. You could be anti-immigrant and anti-Muslim, but maybe not anti-black, right, depending on what the deal is, or maybe not anti-Semitic.

[00:16:41] Host: I want to explore how 2016 and Trump's election kind of was another element, another torch to ignite a lot of these groups and kind of give the freedom to be able to be louder and more public about their opinions.

[00:17:04] Beirich: Well, Trump did something that I didn't think I was going to see in my lifetime, which is he reintroduced into the mainstream discourse racism and bigotry and whatnot. You know, from the first day that he ran for office, the first time, back in 2015, I guess, he called Mexicans rapists, and he attacked a judge for being Mexican. The list of this is really, really long, and that was the kind of thing that we didn't talk about in polite conversation. The Republican Party, prior to Trump's rise and now full domination of the party, if we at SPLC found that there was a staffer, let's say, working for someone who is affiliated with one of these hate groups, and we told them about it, that person was gone. Even when Romney ran for president, he had an anti-immigrant guy on staff that he didn't know about him. When we contacted them about it, that guy was fired. I mean, he was let go. Trump has now kind of ushered bigotry into the mainstream in a way that I didn't think was possible, and that was extremely emboldening for white supremacist groups. You know, people remember when Trump said there were fine people on both sides at the Charlottesville rallies, and reminder, one side was white supremacist clansmen, neo-Confederates, violent people, and then the other side were people who were anti-racist and didn't want Confederate monuments up. All of this stuff had ... Putting it into the public discourse in the way that we find it now, wasn't there before Trump, and he changed the country, and so now we will hear public officials, people in high office, openly denigrate various communities in ways that weren't the case before.

[00:18:58] Host: Was there a spike in these groups during COVID-19, during the lockdown? Was that isolation something that maybe brought, I don't know, younger people or people that were just lost and confused more into the fold of these groups?

[00:19:20] Beirich: Yes, COVID had a serious impact. So too did the racial justice protests around George Floyd's killing, and we saw mass mobilizations of white supremacists at that time. We saw Proud Boys rampaging through Washington, D.C. in the fall of 2020. In mid-December, there was a rally in which some people were knifed and attacked by members of these far-right groups. Portland, Oregon was basically under siege by far-right actors at the time, including the Proud Boys, but others. It was really bad. There was violence against people involved in the racial justice protests. Far-right groups, members killed cops in Northern California, I think in Oakland. So yes, it was, and so people are sitting at home all day long on their computers, some of them getting radicalized, and then others deciding, screw it, I'm going to go out on the streets and fight.

[00:20:30] Host: Armed.

[00:20:31] Beirich: Yes, armed. Of course, armed. And there were other things that happened. You know, the kid who—maybe I shouldn't say kid—the young man who killed, I think, 10 people at the grocery store in Buffalo, New York, targeted a black area of the community. You know, he had stuff on Discord where he talked about, kind of like a personal diary, and it was all related to the alienation of the lockdowns, right? He wasn't in school. He wasn't talking to anybody. He was reading all this extremist—like, he was a case study in being radicalized, and it didn't help that he wasn't out and about in classrooms with other people. So I think sometimes we underestimate how the pandemic affected certain people greatly. And it was very isolating. So yes, all of that was radicalizing. The fact that Trump didn't win in 2020 was radicalizing for the far right. You know, all of a sudden we had an election denial movement that we didn't have before. It was a really dicey time, and of course it all sort of led up to January 6th and the Capitol insurrection.

[00:21:47] Host: I want to look at some of the similarities between a lot of these groups. I would say, I don't know if this is true, but it would seem like majority of them are male-dominated. Is that correct?

[00:22:03] Beirich: Oh yeah. And some of them are only for males, yes. That has been true for as long as I've been studying these groups. There were always jokes actually within neo-Nazi forums and whatnot about how we don't have enough women. Nowadays, you don't hear that so much. What you see is the rise of extremist groups that are only for men. So for example, there's this neo-Nazi group called the Blood Tribe. They were behind the accusations, the false accusations about how Haitians were eating pets in Springfield, Ohio. Really aggressive organization. They don't allow women. Proud Boys, no women. The neo-Nazi active clubs, which is a movement that has only been around for about three years. It was actually conceived of by a guy who lives in Huntington Beach, California. There are now active clubs all across the world, and they're like mini fight clubs. They practice MMA and do hikes and bodybuilding, whatever. No women allowed. So it's almost like they're reveling in this, I don't know what to call it, this hyper-masculinity, which has become a standard. And if you look at these guys, they're all built, right? They're spending way too much time in the gym. But this has become an identity thing among neo-Nazis and white supremacists. And again, it's not just here in the US, it's all over the place.

[00:23:34] Host: So then the woman's role is that kind of tradwife. That's what they support by staying home and having kids, and is that what they see?

[00:23:48] Beirich: That's right. They are Aryan mothers. Their job is to have as many babies as possible and deal with the household. What's interesting though, and this is a big change from these movements in the early 2000s till now, back in the early 2000s, one of the largest neo-Nazi groups in the country, very dangerous, connected to a lot of violence, bombing, murders, was this thing called the National Alliance. And they would depict women as almost like a Hitler kind of image, like this beautiful blonde woman running through the hills, the kids holding onto her, hair flowing. And they would say, this is Aryan motherhood, this is prized. The interesting thing today is we still have some of that. We have this kind of tradwife movement that's a version of that. But we also have misogynistic movements that denigrate women. All women are whores, women are essentially evil. Those movements didn't exist 20 years ago, and they're almost entirely a phenomenon of the web. I'm thinking of like the incel movement or the involuntary celibate movement where they just say horrible, horrible misogynistic things about women. And this is also a movement that's led to violence, terrorist attacks against women.

[00:25:07] Host: Another kind of common thread through a lot of these groups is some connection to Christianity or Christian Nationalism, is that correct?

[00:25:18] Beirich: Yes. Christian Nationalism is also a phenomenon that didn't really exist in its current form 20 years ago. So a couple of things before I talk about them. This is not about Christians. When you talk about Christian Nationalism, this is a political movement that has a particular far right take on the religion, right? So I don't want anyone to misunderstand when I talk about this as though I'm saying bad things about all Christians. It's not what this is about. Christian Nationalism has arisen from far-right Christian movements in the United States like the Christian Right under Reagan. It is a political phenomenon that believes that the United States is a Christian country, and that should be said, that Christians should dominate this country. That should be the official religion. Everything should be rooted in their version of the Bible and the Ten Commandments. In other words, they would obliterate separation of church and state. They would obliterate protections for minorities. They have a very different way of thinking about this country than what we are traditionally taught is part of the Constitution. And there's a lot of them. About 10%, this is according to PRRI, their research institute, about 10% of Americans identify as Christian Nationalists. Another 20% believe some of their tenants, maybe not all. So that's 30% of the American public. That's a big chunk of folks. And they've been growing in recent years. The Christian Nationalist movement has taken over a large swath of evangelical Christianity. Anyhow, they're a big part of the MAGA coalition too.

[00:27:02] Host: Is it an element of using these Christian beliefs and teachings to kind of bring in more members or followers or like using Christianity as a commodity rather than the spiritual practice and belief?

[00:27:18] Beirich: I would say so. It's actually a very top-down movement. You would think that this was a grassroots thing, but this is why I say it's kind of a political plan. There's specific individuals who've spent their time building recruitment processes to get people into these churches and these movements. Yeah, it's almost like it's been sold to people. And the other thing about it is people who are involved in Christian Nationalism, this polling shows, also tend to be more anti-immigrant, bigoted-

[00:27:52] Host: Anti-LGBTQ.

[00:27:56] Beirich: For sure. Well, I mean, at the base, when you say Christian Nationalism, the Christianity they want to put in place here would strip all LGBTQ rights and certainly get rid of gay marriage. And also, women's rights would be, it wouldn't just be about abortion, it would be no birth control, no no-fault divorce, maybe even no voting. It's pretty extreme. And that's the basis of the tenets, right, of the religion. You think about it, Christianity or Christians would be supreme, and these populations would lose their rights.

[00:28:31] Host: So how did these groups and their influence and this increase, this exponential increase, how did this all play into us having our current version of a Donald Trump presidency?

[00:28:49] Beirich: Well, the MAGA coalition, I would argue, was forged by bringing in two basic groups. The people who, the racists, the white supremacists, various forms of bigotry into the fold and wedding them with the Christian Nationalist movement. And because, now, not all Christian Nationalists are white supremacists, I don't mean to say that. But there is this rampant bigotry there and this dovetailing on views, and Christian Nationalism is for the most part a very white movement. And so there are places that these two kinds of movements share. And Trump wedded those in the MAGA movement. He brought those together. He also brought in conspiracy theorists like QAnon and now this Epstein-Files business, conspiracy theorists into the fold to build the MAGA movement. And so at its base, that's how Trump got in office. But that is not enough people, the movements I just described, to actually elect the president.

There were also people who voted for Trump for completely regular reasons, right? Because they thought he was going to rein in inflation or the economy or whatever the case might be. But it's a big chunk of the American public. And whatever happens in national politics going forward, there's probably somewhere around 30%, 35% of the public that adheres to some form of these hardcore beliefs. And that movement's not going to disappear overnight. It's also stronger regionally in certain areas, deep red states like Alabama. This agenda, especially Christian Nationalism, was being put in place long before Trump came back into office. They banned yoga from the schools thinking it's like some devil worship. So we should be clear, you know, in certain parts of the country, even if the face of politics changes nationally, these people will probably decide things based on these beliefs in local areas, which makes it difficult for gay people, makes it difficult for women, right, minorities. So it's not like it's going to disappear overnight.

[00:31:05] Host: And there is an influence in supporting the Heritage Foundation and building up Project 2025, not necessarily from the white supremacist groups, but some of the white supremacist light groups or these hard right or far right groups as well.

[00:31:26] Beirich: Yeah, well, Project 2025, you know, this is the playbook that Trump has put in place. I describe it as an authoritarian playbook. And there were over 100 organizations, it was spearheaded by the Heritage Foundation, but over 100 organizations that put this thing together. Quite a few of the hate groups that we listed at SPLC are on that list, anti-immigrant hate groups or anti-LGBTQ hate groups. Project 2025 is sort of Christian Nationalism and racism put into action. Dismantle USAID because the money is going to LGBTQ groups abroad or to help women with health access. Can't have that. You know, get rid of efforts to root out extremism in the military because we're happy to have the white supremacists be involved. We don't care about those issues. Definitely get rid of the education department because it's pushing some kind of crazy woke agenda on kids and telling them, you know, it's bad to be a bigot, right? All of these elements in Project 2025 are really the crystallization of policy at the federal level that these people would want to see. And it's just, I mean, it's pretty much anti-everybody except for white Christian males and maybe traditional Christian females that agree with things like you can't get a divorce.

[00:32:49] Host: There's, I think, an element of this kind of right-from-center you talked about, you know, that just wanted lower cost of food, but maybe even slightly a little further right. And immigration and transphobia was such a big issue and it was kind of at the core of these voters. I call them the “not quite far right” or the “fascist light” or that “that's what we used to say in my day,” older generation. “I'm not racist, but...” I call those voters that kind of pushed over the edge. But those two issues in particular of immigration and the fear of losing jobs or how immigrants are the reason why things are so expensive. And then the transphobia, this not understanding and it's kind of been put into their face. But those seem like two big issues that sway and that they're still holding on to despite of everything else that's happening.

[00:34:05] Beirich: Yeah. The attacks on the trans community were cruel. I don't know how else to put it. There's a bunch of people who were cashiered out of the military with Trump's anti-trans rules who were told they would get their pensions. They're now suing. They just took them away from them. And the demonization of the trans community and the lies about the trans community were so rampant in the GOP in this last election. They were focused on that like a laser. And over the course of the last several years, the number of anti-gay, anti-trans laws that have been proposed at the state level and passed across this country is like in the thousands. So it has been a tactic of the GOP, like bathroom bills, for example, or sports issues, a tactic for a long time. The immigration issue, the way that immigrants have been described by the right in recent years, and you're right, it's not just the far, far right, has been a wholesale demonization, including conspiracy theories like immigrants are responsible for a great replacement. There's a plot to get rid of white people and bring in Latinos, basically.

[00:35:20] Host: Right, that they're brought in for votes, that they're brought in to have some kind of...

[00:35:26] Beirich: Yeah, and so it's maybe the Democrats are bringing them in, maybe Jews are bringing them in, depending on how radical you are. But that demonization of the Latino population, which the Republican Party has undertaken under Trump, right, George W. Bush was not about that, is quite astounding. And it has literally upset the narrative that was in place for so long in the US that we are a melting pot, immigrants are good for the United States, “bring us your tired, your hungry and your poor,” right, the Emma Goldman poem on the Statue of Liberty, we're a nation of immigrants. The right has completely ditched that whole thing and pushed the idea that immigrants are criminals, rapists, terrorists, a drain on the economy, destroying America, destroying our culture, everything.

That xenophobic push began in the early 2000s on the far fringes of the right and marched its way through things like the Tea Party, and then into the kind of far right GOP ranks in Congress and eventually captured the entire party, and even made its way to some extent into Latino populations. And we in the elections a couple weeks ago, we saw kind of a full scale reversal there because people thought Donald Trump was going to get rid of criminals in the country, which who wants the criminals here, right? But that's not what he's doing, right? This is just a wholesale assault on Latinos.

[00:36:58] Host: With this increase in funding and the uptick in hiring for immigration and customs enforcement, are we seeing a large number of members from far right groups joining this agency, given a badge and given a weapon and given the freedom to do whatever they want?

[00:37:22] Beirich: I've been asked by a lot of reporters if we have documentation of that. We spend a lot of time on forums for hate groups, and we have seen them advertise that DHS is hiring, hey, you can get a $50,000 bonus, look at these jobs, I should think about joining this, or people posting, I'm going to join this. We don't have any evidence that that's happened, and I think it would be very, very hard to figure that out unless somebody outs themselves, right? Or if you were to see someone who's a well-known white supremacist, and there they are, not in a mask, which most of these guys are all the time. So I don't know if that's happening. There's a lot of chatter about these being good jobs. You would think some of these guys would sign up, but I can't prove it.

[00:38:12] Host: So the billion dollar question, what do we do? How do we stop angry armed racists with the authority to round up people? How do we slow down the access to misogynistic grooming sites preying on our young boys? How do we convince our family members that men are not dressing up as women so that they could use the bathroom to do whatever you think they're going to do? How do we win a battle peacefully when the other side is so willing and wanting to use violence?

[00:38:48] Beirich: Well, it's not easy. I mean, first of all, protest does work. So when there were seven million-ish people out for No Kings a couple of weeks ago, when it was the largest protest ever held in American history, that matters. It's a statement that I'm against this. And it helps people who are afraid in this moment, for a myriad of reasons, feel more comfortable expressing their rejection of this kind of politics you're describing, this just mean, lacking empathy, cruel to various populations politics. I also think there was an element in the most recent elections of people deciding, I have had it with this. New York's mayor, yeah. I didn't vote for this. Yeah, and there were Democrats who won in deeply red areas, or who threw whole school board representatives out who were going for book bans and taking away books about gay families or whatever the case might be, thrown out. So it's not just the fact that in New Jersey everything went Democrat with the governor's race or Virginia. It's that in deep red parts of these states and others at the state and local level, there seemed to be a big rejection of Trump's politics. Latinos and black communities, whatever support they had thrown to Trump in the presidential have flipped back, apparently.

The vote in California on the changing the congressional seats, which was in response to Trump starting a gerrymandering war, was another rejection of this kind of politics. So there's that. But I think also there's a lot of community activism going on that people don't realize that's at the local level, coming out for pride events, for example, whatever the case might be, where people are trying to, at least in their backyards, make things good. But it's going to take a change in power to really stop this. That's just the reality of it. And especially if you're living in a red state and you don't agree with these politics, you are very, very isolated and in a bad position to do anything about them, unfortunately, until the politics at the national level shift in some way. In terms of the violence, I'm really concerned. The Trump administration has abandoned all efforts that were put in place to counter far-right violence and domestic terrorism. They've just stopped doing it. I have a friend who worked at DHS who said they got- not any longer there- got a missive once early in the Trump administration, that there is no right-wing terrorism. There is only left-wing terrorism. So this kind of stuff worries me about, makes me worried about public safety going forward, going towards the elections. I don't know what to do about that until something changes in terms of power. And we're just going to have to wait and see.

[00:41:51] Host: And on the transnational level, with your current organization, I mean, it's always kind of been, as America goes, so goes the rest of the world. And with our uptick in far-right politics kind of echoed throughout the rest of the world, is it that we would have to change to inspire others to change as well?

[00:42:16] Beirich: Well, yeah, I think so. I mean, if we could change the power structure, I think it would give great hope to center movements, center-left movements, you know, all across the US. And the interesting thing is, what's happening here in the United States really started in Hungary. Much of what we've seen happen here in terms of authoritarian moves is from the Hungarian playbook. Project 2025 just modeled itself on Viktor Orban's government, which, you know, stifled freedom of the press, reduced powers of the judges, messed with the ability to vote, took away women's rights, gay rights, like, it's the same thing. And far-right movements have been gaining in power for some time. We're kind of late to the game, actually. And in Brazil, a far-right government came to power and got tossed out, and Bolsonaro, the former president, is going to jail. The Dutch just rejected their far-right government that was there for a while. The Poles did a couple of years ago. So maybe in this case, we're actually kind of following the trend. And hopefully, we will reject this far-right politics.

This is bad for the world, what the U.S. is doing, shutting down aid, pushing, you know, basically saying, we don't care about the United Nations. We don't care about global LGBTQ or women's rights. We don't care about the World Health Organization. Our foreign policy is going to be driven by an anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ agenda. We're going to lie ourselves with places like Uganda, which, you know, has a death penalty for gays. This is the kind of thing that our country is doing right now. And because we're big and powerful and wealthy, it has an outsized impact. And I just hope that that ends sooner than later, because it's extremely damaging. We know millions of people have died already because of the cuts to USAID.

[00:44:10] Host: Is there anything you'd like to share that we didn't cover? Anything you want to finish with?

[00:44:15] Beirich: Well, I don't want to leave everybody without hope.

[00:44:17] Host: Please.

[00:44:18] Beirich: Okay. I mean, the polling shows that most Americans don't support any of this. You know, somewhere between 60% and 65% of Americans don't agree with these immigration policies, don't agree with the harsh treatment of minorities, don't agree with the attacks on democracy. Like, there is a lot of cause for hope. Our political system, because of the electoral college, mutes that reality. But that reality is there. And I think that is a huge cause for hope, because even though it may seem sometimes like Trump and his allies rule everything and the future is all theirs, it doesn't align with most Americans. And so I'm hopeful because of that.

[00:45:04] Host: We'd like to thank Heidi Beirich and the Global Project Against Hate and Extremism. If you'd like to continue the conversation, visit chapman.edu/Wilkinson and globalextremism.org to learn more. To access recommended books from our guests for further learning and for more socially conscious content, visit us at pastforward.org or follow us at Apple, Spotify, or wherever you podcast.