America's Struggle Against the Wahhabi/Neo-Salafi Movement

One consequence of using labels such as the “global war on terrorism,” “the long war,” “the global struggle against violent extremism” or any name that dissociates the conflict from the Wahhabi/neo-Salafi movement is that Americans lack the necessary framework for assessing U.S. policies. Misconceptions concerning the war proliferate on both the Left and the Right because of the absence of an analytical framework to provide precise vocabulary identifying the origins and objectives of the enemy. The current war and the sources of Al Qaeda's conduct can only be understood by examining the complex history of Arabia, the U.S.-Saudi alliance, and a particular historical cycle of corruption, decadence, violent purification, and moral restoration that characterizes the Wahhabi/neo-Salafi narrative.     

Power Sharing: Institutions,Behavior, and Peace

Grievances that derive from the unequal treatment of ethnic groups are a key motivation for civil war. Ethnic power sharing should therefore reduce the risk of internal conflict. Yet conflict researchers disagree on whether formal power‐sharing institutions effectively prevent large‐scale violence. We can improve our understanding of the effect of power‐sharing institutions by analyzing the mechanisms under which they operate. To this effect, we compare the direct effect of formal power‐sharing institutions on peace with their indirect effect through power‐sharing behavior. Combining data on inclusive and territorially dispersive institutions with information on power‐sharing behavior, we empirically assess this relationship on a global scale. Our causal mediation analysis reveals that formal power‐sharing institutions affect the probability of ethnic conflict onset mostly through power‐sharing behavior that these institutions induce.     

The Dialectical Liberalism of Richard Hofstadter

This essay examines Richard Hofstadter’s The American Political Tradition, alongside some of his unpublished writings from the 1940s, in order to reassess his contributions to the history of American political culture and thought. After exploring some of the implications of Hofstadter’s critical analysis of mid-century liberalism, the essay then considers how we might bring his insights into the present.     

Holocaust inversion,anti-Zionism and British neo-fascism: the Israel–Palestine conflict and the extreme right in post-war Britain

ABSTRACT

The British extreme right has always struggled to distance itself from the crimes of the Third Reich, not helped by the high level of Holocaust consciousness in Britain and by the importance of antisemitic conspiracy theory to British neo-fascist ideology. Bland’s article charts attempts by British neo-fascist actors to use Holocaust inversion and—by extension—anti-Zionism as a mask for their Nazi sympathies. It shall, first of all, demonstrate how the Israel–Palestine conflict was incorporated into British neo-fascist antisemitic discourse in the 1960s. It shall then use the 1980s National Front as a case study, to illustrate the manner in which the extreme right can use anti-Zionist activism as a tactic aimed at legitimizing its politics and gaining new supporters. The article therefore contributes to the historiographies of antisemitism and anti-Zionism in Britain, as well as to scholarly understandings of neo-fascism.