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On July 19, 2010, Shirley Sherrod was fired from her appointed position as Georgia State Director of Rural Development for the United States Department of Agriculture . Her firing was an administration reaction to media reports on video excerpts from her address to an event of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in March 2010 and commentary posted by conservative blogger Andrew Breitbart on his website . Based on these excerpts, the NAACP condemned Sherrod's remarks as racist and US government officials called on the official to resign. However, review of her full speech showed that the excerpts had been selectively edited, and that her remarks – understood in context – were about the importance of overcoming personal prejudices. The NAACP and White House officials then apologized for their earlier criticisms, and United States Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack apologized for the firing and offered Sherrod a new position.

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130-660: Defunct Newspapers Journals TV channels Websites Other Economics Gun rights Identity politics Nativist Religion Watchdog groups Youth/student groups Miscellaneous Other Breitbart News Network ( / ˈ b r aɪ t b ɑːr t / ; known commonly as Breitbart News , Breitbart , or Breitbart.com ) is an American far-right syndicated news, opinion, and commentary website founded in mid-2007 by American conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart . Its content has been described as misogynistic , xenophobic , and racist by various academics and journalists. The site has published

260-626: A "trusted source" in its Facebook News feature alongside sources like The New York Times and The Washington Post . The decision sparked controversy due to Breitbart 's status as a platform for the alt-right and its reputation for publishing misinformation. In October 2021, The Wall Street Journal reported that Facebook executives resisted removing Breitbart News from Facebook's News Tab feature to avoid angering Donald Trump and Republican members of Congress, despite criticism from Facebook employees. From November 2016 to June 2017, Breitbart ' s readership fell faster than other news sites. In

390-412: A demonic force that was on the verge of total control, requiring their urgent efforts to stop it. Therefore, they rejected pluralistic politics, with its compromise and consensus-building. Hofstadter thought that these characteristics were always present in a large minority of the population. Frequent waves of status displacement would continually bring it to the surface. D. J. Mulloy, however, noted that

520-435: A deposition as part of pretrial discovery. Sherrod was represented by the law firm of Kirkland & Ellis . In October 2015, the parties settled the case on undisclosed terms, issuing a joint statement saying: "The parties regret the harm that Mrs. Sherrod suffered as a result of these events. In a gesture they hope will inspire others to engage in the difficult but critically important process of bridging racial divides,

650-487: A good visit." Eloise Spooner recalled Sherrod as "nice-mannered, thoughtful, friendly; a good person." The couple were surprised by the controversy. "I don't know what brought up the racist mess", Roger Spooner said. "They just want to stir up some trouble, it sounds to me in my opinion." Eloise Spooner said that on seeing the story of Sherrod's resignation, "I said, 'That ain't right. They have not treated her right.'" The extended unedited video of her speech released by

780-734: A lawsuit in the Superior Court of the District of Columbia against Andrew Breitbart, Breitbart News ' Larry O'Connor , and a " John Doe ," who, according to the complaint, is "an individual whose identity has been concealed by the other defendants and who, according to defendant Breitbart, was involved in the deceptive editing of the video clip and encouraged its publication with the intent to defame Mrs. Sherrod." In her complaint , Sherrod accused Breitbart of defamation , false light and intentional infliction of emotional distress . Following Breitbart's death in 2012, Breitbart's estate

910-461: A left-wing attack that was highly critical of American capitalists. By 1932 he had millions of regular listeners. He supported Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1932 and promoted the early New Deal . He broke with Roosevelt in 1935 on foreign policy. Coughlin then denounced the New Deal , which he claimed had accomplished little but instead had strengthened the position of the bankers. In 1934 he set up

1040-505: A local chapter and collected initiation fees, while the national office sold expensive white robes with masks. The organizers collected the money and moved on, leaving locals with weak leadership. Once the state leaders were exposed as frauds in the mid-1920s, the KKK collapsed rapidly. Organizers promised membership would be secret, and appealed to Anti-Catholicism as well as hostility to Jews and African Americans. Protestant fundamentalists were

1170-403: A longer version of her address was reviewed. In April 2016, Stephen Piggott wrote in a Southern Poverty Law Center blog that the "outlet has undergone a noticeable shift toward embracing ideas on the extremist fringe of the conservative right" and was using " racist ", "anti-Muslim" and " anti-immigrant ideas". Piggott wrote that the website was openly promoting, and had become associated with,

1300-445: A lower commitment to democracy, instead having loyalty to groups, institutions and systems. However, some scholars reject Lipset and Raab's analysis. James Aho, for example, says that the way individuals join right-wing groups is no different from how they join other types of groups. They are influenced by recruiters and join because they believe the goals promoted by the group are of value to them and find personal value in belonging to

1430-600: A more militant approach to countering these perceived threats. A book written by Klaus Wah in the year 2000, The Radical Right , contrasts the radical right of the 1950s, which obtained influence during the Reagan administration, to the radical right of today, which has increasingly turned to violent acts beginning with the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995. Wahl's book documents this evolution: "Ideologies of [today's] radical right emphasize social and economic threats in

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1560-430: A new position in the department, and that she was taking time to consider it. That night, Bill O'Reilly apologized to Sherrod for his remarks calling for her removal from office. He had been the first on cable television to air the video excerpt posted by Breitbart. Initially, Breitbart said that Sherrod harbored racist sentiments. On July 20, 2010, in an interview with CNN 's John King , Breitbart said that releasing

1690-605: A number of conspiracy theories and intentionally misleading stories . Posts originating from the Breitbart News Facebook page are among the most widely shared political content on Facebook. Initially conceived as "the Huffington Post of the right", Breitbart News later aligned with the alt-right , the European populist right , and the pan-European nationalist identitarian movement under

1820-500: A phone interview. In a July 30 interview with Newsweek , Breitbart said he would be glad to meet with Sherrod privately. He agreed that the excerpted video took her statements out of context and said that if he could do things all over again, he would not have posted the excerpted video, but he did not apologize to Sherrod. President Barack Obama spoke to Sherrod personally in a phone call that lasted for seven minutes. Although he did not apologize personally to her, Sherrod said she

1950-696: A reaction among Americans, who were alarmed by the levels of crime and welfare dependency among the new arrivals, and the danger of political power in the hands of the Pope. This led to the organized Nativists and xenophobes . Nativists in New York formed the American Republican Party . It merged into the Know Nothings in the 1850s. The Know-Nothing activists and Irish Catholics fought a series of election-day confrontations especially in

2080-513: A resolution asking the Tea Party to repudiate racist language among its members. Breitbart said he posted the videos in response. Commentators from each side noted that racial issues were being manipulated for political gain. Imani Perry, a professor at Princeton University 's Center for African American Studies , said some conservatives manipulated white fears for political advantage: I think many white Americans are fearful that with Obama in

2210-498: A ruthless prosecution of the ideological war along lines very similar to those it finds in the Communist enemy". He also quotes Barry Goldwater : "I would suggest that we analyze and copy the strategy of the enemy; theirs has worked and ours has not". American historian Rick Perlstein argues that radical right issues, including populism , nativism , and authoritarianism—embodied by conspiracy-minded right-wing movements, such as

2340-616: A significant proportion of other white Americans. Throughout modern history , conspiracism has been a major feature of the radical right and subject to numerous books and articles, the most famous of which is Richard Hofstadter's essay The Paranoid Style in American Politics (1964). Imaginary threats have variously been identified as originating from American Catholics , non-whites , women , homosexuals , secular humanists , Mormons , Jews , Muslims , Hindus , Buddhists , American communists , Freemasons , bankers , and

2470-421: A single phenomenon. Daniel Bell argues that the ideology of the radical right is "its readiness to jettison constitutional processes and to suspend liberties, to condone Communist methods in the fighting of Communism". Historian Richard Hofstadter agrees that communist-style methods are often emulated: "The John Birch Society emulates Communist cells and quasi-secret operation through 'front' groups, and preaches

2600-713: A source due to its unreliability; Breitbart News can still be cited on Misplaced Pages as an opinion or commentary source. Breitbart News is also on Misplaced Pages's spam blacklist , requiring special permission for links to the website to be used. In 2008, Andrew Breitbart launched the website Big Hollywood , a group blog by individuals working in Hollywood . The site was an outgrowth of Breitbart's "Big Hollywood" column in The Washington Times , which included issues faced by conservatives working in Hollywood. In 2009,

2730-527: A time when USDA was working to improve its previous civil rights abuses. The Breitbart video was first broadcast that evening on The O'Reilly Factor , a talk show on the Fox News Channel ; host Bill O'Reilly said Sherrod should resign. At the time of the taping of the show, news of Sherrod's resignation had not yet been reported, nor had the NAACP yet released the full video. But, the program

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2860-479: A video of him making controversial statements in relation to hebephilia surfaced. Allies of Donald Trump's son-in-law and senior advisor Jared Kushner complained to Trump in April 2017 after Breitbart published several unflattering articles about Kushner. Shortly afterwards, the site's senior editors asked staffers to stop writing stories critical of Kushner. Bannon was appointed White House Chief Strategist in

2990-424: Is European in origin, has been adopted by some American social scientists. Since the European right-wing groups in existence immediately following the war had roots in fascism they were normally called "neo-fascist". However, as new right-wing groups emerged with no connection to historical fascism, the use of the term "right-wing extremism" came to be more widely used. Jeffrey Kaplan and Leonard Weinberg argued that

3120-578: Is an overarching belief in the existence of New World Order intent on instituting a one-world, communist government. Climate change being viewed as a hoax is also sometimes associated with the radical right. Since 2017, the QAnon conspiracy theory has been widely promulgated among fringe groups on the far-right. During the COVID-19 pandemic , far-right leaders and influencers have promoted anti-vaccination rhetoric and conspiracy theories surrounding

3250-594: Is commonly, but not exclusively used to describe anticommunist organizations such as the Christian Crusade and the John Birch Society ... [T]he term far right ... is the label most broadly used by scholars ... to describe militant white supremacists ." The study of the radical right began in the 1950s as social scientists attempted to explain McCarthyism , which was seen as a lapse from

3380-433: Is disagreement in the past over how right-wing political movement should be described, and no consensus over what the proper terminology should be exists, although the terminology which was developed in the 1950s, based on the use of the words "radical" or "extremist", is the most commonly used one. Other scholars simply prefer to call them "The Right" or " conservatives ", which is what they call themselves. The terminology

3510-467: Is not always the case. The main core belief is inequality, which often takes the form of opposition to immigration or racism. They do not see this new Right as having any connection with the historic Right, which had been concerned with protecting the status quo . They also see the cooperation of the American and European forms, and their mutual influence on each other, as evidence of their existence as

3640-552: Is used to describe a broad range of movements. The term "radical right" was coined by Seymour Martin Lipset and it was also included in a book titled The New American Right , which was published in 1955. The contributors to that book identified a conservative "responsible Right" as represented by the Republican administration of Dwight D. Eisenhower and a radical right that wished to change political and social life. Further to

3770-566: The 1856 , with multiple injuries and a few deaths. The Know Nothing party split over the issue of slavery and its northern wing merged into the Republican Party in the late 1850s. Starting in the 1870s and continuing through the late 19th century, numerous white supremacist paramilitary groups operated in the South , with the goal of intimidating African-American supporters of the Republican Party . Examples of such groups included

3900-766: The 2017 London Bridge attack . By 2019, Breitbart had lost nearly 75% of its readership, going from 17.3 million at the beginning of 2017 to 4.6 million in May 2019. Breitbart News is a far-right American news, opinion, and commentary website. Some news outlets describe it as a conservative news outlet or as part of the alt-right . One of the site's objectives is to court millennial conservatives. It supported Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign, and political scientist Matthew Goodwin described Breitbart News as being "ultra-conservative" in orientation. Breitbart News publishes articles that critique feminism , Islam , and immigration . The site has also been associated with

4030-480: The Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University found that Breitbart News was the most shared source by Trump supporters on Twitter during the election. In November 2016, the cereal manufacturer Kellogg's announced they would no longer advertise on Breitbart News , saying the site was not "aligned with [their] values". In response, Breitbart announced plans to boycott

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4160-594: The Black Legion , Charles Coughlin , the Christian Front , and " birther " speculation — have had more influence on mainstream conservatism than William F. Buckley 's libertarian ideas of limited government , free trade and free market economics ; or neoconservative ideas like pro-immigration and empire-building. The American Patriots who spearheaded the American Revolution in

4290-521: The Democratic party ), based on sympathizers as well as active supporters of the " Proud Boys , Oath Keepers , QAnon etc.". He points to survey data of Republicans who answered "yes" to questions such as whether they had a "favorable opinion of the people who invaded the Capitol on Jan. 6 ", thought it likely that Donald Trump would "be reinstated as president before the end of 2021", and whether it

4420-538: The English Misplaced Pages of having a left-wing and liberal bias. In March 2018, Breitbart News responded negatively to a pop-up on Facebook containing content from the Misplaced Pages article on Breitbart News that described the news website as "intentionally misleading", resulting in several users attempting to change the article's content. In September 2018, Misplaced Pages editors "deprecated" Breitbart News as

4550-466: The John Birch Society in the United States, and since then it has been applied to similar groups worldwide. The term "radical" was applied to the groups because they sought to make fundamental (hence " radical ") changes within institutions and remove persons and institutions that threatened their values or economic interests from political life. Among academics and social scientists there

4680-700: The Los Angeles Times , web traffic is vital to the company as it supports itself from advertising revenue. Breitbart News strongly supported Donald Trump in the 2016 United States presidential election . In July 2015, Politico reported that Ted Cruz "likely has the Republican presidential field's deepest relationship with the Breitbart machine." In August 2015, an article in BuzzFeed reported that several anonymous Breitbart News staffers claimed that Donald Trump had paid for favorable coverage on

4810-631: The Mercer family ) and CEO, while Alex Marlow is the editor-in-chief , Wynton Hall is managing editor , and Joel Pollak and Peter Schweizer are senior editors-at-large . Andrew Breitbart launched Breitbart.com as a news aggregator in 2005. The website featured direct links to wire stories at the Associated Press , Reuters , Fox News , the New York Post , TMZ as well as a number of other outlets. The website's initial growth

4940-691: The Red Shirts and the White League . In the Midwestern United States in 1887, the American Protective Association (APA) was formed by Irish Protestants from Canada who wanted to fight against the political power of Irish Catholic politicians. It was a secret organization with vastly exaggerated membership claims whose members campaigned for Protestant candidates in local elections and it opposed

5070-599: The Southern Poverty Law Center 's view that the site embraces "ideas on the extremist fringe of the conservative right. Racist ideas." She also said that the "de facto merger between Breitbart and the Trump campaign represents a landmark achievement for the alt-right". She also condemned the site as "the Democratic Party's media enemy No. 1" and "racist, radical and offensive". A 2017 study by

5200-533: The U.S. government . Alexander Zaitchik , writing for the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), credited cable news hosts, including Glenn Beck , Lou Dobbs , the John Birch Society , and WorldNetDaily with popularizing conspiracy theories. In the Fall 2010 issue of the SPLC's Intelligence Report , he identified the following as the top 10 conspiracy theories of the radical right: Common to most of these theories

5330-484: The administration of US President Donald Trump and served in that role for seven months; he was dismissed from the White House on August 17, 2017. That same day, he was again appointed executive chairman of Breitbart News . In January 2018, Breitbart News announced that Bannon had stepped down from his position as executive chairman. In October 2019, Facebook announced that Breitbart News would be included as

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5460-428: The conservative commentator Andrew Breitbart to his BigGovernment website, along with a nearly 1,000-word blog post in which he accused the mainstream media and the NAACP of falsely labeling the Tea Party as racist. The first video showed Sherrod describing an experience of working with a white man seeking help to save his farm. She struggled with helping him at a time when many black people were losing their land. In

5590-433: The counter-jihad movement, having employed anti-Muslim writers such as Pamela Geller , Frank Gaffney and Robert Spencer . In August 2017, Joel Pollak, the senior editor-at-large for Breitbart News , described the "mission" of Breitbart News in this way: " #WAR has been our motto since the days of Andrew Breitbart, and we use it whenever we go to war against our three main targets, which are, in order: Hollywood and

5720-869: The mainstream media , number one; the Democratic Party and the institutional left , number two; and the Republican establishment in Washington , number three." Breitbart News has published a number of falsehoods and conspiracy theories , as well as intentionally misleading stories, including a story that the Obama administration had supported ISIS during insurgency against the Syrian regime. It has sometimes published these misleading stories as part of an intentional strategy to manipulate media narratives via disinformation . In July 2010, Shirley Sherrod

5850-422: The politics of the United States , the radical right is a political preference that leans towards ultraconservatism , white nationalism , white supremacy , or other far-right ideologies in a hierarchical structure which is paired with conspiratorial rhetoric alongside traditionalist and reactionary aspirations. The term was first used by social scientists in the 1950s regarding small groups such as

5980-554: The "National Union for Social Justice", as a network of local clubs he would control. The National Union never flourished and it closed in 1936. Instead he endorsed the left-wing presidential campaign of William Lemke , who campaigned on the Union Party ticket, as a new third party. Lemke was also supported by Gerald L. K. Smith , head of the remnants of the Share Our Wealth movement and Dr. Francis Townsend , head of

6110-490: The 1770s were motivated primarily by an ideology that historians call Republicanism . It stressed the dangers of aristocracy , as represented by the British government, corruption, and the need for every citizen to display civic virtue. When public affairs took a bad turn, Republicans were inclined to identify a conspiracy of evil forces as the cause. Against this background of fear of conspiracies against American liberties

6240-541: The 2016 United States elections and its role in both amplifying stories from Russian media and being amplified by Russian bots in social media. In 2017, a Breitbart News reporter left the company to join Sputnik . In a 2017 survey among US readers, Breitbart News was voted the third least trustworthy source among American readers, with BuzzFeed and Occupy Democrats being lower-ranked. In an October 2018 Simmons Research survey of 38 news organizations, Breitbart News

6370-588: The ADL to apologize. An article in The Jewish Daily Forward argued that Bannon and Andrew Breitbart are antisemitic. An article by Shmuley Boteach in The Hill disputed the allegations, arguing that Breitbart defends Israel against antisemitism. Alex Marlow, editor-in-chief of Breitbart News , denies that Breitbart is a "hate-site", stating "that we're consistently called anti-Semitic despite

6500-569: The American alt-right , the European populist right , the pan-European nationalist identitarian movement , and the counter-jihad movement. Bannon declared the website "the platform for the alt-right" in 2016, but denied all allegations of racism and later stated that he rejected what he called the " ethno-nationalist " tendencies of the alt-right movement. One of Bannon's coworkers said he wasn't referring to Richard Spencer but instead to "the trolls on Reddit or 4Chan ". The owners of Breitbart News deny that their website has any connection to

6630-632: The American political tradition. A framework for description was developed primarily in Richard Hofstadter 's "The pseudo-conservative revolt" and Seymour Martin Lipset 's "The sources of the radical right". These essays, along with others by Daniel Bell , Talcott Parsons , Peter Viereck and Herbert Hyman , were included in The New American Right (1955). In 1963, following the rise of the John Birch Society,

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6760-430: The American radical right have stressed American exceptionalism. The U.S. studies have paid attention to the consequences of slavery, the profusion of religious denominations and a history of immigration, and saw fascism as uniquely European. Although the term "radical right" was American in origin, the term has been consciously adopted by some European social scientists. Conversely the term "right-wing extremism", which

6890-453: The CNN reporter Anderson Cooper , Sherrod referred to Breitbart as "vicious" and a "racist", and said that he would "like to get us stuck back in the times of slavery ". National Review commentators suggested she owed Breitbart an apology, and Salon's Joan Walsh said Sherrod's assertion came from her own viewpoint. After learning of Breitbart's death on March 1, 2012, Sherrod released

7020-570: The Department of Interior. Jackson noted the landmark nature of the national settlements of these cases and that tens of thousands of people benefited from the compensation for previous injustices. He said: [J]ust this past Thursday the black farmers got a $ 1.2 billion settlement , the [American] Indians a $ 3.2 billion settlement, for race discrimination. We're not discussing all the facts... 100,000 black farmers get no press. Native Americans get no press. We're still arguing about how fast or slow

7150-755: The Klan in 1924. During the Great Depression in the United States there were several popular new movements. On the left the largest by far was Huey Long 's Share Our Wealth , which attacked capitalism and was expanding from its base in Louisiana when Long was assassinated. On the right the most important was Father Coughlin . Charles Coughlin (Father Coughlin) was a Catholic priest who immigrated from Canada to Detroit and began broadcasting on religious matters in 1926. When his program went national in 1930, he began to comment on political issues, promoting

7280-488: The NAACP showed that in her full speech, Sherrod emphasized what was only touched on in the excerpt: she said that she learned from the incident that poverty , not race , was the key factor in rural development. She said she ultimately worked hard to save the farmer's land. Other references to race in Sherrod's speech related to a story of her more recent help of a black family to prevent forced sale of their farmland. It

7410-611: The Republican Party's political strategy. Critics on the Left denied that McCarthyism could be interpreted as a mass movement and rejected the comparison with 19th-century populism. Others saw status politics, dispossession and other explanations as too vague. Two different approaches were taken by these social scientists. The American historian Richard Hofstadter wrote an analysis in his influential 1964 essay The Paranoid Style in American Politics . Hofstadter sought to identify

7540-461: The South , including the murder of her father; Sherrod went on to say that she had not let that get in the way and did not discriminate against him. They became very good friends as a result of her help. She admitted thinking at the time that white people had "all the advantages" but learned that poverty affected both races. According to Sherrod in her NAACP speech, she did her job correctly by taking

7670-530: The White House reacted. Also the Spooner's testimony – this white family farmer, Eloise and Mr. Spooner – I thought their stepping up to the plate in alliance with Sherrod was a great news story that none of us should miss. Appearing on ABC 's The View on July 29, President Obama characterized the controversy over Sherrod's firing as a "bogus" one generated by the media; he said his administration overreacted in forcing her out. In February 2011, Sherrod filed

7800-425: The White House, and the diversity in his appointments, that the racial balance of power is shifting. And that's frightening both because people always are afraid to give up privilege, and because of the prospect of a black-and-brown backlash against a very ugly history. Some liberals have long maintained that racism requires power, and so black people can't be racist. Obama's election undercut the first argument and made

7930-504: The affair. Greg Pollowitz of National Review Online , a conservative publication, said that the Media Matters timeline was "as good as any I’ve seen." The first news outlet to report on the Breitbart video was FoxNews.com , which posted an article about the story on its website. The New York City affiliate for CBS posted a report on its website later that afternoon. The Atlanta Journal-Constitution website soon picked up

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8060-465: The alt-right or has ever supported racist or white supremacist views. Anthony R. DiMaggio has described these denials as " gaslighting ". Breitbart News spokesperson Kurt Bardella stated in 2015 that the site "is a for-profit operation". The company's investors include computer scientist and hedge fund CEO Robert Mercer. Editors commented in 2015 that the site is a "private company and we don't comment on who our investors or backers are." According to

8190-422: The apparent audience reaction as well. After the NAACP released the entire videotape, its officials retracted their previous statement and said: Having reviewed the full tape, spoken to Ms. Sherrod, and most importantly heard the testimony of the white farmers mentioned in this story, we now believe the organization that edited the documents did so with the intention of deceiving millions of Americans. During

8320-451: The article, saying he had done so in an attempt "to make light of a significant company event". The website's spokesperson Kurt Bardella also resigned following the incident, objecting to the company's handling of the incident and its favorable coverage of Trump. By March 14, several top executives and journalists at Breitbart News had resigned, with The New York Times saying that "Breitbart's unabashed embrace of Mr. Trump, particularly at

8450-573: The authors were asked to re-examine their earlier essays and the revised essays were published in the book The Radical Right . Lipset, along with Earl Raab, traced the history of the radical right in The Politics of Unreason (1970). The central arguments of The Radical Right provoked criticism. Some on the Right thought that McCarthyism could be explained as a rational reaction to communism. Others thought McCarthyism should be explained as part of

8580-558: The beliefs of the alt-right. Breitbart News has published material that has been called misogynist , xenophobic , and racist. The owners of Breitbart News deny their website has any connection to the alt-right. The Anti-Defamation League described Breitbart News as "the premier website of the alt-right" representing "white nationalists and unabashed anti-Semites and racists." The Zionist Organization of America rejected accusations of antisemitism, saying that Breitbart News instead "bravely fights against anti-Semitism" and called for

8710-525: The characteristics of the groups. Hofstadter defined politically paranoid individuals as feeling persecuted, fearing conspiracy, and acting over-aggressive yet socialized . Hofstadter and other scholars in the 1950s argued that the major left-wing movement of the 1890s, the Populists, showed what Hofstadter said was "paranoid delusions of conspiracy by the Money Power". Historians have also applied

8840-401: The company. Breitbart announced they would be willing to go to "war" with Kellogg's over its decision to remove ads from the site. In January 2017, editor Julia Hahn resigned from Breitbart News to work as special assistant to president Donald Trump. Milo Yiannopoulos , who had served as a senior editor of Breitbart News since 2014, resigned from the company on February 21, 2017 after

8970-655: The controversy was "going to be on Glenn Beck tonight", which was disputed by White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs . That same evening, the President of the NAACP, Benjamin Jealous , posted a tweet saying that his organization was "appalled" by Sherrod's comments. The following day, the USDA Secretary Tom Vilsack released a statement explaining his agency's actions and suggested that Sherrod's statements as shown damaged her effectiveness at

9100-591: The country against both foreign and domestic radicals. Fear of immigration led to a riot in New York City in 1806 between nativists and Irishmen, which led to increased calls by Federalists to nativism. In America, public outrage against privilege and aristocracy in the United States was expressed in the Northeast by advocates of anti-Masonry , the belief that Freemasonry comprised powerful evil secret elites which rejected republican values and were blocking

9230-700: The edited video and an accompanying article had been published on the Fox News website, as well as those of several other news organizations, prior to her resignation. Later, the White House sought official review of the case. Sherrod watched live at the CNN Center when Robert Gibbs , White House press spokesman, extended her an apology. She said she welcomed the review and accepted the apology. On July 21, Vilsack of USDA apologized personally and publicly to Sherrod for forcing her resignation based on an "out-of-context video". He said that he had offered Sherrod

9360-562: The election, more than 2,000 organizations removed Breitbart News from ad buys following Internet activism campaigns denouncing the site's controversial positions. Breitbart News has promoted climate change denial and COVID-19 misinformation . The company is headquartered in Los Angeles , with bureaus in Texas , London , and Jerusalem . Co-founder Larry Solov is the co-owner (along with Andrew Breitbart's widow Susie Breitbart and

9490-440: The elites because immigrants brought socialism and radicalism, while for the masses the threat came from their Catholicism. The main elements are low democratic restraint, having more of a stake in the past than the present and laissez-faire economics. The emphasis is on preserving social rather than economic status. The main population attracted are lower-educated, lower-income and lower-occupational strata. They were seen as having

9620-474: The excerpt, she says "So, I didn't give him the full force of what I could do." She took him to a white lawyer, telling the audience that —"his own kind would take care of him." Subsequently, the posted video was shown to be a selected excerpt of broader comments that conveyed a very different meaning, in which Sherrod learned from her experience, and realized it was about the “haves and have nots” and not white versus black. She then worked diligently to help

9750-504: The fact that we are overwhelmingly staffed with Jews and are pro-Israel and pro-Jewish. That is fake news ." Science magazine called Breitbart "a far-right site that avoids explicit white nationalism." Breitbart News has had staff members associated with white supremacists. An exposé by BuzzFeed News published in October 2017 documented how Breitbart solicited story ideas and copy edits from white supremacists and neo-Nazis via

9880-538: The farmer to a white lawyer who she thought could help him, and she looked for another lawyer when needed. Sherrod rejected descriptions calling her racist and said she "went all out" to help the man keep his farm. She said that the incident helped her learn to move beyond race, and she told the story to audiences to make that point. However, Sherrod’s claim she took the Spooners to a white lawyer who did not help them wss contradicted by Eloisa Spooner. Roger Spooner,

10010-498: The farmer, said on CNN that Sherrod is not a racist, that she did everything she could for his family; more than 20 years later, he and Sherrod remain friends. The Spooners credit Sherrod with helping them save their farm: "If it hadn't been for her, we would've never known who to see or what to do", Roger Spooner said. "She led us right to our success." His wife, Eloise Spooner, said that "after things kind of settled down, she brought Sherrod some tomatoes out of her garden, and they had

10140-531: The first Radical Right-style responses came in the 1790s. Some Federalists warned of an organized conspiracy involving Thomas Jefferson and his followers, and recent arrivals from Europe, alleging that they were agents of the French revolutionary agenda of violent radicalism, social equalitarianism and anti-Christian infidelity. The Federalists in 1798 acted by passing the Alien and Sedition Acts , designed to protect

10270-415: The first stage certain groups came under strain because of a loss or threatened loss of power and/or status. In the second stage they theorize about what has led to this threat. In the third stage they identify people and groups whom they consider to be responsible. A successful radical right-wing group would be able to combine the anxieties of both elites and masses. European immigration for example threatened

10400-432: The following statement: "The news of Mr. Breitbart's death came as a surprise to me when I was informed of it this morning. My prayers go out to Mr. Breitbart's family as they cope during this very difficult time." Andrew Breitbart's widow has taken his place as defendant in the ongoing lawsuit. Commentators attributed the rivalry between the left and the right as an important factor in the controversy. The NAACP had passed

10530-430: The full video, Sherrod related her experience in 1986 with the first white farmer to come to her for help. (On July 20 CNN received a telephone call from the farmer's wife and learned his name was Roger Spooner. ) Sherrod said that his land was being sold, and "had in fact already been rented out from under him." At first, she felt that he had a superior attitude toward her, causing her to recall harsh aspects of her life in

10660-417: The group. Several scholars, including Sara Diamond and Chip Berlet , reject the theory that membership in the radical right is driven by emotionality and irrationality and see them as similar to other political movements. John George and Laird Wilcox see the psychological claims in Lipset and Raab's approach as "dehumanizing" of members of the radical right. They claim that the same description of members of

10790-622: The hiring of Catholics for government jobs. The movement relied on forged documents and was rejected by mainstream Republicans. Anti-Catholicism was declining in America as the Catholics moved up the social ladder, and the APA quickly faded away in the mid-1890s. The Second Ku Klux Klan , was formed in 1915 but grew very slowly until the early 1920s. Then entrepreneurs took it over as a cash machine whereby well-paid state and local organizers formed

10920-452: The intermediation of Milo Yiannopoulos. Yiannopoulos, together with other Breitbart News employees, developed and marketed the values and tactics of these groups and attempted to make them palatable to a broader audience. According to BuzzFeed News , "These new emails and documents ... clearly show that Breitbart does more than tolerate the most hate-filled, racist voices of the alt-right. It thrives on them, fueling and being fueled by some of

11050-480: The internet, and decisions made by President Barack Obama 's administration . The Obama administration apologized to Sherrod, and offered her a full-time, high-level internal advocacy position with the Department of Agriculture, which she ultimately declined. In 2011, Sherrod filed suit against Breitbart and co-defendant Larry O'Connor for defamation . In 2015, following lengthy pretrial proceedings, Breitbart's death, and efforts by Breitbart's estate to have

11180-453: The left-wing Townsend Old Age movement. In the election, however, Lemke received fewer than 900,000 votes. Resignation of Shirley Sherrod Extensive media coverage of the excerpted videos, various parties' comments, and later corrections after the full story was discovered, exacerbated the affair. The event brought to the forefront current debates regarding racism in the United States , cable news reporting, ideological websites on

11310-518: The main recruits, along with poorly educated men. The Klan organizers claimed that Catholics were controlled by the Pope. They supported prohibition and public schools. The Klan was anti-elitist and it also attacked "the intellectuals", seeing itself as the egalitarian defender of the common man. The Klan was denounced by the Republicans, but the Democrats split bitterly on a proposal to denounce

11440-406: The man save his farm. The excerpts posted by Breitbart ran for 2 minutes, 38 seconds in total, while the full video was 43 minutes 15 seconds long. Breitbart said he did not edit the video excerpt which he released and did not have a copy of the entire speech. The full video was produced by a Douglas, Georgia , company that filmed the banquet for the local Georgia chapter of the NAACP. The owner of

11570-457: The management of former executive chairman Steve Bannon , who declared the website "the platform for the alt-right" in 2016. Breitbart News became a virtual rallying spot for supporters of Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign . The company's management, together with former staff member Milo Yiannopoulos , solicited ideas for stories from, and worked to advance and market ideas of neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups and individuals. After

11700-510: The modern and postmodern world (e.g., globalization, immigration). The radical right also promises protection against such threats by an emphatic ethnic construction of 'we', the people, as a familiar, homogeneous in-group, anti-modern, or reactionary structures of family, society, an authoritarian state, nationalism , the discrimination, or exclusion of immigrants and other minorities ... While favoring traditional social and cultural structures (traditional family and gender roles, religion , etc.)

11830-544: The most toxic beliefs on the political spectrum—and clearing the way for them to enter the American mainstream." In November 2017, British anti-fascism charity Hope Not Hate identified one of the website's writers as an administrator of a far-right Facebook group that serves as a platform for fascists and white supremacists. In 2017, the Mueller investigation examined the role of Breitbart News in Russian interference in

11960-540: The movement toward egalitarianism and reform. The anti-Masons, with a strong evangelical base, organized into a political party, the Anti-Masonic Party that pledged to rid Masons from public office. It was most active in 1828–1836. The Freemason movement was badly damaged and never fully recovered; the Anti-Mason movement merged into the coalition that became the new Whig Party . The anti-Masonry movement

12090-551: The old media guard." As part of that commitment, he founded Breitbart.com , a website designed to become "the Huffington Post of the right" according to Breitbart News ' s former executive chairman, Steve Bannon . Breitbart News exclusively re-posted the Anthony Weiner sexting scandal , the resignation of Shirley Sherrod , and the ACORN 2009 undercover videos controversy . Following Andrew Breitbart's death in 2012,

12220-519: The opening of Texas and London-based operations. The new offices were the beginning of an expansion plan that included the addition of a new regional site roughly every 90 days, with new locations to include Florida , California , Cairo , and Jerusalem . According to a 2014 Pew Research Center study, 3% of respondents got their news from Breitbart in a typical week, and 79% of its audience reported having political values that are right-of-center. Under Bannon's management, Breitbart News aligned with

12350-541: The organisation in the year after Andrew Breitbart's death as staffers battled for ownership of his legacy. Before his death, Andrew Breitbart had begun a redesign of the Breitbart News website to transform it from a links-aggregator into a more tabloid-style website. The redesign was launched shortly after his death in March 2012. In February 2014, Bannon announced the addition of approximately 12 staff members and

12480-524: The pandemic . From the 1990s onward, parties that have been described as radical right became established in the legislatures of various democracies including Canada , Australia , Norway , France , Israel , Russia , Romania , and Chile , and they also entered coalition governments in Switzerland , Finland , Austria , the Netherlands , and Italy . However, there is little consensus about

12610-549: The paranoid category to other political movements, such as the conservative Constitutional Union Party of 1860. Hofstadter's approach was later applied to the rise of new right-wing groups, including the Christian right and the Patriot movement . Political scientist Gary Jacobson gives an estimate of the "size of the extremist vote" as a fraction of Republican Party voters (there being essentially no right-wing extremists in

12740-632: The radical right in the U.S. and right-wing populism in Europe were the same phenomenon that existed throughout the Western world. They identified the core attributes as contained in extremism, behaviour and beliefs. As extremists, they see no moral ambiguity and demonize the enemy, sometimes connecting them to conspiracy theories such as the New World Order. Given this worldview, there is a tendency to use methods outside democratic norms, although this

12870-468: The radical right is also true of many people within the political mainstream. Richard Hofstadter found a common thread in the radical right, from fear of the Illuminati in the late 18th century, to anti-Catholic and anti-Masonic movements in the 19th to McCarthyism and the John Birch Society in the 20th. They were conspiracist , Manichean, absolutist and paranoid. They saw history as a conspiracy by

13000-578: The radical right uses modern technologies and it does not ascribe to a specific economic policy; some parties advocate a liberal, free-market policy, but other parties advocate a welfare state policy. Finally, the radical right can be scaled by using different degrees of militancy and aggressiveness from right-wing populism to racism , terrorism , and totalitarianism ." Ultraright groups, as The Radical Right definition states, are normally called " far-right " groups, but they may also be called "radical right" groups. According to Clive Webb, "Radical right

13130-929: The reasons for this. Some of these parties had historic roots, such as the National Alliance , formed as the Italian Social Movement in 1946, the French National Front , founded in 1972, and the Freedom Party of Austria , an existing party that moved sharply to the right after 1986. Typically new right-wing parties, such as the French Poujadists , the U.S. Reform Party and the Dutch Pim Fortuyn List enjoyed short-lived prominence. The main support for these parties comes from both

13260-462: The right of the radical right, they identified themselves as the "ultraright", adherents of which advocated drastic change, but they only used violence against the state in extreme cases. In the decades since, the ultraright, while adopting the basic ideology of the 1950s radical right, has updated it to encompass what it sees as "threats" posed by the modern world . It has leveraged fear of those threats to draw new adherents, and to encourage support of

13390-568: The second half of that slogan has been dumped into the trash bin. The BBC commented about "the absurdity of the spin-cycle in which American journalists and politicians are intertwined and about the febrile atmosphere that surrounds any story about race." The New York Times noted that, "Politically charged stories often take root online before being shared with a much wider audience on Fox. The television coverage, in turn, puts pressure on other news media outlets to follow up". Mediaite 's Steve Krakauer reported that although FoxNews.com broke

13520-592: The seeming expense of its own reporter, struck them as a betrayal of its mission." Former employees accused Bannon of having "turned a website founded on anti-authoritarian grounds into a de facto propaganda outlet for Mr. Trump." On August 17, 2016, Bannon stepped down from his role as executive chairman to join the Trump campaign as its new CEO. On August 25, Trump's opponent Hillary Clinton criticized him for hiring Bannon as his CEO in her rally in Reno, Nevada. She quoted

13650-541: The self-employed and skilled and unskilled labor, with support coming predominantly from males. However, scholars are divided on whether these parties are radical right, since they differ from the groups described in earlier studies of the radical right. They are more often described as populist. Studies of the radical right in the United States and right-wing populism in Europe have tended to be conducted independently, with very few comparisons made. European analyses have tended to use comparisons with fascism, while studies of

13780-971: The site used audio from a conference call to accuse the National Endowment of the Arts of encouraging artists to create work in support of President Barack Obama's domestic policy . The Obama Administration and the NEA were accused of potentially violating the Hatch Act . The White House acknowledged regrets, and the story led to the resignation of a White House appointee, and new federal guidelines for how federal agencies should interact with potential grantees. Radical right (United States) Defunct Newspapers Journals TV channels Websites Other Economics Gun rights Identity politics Nativist Religion Watchdog groups Youth/student groups Miscellaneous Other In

13910-753: The site was redesigned, bringing the formerly distinct "Big" websites under one umbrella website at Breitbart.com . Billionaire conservative activist Robert Mercer endowed Breitbart.com with at least $ 11 million in 2011. Andrew Breitbart died in March 2012. The website hosted a number of memorials for him. Editors said they intended to carry on his legacy at the website. Following Andrew Breitbart's death, former board member Steve Bannon became executive chairman and Laurence Solov became CEO. The company also hired Joel Pollak as editor-in-chief and Alex Marlow as managing editor. An October 2012 article in BuzzFeed News suggested there were internal tensions in

14040-704: The site. The site's management strongly denied the charge. In March 2016, Lloyd Grove of The Daily Beast characterized the website as "Trump-friendly", writing that Breitbart News "regularly savages the GOP establishment, the media elite, the Washington consultant class, and the Fox News Channel." On March 11, 2016, Breitbart News reporter Michelle Fields filed a battery complaint against Donald Trump's campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski , alleging that Lewandowski had grabbed her and bruised her while she

14170-527: The specter of black racism appear more threatening. After the release of the full video, media outlets across the political spectrum criticized the decision to force Sherrod to resign. Jeff Greenfield of CBS News criticized the role of the 24-hour news, saying, The old United Press International wire service had a slogan: 'Get it first, but first get it right'. In the wake of the Shirley Sherrod story, it's worth asking whether more and more

14300-611: The story until after Sherrod's resignation was widely reported. Clemente of Fox News said that it was a mistake to have put the story on their website before Sherrod's resignation was announced. In an interview with Chris Wallace of Fox News, the civil rights activist the Reverend Jesse Jackson said that he regretted that coverage given to the Sherrod incident had overshadowed more important federal actions that month. The government had settled longstanding legal claims of racial discrimination in programs of USDA and

14430-525: The story, it was later reported by other online sites such as The Atlanta Journal-Constitution ' s, and that it was repeated by a number of people on various shows and networks. He noted full coverage by other networks and channels, so Sherrod's resignation was not simply because of the Fox News coverage. Howard Kurtz said in The Washington Post that the Fox News network, with the exception of brief comments by O'Reilly, did not discuss

14560-500: The story. In addition, the story was picked up and reported widely in the blogosphere . Sherrod later said that on the afternoon of July 19, she received numerous demands from government officials to submit her resignation, demands which she characterized as harassment. In response to a call from USDA deputy undersecretary Cheryl Cook, Sherrod submitted her resignation via email that same day. Sherrod said that Cook told her White House officials wanted her to quit immediately because

14690-512: The suit dismissed which were rejected, the parties settled the suit on undisclosed terms. When Shirley Sherrod addressed the Federation of Southern Cooperatives/Land Assistance Fund on August 21, 2010, she said she had been aware of the videos on July 14, 2010, five days before they were posted on Andrew Breitbart's BigGovernment website. Sherrod says that she immediately notified the USDA about

14820-589: The term "extremist" is often applied to groups outside the political mainstream and the term is dropped once these groups obtain respectability, using the Palestinian Liberation Organization as an example. The mainstream frequently ignores the commonality between itself and so-called extremist organizations. Also, the radical right appeals to views that are held by the mainstream: antielitism, individualism, and egalitarianism. Their views on religion, race, Americanism and guns are held by

14950-589: The two months from April to June 2017, the site lost about 90% of its advertisers. The decline coincided with boycotts aimed at getting advertisers to stop running ads on the site. The boycotts were mainly organized by the anonymous online group Sleeping Giants , which said on June 5 that 2,200 organizations had committed to stop advertising on Breitbart News (and similar sites) due to its controversial positions. Soon thereafter, Breitbart News trimmed prominently displayed, overtly racist content and fired contributor Katie McHugh for posting Islamophobic tweets about

15080-485: The uproar over Sherrod's resignation, Vilsack released a statement on July 20 saying that the USDA would "conduct a thorough review and consider additional facts". Sherrod said that she might not want the job any more. On July 21, 2010, Sean Hannity rejected the NAACP's blaming of Fox News for inflaming the situation. While the story was not mentioned on the Fox News Channel until after Sherrod's resignation,

15210-454: The video company, Johnny Wilkerson, said on July 20 that he was sending the full video to the national NAACP and would post it in full once he got permission to do so. Breitbart's source for the excerpt remained confidential as of July 2010 . Much of the controversy related to the incident involved which parties took which actions and when. Media Matters for America , a liberal media watchdog organization, compiled an extensive timeline of

15340-441: The video was "...not about Shirley Sherrod. It's about the NAACP. This was about the NAACP attacking the Tea Party and this [the video of Ms. Sherrod] is showing racism at an NAACP event. I did not ask for Shirley Sherrod to be fired. I did not ask for any repercussions for Shirley Sherrod. They were the ones that took the initiative to get rid of her." Breitbart questioned CNN's acceptance of Eloise Spooner's self-reported identity in

15470-444: The videos, saying that they did not convey the entire or accurate story. She heard nothing from the USDA until Monday, July 19, 2010, when she was put on administrative leave and then asked to resign. Released White House emails show the Obama administration was aware of the situation, but there was no evidence that the dismissal of Sherrod was under orders of the White House. On July 19, 2010, two different video clips were posted by

15600-431: Was "definitely true" that "top Democrats are involved in elite child sex-trafficking rings ." Based on the results, which were stable over 2020–2022, he estimated that "20 to 25 percent of the Republican electorate can be considered extremists". Sociologists Lipset and Raab were focused on who joined these movements and how they evolved. They saw the development of radical right-wing groups as occurring in three stages. In

15730-499: Was "very, very pleased with the conversation." On July 22, Sherrod said she planned to sue Breitbart, who published the excerpted video that led to her resignation. She also said that she would like to see Breitbart's BigGovernment website "shut down". The attack on my wife has opened up an avalanche of discussion on a tabooed subject – race . It is a blessing to be an instrument of God's grace . —E-mail to Salon's Joan Walsh, August 1, 2010 In an interview with

15860-486: Was a case in which distant cousins, among numerous heirs, were forcing a sale of land that the family had owned since the grandfather bought it. She noted finding some honest lawyer who happened to be white, and also that the cousins in the North had lined up a white buyer. Within hours of the excerpted video's being shown, Benjamin Jealous , president of the NAACP, condemned Sherrod for having abused her power and criticized

15990-485: Was affirmed by a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit in June 2013. The case was assigned to U.S. District Judge Richard J. Leon , who repeatedly expresses frustration with the U.S. government's delays in providing discovery . In July 2014, a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit overturned Judge Leon's order directing Secretary of Agriculture Vilsack to give

16120-440: Was attempting to ask a question at an event. After claiming that Breitbart News ' s management was not sufficiently supportive of Fields, Breitbart ' s editor-at-large Ben Shapiro and Fields resigned. A Breitbart News article published on March 14, 2016, accused Shapiro of betraying Breitbart News ' s readers; the article was subsequently removed from the website. Editor-at-large Joel Pollak apologized for writing

16250-671: Was fired from her appointed position as Georgia State Director of Rural Development for the United States Department of Agriculture . Her firing was largely in response to coverage in Breitbart News of video excerpts from her address to an event of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in March 2010, though it was later picked up by Fox News . Both NAACP and White House officials apologized for their statements after

16380-530: Was largely fueled by links from the Drudge Report . In 2007, Breitbart.com launched a video blog, Breitbart.tv . According to co-founder Larry Solov , the two men were in agreement that the site should be "unapologetically pro-freedom and pro-Israel" during their visit to Israel in 2007. In August 2010, Andrew Breitbart told the Associated Press that he was "committed to the destruction of

16510-456: Was not "radical"; it fully participated in democracy, and was animated by the belief that the Masons were the ones subverting democracy in America. While earlier accounts of the antimasons portrayed their supporters as mainly poor people, more recent scholarship has shown that they were largely middle-class. The arrival of large numbers of Irish Catholic immigrants in the 1830s and 1840s led to

16640-568: Was not broadcast until after Sherrod resigned and O'Reilly's staff had confirmed that fact with the USDA. Dana Loesch , an organizer for the Tea Party in Saint Louis, Missouri , mentioned the video in an appearance on Larry King Live ; it was also shown on Anderson Cooper 360 (both on CNN). It was discussed on Hannity and On The Record with Greta Van Susteren (both on Fox) as well, but notably not on Glenn Beck . In

16770-573: Was ranked the sixth least trusted news organization by Americans in a tie with the Daily Kos , with the Palmer Report , Occupy Democrats, InfoWars and The Daily Caller being lower-ranked. An August 2019 internal Facebook study found that Breitbart News was the least trusted news source, and also ranked as low-quality, in the sources it looked at across the U.S. and Great Britain. Breitbart News has published several articles accusing

16900-566: Was substituted as a defendant. The defendants removed the case to federal court . Breitbart and O'Connor filed joint motions for dismissal on First Amendment grounds, stating that the suit was barred by an anti-SLAPP law . The motion was denied, and in February 2012, the U.S. District Court issued a six-page "statement of reasons" which accused Breitbart and O'Connor of wasting "a considerable amount of judicial and litigant resources" on their "'novel' if not overreaching motion." This ruling

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