One could start calling Nazis cancers instead…
Seeing as someone just died at one, too many.
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California, including its two large liberal bastions. As well as the Pacific Northwest. Were in the 80s and 90s the center of the neo-nazi movement. And the Northwest, including northern Cali, Washington and Oregon. Are central to the patriot movement. And the alt-right more generally has direct roots in Silicon Valley, And intellectual ties to the weird sort of techno libertarian politics that’s endemic there.
Last I checked New Jersey currently has the largest number of formally identified hate groups of any state. And for a long time the largest number per capita was Pennsylvania.
We tend to think of these movements as based in or only present in the south. And driven by uneducated rural folk. And that’s never been true. But these newer groups are often based in or tied to very urban, modern areas. Formed and driven by college educated, white collar men. I wouldn’t assume that the Bay Area or urban SoCal are places where anyone is safe from Nazi’s. In the not so distant past that certainly wasn’t true. And a good lot of these alt-right groups are already based nearby.
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To this day the unincorporated hilly areas around Santa Cruz are populated by with a fairly even number of hippie communes and White Nationalist compounds. It’s an odd mix.
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that never much surprised me. That whole frontier radical self reliance myth is pretty heavily embedded in our perceptions of every place west of the Rockies. That would tend to attract any group looking for isolated places to get up to their own weird. Lots of UFO groups out there too. Spiritual/occultists groups. Lots of cults.
The Nazis are a little more surprising. At least during the last great neo-nazi wave the movement seemed very urban and suburban. Seemed have precious little to do with Cali’s usual sort of “move to the wood and worship bigfoot” sort of weird.
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