YIVO-Bard Summer Program
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Neo-Nazi Terrorism and Countercultural Fascism

Thursday May 30, 2024 1:00pm
Book Talk

Admission: Free

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A new wave of aspiring neo-Nazi terrorists has arisen—including the infamous Atomwaffen Division, and they have a bible: James Mason’s Siege, which praises terrorism, serial killers, and Charles Manson. Neo-Nazi Terrorism and Countercultural Fascism: The Origins and Afterlife of James Mason's Siege documents the origins of Siege and shows how Mason’s vision emerged during debates in the 1970s after the splintering of the American Nazi Party/NSWPP. The second part of the book unveils for the first time how four 1980s musicians and publishers—Boyd Rice, Michael Moynihan, Adam Parfrey, and Nikolas Schreck—discovered and promoted the terrorist ideologue.

Join YIVO for a discussion of this book with author Spencer Sunshine.

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This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council. 


About the Speaker

Spencer Sunshine holds a PhD in Sociology from the CUNY Graduate Center and is the author of Neo-Nazi Terrorism and Countercultural Fascism: The Origins and Afterlife of James Mason's Siege (Routledge, 2024). Sunshine’s articles have appeared on platforms such as The New Republic, Daily Beast, SPLC, and JTA. Starting in 2018, he also produced panels at YIVO, including “Nazism, Neo-Nazism and Music,” “Leftists on Left-Wing Antisemitism,” and the conference “Yiddish Anarchism: New Scholarship on a Forgotten Tradition.”