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Jim Prosers new biography on Jordan Peterson portrays him as a Christlike figure plagued by personal demons. Yet the real devil here is in the details.

What does one say about Jim Prosers new biography of Jordan Peterson, Savage Messiah: How Dr. Jordan Peterson Is Saving Western Civilization? The first thing is that its not a biography, at least not in the modern sense of Boswells Life of Samuel Johnsona text thats extensive leveraging of archival records, eye-witness accounts, and interviews effectively bestowed the genre with a veneer of objectivity thats defined it ever since. By contrast, what Proser offers us hereas can be inferred from the titleis essentially a Christ allegory: one in which Peterson is portrayed as being the lone individual capable of saving Judeo-Christian Enlightenment values from the vipers of postmodern neo-Marxism, resurgent since the anti-Western movement of Occupy Wall Street. And should one dispute Petersons candidacy for comparison with Christ on the grounds that the latter was put to death for his sermons whereas the former has become rich off of them, Proser constantly reassures us of the mental anguish Peterson has endured on account of neo-Marxist aggression, which at one point, literally surrounded him, invaded his classroom, threatened his career and the future stability of his family.

Given the apocalyptic sense of importance Proser assigns to Peterson, many readers may be curious as to just who he is. In 2016, Peterson first attracted widespread notoriety for his publication of a video on YouTube, Professor Against Political Correctness: Part 1. The video, which featured Petersons voiceimagine Kermit the Frog trying to evince the air of a truth-telling patriarchdubbed over a handful of black-and-white PowerPoint slides, was austere. It was also factually dubious: in it, for instance, Petersona Canadian, who currently teaches at the University of Torontoconfuses Canadian jurisdictions, waxing on about the threat posed to academic freedom by the Canadian governments effort to legislatively protect gender-nonconforming individuals seemingly unaware that his own vocation falls under provincial mandate. Naturally, few noticed, and Petersons was able to parlay his burgeoning star as a professor capable of legitimating the intellectual pretensions of the alt-right into a best-selling book two years later, 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos. 12 Rules for Life, which builds on Petersons efforts to map Jungian archetypes onto neuroscience in his earlier book Maps of Meaning isat bottoma pop psychology book sprinkled with a few inchoate philosophy references (Peterson succeeds in misreading numerous thinkers throughout the book, including Heidegger and Derrida). However, by this point, the question of Petersons academic bona fides was largely a moot one. His nonstop polemicizing against the leftwhose ideology he coined the neologism postmodern neo-Marxism to describe, sloppily compounding differences a more rigorous thinker wouldve bothered to delineatesupported by his nonstop lecture tours, had already resonated with a mass audience. 12 Rules was just the tour souvenir.

That Petersons elevation to fame occurred relatively recently poses a distinct problem to Proser as a biographer. Jordan Peterson is 57 years oldhardly an upstart. Yet as he was not a public figure prior to his fiftieth year, writing a genuinely comprehensive biography wouldve required undertaking substantial research to supplement Petersons own accounts (part of the appeal of Petersons books and lectures lies in the way he frequently recounts stories supplied from personal experience). But whether out of laziness (or whether out of a desire not to impinge upon the soupcon of prophecy Peterson has built up around himself), Proser instead elects to use the books first half to furnish his readers with an assemblage of chronologically organized anecdotes about Petersons life derived from none other than Peterson (and virtually all readily available elsewhere). The best thing that can be said about this part of the book is thatin so far as the events in question occurred prior to his transformation into the public intellectual par excellence of the Rightits impossible to say categorically that theyre wrong (though one does get the sense that taking them at face value would be a bit like seeing a long cut of Purple Rain and mistaking it for authentic biography). The worst thing that can be said is that Proser here does the exact opposite of what a biographer should do, inflating Petersons personal mythology rather than slicing through it.

The word mythology is not used here loosely. Peterson, who believes that the world is not made of matter but out of what mattersdeep, brohas in his past works compared his travails to those of mythological and religious figures. Given that Peterson makes clear in Maps of Meaning that he believes there is a symmetry between neurobiological structures and mythic archetypes, it can be argued that this is less preposterous than it seems (even as this argument itself is complicated by the fact that the mythological examples Peterson makes to use it are disproportionately Western). For Proser, however, it is not enough that Peterson simply be an avatar of common experience. Instead, his stress on Petersons world-historical confrontation with SJWs (social justice warriors) infuses even his relaying of the events of Petersons early life. When Peterson refuses to go to church and rejects religion, he, may have felt something like Dantes Inferno. When he experienced depression as a young man, he was, Odysseus traveling through the land of the dead to learn of his future. To top it all off, in Prosers account, Peterson was dogged as a youth by none other than Satan (!) himself, who decided to,be patient with the young man who was so bright and seemed so enthusiastic. Not that his patience was infinite: after Peterson interrupts a college drinking party by shouting about God and war and love and other things he didnt know a lot about, the, Prince abandoned his drunken prospect to suffer in his well-deserved vomit. These kinds of descriptions, coupled with the books title, make you wonder if Proser hasnt forsaken the vocation to which he wouldve been best disposed: that of a metal lyricist.

Petersons reception during the early stages of his academic career, was, as Proser explains, not much different than the one he encountered assailing besotted college students with his philosophic theses at house parties. At least so far as his colleagues were concerned. After serving as an assistant professor at Harvard for five years, Peterson failed to acquire a tenured position there due to, in his own words, a lack of presence of mindwhatever that means. Even at the University of Toronto, a prestigious albeit considerably less prestigious institution, Peterson was nearly rejected by the psychology departments search committee on the grounds that he was too eccentric. Throughout his description of these events, Proser is so committed to portraying Peterson as a concentrate of titanic significance that he fails to countenance the possibility that his academic work just might not be that good. But while hardly a model of intellectual rigor, whats also clear from this part of the book is the way that Petersons indisputable skills as an orator furnished him with opportunities well above his academic station. At Harvard, he purportedly built up a cult following among his studentswho also nominated him for the Levenson Teaching Award in 1998, which he subsequently won. And a few years into his stint at the University of Toronto, he landed a gig delivering lectures on Maps of Meaning for a publicly-funded broadcaster, TVOntario (which also invited him to frequently serve as in interlocutor on The Agenda with Steve Paikin). Predictably, Proser fails to notice the irony thatwhile Peterson frequently rails against the oppressive diktats thrust upon him by politically correct government apparatchikshe is also a product of government, having received a quotient of support throughout his career denied to many of the postmodern neo-Marxists whom he regularly decries.

Its at this point in Prosers bookas Petersons public visibility begins to increasethat it degenerates into deep nonsense. Absent extensive research, and unmoored from the coming-of-age narrative that undergirds its first half, the latter part of Savage Messiah is a mess of phrases copied verbatim from public websites, tidbits of Petersons lectures, and Prosers crass polemicizing. Much of it is, moreover, factually inaccurate. The competition for the worst burst of prose in Savage Messiah is a fierce one. But in Prosers description of the political ascent of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, we seem to have found a winner:

Arriving just in time, young Justin ascended quickly to the leadership of the NDP. Then riding the wave of progressive outrage over the repeated defeat of their agenda and the rise of traditionalist voices like Jordan Peterson, he led the Liberal Party to a sweeping national victory in 2015. The Liberal Party went from third place with 36 seats to a dominating 184 seats, the largest increase by a party ever in a federal election. He was sworn in as prime minister of Canada on November 4, 2015.

To be clear, the Liberal Party and NDP (New Democratic Party, though Proser elsewhere refers to it in the text as the National Democratic Party) are, in fact, completely different political organizations. Nor is this the only example of Proser sloppily conflating different political traditions: at another point, he declares that Sartre and French pro-fascist writer Louis-Ferdinand Cline as exponents of different forms of Marxism (though perhaps Cline is indicted here because he actuallyunlike Peterson or Prosertook the time to read Capital). And for the coup de grace, we learn that anti-fascist Antifa fighters are none other than the modern-day version of the violent Black Shirts, the voluntary, paramilitary wing of Benito Mussolinis Fascist Party of Italy. Oh, and in case you wondering: the cause of the violence of Antifa is possibly the theory of toxic masculinity.

Whats disturbing about these kinds of claimsapart from the fact they made it by an actual copy editoris that its not clear that describing them as errors fully does justice to the mind in question. Some may be oversights. But one also harbors the suspicion that Proser is so in the thrall of a conspiratorial vertigo that he thinks hes offering up the unvarnished truth. This speaks to the fundamental flaw of Savage Messiah: that it never even momentarily allows the facts to stand alone. Of course, narrative structuration is the essence of biography, and it would be unreasonable to expect any author to not bring some kind of predisposition to a project dedicated to a figure as divisive as Peterson. But if Prosers goal is to honor Petersons work, his exaggeratedly hagiographic approach actually has the opposite effect. If Petersons brilliance is so self-evident, why is it necessary for Proser toin arguably the most surreal moment in a book rife with themcite student ratings on ratemyprofessor.com in order to attempt to discredit one of his ideological opponents? Moreover, one gets the sense that Proser, who identifies openly as a follower of Petersons work, has not even fully assimilated it. Where Peterson, for instance, has criticized the adoption of identity politics by both the right and leftalbeit been more severe in his condemnations of the latterProser is alarmed by an Amazon.com product review that refers to a two-decade-old journal as, seeking to abolish the white race. Likewise, where Peterson couches his misogyny in improperly applied statistical data, Proserwhos elsewhere described women as having a last fable dayis hardly so discreet. For him, should we examine the subtext of one of Petersons lectures, it is clear that its not right-wing authoritarians, but women who most wanted to control speech.

Savage Messiah is a colossal embarrassment. But if its most disquieting passages can credibly pass themselves off as analyses of Petersons work, is it solely Prosers? Petersons has mastered the art of disavowal: of selectively deploying statistical data in order to infer bigotries he then can subsequently distance himself from. This book is just another example: as Proser explains in the books epilogue, Peterson gave it his assentbut never in a way that would impede him from later disowning its contents. Maybe, then, its not Peterson but, rather, Proser who manifests the archetypal traits of the Messiah. Jesus, after all, let himself be pinned down.

Conrad Bongard Hamilton is a PhD student based at Paris 8 University, currently pursuing research on non-human agency in the work of Karl Marx under the supervision of Catherine Malabou. He is a contributor to the text What is Post-Modern Conservatism, as well as the author of a forthcoming book, Dialectic of Escape: A Conceptual History of Video Games. He can be reached at konradbongard@hotmail.com, and a catalogue of his writings can be found on Academia.edu.

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A Jordan Peterson Biographer Missing the Mark - Merion West

On August 11, 2017, hundreds of alt-right white nationalists marched in Charlottesville, VA in the Unite the Right Rally. The next day, their calls for a white ethnostate drew counterprotesters. At first, the meetings were mostly peaceful. Later on, however, one white nationalist turned the situation violent when he drove a car through a crowd of opposing demonstrators, injuring 19 and killing one. After the attack, the public saw the true evil that was present in the alt-right, and its members retreated. However, recent months have seen this racist ideology rear its ugly head again.

Members of the alt-right 2.0, the groypers as they call themselves, have started to become a nuisance for Young Americas Foundation (YAF) and Turning Point USA (TPUSA), two conservative student organizations who have denounced their movement. One groyper website, The Daily Stormer, published a calendar of YAF and TPUSA college lectures and called for its soldiers to challenge the mainstream conservatives who came to speak. When Congressman Dan Crenshaw (R-TX) came to Texas A&M, one groyper asserted to him that America should not be giving aid to the Jewish state of Israel because they hate Christianity. Another asked TPUSA Chairman Charlie Kirk, who was holding a panel with gay Iraq War veteran Rob Smith, How does anal sex help us win the culture war? Even the University of Michigan was a target in the Groyper War. Among the speaking events on The Daily Stormers calendar was YAF Speaker and Daily Wire author Elisha Krausss Pro-Life is Pro-Woman lecture. Luckily, none came to disrupt the event.

The commander-in-chief of the Groyper War is YouTuber Nicholas J. Fuentes. TPUSA Chief Creative Officer Benny Johnson has created an effective Twitter thread that catalogs Fuentess misdeeds. For one, he has heaped heavy praise on the Unite the Right Rally (which he attended). He has claimed that racial segregation was better for [black people]. He has called Daily Wire host Matt Walsh a race traitor who works for Jews. Finally, he has stated that there is little difference between himself and Richard Spencer in terms of evaluating the problem.

The problem for him is that there are too many minorities in America. Fuentes and his ilk claim that as our population becomes more diverse, it becomes more difficult to elect Republicans. As evidence, they point to the overwhelming tendency of minorities to vote for Democrats. However, this argument relies on a false assumption that correlation equals causation. Data from the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies suggest that black people, for example, have not always voted Democratic. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, African-Americans were split in party identification, with as many associating with Democrats as with Republicans. 1948 represented the start of the disparity. One main reason for the split was that Democratic president Harry Truman desegregated the military just months before the election. Later, Lyndon B. Johnson issued the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. These policies allowed Democrats to cater especially well to black voters and paint themselves as civil rights champions. The right should take note. In order to get more conservatives elected, Republicans need to focus on better marketing to minorities, not create movements that claim that minorities should not be allowed into the country because of their race. The Republican Party platforms of the early 1940s called for the fostering of free enterprise, lower taxes, and a strong national defense. They backed up these ideas by appealing to the values of the Founding Fathers. African-Americans can resonate with these policies; they have in the past. The first step in winning over minority voters is debunking the far-left lie that Republicans are racist. That becomes much more difficult if we embrace movements like Fuentess.

The problem for him is that there are too many minorities in America. Fuentes and his ilk claim that as our population becomes more diverse, it becomes more difficult to elect Republicans.

So what caused the rapid rise of the groypers? First, these new alt-righters have a different core philosophy than their predecessors. Conservatives could easily fight back against the first wave by pointing out that these people were simply not conservatives. The first alt-rights members were radically pro-abortion, heavily opposed to an alliance with the Jewish State of Israel, and highly critical of Christianity and its message that all people are created in Gods image. Now, Fuentes followers espouse a much more seductive message. They claim to be trying to save American conservative values under an apparent America First ideology. Indeed, their philosophy is better described as White People First. They espouse a racist message which masquerades as conservative, and their supposed fervor to elect more Republicans has fooled many.

While the right must put its own house in order, the radical left also shares culpability for the growth of the groyper movement. On the far left, a tendency exists to label ordinary conservative thought-leaders as racists. For example, when conservative pundit Ben Shapiro came to speak at Stanford University, the schools Coalition of Concerned Students released a statement calling Shapiro a white supremacist. Shapiro is one of the alt-rights strongest critics and, according to the Anti-Defamation League, the number-one journalistic target of anti-semitism online. Moreover, the Coalition decided to interrupt Shapiros speech at the most inopportune time possible. As Shapiro was condemning the same racist movement that I am now, the protestors shouted him down. Shapiro responded to the hecklers by asking them if they were responding to the part where he condemns Nazis.

As conservatives, we must cast off any hint of bigoted cancer that exists in our movement and stay true to the exceptional American ideals of liberty and justice for all.

The far-left has created a boy-who-cried-wolf scenario. By levying unfounded accusations of racism on mainstream figures, it has allowed actual racists to slide under the radar. When YAF and TPUSA came out against them, groypers claimed that the allegations were characteristic of those conservatives hear generally and labeled members of the two organizations whiny leftist snowflakes.

As both sides learn lessons from the movements rise, conservatives especially must note the difference between the bigoted ideology of blood-and-soil nationalism and that of credal patriotism. The former presumes that American exceptionalism is intrinsically connected to the race of the people and the land they live on. According to those who subscribe to this theory, the Founding Fathers could not have created a liberal democracy if they were not white. This idea simply does not have a connection to reality. Japan, for example, has seriously liberalized since World War II. The Hong Kong protests would also undercut this viewpoint, as they exhibit a case of non-white people demanding their rights from a tyrannical government. Russia, however, has had a long history of standing in opposition to western ideals despite being a majority white country. The country did not abolish serfdom until the mid-19th century, and any attempt to liberalize it failed, eventually leading to the formation of the Soviet Union. Credal patriotism, on the other hand, connects the love of country to the ideals on which it was founded. For Americans, these ideals are Jeffersons self-evident truths that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. The philosophy that Fuentes and his followers espouse is antithetical to American founding values, and, therefore, antithetical to conservatism. As conservatives, we must cast off any hint of bigoted cancer that exists in our movement and stay true to the exceptional American ideals of liberty and justice for all.

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Conservatives, Time for Us to Renounce the New Alt-Right - The Michigan Review

Several months before Gebert tweeted the swastika photograph, he appeared on Vaughns podcast to, in his words, defend the movement, to defend my friends. (It should be noted that Vaughn, whose given name is Douglass Mackey, has come under attack from fellow alt-righters for not being adequately alt-right and that, not long after the podcast aired, Nehlen, the Republican congressional candidate, doxxed him, sending Mackeys life into a tailspin.) Gebert was angry with Vaughn for sowing discord among the alt-right. He was against infighting. He said, more than once, that it was important that alt-righters name the Jew, alt-right speak for using openly anti-Semitic terms. Vaughn said Ann Coulter and Tucker Carlson were susceptible to Zionist propaganda, which Gebert appeared to agree with, but then Gebert said, The service that Tucker is doing on Fox News is unquestionably of value to the boomers sitting in their Lazy Boys and watching it every night and dropping those bombs.

At one point in the conversation, Gebert turned somber. He was discussing his double life. He sounded like a quarterback addressing his teambloodied, exhausted. I take these risks because I have a grave sense of foreboding that this country and all of the white countries on earth are on a collision course with perdition, with disaster, he said. The only reason Im taking this risk is so that my kids can grow up in a whiter country, if not an actual, explicit, white-exclusionary country at some point in their lives or their grandkids.

In 2018, Geberts security clearancea Top Secret, Sensitive Compartmented Information clearance, which gave him access to an array of highly sensitive intelligence across the U.S. governmentwas re-upped. None of these interviewers ever, I would say, was an impressive human being, but this was truly unbelievable, one of Geberts former colleagues said. Another former colleague added, How could you not connect the dots?

I attempted many times to reach out to Gebert for comment for this story, first through email, then through a phone number I believed to be his, then through his family members, none of whom replied to my messages. I tried knocking on his door, and leaving my contact information with a neighbor, all to no avail.

For years, Gebert took a combination of trains and buses into D.C., went to work, came home, logged on. He and his wife were model neighbors. They didnt play loud music. They could be relied on, in a pinch, for sugar or milk. (Ive had Nazi milk, one neighbor said. Jesus, to think of that.) They adhered to the homeowners association bylaws and painted their house one of the colors in the Duron Curb Appeal Exterior approved accent palettein this case, wheat, or maybe amber white, with forest green trim. His neighbors either liked or had never met him. But none of the neighbors I spoke to disliked him.

Then, on the morning of August 7, 2019, Hatewatch reported that Gebert was the leader of an alt-right cell in Northern Virginia, and that he had posted anti-Semitic comments on white-nationalist forums and been a guest on a now defunct podcast called the Fatherland, which addressed issues like white demographic decline and the subversiveness of girl power.

Within minutes of publication, the story was being read on most of the screens in the building, a State Department employee said. It didnt take long for the story to start ping-ponging around the globe, from one U.S. embassy to another. As far as the higher-ups at State were concerned, there were two very big problems with Gebert being a civil-service officer. The first was that no one wanted to work with him. His unmasking had made him repugnant and toxic. The second was Russia. Multiple State Department sources suggested that Geberts apparent affinity for Slavic culture, particularly as related to his white-nationalist leanings, would be considered problematic.

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How Could You Not Connect the Dots?: Inside the Red-Pilling of State Department Official Matthew Gebert - Vanity Fair

In his novel Foucaults Pendulum, the late Umberto Eco dreamed up a plot for our time. The book portrays a collection of enlightened skeptics who get swept into conspiracy. First to amuse themselves, and then because the crackpots they ridicule participate in the madness, Ecos characters seal their own doom. They connect dots that are unrelated. They see cabals that dont exist.

Before they all die, Ecos leading characters have learned that conspiracies are false but their effects are true especially for those who might have simply looked for more obvious wrongs to right instead. We offered a map to people who were trying to overcome a deep, private frustration, one reflects. Clear meaning in an opaque world turns out to be a dodge for people aggravated by real problems but never offered the right solutions. And it is disastrous for all concerned.

In America today, it is happening for real.

Conspiracy has long haunted American politics, but the age of Trump has made it an almost universal syndrome. The left conspiracy of Russian assets in government bred the right conspiracy of the deep state and Ukrainian election interference. The boring incompetence that led to the Iowan primary fiasco generated Twitter fevers and TV speculation that the Democratic National Committee with a software company idiotically named Shadow, manned, naturally, by foreign agents has hidden designs against Bernie Sanders.

The most prominent theory of conspiracy isolates the illiberal fringe, while casting the mainstream as rational. It proceeds to call for the cognitive infiltration of the extremists to correct a crippled epistemology. Nowadays, similar voices insist, only the unhinged right which at least used to gesture to facts spins conspiracies from thin air with no pretense of truthfulness, in order to attack the foundations of democracy.

But such theories complacently deny how universal conspiracy thinking is, driven by genuine social conditions and how pathologizing it as someone elses problem makes things worse. Historically, conspiratorial thinking has never been anyones monopoly. The idea of a worldwide Jewish plot has inspired the Nazis but it was also, in the German socialist August Bebels memorable formula, the socialism of the imbeciles. Alt-right bloviations about deep state conspiracies make us forget that the counterculture of the 1960s was rife with anxious visions of monsters inhabiting the same abyss, as a recent Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition suggested.

If the Russian hack made any difference, it's because the fruit was hanging so low the worms were able to feast on it

The root causes of conspiracy theories are not a matter of cognitive impairment either. In what may be the first article ever written on fake news, the French historian Marc Bloch observed in 1921 that conspiracy theories always require specific social conditions to take hold and spread in his experience, a fragmented society disrupted by war. While America fights endless war, it is equally relevant that its society is fragmented by unprecedented levels of inequality. In this context, conspiracy theories have become endemic to Americas brand of democratic politics. Those intent on continuing oligarchic policies that serve the interests of an increasingly small fraction of the population cannot rely on it to form a majority. They turn to conspiracy-mongering in order to capture support and deflect the social resentment generated by the policies that leave most people in the lurch.

But even when they refrain from using such tactics and lose elections, they can indulge in conspiracy-mongering. When it comes to explaining the loss of the 2016 primaries and general election, American centrists have no qualms laying the blame on shadowy forces. They should know better. After all, it was their ultimate forbear, the 19th-century French liberal Franois Guizot, who acknowledged that conspiracies are what weak governments conjure out of the resentment they generate in order to cover up their own mistakes. This is clearly true of current governance too. But it also applies to all those who believe their elections are being stolen while never succeeding in garnering enough votes to win.

The point is not that Russia did not intervene in 2016 everything indicates it did but that the obsession with conspiracies misses the point. If the Russian hack made any difference, it is only because the fruit was hanging so low that the worms were able to feast on it. Peddling or debunking conspiracy theories are just two faces of the same coin: the avoidance of true politics.

Conspiracies to ferret out sometimes exist, of course. Yet they fail most of the time. As Italian political thinker Niccol Machiavelli observed of them long ago, many are attempted, few have the desired outcome. The real danger, he warned, was not that their designs would come to pass but the long shadow they cast upon politics. Once the idea of conspiracy has taken hold of the public mind, it generates real effects whether it is true or not. Even when anxieties of conspiracies afoot have some basis, concern with them regularly helps fulfill them and makes things worse.

Conspiracies are best left to Netflix period dramas with bouffant breeches and damascened daggers. The best defense against their corrosive effect on politics, Machiavelli suggested, is a set of policies that do not alienate the vast majority of the population, leaving them wondering who betrayed them: a prince must take little account of conspiracies when he counts the people as his friend, but when the people are his enemy and hold him in contempt he must fear everything and everyone.

If we want to avoid the descent of politics into the factionalism of corrupt oligarchies, what we need is not the foiling of alleged plots or the debunking of conspiracy theories but a new political realism that takes a cold look at the economic and fiscal policies that have failed so many for so long.

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The Trump era is a golden age of conspiracy theories on the right and left - The Guardian

Keith Fuller, 49, of Murfreesboro is wrapped in a Confederate flag as David Lee Oliphant, 37, of Portland yells across a police line to counter protesters during the "White Lives Matter" rally on the square in Murfreesboro, on Oct. 28, 2017. The Anti-Defamation League as trackedmore than 100 incidences of white supremacist propaganda in Tennessee since the beginning of 2018.(Photo: HELEN COMER/DNJ)

Incidents of white supremacist propaganda distributed across the nation more than doubled between 2018 and last year,making 2019 the second straight year that the circulation of propaganda material has more than doubled.

The incidents include103 events in Tennessee since the beginning of 2018,according to an Anti-Defamation League's Center on Extremism report released Wednesday.

The report lists2,713 nationwide cases of circulated propaganda by white supremacist groups, including flyers, posters and banners, compared with 1,214 cases in 2018.

The printed propaganda distributed by white supremacist organizations includes material that directly spreads messages of discrimination against Jews, LGBTQ people and other minority communities but also items with their prejudice obscured by a focus on gauzier pro-America imagery, according to the report.

There were some high-profile incidents in Tennessee, including a police shootout, two killings and white supremacist rallies at Montgomery Bell State Park. But the majority of events were more subtle handing out flyers, hanging banners and posting stickers promoting "alt-right" groups.

One reported incident in Tennessee took place on Jan. 1, 2018, in Knoxvillewhen members of the Smoky Mountain Fugitive task force captured prison gang member Ronnie Lucas Wilson. Wilson, a white supremacist, was convicted and sentenced to prison in 2019 for pulling a shotgun and wounding a Knoxville police officer who pulled him over for speeding.

Attendees listen as Rick Tyler speaks during his "White Nationalism: Fact or Fiction" event in the Alumni Memorial Building on University of Tennessee's campus in Knoxville on May 28, 2019. Tyler's appearance was one of more than 100 incidents of white supremacist propaganda in Tennessee since 2018 tracked by the Anti-Defamation League.(Photo: Caitie McMekin/News Sentinel)

In Memphis, the ADL reported Identity Evropa, an alt-right group, distributed flyers at the University of Memphis that read: "European roots American greatness." They also posted stickers featuring their group logo.

In a separate incident in Memphis, the report continued, several peopleassociated with the Shield Wall Network demonstratedagainst the removal of Confederate monuments.

Also listed among the Tennessee incidents is the 2018 Antioch shootingin which Travis Reinking allegedly opened fire inside a Waffle House,killing four people and injuring four others. But the ADL noted that despite reportsReinking had claimed to be a so-called sovereign citizen,"the shooting appears to have been non-ideological in nature."

CONFEDERATE MONUMENTS IN TENNESSEE: Where they are and when they were built

The sharp risemade2019 the second straight year that the circulation of propaganda materialmore than doubled across the U.S. and followed a jump of more than 180% between 2017, the first year the ADL tracked material distribution, and 2018.

While last yearsaw cases of propaganda circulated on college campuses nearly double, encompassing 433 separate campuses in all but seven states, researchers found that 90% of campuses only saw one or two rounds of distribution.

Oren Segal, director of the ADL's Center on Extremism, pointed to the prominence of more subtly biased rhetoric in some of the white supremacist material, emphasizing "patriotism," as a sign that the groups are attempting "to make their hate more palatable for a 2020 audience."

By emphasizing language "about empowerment, without some of the blatant racism and hatred," Segal said, white supremacists are employing "a tactic to try to get eyes onto their ideas in a way that's cheap, and that brings it to a new generation of people who are learning how to even make sense out of these messages."

The propaganda incidents tracked for the ADL's reportencompass 49 states and occurred most often in 10 states: California, Texas, New York, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Ohio, Virginia, Kentucky, Washington and Florida.

The Anti-Defamation League's online monitoring of propaganda distribution is distinct from its tracking of white supremacist events and attacks, and that tracking does not include undistributed material such as graffiti, Segal explained.

Elana Schor, with the Associated Press, contributed to this report. Reach Natalie Neysa Alund at nalund@tennessean.com and follow her on Twitter @nataliealund.

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Report finds 103 incidents of white supremacist propaganda in Tennessee since 2018 - Tennessean