Neiwert, who has reported on the American right for five decades, says it’s a mistake for the media to ignore rightwing movements

Habits built up over the course of a working life don’t just disappear on book tours.

Last week when David Neiwert, author of Alt-America: The Rise of the Radical Right in the Age of Trump, was in Melbourne for its writers festival he saw a rightwing rally taking place in Federation Square. Just as he has over decades reporting on the far right, Neiwert slipped into the midst of the anti-feminist March for Men to take its measure.

“I spent a bit of time in the crowd there to get a sense of where they’re coming from,” he said in a telephone conversation.

'Stop the name-calling!': anger unites Melbourne's March for Men protesters Read more

Neiwert was asked to compare what he saw there to what he has seen recently at rightwing events in the United States. He says while there are similarities, Australia still may have time to avoid the worst.

But that time may be running out.

“They were talking about being redpilled, there were mentions of cultural Marxism. They’re moving in the same direction, they just haven’t got there yet.”

Neiwert’s habit of up-close reporting has sustained him as a journalist through several surges in far right movements in the United States.

Neiwert credits Trochmann with originating many of the conspiracy theories later monetised by the likes of Alex Jones.

It’s also led him to sound the alarm early on movements that later turned out to be deadly. In the late 1970s, as a young newspaper reporter, he saw the rise of Aryan Nations in the panhandle of Idaho, and then saw the region become “awash in hate crimes”. This culminated in the murderous spree of the white supremacist cell known as The Order.

In the early 1990s, he reported on the growth of militia groups in Idaho, Washington and Montana, before almost anyone else was interested.

He paid particularly close attention to the entrepreneurial ideological salesmanship of John Trochmann, head of the Militia of Montana, a paper organisation that functioned as a kind of mail order think tank for the far right. Neiwert credits Trochmann with originating many of the conspiracy theories later monetised by the likes of Alex Jones.

“Then suddenly Oklahoma City hit,” he says, referring to Timothy McVeigh’s bombing of a federal building in 1995, a mass murder that claimed 168 lives, including many children.

“I was one of the only reporters who had talked to these guys,” Neiwert says.

In the wake of the tragedy, he was in demand as an expert from media outlets who had until recently ignored the warnings of he and the small number of other beat reporters.

He says the same mistakes made by the media in the 1970s and the 1990s were repeated in the run up to the Trump insurgency, the most serious error being the idea that ignoring the far right will make them go away.

“The far right thrive and fester in darkness,” he says. “They rely on people’s silence. They interpret the wider silence in the community and the culture as tacit approval.”

Neiwert says that close attention and loud disapproval can disrupt and challenge one of their central beliefs: “the idea that they represent the real, mainstream America”.

Over five decades, Neiwert has produced a string of books and reams of print and online reporting on the political right in America. Together, this body of work constitutes one of the most detailed and perceptive records of the growth of rightwing extremism, and the increasingly extremist drift of conservatism.

In his most recent books on the right, Alt-America and The Eliminationists, he has tracked the radicalisation of American conservatism, showing how far right beliefs and violent rhetoric have become a part of the American mainstream.

If there’s a dean of the far right beat, it must be Neiwert. Alt-America, which he is bringing to several events in Australia and New Zealand over the next two weeks, explores the Trump moment in the light of that history.

I don’t think we can escape the fact that in the US we have a cable TV station that ... is devoted to coaching half of America to hate the other half. David Neiwert

For Neiwert, the current surge on the right can only be understood properly as the culmination of a long arc, whereby more and more people have been brought to inhabit an alternative reality – an “Alt America” – where conspiracy theories reign, facts no longer matter, and partisan polarisation has torn America’s common world apart.

In the book he describes a movement “fed by the rivulets of hate mongering and disinformation-fuelled propaganda flowing out of rightwing media for at least a decade and the hospitable dark environment provided by a virtual blackout in mainstream media concerning the growth of rightwing extremism”.

The savagery of US conservative media, he says, is one of the key differences between the United States and New Zealand.

He has spent time in recent years pursuing another passion – whale-watching (he has also written a well-received book on the Orcas of the Pacific Northwest).

“I don’t think we can escape the fact that in the US we have a cable TV station that at least 22 hours a day and seven days a week is devoted to coaching half of America to hate the other half,” Neiwert says. “That’s been going on for 20 years or more, and it’s had a profoundly toxic effect on our discourse, our social contract, our view of each other.

“You know as well as I do that these people sit around talking about civil war, and that longed-for day when they can shoot liberals.”

He knows that the effort to track surging rightwing movements is more urgent than ever. On his home ground in the Pacific Northwest, which has produced some of the most dynamic extremist movements in recent times, Neiwert is still a familiar, discreet presence at Patriot Movement rallies.

He’s not just a reliable witness, but an experienced hand with wise counsel for reporters who are new to a beat that is always unpleasant, and sometimes dangerous.

He says that despite his experience, the task of monitoring these movements, which he now does as a correspondent for the Southern Poverty Law Center, hasn’t become less challenging.

'Liberty or Death': rightwing protesters march against alleged leftwing violence in Seattle Read more

“Attending some of these events leaves you feeling like you have been through a war. I have contemplated PTSD therapy. I’ve had issues with depression that I think is a result of being immersed in this world,” he says.

“Those of us who do it long term have various coping strategies. Mine is to get out in wilderness in wild places and immerse myself in what I call the real world. It’s a kind of spiritual renewal for me,” he says.

He says that Alt-America has been received more warmly in Australia than almost anywhere, and events to date have been sold out. He puts it down to a desire to know what went wrong in the cultural and political life of Australia’s most important ally.

“Everybody I talk to says they’re obsessed down here with what’s happening in America – everyone wants to know what’s going on,” he says.

“The US is extremely influential and powerful in the world, it’s supposed to be the apotheosis of democracy in the world, and right now our democracy is very much in trouble, and I think that scares everyone else.”