Luciferian Dirty Hands: Scholar calls for solidarity with neo-Nazis in the new 'immoral anthropology'

Canada’s decision to list far-right racist groups for the first time as terrorist organizations has grave criminal consequences for anyone who would provide them support.

What is less obvious is the risk this law might pose to anthropologists, ethnologists and other social scientists who study them up close.

For a scholar who studies violent fringe movements with a coolly critical air of objective detachment, or with outright hostility to their ideology, there are no obvious problems. But a provocative new article in a leading anthropology journal by an American ethnographer of Nordic white nationalists says these approaches are misguided and moralistic.

In “Collaborating with the Radical Right: Scholar-Informant Solidarity and the Case for an Immoral Anthropology,” Benjamin Teitelbaum argues that detached observation is the wrong way to seek deep insight about fringe communities, just as it was for the pith helmeted colonial scholars who looked on their subjects with condescension and arrogance.  (more...)

Dirty Hands: Scholar calls for solidarity with neo-Nazis in the new 'immoral anthropology'

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A far-right primer: From extremist preachers to combat-ready Islamophobes

Anthropology has a curious Nazi history:

How Josef Mengele Became The Angel Of Death

The social scientists I knew in my school days were pretty much of this mindset.