Madeleine Coles
Staff Writer
James Aho, a sociology professor emeritus at ISU, recently finished his novel, “Far-Right Fantasy: A Sociology of American Religion and Politics.” As the title suggests, the book discusses right-wing extremism and deals specifically with the similarities between extremists and the more conventional public population.
Although this novel was just recently published, Aho began his studies in the far-right movement in 1985. He said that he began studying the movement because he hoped to understand himself.
“I wanted to get a grasp of my own propensity to violence, and so when the Aryan Nations Church emerged in Northern Idaho, I became very curious,” Aho said. “It was really an attempt to deal with my own rage by trying to understand these people.”
Although Aho’s initial interest in the movement spawned from a desire to make sense of his own violent tendencies, he said that he was shocked at just how similar he was to the people in the far right movement.
“I came to see myself in them and them in myself,” Aho said. “That was the great unnerving discovery.”
This led Aho’s desire to investigate the movement on a deeper level. He said that he interviewed literally hundreds of people involved in the movement in an effort to understand their thoughts and beliefs, and how they became a part of such a movement.
“One of the biggest things I learned is that if you want to understand collective violence, you have to understand religion,” Aho said. “These people see themselves as full of God.”
After 10 years of research, in 1995 he published a novel titled “The Politics of Righteousness: Idaho Christian Patriotism.” The book explored the lives and beliefs of members of far-right organizations, such as the Aryan Nations Church, through personal interviews and direct observations of their gatherings.
However, after the Oklahoma City bombing took place the same year that Aho’s novel was published, he said that he gave it all up. “I just didn’t want to have anything more to do with these people and this stuff,” Aho said.
But Aho began to notice a rise in the far-right movement after the election of President Barack Obama in 2008. “I figured that in 2012, after [Obama] had won an overwhelming election, this stuff would disappear. But actually it got much worse,” Aho said.
He stated that he was invited to write another novel about the resurgence of the movement. “I had an obligation to address this subject once again, so that’s this book,” Aho said of “Far-Right Fantasy.”
Aho said he hopes that with the publication of this new book, people will come to understand and not diabolize the members of the far-right movement.
“These people are not monsters; they’re not madmen; they’re not morons,” Aho said. “I want people to recognize themselves in these people.”
Despite Aho’s statement that he is very similar to the people involved in the far-right movement, he said that he is more liberal. “I have never voted for a Republican, ever,” Aho said.
This has led some members of the right-wing to criticize him and his work.
However, Aho claims that, “The most vehement anger directed at me from a result of my research comes not from the right-wing, but from the left-wing. They’re outraged because they want to insist on the difference of these people.”
But Aho said that there really aren’t that many differences. “Many of these people are well-educated. They have families and children, and they have occupations.”
He claims that he wants people to understand this movement and the people involved in the hopes of tempering the violence that the far-right movement has produced.
“That is my ultimate goal here,” Aho said. “I want to temper these voices of hate.”
He cited the most recent far-right incident in Burns, Oregon. “There was a man who got killed. He was under a tarp, and they called him ‘tarp man.’ He was eventually killed, but it was sad because in the course of being introduced to everyone through reporters, he had really become humanized to everybody.”
Aho said that this is what he hopes to do with his book and his studies. “I guess the word would be to normalize these people,” he said.
