November 14 | 6-7:30pm, doors open at 5:30pm
Today’s most important book promoting neo-Nazi terrorism is James Mason’s Siege. Spencer Sunshine’s newly released Neo-Nazi Terrorism and Countercultural Fascism: The Origins and Afterlife of James Mason’s Siege is based on five years of archival work and interviews. In conversation with Steven Wasserstrom, Sunshine will talk about the role played in the creation of Siege by several important musicians, publishers, and Holocaust deniers who lived in Portland, Oregon; their connection to local media; and the historical and ongoing presence of conspiracy theorists and neo-Nazis in the city.
Spencer Sunshine holds a PhD in Sociology and is the author of Neo-Nazi Terrorism and Countercultural Fascism: The Origins and Afterlife of James Mason’s Siege (Routledge, 2024). He has done freelance programming at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in NYC, and his articles have appeared in The New Republic, Daily Beast, SPLC, Forward, and JTA.
Steven M. Wasserstrom recently retired as the Moe and Izetta Tonkon Professor of Judaic Studies and the Humanities at Reed College, where he taught since 1987. He served as the Andrea and Charles Bronfman Distinguished Visiting Professor in Judaic Studies at the College of William and Mary, and as an Invited Scholar at the Zentrum für Literatur und Kulturforschung in Berlin. He has written numerous works including Between Muslim and Jew: The Problem of Symbiosis under Early Islam; Religion after Religion: Gershom Scholem, Mircea Eliade, and Henry Corbin at Eranos; and “The Fullness of Time”: Poems by Gershom Scholem.