Aaron Flanagan is a team lead in the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center where he oversees research of the white power movement across several ideologies including neo-Nazi, racist skinhead, the Ku Klux Klan, Holocaust denial, hate music and others. Flanagan also works closely with SPLCs federal and state-level policy teams on issues related to political violence, electoral extremism and election protections in addition to prevention and resilience building against far-right extremism. He has provided analysis and investigative support to news outlets—including the BBC, New York Times, ProPublica, Der Spiegel, ARD, MSNBC, ABC News, Rolling Stone, Washington Post, The Guardian and others—and has briefed government agencies in numerous countries. Previously, he has lead teams publishing original reports and conducting community-based research to develop resources for or with advocates leading organizing efforts to counter the nativist, anti-immigrant movement in our country and the international anti-Muslim movement. He has been a part of the broader NGO research community focused on reducing harms attributable to far-right extremism for nearly 20 years.
This cannot be thought of as a conference or a summit. The stakes are simply too high and the data/conversation and methods to drive action more valuable/motivating than any gathering I have attended. I took more than 100 pages of notes and have shared them with my CBS News leadership team, anchors, producers, and correspondents. Nothing about this gathering was easy. The agony around this topic is real. But no one curious about it could ask for a more devoted, rational, or unflinching look into this dark but decipherable world.
