New English Review

The New English Review is an online monthly magazine of cultural criticism, published from Nashville, Tennessee, since February 2006.^[1] Scholars note the magazine to have platformed a range of far-right Islamophobic discourse including conspiracy theories. An eponymous press is run by the same publisher.^[1]

Profile

The magazine was funded by Roy Bishko, owner of Tie Rack.^[2] Editor Rebecca Bynum was a long-time collaborator with Robert Spencer, a noted far-right Islamophobe activist, before heralding NER.^[2][3]

Reception

Sveinung Sandberg, a criminologist at the University of Oslo, notes Anders Breivik to have been inspired and motivated by anti-Islamic discourse on sites including NER.^[4] Sindre Bangstad, a social anthropologist at University of Oslo, described the site as a "counter-jihadist publication" in discussing how the spread of Islamophobia within right-wing political networks of Norway had birthed Breivik.^[5] Joel Busher, a sociologist at the Coventry University, found NER to be part of the broader counter-jihad ecosystem which lamented the "failings of Western liberalism" to resist the "cultural loss" of Europe in the wake of increasing Muslim immigration; it hosted content that was sympathetic to the English Defence League, a far-right, Islamophobic organization in the United Kingdom.^[6]

Cynthia Miller-Idriss, a sociologist at American University who specializes in far-right extremism, notes the journal to have platformed favorable reviews of Bat Ye'or's works propounding Eurabia — a far-right anti-Muslim conspiracy theory, involving globalist entities allegedly led by French and Arab powers, to Islamise and Arabise Europe.^[7] Joe Turner, a political scientist at the University of York, found Peter McLoughlin's monograph on grooming in UK, published by the press in 2016, to be intimately linked with Islamophobia and white nationalism — McLoughlin was more anxious about protecting "white Britishness" from "Islam" than individual bodies.^[8] Ella Cockbain, a criminologist at University College London, found the book to be far-right propaganda in that it accused the entire Muslim community of colluding with the groomers and took digs at multiculturalism; NER itself was described as a "conservative magazine heavily involved in the 'counter-jihad' movement".^[9]

Bynum's monograph on why Islam is not a religion, published by the press in 2011, has been noted to fuel Islamophobia.^[10] Lorenz Langer, a professor of law at University of Zurich, noted her to be among those who made a living by "churning out alarmist accounts of the threat that Islam poses to the Occident".^[11] Philip Dorling, while describing the attempts by Pauline Hanson's One Nation to have Islam unconsidered as a religion, found synonymities with Bynum, editor of the "far-right" NER.^[12]

References