How Wingnuts Made Violent Extremism the New Normal

Guno צְבִי

Guno צְבִי

We fight, We win, Am Yisrael Chai
There were always the expected Hitler devotees who donned brown shirts and swastika armbands, as well as tattooed skinheads with threatening demeanor's, among the participants at the annual Aryan Congresses in Hayden Lake. But the large majority of the people I would interview at these gatherings looked and dressed like anyone else in Idaho at the time. More importantly, I came to recognize that their views were only extreme variations of ideas and beliefs—about the federal government or education or minority and women’s rights or homosexuality—that I knew were already common among my conservative Idaho neighbors, particularly among those already immersed in the far-right John Birch Society, which had long been a significant political presence in the state. They were only a few turns of the paranoia ratchet away from being the same.

By 2008, however, these protofascist elements had found a new focus: the election of a Black president. Suddenly, the hysterical fears about gun rights, fueled by a raft of fresh conspiracy theories, and paranoid claims about “government tyranny” were being circulated widely—and a fresh wave of militia organizing began. In the first year of Barack Obama’s presidency, the numbers of militia groups had nearly quadrupled from their 2007 numbers, from 131 to 512; by 2011, they had peaked at 1,360.


All of these protofascist elements finally found their long-missing key ingredient—their authoritarian need for a “glorious leader” around whom they could realize their dream of returning to national power—in 2015 with the ascendance of Donald Trump to the top of the Republican presidential ticket. The broad range of elements of the American protofascist right—the Patriots, the white nationalists, the conspiracists, and their mainstream enablers—all congealed in unrequited support for Trump and played a powerful role in his ultimate election to the presidency.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/h...V?cvid=04eb49d7b1f54e0e95c0862567d8550f&ei=26
 
In the succeeding years, Trump would unleash a politics of menace and intimidation on the national landscape unlike anything seen since the Klan years. As a correspondent for the Southern Poverty Law Center, I was there to report on much of it. On the night of Trump’s inauguration, I witnessed an anti-fascist being shot by alt-right fans of Milo Yiannopoulos on the University of Washington campus. Over the course of the ensuing weeks and months, I was present as gangs of street brawlers who gave themselves names like Patriot Prayer and the Proud Boys organized riots in West Coast urban centers like Berkeley, Portland, and Seattle, using the pretext of defending “free speech” to deliberately create scenes of violence for which they came fully prepared. The trend spread to other locations and culminated in the lethal Unite the Right march in Charlottesville, Virginia, in August 2017, at the end of which a neo-Nazi rammed into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing one and maiming dozens.

Even after that tragedy, the neofascist Proud Boys and their like-minded thugs continued to organize marches, ranging from their epicenter in Portland to Providence, Rhode Island, and dozens of points in between. I covered nearly two dozen of these events over three years and observed their unfolding strategy for simultaneously intimidating the general public while generating a phony narrative blaming leftists—particularly anti- fascists and Black Lives Matter—for the brutality they themselves inflicted on these cities. Even more disturbing was how I witnessed their politics seeping into the mainstream, drawing Republican Trump fans and police officers alike into their web of extremism.
 
I paid close attention to their rhetoric: the mounting eliminationism directed not just at “Antifa” and BLM but anyone they deemed “Communist”—a term of demonization so flexible that it included mainstream liberals like Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. I paid attention to their willingness to bring violence against peaceful liberal politicians on the campaign trail. And I listened as they gobbled up Donald Trump’s claims about looming election fraud in the 2020 election and were heartened by his refusal in a debate with Biden to say whether he would hand over the presidency peacefully. I especially noticed how they were positively electrified by his shout-out to the Proud Boys in that same debate, telling them, “Stand back and stand by.”

So when Trump in fact lost, I knew that at some point he would gather these forces in Washington, D.C., to prevent his removal from office. And by late December, it had become plain that January 6, 2021, would be the day. Reporting for the progressive news website Daily Kos, I warned readers that extreme violence directed at officials in Washington was coming, as did other journalists who could see the same black clouds taking shape. Unfortunately, those warnings did not reach the higher echelons of the national media, nor the law-enforcement sectors that would nonetheless wind up saving democracy on that day despite being overwhelmed.
 
Republicans have sponsored and passed the vast majority of civil rights legislation in this nation, even into current history, against fierce democratic opposition.
 
guno said:
There were always the expected Hitler devotees who donned brown shirts and swastika armbands, as well as tattooed skinheads with threatening demeanor's, among the participants at the annual Aryan Congresses in Hayden Lake. But the large majority of the people I would interview at these gatherings looked and dressed like anyone else in Idaho at the time. More importantly, I came to recognize that their views were only extreme variations of ideas and beliefs—about the federal government or education or minority and women’s rights or homosexuality—that I knew were already common among my conservative Idaho neighbors, particularly among those already immersed in the far-right John Birch Society, which had long been a significant political presence in the state. They were only a few turns of the paranoia ratchet away from being the same.

By 2008, however, these protofascist elements had found a new focus: the election of a Black president. Suddenly, the hysterical fears about gun rights, fueled by a raft of fresh conspiracy theories, and paranoid claims about “government tyranny” were being circulated widely—and a fresh wave of militia organizing began. In the first year of Barack Obama’s presidency, the numbers of militia groups had nearly quadrupled from their 2007 numbers, from 131 to 512; by 2011, they had peaked at 1,360.


All of these protofascist elements finally found their long-missing key ingredient—their authoritarian need for a “glorious leader” around whom they could realize their dream of returning to national power—in 2015 with the ascendance of Donald Trump to the top of the Republican presidential ticket. The broad range of elements of the American protofascist right—the Patriots, the white nationalists, the conspiracists, and their mainstream enablers—all congealed in unrequited support for Trump and played a powerful role in his ultimate election to the presidency.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/h...V?cvid=04eb49d7b1f54e0e95c0862567d8550f&ei=26
Click to expand...

There are 1360 Antifa branches? Who knew...
 
Tinkerpeach said:
Republicans have sponsored and passed the vast majority of civil rights legislation in this nation, even into current history, against fierce democratic opposition.
Click to expand...

You certainly have that backward. But then you either are ignorant or lying. It is like the Repub supreme court taking away the rights of minorities. That is what they do.
 
Tinkerpeach said:
The proud boys preplanned the attack and were convicted of it.

It was going to happen regardless

Unless you are claiming that Trump secretly planned it with them
Click to expand...

No secret. Trump and staff had a 'war room' in a local hotel where they planned it. Well document by the House J6 Committee.
 
BidenPresident said:
^Says the self described troll.
Click to expand...

At least I read the whole article. It is one mishmash of drivel and radical Leftist nonsense. The author even at one point admits,

As a correspondent for the Southern Poverty Law Center...

Easily the most discredited, unreliable source there is for anything about domestic terrorism...

So, a radical Leftist wingnut is claiming shit about radical Right wingnuts. Seems to me that he's as full of shit as the groups he's talking about.
 
T. A. Gardner said:
At least I read the whole article. It is one mishmash of drivel and radical Leftist nonsense. The author even at one point admits,

As a correspondent for the Southern Poverty Law Center...

Easily the most discredited, unreliable source there is for anything about domestic terrorism...

So, a radical Leftist wingnut is claiming shit about radical Right wingnuts. Seems to me that he's as full of shit as the groups he's talking about.
Click to expand...

ok, troll
 
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