Trump Plays the Anti Semitic Card
Will the Waco Rally Bring Far Right Violence to the Forefront?
In case you’ve missed the news, Donald Trump’s first official campaign rally is happening this weekend in Waco, Texas.
Since publicizing –there was no leak–a claim concerning an impending arrest, the former President has gone ‘round the bend, issuing ALL CAPS threats and denials aimed at whomever he deems to be against him at the moment.
As is usually the case, his on-line tantrum has generated threats of violence against law enforcers, and frantic posturing among elected officials seeking to prevent themselves from being added to the Mar-a-Lago enemies list.
So it’s all-but-guaranteed this rally It’s going to be a doozy, given its historical significance as the site of a stand off and subsequent deaths of Branch Davidian sect members and federal law enforcement agents thirty years ago this spring.
This location is where nutcase Alex Jones cemented his claim as a leader in the opposition to the “New World Order”, a conspiracy theory once confined to the extreme reaches of the American right.
A long-forgotten radio broadcaster named William Cooper wrote a book fleshing out an analysis of what he viewed as the massive conspiracy leading Americans down the road to a totalitarian state. Cooper’s book, Behold a Pale Horse, is the most popular conspiracy manifesto ever published.
From a Daily Beast profile:
In it, Cooper claims the Illuminati, Rothschild family, Bilderberg Group, CIA, Pope, United Nations, Communist Party, Nazi Party, Skull & Bones, Bohemian Club, and a raft of others were responsible for this Satanic globalist plot. A secret deep state, operating in the shadows.
Some of this theorizing was old hat, at this point. A French minister had accused the secret society of secretly plotting all manner of world events, including the Reign of Terror, which begat an anti-Illuminati panic in America in the eighteenth century. Through the Cold War, the arch-conservative John Birch Society warned that America had already fallen prey to a one world socialist government, and that its “tentacles now reach into all of the legislative halls, all of the union labor meetings, a majority of the religious gatherings, and most of the schools of the whole world.”
Alex Jones latched on to Cooper’s version of what went down at Waco, and leveraged it to become a national figure. His “documentary” on the siege was issued right as Jones was going from figure on public access media to a syndicated talk radio host.
Jones, who was at the head of the crowd that stormed the capitol on January 6, 2021, kept his followers on the edge of their seats with ongoing commentaries always pointing to a government-run conspiracy as the source of disasters in the country. His commentary on the school shooting at Sandy Hook has led to guilty verdicts in three defamation trials with a potential total of $1.4 billion in damages.
Two years to the day after the Waco siege ended, two other fans (Terry Nichols & Timothy McVeigh) of Cooper’s worldview blew up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, killing 168 people. It was the deadliest act of homegrown terrorism in U.S. history.
Here’s Art Jipson and Paul J. Becker, writing at The Conversation:
Waco continues to be a rallying cry for extremism today. To cite one example, Gavin McInnes, the founder of the Proud Boys, has discussed government actions like the Waco siege as an example of government corruption and to accuse it of attacking people of faith whose politics it opposes. A former member has testified that the Proud Boys’ participation in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection was driven by belief in a civil war pitting the federal government against citizens, patriots and nationalists.
What unites many of the groups influenced by Waco is a belief that the federal government is tyrannical and willing to attack citizens while depriving them of liberty, freedom and firearms. The perception of a lack of consequences for the deaths at Waco is perceived, in and of itself, as proof of extremist beliefs.
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News of an impending arrest of Trump, has triggered an onslaught of claims about the involvement of Greek Billionaire George Soros as the real instigator of investigations involving the former president.
George Soros is a liberal whose philanthropic interests span a range of causes focused on fixing problems with and spreading the idea of democratic governance.
In the far right world, he’s public enemy number one, an ultra-leftist funding aspects of the One World conspiracy ranging from supporting reformist candidates to wikimedia.
Russia kicked out organizations affiliated with Soro’s funding for the crime of talking up democratic reforms. Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orbán rose to power with unfettered anti semitic attacks picturing the billionaire as an evil villain.
From Business Insider on Trump’s use of an anti Semitic trope to blame Soros as backer of all his opponents.
The core narrative of antisemitism has always been that a "secretive Jewish cabal sits at the root of the world's problems," Ben Lorber, a researcher of the far-right and antisemitism, told Insider. To the far right, Soros represents a member of that cabal, said Lorber, an analyst at Political Research Associates.
"George Soros conspiracies have been a fixture of the far right in the US since 2010, and now they're even more mainstream," Lorber said. "The rise of the far right that's occurred alongside the MAGA movement has led to the mainstreaming of antisemitism in this country."
The cancer of anti Semitism has spread alongside the growth of the MAGA movement. A report issued by the Anti Defamation League this week was on the front pages of many papers this morning.
In total, the ADL found 3,697 incidents of antisemitism last year in the U.S., including vandalism and harassment in addition to assaults. The number, the highest the group has counted since it began compiling reports on anti-Jewish hatred in 1979, represents a 36 percent increase from 2021. That year also set a record with 2,717 incidents, while 2020 showed a slight year-to-year dip, probably because of the slowdown of public life due to pandemic-related closures of houses of worship, businesses and workplaces.
Overall, the ADL said, the pattern over the last years has been one of growing violence, vandalism and rhetoric aimed at Jews. The group logged 2,107 antisemitic incidents in 2019 and 1,879 in 2018. The 2018 numbers included the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history, at the Tree of Life congregation in Pittsburgh in which 11 were killed. In 2019, there was another deadly mass shooting, at the Chabad of Poway.
Last year’s incidents took place in every state and the District of Columbia, but five states — all with significant Jewish populations — accounted for more than half of them. New York was first, with 580, followed by California with 518. New Jersey, Florida and Texas rounded out the top five.
The aura of hate around Trump worshipers is growing as the man gets more unhinged and anti Semitic ideas have gained acceptance in recent years.
Holding a rally in Waco has a huge symbolic meaning and could easily signal the advent of a wave of domestic terrorism in the United States.
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