Understanding and Dealing With Trump’s Jack Booted Thugs
After five years of dog whistles, feints, and innuendo, modern day brownshirts are answering Dear Leader’s call to arms.
In cities and towns around the country white men (and a few women) are acting on nurtured nightmares to defend against an “other” they believe is threatening their existence.
This wave of violence isn’t just some media created narrative.
White vigilantes and far-right actors have shown up to oppose Black Lives Matter protests in the U.S. at least 497 times this year, according to data collected by Alexander Reid Ross, a doctoral fellow at the Center for Analysis of the Radical Right. He started gathering data on May 27, two days after police in Minneapolis killed George Floyd, and continued through this week.
The dataset, which Ross shared with HuffPost, documents a staggering amount of violence directed at protesters by the far-right, including 64 cases of simple assault, 38 incidents of vigilantes driving cars into demonstrators, and nine times shots were fired at protesters.
All told, six protesters were hit by vigilante bullets in this summer’s violence. Three died from their wounds.
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A promised confrontation in Santee on Saturday didn’t take place between followers of a reactionary Facebook page called Defend East County and demonstrations calling for racial justice.
https://twitter.com/SDUTdyer/status/1299749634760269824?s=20
A Union-Tribune story on Defend East County gave an overview of the group:
A Facebook group that organized after a Black Lives Matter protest in La Mesa turned destructive has ballooned to more than 20,000 members.
Called Defend East County, it has become an active online community of people who say they want to protect their cities, but it’s also a place where conspiracy theories, racist banter and calls for violence persist.
Recently, videos of self-styled “patriots” in other cities punching and kicking Black Lives Matter protesters received hundreds of “likes” on the Defend East County page, as did a video of a car running over protesters.
Some people affiliated with this and other East County community Facebook groups have counterprotested at area Black Lives Matter marches and, in at least five recent cases, have engaged in verbal and physical altercations. The latest verbal conflict occurred Tuesday at a march in La Mesa.
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In Portland, hundreds of militia-aligned types were called from surrounding states for a pro-Trump rally and caravan this weekend. Despite a published route circling the city, hundreds of pickup trucks with blacked out license plates, carrying passengers displaying a gamut of right wing flags and emblems drove the streets in areas where protests supportive of Black Lives Matter have been taking place.
https://twitter.com/TheRealCoryElia/status/1299908378810957825?s=20
Passers by were shot at with paintball guns, powerful streams of bear mace were aimed at real and imagined adversaries, and pedestrians properly in crosswalks were mowed down. Amid all the chaos, a man whose hat bore the insignia of a far-right group called Patriot Prayer was fatally shot late Saturday.
From the Washington Post:
The stated aim of Patriot Prayer, organized in 2016 to bring pro-Trump rallies to liberal bastions, is to “liberate the conservatives on the West Coast.” Its leader, Joey Gibson, was swarmed later Saturday night as he ran through the streets, following the fatal episode involving the man wearing his organization’s logo.
https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/1300115831087656960?s=20
Protests have occurred for more than 90 consecutive days in downtown Portland since George Floyd was killed by police in Minneapolis in May. Portland police have not released details of the man who was killed over the weekend or any information about the suspected gunman.
https://twitter.com/donwinslow/status/1299954224915124226?s=20
https://twitter.com/BaddCompani/status/1299972463342661633?s=20
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Last week began with a white police officer shooting Jacob Blake, a Black man, in the back seven times in Kenosha, Wis., last Sunday. Protests and some acts of violence against property followed.
Trump’s irregular militia-types put out a call on Facebook for “patriots” to defend property and shop owners in Kenosha. Two days later, a white teenager from Illinois shot three people, killing two of them.
Hundreds of concerned Facebook users reported the Kenosha call to arms, since it clearly suggested a violent response. In fact, those complaints totalled 66% of all the reports turned into FB on that day.
After the shooting, the post was removed. And now “patriots” are using Facebook to glorify the actions of the shooter.
In case you have any questions about Facebook’s role in all this mayhem, let’s take a look at some numbers from the month of August:
Interactions on news stories from CNN: 21 million
Interactions on news stories from the New York Times: 8 million
Interactions on “news” stories from Ben Shapiro*: 55 million
*Former Brietbart editor Ben Shapiro is a source for conspiratorial news and views. He has a popular podcast and is editor of The Daily Wire.
So-called mainstream Republicans are also encouraging this insanity:
https://twitter.com/shannonrwatts/status/1300099381861867520?s=20
As the following video from the former Homeland Security Administration’s Assistant Secretary for Counter-terrorism and Threat Protection demonstrates, what we’re seeing on the streets of our country isn’t random. President Donald J. Trump is uniquely responsible for the violence erupting on his watch.
https://youtu.be/EF4KcunfvCg
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What is to be done?
The right wing violence isn’t orchestrated. It’s the result of what’s called stochastic terrorism, defined as “the use of mass communications to incite random actors to carry out violent or terrorist acts that are statistically predictable but individually unpredictable.”
The “mass communication” are the words of Donald Trump and his minions, who seemingly compete to broadcast the most outlandish conspiracy theories, always praising the President and always demonizing his opponents.
A certain publication and a fringe cable network (not sharing links!) are now pushing the narrative that the Democratic Party and assorted protest movements around the country are a coup attempt. Needless to say, the implicit action once those words are digested is to “defend” the “good guys” by more than just writing letters to the editor.
QAnon, the various militia groups and the Facebook self-defense committees are all part of this phenomenon. Lately anti-vaccination and anti-union groups are joining in the fray.
BUT, while the seeds of this reactionary movement may have been sowed by the backers of the Tea Party (who were right wing money men), what we’re experiencing now is much more “individually unpredictable.”
Quelling this unrest starts with focusing on what actually can be done.
You can’t use logic to change hearts and minds that have been through more than a decade of indoctrination, so don’t engage whenever possible.
A huge part of the psychological reward for confrontational behavior is the satisfaction of “owning the libs.” (i.e., making people stressed out and prompting feelings of hopelessness.)
Unfortunately, the more violent aspects of these would-be patriots can’t be reliably resolved through the legal system; too many law enforcement officials are sympathetic to their cause. We’ve seen this repeatedly over the few years, especially with the San Diego County Sheriff’s department and any entity connected with Homeland Security.
What we can do is to document bad behavior, for immediate use on social media and perhaps as evidence at some future date when officials are more inclined to be responsive.
Protecting ourselves from various sorts of aggression involves basic security. Don’t get separated at demonstrations. Enter and leave with a crowd. Don’t bait counter-demonstrators. Use good security practices with devices and social media platforms.
Despite my loathing for Facebook, I don’t encourage people to quit the app; instead I say to make sure what you say and repeat wouldn’t offend your spiritual advisor/priest/counselor, etc. Read more and talk less.
It's a mistake to consider the assorted MAGAts showing up at demonstrations as a monolithic entity. There is a difference between a Proud Boy (noisy but often cowardly) and a booglaloo militia follower (wants violence to accelerate civil war).
There are 88 different groups in California listed with the Southern Poverty Law Center, and that number doesn't include those organized via social media. A little education never hurts.
Understand that the fringe right types involved with the quest to MAGA are notoriously unstable. The shelf life of the average wingnut coalition is shorter than a congressional election cycle. The paranoia and ego battles on the far right are a historical fact. This doesn’t mean they aren’t dangerous; it means that the danger comes from a few individuals.
The Secret Army Organization (SAO), perhaps the most notorious of the 1970’s militia wannabes, only stayed together because their leader (and financier) was an FBI informant. As soon as the Nixon administration’s war on their enemies ended, the SAO went rogue, leading to arrests and prosecutions. (The SAO did have contact with Nixon’s dirty trickster, Don Segretti, during the run-up to the 1972 GOP convention, which was moved from San Diego due to scandal. The idea on the table was for the group to participate in acts advancing a declaration of martial law.)
What happens with these guns and glory types should be a warning to us all; they may start with the best of intentions --even if we don’t agree-- but the psychology of waging an asymmetrical war inevitably leads to those running it becoming more like what they imagine their enemies to be.
The point here is that adopting the tactics of adversaries in politically volatile situations is unwise because they can be manipulated and aren’t effective.
On the other hand, there are bound to be lots of “concerned” armchair strategists who claim to be sympathetic to progressive causes who will say non-electoral political activism only encourages reactionaries.
Let me be perfectly clear here. Please protest. A lot. Letting the same people largely responsible for setting this nation’s long term agenda (or doing nothing) have their way amounts to doing the right wing’s work.
Voting Democratic/Progressive/anti-reactionary is a good and necessary step, especially if people take the time and effort to vote “down the ballot.” Tomorrow’s Mike Pence could be running for school board this year; losing might make him reconsider a career in politics.
Playing the electoral game won’t undo the damage done by decades of systemic racism, nor will it neutralize the proto-fascist elements in the domestic homeland security apparatus. But it will mean --at minimum-- the end of ignoring the growing threat on the right.
When and if Joe Biden is president, his administration’s accomplishments will be determined by activism outside of the legislative process. If we don’t push, nothing will happen. Getting rid of Donald Trump should be the first, not the last step, in making this country into a better place for all of us.
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Email me at: WritetoDougPorter@gmail.com