Opinion | The risk of right-wing terrorism is rising dramatically - The Washington Post
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
When Joe Biden is inaugurated in a little over a month, he'll face an opposition that has convinced itself that the election was stolen from them, that the public health measures he encourages to get control of the coronavirus pandemic are a terrifying assault on their freedom, and that Biden and his party will literally attempt to destroy the United States.
We can't know for certain how this era in our national life will play out. But the potential for a wave of right-wing domestic terrorism is absolutely real, and we ignore or dismiss it at our peril.
Even Republican politicians understand that the threat is moving beyond the realm of ordinary politics — primary challenges, letter-writing campaigns, the occasional angry voter at a town hall — to a place where people's physical safety is at risk.
Consider this shocking comment from a Republican leader in the Pennsylvania state Senate, about a letter some of her colleagues sent to Congress demanding that their own state's results in the presidential election be rejected:
Kim Ward, the Republican majority leader of the Pennsylvania Senate, said the president had called her to declare there was fraud in the voting. But she said she had not been shown the letter to Congress, which was pulled together hastily, before its release. Asked if she would have signed it, she indicated that the Republican base expected party leaders to back up Mr. Trump's claims — or to face its wrath. "If I would say to you, 'I don't want to do it,'" she said about signing the letter, "I'd get my house bombed tonight."
Perhaps she was exaggerating, but the fact is that this is what immediately comes to the mind of a loyal Republican in the midst of an election controversy: If I don't support Trump's insane claims of fraud, my own party's supporters might kill me and my family.
And why would that be a foolish thing to worry about? All over the country we're seeing conservative rage reaching right up to the line that separates activism from violence, as they vent their feelings about both the election and public health measures meant to contain the pandemic:
- Heavily armed protesters surrounded the home of the Michigan secretary of state, after a plot to kidnap the state's governor was thwarted.
- Other secretaries of state who refused to steal the election for Trump have found themselves and their families threatened.
- A prominent supporter of the president went on TV and said that a federal official who countered Trump's false claims about voter fraud should be "taken out and shot."
- In Idaho, anti-mask protesters terrorized local officials' families.
- Public health officials all over the country have been threatened and harassed.
- The American right made a hero out of a teenager who went to a protest and allegedly killed two people.
The situation right now is terrifying. And in a month it's going to get much worse.
I say that because all this is happening while Donald Trump is still president. As panicked as his supporters are about losing power, he's still in the White House and they can delude themselves into thinking he'll find a way to stay there.
Think about the QAnon lunatics, for instance. The core of their story is not only that Democrats run a global conspiracy of satanic pedophile sex-trafficking cannibals, but that Trump is about to take the whole thing down. Whatever moment we're in, it's "the calm before the storm," the storm being the day when Trump rounds up the conspirators.
If you've fallen down that rabbit hole, you can tell yourself that all you have to do is wait for the president to do what he has planned all along. But what happens when he leaves the White House without having demolished the conspiracy? How many of them will conclude that the villains have taken control and violent action to dislodge them is now necessary?
You can apply the same logic to the only slightly less-deranged worldview propagated every day not just on fringe outlets like OAN and Newsmax, but much of the time on Fox News as well. If you actually believed the lie they're telling their audiences — that our democracy has been destroyed by a sinister conspiracy bent on dismantling America, outlawing religion and rounding up anyone who dissents — then violence would seem completely appropriate.
It would not be much of a leap to imagine yourself the equivalent of a resistance fighter in a Nazi-occupied country in World War II, taking up arms in the noblest of causes.
They're going to keep getting this message from conservative media, for whom rage is the fuel that drives ratings and makes money. And while some Republican officeholders are too afraid to contradict the myth of a stolen election, other elite Republicans are literally telling people they should be willing to die for Trump.
To be clear, I'm not saying a substantial portion of Republicans will decide in January that politics has failed them once and for all and the only way to achieve their ends is through terrorism. But it won't take a substantial portion. If just 1 in 100,000 of the people who voted for Trump came to that conclusion, you'd have an army of 740 domestic terrorists. How much death and chaos could they cause with a campaign of bombings and mass shootings?
Can anyone say that once they feel the sting of Trump leaving the White House, his most ardent supporters will say, "Man, that was a bummer. Oh well, that's democracy — we'll just try to win next time"?
Twenty years ago we lived through an extraordinary election controversy, and in retrospect one of the most remarkable things about it was how quickly everything calmed down. Despite the fact that the Supreme Court handed George W. Bush the presidency with the most dubious of rationales, Al Gore made a gracious concession, putting the good of the country over his own ambitions.
His supporters weren't happy about the outcome, but they did not seek to destabilize American democracy — let alone engage in acts of terrorism. They weren't steeped in a culture of violence, and the message they got from the leaders they trusted was to maintain the system and focus on the next election.
It would be nice if we could be so lucky this time. But it's hard to believe we will.
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Is it any wonder that the once Grand Old Party of Abraham Lincoln is now known merely as the gop?
The violence is a reaction by the right wing and it's GOP enablers that have massive amounts of dirty money to close to them. Most of it Russian, Saudi, Turkish, Chinese and others.
Putin has them right where he needs them. Desperate and afraid. This is why weapons show up frequently at rallies against masks or I can't sit down for a meal thing.
The timing is perfect for whipping up a disgruntled population because Supply Side Economics has concentrated the wealth and Citizens United has consolidated the power, thusly leaving Americans the easiest option of blaming their plight on their fellow citizens rather than those who created their problems in the first place.
There is abundant wealth in America. Unfortunately that wealth is concentrated into the control of to few and is the laziest wealth on the planet
There's no way to be sure... but we've already seen a kid kill... I'd be surprised if we don't see more.
As I was running errands on my lunch break today I heard 2 callers on Todd Starnes' show call for violence. Starnes did his best to try and tell them that they shouldn't be like the "leftists", but it fell on deaf ears.
Imagine that, a politician ceding to reality.
If the decision had been reversed, George Bush would have been a gracious loser and his supporters would have been upset but they would have accepted reality
Yes. Quite the different whorl we live in...
I agree with that. The big difference I see is the advent of 20 years since.........both sides have gotten more and more extreme and are filled with non acceptance of anything against their agenda and ideology. It may have something to do with the "I want what I want when I want it without exception" mentality. Witness all the sky screaming and pink pussy hat "rallies" of 2016. And it was accepted by those who didn't get what they wanted when they wanted it. Yes, Trump's personality had a lot to do with it but.................
Probably. We've gone a long way downhill since then...
This can play out in many ways. Trump may initiate a war with Iraq to justify crushing opposition to his refusal to leave office. Or me may agree to leave while peddling a 'backstabbing' narrative. He may declare himself president and rule that the administration is moving to wherever he wants to go. In office or not, expect Trump to continue to build a distinctively American form of fascism, especially within the military and many police agencies across the nation, those frequently being the most backward and reactionary layers of the population.
Trump's greatest asset is a pliant Democratic Party with neither fortitude nor integrity to stand up to Trump and his fascist faction. I expect the Democratic Party will try to crush brutally any genuine, working class opposition to the fascist movement. Opposition to fascism can be managed ONLY on the basis of a complete break with both the Republican and Democratic factions of the ruling class.
I wonder if the military would accept a new war, without a specific vote of Congress.
Manufacturing a pretext for more war is no issue. And whatever this glorious constitution tells us, war is standing, US policy. We have been at war continually for three decades. As for the military, its ranks are overwhelmingly drawn from the working class. The question is, 'has working class consciousness risen to the point of refusing illegal orders?' If it is, and if it stands with the civilian working class in its refusal to be drawn into yet another of a long string of class wars, then and only then can the ongoing ruling class drive campaign for ever more 'blood-for-profit' war be arrested.
I don't think so.
The question is, "Are the senior officers going to take the responsibility for the fall of democracy in America?"
Senior officers will think long and hard before opposing the interests of the ruling class. The fall of democracy is irrelevant. All that remains of it are a few, thread-worn tatters.