Far-right violence

In Tweets, public statements, and mass campaign emails over the last few months, Trump has repeatedly referred to those protesting police killings as dangerous criminals and terrorists. In doing so he has amplified the conspiracy theories of the far right, and authorized the violent stances of Three Percenters, Oath Keepers, Proud Boys, and other organized paramilitary and individual armed volunteers who have shown up in greater numbers at Black Lives Matters protests in recent months.

No other president or presidential candidate has so openly courted far-right violence. The closest comparison would be segregationist third-party candidate George Wallace in the tumultuous election season of 1968. During the urban uprisings that rocked the US in the latter half of the 1960s, small armed right-wing groups formed to defend white communities across the country, reflecting Wallace’s (and then Nixon’s) calls for “law and order.”

One difference though is that in 1968, such groups were considered so extreme that even Wallace’s presidential campaign was cautious in its approach to them. One Wallace campaign staffer wrote to the national office about a group they were courting in Northern New Jersey, fearful of bad publicity while covetous of their support: “Since the last Newark riots, the North Ward has become a terrified white ghetto,” he wrote. “Evolving from this terror the whites of the North Ward have organized rifle squads, groups trained in karate and judo, and guerilla warfare. Their headquarters is a karate studio. It gave me the jim-jams just visiting the place. This group will produce thousands of Wallace supporters. However, their publicity has been so adverse, including some national television, that none of this group should be electors. I told them to stay away from the news media as far as their support of the Governor is concerned.”

Half a century later, by contrast, the campaign of one of the two major political parties has openly used militia groups as security at national campaign events, has employed Bikers for Trump – a group that Trump has threatened would attack his political enemies, and has elevated figures like the McCloskeys as defenders of freedom against the ‘Marxism’ of Black Lives Matters and mobs in the streets.

What does it mean that far right has migrated to the center of the party system? Heavily-armed counter-protestors at an anti-Black Lives Rally in Salem, Oregon I spoke with in July repeated conspiracy theories about both Antifa and Black Lives Matter, claiming that “patriots” like him were there not to cause violence but prevent property destruction. Far-right vigilantes have shown up across the country armed with semiautomatic weapons and strong beliefs about the evil of their political adversaries. Experts have tracked hundreds of far-right incidents in recent months, and hundreds of acts of violence including lethal shootings. Such counter-protests are meant to intimidate and quell antiracist demonstrations.

Excerpted from:‘Murdering Democracy in Kenosha’.

Commondreams.org