Nothing happens out of the blue. It may seem that way, but if you start to look at events you’re able to see the antecedents which led up to them. Today a journalist at Talking Points Memo traces back the horror in Minnesota in recent days to January 6. January 6 is the date that everybody in Trump world wants to forget. As Kellyanne Conway snapped, “Their watches are all broken to January 6,” the inference being that the left cannot get beyond January 6. No, we are way beyond the insurrection and we see clearly where it has led: to murder. That was last weekend and who knows when it will happen again?
The “good people on both sides” in Charlottesville marked the beginning of a new era of state-sanctioned violent extremism that historically had been seen only in the South. From there through “Stand back and stand by” and up until the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, you might have been able to argue that it wasn’t state-sanctioned so much as it was merely endorsed by the head of state, a thin reed of a difference, but a plausible distinction.
After Jan. 6, the state was still functioning on a rule of law basis. But as we noted then, Jan. 6 was the beginning of a new battle, not a culmination. While clear and deeply worrying cracks like the Supreme Court’s corrupt immunity decision were emerging, there was still a chance to avoid going over the cliff’s edge into lawlessness. Trump’s re-election foreclosed that last chance. It cleared the way for him to the empower the apparatus of the state with his brand of right-wing authoritarianism.
But it was the Jan. 6 pardons specifically that brought it all full circle. As Graff notes, “The January 6th pardons — and a host of other abuses of the presidential pardons — have made clear a chilling message to Trump’s most extreme supporters: Violence in support of the regime will be not only tolerated but excused.”
Combined with the Trump White House’s takeover of the Justice Department, the Jan. 6 pardons and the retaliation against investigators and prosecutors marked the end of a functioning rule-of-law-based state apparatus. In its place is violence and retribution. The law is used as a shield for his supporters and a sword to his foes. That’s where we are now and the way out of this wilderness remains alarmingly unclear.
There is another article by Garrett Graf that you should check out. Over the years we have lived with the pretense that right-wing domestic terrorism is “made up of ‘lone wolves’ — as if all these terrorists just spawned independently believing the same thing and following the same tactics.”
They’re not lone wolves. They’re foot soldiers.
This hate and extremism emerges from the fever swamp the right-wing media has built over the last generation — McVeigh was a huge fan of Bill Cooper, the extremist host who help inspire and mentor Alex Jones in the 1990s — and that fever swamp has been amplified and accelerated by the internet and social media.
There’s a whole loose confederation of white nationalist mass killers now, inspired by one another and building on the atrocities of each other. This week marks the 10th anniversary of the shootings at Mother Emanuel church in Charleston, S.C., which were a key moment in the development of this era’s white nationalist mythology.
We got an important warning this weekend about just how interconnected these “independent” acts of violence really are — one that you probably didn’t read about it.
Amid the Minnesota shootings, you probably missed that an armed masked man — an apparent Nazi — was arrested in Nashville at the #NoKings rally there after he clashed with the peaceful protesters and pulled a handgun. He had shouted at protesters, “Commie scum! No f***ing commie, commie scum in America, motherf***er.” Reporters who dug into his social media posts found that he’d celebrated the notorious 2011 killing in Norway that left 77 people dead, a mass murder that has become one of the rallying points for global white supremacists, as well as a racially motivated 2022 mass shooting at a Buffalo grocery store that also has become part of the white supremacist killing canon.
What stopped me in my tracks, though, was that he’d recently purchased a new Mossberg shotgun and decorated it along the lines of the gun the killer used in Christchurch, New Zealand, to murder 51 Muslims, adding white power slogans and the inscription “this machine kills commies.”
Here’s a photo of his shotgun from social media:
Thinking about that weapon and the Minnesota killings underscore to me how we’re watching American politics warp before our very eyes.
The January 6th pardons — and a host of other abuses of the presidential pardons — have made clear a chilling message to Trump’s most extreme supporters: Violence in support of the regime will be not only tolerated but excused. Consider too the message sent by the right-wing’s warm embrace of Kyle Rittenhouse, who killed two men in Kenosha in August 2020 amid Black Lives Matter protests.
This is the message which has been sent. We are now at a juncture in American politics where we have a *president* who not only will sic his mob on the other side, but he’ll sic them on the Republican party if need be. That’s chilling, to say the least.
Earlier this year, we saw a wave of stories about the corrupting impact that rising political violence was having on the GOP itself. Multiple news stories highlighted how Republicans themselves were scared by potential attacks from Trump loyalists and caving to his policy and political demands to avoid being targeted. A quick summary:
- A key driver of Sen. Thom Tillis’ flip-flop on being the vote that could have stopped Pete Hegseth from becoming defense secretary appears to be the wave of death threats he received. The hate and vitriol was so extreme that even Fox News covered it, quoting his senior advisor saying, “the volume of threats and harassment directed at members of Congress and their staff is the new normal.”
- Rep. Eric Swalwall explained what he was hearing from GOP colleagues behind-the-scenes: “I have a lot of friends who are Republicans. They are terrified of being the tallest poppy in the field, and it’s not as simple as being afraid of being primaried and losing their job. They know that that can happen. It’s more more personal. It’s their personal safety that they’re afraid of, and they have spouses and family members saying, ‘Do not do this, it’s not worth it, it will change our lives forever. We will have to hire around-the-clock security.’ Life can be very uncomfortable for your children.”
- Writing in Vanity Fair, Gabe Sherman reported, “In private, Republicans talk about their fear that Trump might incite his MAGA followers to commit political violence against them if they don’t rubber-stamp his actions. ‘They’re scared shitless about death threats and Gestapo-like stuff,’ a former member of Trump’s first administration tells me.”
- Sen. Lisa Murkowski told voters in Alaska she was outright afraid to stand up to Trump: “We are all afraid, okay? I am oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice because retaliation is real.”
There you have it. Melissa Hortman and her husband are dead. Lisa Murkowski admits her fear and her reticence to speak her mind because “retaliation is real.” We never used to live like this. In America, elections were hard fought, sometimes some people played dirty, but at the end of the day, the winner went through the motions of saying he was the president for all Americans — and I think most of them meant it — and we carried on as before.
We are in a different land now. This is political terra incognita. We have a sitting *president* who has no problems manipulating the rule of law to suit himself and his interests — and the Supreme Court, with rare exception — backs his play. That further incentivizes the lunatic fringe. That is the status quo right now, bizarre as it is. The question we really face is: Can we get America back? Because without the rule of law, we are not America, and you see the condition that the rule of law is in due to Trump and his SCOTUS sycophants.
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someone also broke into her house after the murders to burglarize it.
That’s true. Our local news in Minneapolis/St.Pail reported that first hand from the family.
When I see it all summed up like that, it really is horrifying.
When the other side lies, promotes deadly violence, and celebrates killers and traitors, while minimizing or responding with hypocrisy, it is clear we are already in a deadly guerilla war. We can never point fingers at the Germans for their mass murdering cowardice. We are no better. And we’re only five months in.
These GOPers who cower like this should get out in front of the public and say–for all to hear–“If I am killed or seriously injured following my vote against something President Trump wants done, find and hold accountable that person and then arrest President Trump as an accessory because my death or injury will ultimately be HIS fault.”
But they’re too spineless to do something like that even though it would force Drumpf to have to be very cautious in his future comments. As we’ve constantly been reminded, Drumpf likes television and, on pretty much ANY crime show (murder mystery or police procedural), the FIRST suspect in any murder investigation (and usually the actual killer) is someone who has some kind of antagonistic “history” with the victim.