{"id":1526,"date":"2020-09-16T21:41:55","date_gmt":"2020-09-17T02:41:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/v01_2020\/staging\/?p=1526"},"modified":"2022-11-07T19:32:51","modified_gmt":"2022-11-08T00:32:51","slug":"a-threshold-has-been-crossed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/2020\/09\/a-threshold-has-been-crossed\/","title":{"rendered":"A threshold has been crossed"},"content":{"rendered":"

W<\/span>e are in a dangerous political moment. The far right has surged with the support of President Donald Trump. The late spring mobilizations<\/a> to \u2018re-open the economy\u2019 were a stepping stone to a much larger presence of armed militias and neo-fascists at Black Lives Matter demonstrations in Kenosha and Portland; these forces appearing as allies of the local police forces or Trump\u2019s federal officers. While the far right is still a small and unpopular political movement in the United States\u2014made up of competing political factions and cornucopia of contradictory and bizarre ideas\u2014worse is yet to come if we don\u2019t act against them.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt feels like a threshold has been crossed,\u201d Joe Lowndes<\/a>, a political science professor at University of Oregon who studies the far right, told<\/a> the Financial Times<\/em>. \u201cI\u2019m not predicting violence on election day…but the conditions are there that have not been present before.\u201d The far right has gone from threats, brandishing weapons and menacing<\/a> demonstrators, to action: Kyle Rittenhouse murdered of two anti-racist protesters and attempted to kill another in Kenosha on August 25. Four days later, a caravan<\/a> of hundreds of Trump supporters invaded Portland\u2014 armed with paint ball guns and bear spray<\/a>\u2014assaulted radical activists in dramatic escalation of violence .<\/p>\n

Trump lavished praise on his paramilitary supporters, calling them \u201cGreat Patriots\u201d<\/a> while retweeting the video of the caravan invading Portland. Trump highlighted the death of Aaron \u2018Jay\u2019 Danielson, a member of the violent, far right organization Patriot Prayer<\/a>. Danielson was shot and killed by self-proclaimed Antifa supporter Michael Forest Reinoehl. Not long after, Reinoehl confessed to Vice News<\/em><\/a> that he shot and killed Danielson because, “I could have sat there and watched them kill a friend of mine of color. But I wasn’t going to do that.”\u00a0 Members of a fugitive task force<\/a> later killed<\/a> Reinoehl\u00a0 outside of Olympia, Washington.<\/p>\n

US Attorney General William Barr applauded Reinoehl’s killing, who he denounced<\/a> as \u201ca dangerous fugitive, admitted Antifa member, and suspected murderer.” Barr characterized it a significant accomplishment in the ongoing effort to restore law and order in Portland and other cities. He went on to proclaim,<\/p>\n

The streets of our cities are safer with this violent agitator removed, and the actions that led to his location are an unmistakable demonstration that the United States will be governed by law, not violent mobs.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If this isn\u2019t painting a target on the back of every anti-fascist\/anti-racist activist in the country, what is? Reinoehl\u2019s death was recently ruled a \u2018homicide<\/a>\u2019 by Thurston County Coroner Gary Warnock in Washington state.<\/p>\n

From May 27 onward<\/a>,\u00a0 Alexander Reid Ross, a scholar who studies the far right, estimates that far right paramilitary groups or individuals have shown up at 497 protests this year carrying out \u201c64 cases of simple assault, 38 incidents of driving cars into demonstrators, and nine times shots were fired at protesters.\u201d Provided the opportunity, there\u2019s no indication that the far right won’t continue their reign of terror against our side.<\/p>\n

We defeated the Trump-era far right once before: in a period of two weeks in August 2017, our mass mobilizations in Charlottesville<\/a>, Boston<\/a>, and the Bay Area<\/a> drove them off the streets. These humiliating defeats, after James Fields\u2019 murder of Heather Heyer, produced a political crisis for the far right that led to various groups disintegrating and leading figures withdrawing from public view. While anti-fascist campaigning has continued across the country, primarily in Portland, the latest upsurge caught many of us off-guard. We need to act quickly and with renewed purpose to deal with these new threats to the Left and Black liberation movement.<\/p>\n

Kenosha: A Turning Point<\/h3>\n

On the night of August 25, Kyle Rittenhouse<\/a> shot and killed protestors Anthony Huber and Joseph Rosenbaum, and wounded another, Gaige Grosskreutz, in Kenosha, Wisconsin. This was a graphic example of the far right escalating violence in the United States. Rittenhouse responded to a call from the \u201cKenosha Guard\u201d<\/a> , who created a Facebook event \u201cArmed Citizens to Protect our Lives and Property\u201d in order to intimidate anti-racist demonstrators who had been marching daily since the Kenosha police shot Jacob Blake<\/a> seven times in the back and paralyzed him from the waist down.<\/p>\n

The seventeen-year-old Rittenhouse was driven the twenty miles from his home in Antioch, Illinois by his mother Wendy, a nurse\u2019s assistant. Vice News<\/em> interviewed<\/a> many of Rittenhouse’s former classmates from Lakes Community High School, who portrayed him as a hardcore Trump supporter wearing a MAGA hat to school and who went out of his way to antagonize his classmates calling them \u201clibtards.\u201d Several of his former classmates thought of him as a future mass shooter. His mother removed him from school claiming he was bullied.<\/p>\n

Kyle Rittenhouse has been described by various media outlets as a \u2018police admirer\u2019 with \u2018Blues Lives Matter\u2019 material posted on his Facebook page. Revealingly, he was a member of a Public Safety Cadet Program that recruited teenagers. According to USA Today<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n

The website for that [Public Safety Cadet Program] group, [was] also removed from view Wednesday, said cadets, who are between the ages of 14 and 20, are schooled in police procedures including traffic stops, crash investigations, firearms, domestic disputes and crime scene investigation.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Such youth programs across the country are one of the ways that various U.S. police and military organizations recruit to their ranks. Rittenhouse made no attempt to hide that he went to Kenosha; he posted<\/a> a mug shot of Blake on Snapchat with the caption, \u201clol, he\u2019s innocent.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rittenhouse reported<\/a> the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel <\/em>that he \u201cconsidered himself a member of some sort of militia, trying to protect life and property, according to his social media posts and video interviews.\u201d He met up with dozens of all-white, heavily armed vigilantes who made their way to downtown Kenosha. They received a friendly reception from Kenosha\u2019s police department:\u201cWe appreciate you guys,\u201d one officer told them. \u201cWe really do.\u201d Rittenhouse told<\/a> The Daily Caller<\/em>, a conservative website, his motivation for being in Kenosha:<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are getting injured, and our job is to protect this business, and part of my job is also to help people,\u201d said Mr. Rittenhouse, wearing a backwards baseball cap and fingering a rifle strapped to his chest. \u201cIf somebody\u2019s hurt, I\u2019m running into harm\u2019s way. That\u2019s why I have my rifle, because I need to protect myself, obviously. I also have my med kit.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The\u00a0 “our” in \u201cour job\u201d is clearly a reference to the alliance between the Kenosha police and the white vigilantes that flocked to the city. Using the cover of stopping looting, the vigilantes targeted anti-racists demonstrators and activists. David Bowen, an African-American state representative from Milwaukee, told<\/a> Democracy Now!<\/em>:<\/p>\n

I literally witnessed firsthand a massive amount of organized white supremacists driving around in pickup trucks, targeting protesters. And they were there not to try to defend businesses, as they make it seem. They were not there to attempt to get a point across. They were there to hurt people. They were armed, and they were using chemical irritants. They were harassing protesters. And even from the video, it looks like they are in coordination with the Kenosha law enforcement that were there, literally.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel<\/em> recreated<\/a> the events that night interviewing witnesses, participants, and reviewing video. In one clip, a vigilante bragged:<\/p>\n

You know what the cops told us today? They were like, ‘We\u2019re gonna push \u2018em down by you, ’cause you can deal with them and then we\u2019re gonna leave.'”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This confirms the witness account of State Representative Bowen. Kenosha County Sheriff David Beth denied any coordination with vigilantes and claims he denied a request to deputize them. It\u2019s hard to take Sheriff Beth\u2019s denials seriously. Beth is a notorious racist, caught on video<\/a> calling for \u201cgarbage people\u201d to be warehoused for life. Kenosha Police Chief Daniel Miskinis defended<\/a> the vigilantes:<\/p>\n

\u201cAcross this nation there have been armed civilians who have come out to exercise their constitutional right and to potentially protect property,\u201d he said. \u201cAm I aware that groups exist? Yes, but they weren\u2019t invited to come.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

President Donald Trump defended Rittenhouse. At a White House press conference, he declared<\/a>:<\/p>\n

“I guess he was in very big trouble,” Trump said of Rittenhouse. “He would have been, he probably would have been killed. But it’s under \u2013 it’s under investigation.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Resurgence<\/h3>\n

Far right vigilantism is not a new phenomenon in the United States. From the Reconstruction era Ku Klux Klan to the Midwest-based Black Legion<\/a> of the early 1930s to the militia movement<\/a> of the 1990s, far right paramilitary groups have populated the scenery of far right politics. Throughout the 20th<\/sup> Century they emerged, largely but not exclusively, from a white, nativist middle class with some very wealthy patrons. The far right vigilantism emerges as a reactionary response to economic decline and a \u2018crisis of status\u2019 brought about by advances made by women and long oppressed in racial and ethnic peoples. Extreme anti-Black racism and xenophobia are at the core of their beliefs, with bizarre conspiracy theories\u2014almost always anti-Semitic<\/a> at their core\u2014used to explain their decline.<\/p>\n

The most recent far right resurgence began in the spring. Heeding President Donald Trump\u2019s call to \u201cliberate\u201d<\/a> states and \u201cre-open\u201d the economy, rallies linked to conservative foundations<\/a> were organized in late April and early May. While the rally organizers largely targeted Democratic governors in the Midwest, protests of one kind or another eventually took place in thirty of fifty state capitals, calling for an end to COVID-19-related stay-at-home orders and social distancing measures. These relatively small protests with ranging from a few hundred to a thousand participants were heavily covered by the media<\/a> and drew an array of armed patriot groups<\/a> and outright Nazis.<\/p>\n

Protests across the country saw displays of Revolutionary War-era flags and slogans along with American and Confederate flags. Right-wing protesters carried signs that denounced \u201cCommunism\u201d and \u201ctyranny;\u201d many, not all, also saw the open brandishing of automatic weapons and threats of violence. Some protesters denounced governors as \u201cNazis,\u201d while they mingled with real Nazis. The most terrifying scenes were in Lansing, Michigan where armed fascists stormed the state capitol building on April 30 to demand the reopening of the state. Casting aside medical advice, the fascists chanting \u201clet us in\u201dconfronted<\/a> state policemen, who blocked them from getting to the assembly floor.<\/p>\n

Trump called<\/a> on Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer to:<\/p>\n

Give a little, and put out the fire. These are very good people, but they are angry. They want their lives back again, safely! See them, talk to them, make a deal.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Trump\u2019s intervention was an eerie recycling of the his role following the murder of Heather Heyer<\/a> and dozens of anti-fascists seriously injured in Charlottesville, Virginia, who protested the \u201cUnite the Right\u201d rally in August 2017. He declared violent Nazis in Charlottesville, \u201cvery fine people.\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n

The far right, however, were not done with Michigan when they called for a \u2018Judgement Day\u2019 rally at the state capitol building on May 14th<\/sup>. In response to this ominous sounding call, Whitmer closed the capitol building and canceled<\/a> its legislative session. It is the first time that I\u2019m aware of that a democratically-elected state government in the United States shut down because of threats of violence<\/a> from the far right. Sarah Anthony, an African-American state representative, was so concerned about her personal safety at the Michigan state capitol building that she was accompanied to work by a six-person Black armed escort<\/a> organized by firefighter Michael Lynn, Jr.<\/p>\n

The far right vigilantes radicalized even further in response to the national uprising against racism following the police murder of George Floyd. \u201cI never thought that I\u2019d be in the back of a pickup rolling through downtown Olympia with six guys heavily locked and loaded, armored out,\u201d said Peter Diaz, a former Army reservist told the Washington Post<\/em><\/a>. \u201cI\u2019m doing something now that\u2019s for a greater cause than myself. And it feels really . . . good.\u201d Diaz ran a tree trimming busing. In response to Black Lives Matter protests, he decided to form his own political party and militia: American Wolf. The Washington Post<\/em> profile of him describes how he is part of,<\/p>\n

a roving band of civilians who have anointed themselves \u201cpeacekeepers\u201d amid months of tense protests over racism and policing. In the name of law and order, members of his informal group have shot paintballs at demonstrators and carry zip ties and bear spray as they look for antifascists. Diaz has done \u201crecon\u201d in Minneapolis and Seattle\u2019s \u201cautonomous zone,\u201d and drove his American Wolf mobile home to Mount Rushmore to celebrate Independence Day with President Trump.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Many of the longstanding far right vigilante groups like the Oath Keepers<\/a> or the Three Percenters<\/a> were spurred into existence because of the election of Barack Obama, the country\u2019s first African-American president. On the face of it, many of the new militia groups came out of nowhere. But Devin Burghart, president of the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, argues, \u201cWhat we\u2019re seeing right now is the outward manifestation of years of organizing by militia-type groups,\u201d \u201cThey\u2019ve moved from backwoods training to on-the-streets activism.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, law enforcement agencies across the country have become populated with officers sympathetic to or members of far right. White supremacist organizations have begun blurring the distinction between law enforcement and far right militias, like we saw in Kenosha. The Brennan Center in a recently released study<\/a> reports:<\/p>\n

In 2017, the FBI reported that white supremacists posed a \u201cpersistent threat of lethal violence\u201d that has produced more fatalities than any other category of domestic terrorists since 2000. Alarmingly, internal FBI policy documents have also warned agents assigned to domestic terrorism cases that the white supremacist and anti-government militia groups they investigate often have \u201cactive links\u201d to law enforcement officials.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Many of the new far right paramilitaries claim not to be racist or sympathetic to fascism or Nazism but a close look shows that many members are, despite in some cases having Black or Latino members<\/a>. Yet, like the fascists of the years between WWI and WWII, the militias are less defined by what they say about themselves than what they do. The German Nazis or the Italian Fascists saw themselves as military formations organized to destroy a revolutionary workers movement and its leading parties, the Social Democrats and the Communists, and its unions.<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s far right militias are fighting an emergent movement for Black liberation and a new socialist Left, while allied with an increasingly authoritarian state. Again quoting Professor Lowndes, the Financial Times<\/a> noted: \u201cappeals to a strong, armed figure needed to protect the polity has a long, dangerous history, frequently tied to fascist movements. In the US, that has taken the form of \u201cclaiming to represent forces of order, and of volunteerism, and of civic obligation, and doing the right thing\u201d.\u201d<\/p>\n

The militias may wave the flags of the American revolution, but the actions are more like the fascist gangs of the 1920s and early 1930s. Historian Peter Amann writing about the Black Legion in the 1930s\u2014immortalized in Humphrey Bogart\u2019s 1937 film<\/a> of the same name\u2014 described its politics and organization as a \u2018hybrid\u2019 of European fascism and U.S. secret societies like the KKK, what he called \u201cVigilante Fascism.\u201d<\/a> This is perhaps the most useful way of looking at the incipient far right militia movement in the U.S.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe most important election of our lifetime\u201d<\/h3>\n

For a broad range of people the way to defeat the threat of fascism in the United States today is to go and vote for the Democratic Party\u2019s presidential ticket of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris. The day after her speech seconding Bernie Sanders for president during the virtual Democratic National Convention, New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) took to Instagram with a video<\/a> that laid out her perspectives on the 2020 presidential election to her millions of followers. \u201cWe need to win in November,\u201d AOC said, \u201cNovember is about, in my opinion, stopping fascism in the United States, and that is what Donald Trump represents.\u201d<\/p>\n

In a Teen Vogue<\/em><\/a> article entitled, \u201cIn the 2020 Election, I\u2019m Casting a Ballot Against Full-Blown Fascism\u201d, Kelly Hayes, wrote along the same lines:<\/p>\n

I am writing this message to the broken-hearted electorate, some of whom believed, not so long ago, that this system just might swerve in a more hopeful direction. I am also speaking to everyone who knew better than to expect anything from this process, but who feel like they\u2019ve been kicked in the teeth all the same…If Trump is the fascist I believe he is, I worry he will not leave without a fight, no matter November\u2019s outcome. If Trump is victorious, so many will be ground under so quickly that I can barely stand the sight of it in my own mind.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The public statements by AOC and Hayes are the latest in a growing list of political interventions seeking to sway the new generation of young voters and U.S. radicals, largely members of Democratic Socialists of America (DSA), to vote for, if not out-rightly endorse and campaign for, the Democratic Party\u2019s Biden-Harris ticket. In many cases, veterans of the 1960s New Left<\/a> have joined this chorus. For other figures<\/a> in the U.S. Left, Trump\u2019s increasing authoritarian rule are reasons enough to campaign for Biden.<\/p>\n

Tens of millions of people will go and vote for Biden and Harris in November; an election that they will likely win. Yet, what we\u2019ve learned from U.S. and European politics during the past four decades is that the neoliberal policies of the mainstream political parties of various stripes are what have created the opening for new xenophobic, if not outright, fascist parties. Even worse, as I wrote<\/a> a few years back, \u201cIn many cases, the parties of the far right have recast themselves<\/a> as \u2018working class\u2019 parties.\u201d Working class votes, like those in Kenosha county<\/a>, helped Trump win the Electoral College. Far too many working class people are influenced by the racist and xenophobic ideas<\/a> that militias feed off of. Millions of working class people will unfortunately vote for Trump in November, also.<\/p>\n

What we learned in November 2016 is that when the only choice provided is between neoliberal business as usual, and a reactionary alternative, the far right can (and does) often win. But what we learned in August 2017 is that mass mobilizations can beat the far right, and can strengthen our ability as a Left to present our own alternative. Anywhere from 15 to 26 million people<\/a> marched against police racism in the United States. The far right is far smaller than us. But, while an opportunity to organize against the far right on a large scale similar to the \u201cUnite the Right\u201d rally is not likely in the near future, thousands of activists across the country are currently involved in anti-fascist campaigning. We need to bring those voices together to discuss the next step in taking on this new threat. Trump may be gone after the November election, the far right will remain.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joe Allen<\/strong> looks at the rising threat of the Far Right, its relationship to the Trump Administration, and its implications for the Left before and after the November elections.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":1527,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,62],"class_list":["post-1526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-article","tag-far-right","tag-fascism","tag-trump"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/09\/far-right.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1526\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tempestmag.org\/test02\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}