Democracy is the greatest threat to white supremacy, said a cable new guest (Sally Kohn) after this week’s assault on the U.S. Capitol. *
Despite there being one or two black faces among them, Trump’s MAGA followers tend to deny race has anything to do with their authoritarian, anti-democracy cult. Despite relatives’ confirmation that he had made racist remarks in their presence, insurrectionist veteran Larry Rendall Brock, Jr. denied he held racist views. He stormed the Capitol over baseless claims of election fraud seen on social media.
While Brock stood with zip-ties in the well of the U.S. Senate on Jan. 6, another MAGA mob was beating up Berlinda Nibo, 25 and Black, in downtown Los Angeles just feet away from a cluster of police officers (L.A. Times):
Nibo said she unwittingly found herself in the midst of Wednesday’s pro-Trump demonstration in downtown Los Angeles, where she was accosted and assaulted. Parts of the melee were captured in photos and video that were posted to social media, and the Los Angeles Police Department is looking into the battery as a hate crime.
Nibo was headed to eat breakfast when she encountered the “Stop the Steal” MAGA Rally. Seeing she was the only Black person around, she decided to move away but had to stop to help a friend who had dropped a cell phone. People broke away to follow her from the crowd of about 200. Taunts and jeers began. Did she know who Joe Biden was? Had she voted for Donald Trump?
The racial slurs started coming, she recalled, then chants of “White lives matter.” Nibo said she flipped off the group and kept walking.
Nebo has friends with COVID-19. Her mother is a nurse working with coronavirus patients. The protesters were not wearing masks. They demanded (NBC News) she remove hers. She asked them to social distance and told them to put on masks themselves.
“As soon as she told them to put a mask on, they swarmed her and circled her and started pushing her around amongst them, and trying to intimidate her,” said photographer Raquel Natalicchio, 29.
The L.A Times story continues:
Someone shoved her from behind. Another man knocked her phone out of her hand, scratching her face in the process.
Then a woman reached up and grabbed her long, wavy mahogany wig — a brand-new hairpiece Nibo wore for the first time Wednesday in celebration of the new year — and tore it off.
Nibo said she punched the woman in the face.
A video posted later showed the woman in the photo, holding a Trump flag in one hand and Nibo’s wig in another: “I did that,” she boasted. “I did the first scalping of the new civil war.” The crowd around her roared in cheers.
More punches. Nibo was pepper-sprayed.
“You know the scenes in cartoons when the villagers were coming at you with pitchforks and fire and all that? Literally, I thought that was it,” she said. ”I’m going to be on the front page: a young African American girl has been beaten to death on the streets of downtown L.A.”
Race had nothing to do with the “first scalping of the new civil war,” naturally.
*UPDATE: I identified where I heard the statement in the first sentence and credited Sally Kohn. I believe she read it in an essay by Darren Walker of the Ford Foundation..