America-hating America-lovers are celebrating the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan. And what’s not for right-wing extremists to love? A fundamentalist army carrying infantry weapons overran the capitol in just days and drove out the government in power. Winning a second U.S. civil war is what every Three Precenter, Proud Boy, and weekend militiaman dreams of. Our domestic terrorists just failed to pass out the AR-15s at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. They can chalk up their failed assault to being a dress rehearsal. The Taliban launched the real thing.
Ben Makuch writes at Vice:
“I think Islam is poisonous,” posted an account linked to a former Proud Boys network on Telegram, an encrypted app widely used by the far right. “BUT, these farmers and minimally trained men fought to take their nation back from [world governments]. They took back their national religion as law, and executed dissenters. Hard not to respect that.”
“If white men in the West had the same courage as the Taliban, we would not be ruled by Jews currently,” said the same post that garnered nearly 2,500 views.
Many of the posts were (like the one above) blatantly antisemitic. So, under “the enemy of my enemy is my friend” principle, perhaps joint Proud Boy-Taliban exercises in the future? There’d be running and tumbling, tips on weapons maintenance, back-slapping and sharing of anti-Jewish memes. Then again, the posters were “quick to point out that they hate the Middle East and people of color.”
Still, the Taliban blitzkrieg got right-wing extremists’ nether regions all tingly:
“To be honest, the Taliban is epic,” said a popular white-nationalist commentator on Telegram, in a post viewed over 2,000 times. “The US had to invade in the early 2000s and stay over 20 years, spending $1 trillion dollars, and dozens of American lives to hold them back. As soon as we left, the Taliban took over the whole country in like 12 hours. LMAO.”
“I celebrate every time the [the U.S. government] is embarrassed. You should too.”
Neo-nazis also celebrated:
“For those unaware, NATO is pulling out of Afghanistan after 20 years of war with the Taliban and losing,” [a blog linked to members of neo-Nazi terrorist organizations the Atomwaffen Division and the National Socialist Order] stated. “This should in fact be celebrated as a victory against the Jewish-controlled world. While the Taliban does have its faults, they are nonetheless a marked enemy of the Jews.”
They continued: “Another reason to celebrate this victory for the Taliban is yet another example that our enemy, this system, is but a paper tiger.”
Meanwhile, the Republican National Committee was too busy wiping away fingerprints and readying a barrage of criticism aimed at Pres. Joe Biden (The Independent):
A web page on the site of the Republican National Committee detailing former President Donald Trump’s work on issues related to terrorism and the Middle East disappeared over the weekend as Taliban militants took control of Kabul and toppled Afghanistan’s government.
The page, which returned a 404 error as of Monday but could still be seen on archive sites, dealt with a number of issues including the Trump administration’s negotiations with the Taliban as well as the normalisation of relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates.
“President Trump has continued to take the lead in peace talks as he signed a historic peace agreement with the Taliban in Afghanistan, which would end America’s longest running war,” read the web page before it was taken down.
Rep. Lauren Boebert (R) of Colorado strapped on her sidearm before tweeting:
Best of luck with Shooters Grill-Kandahar, Ms. Boebert.
Boebert later joked about desperate Afghans being killed as they tried to climb aboard a taxiing U.S. Air Force jet.
Parker Molloy of The Present Age responds:
It’s hard to argue with that.