They are heavily armed and ready to go
NY Times reporter Blake Hounshell interviewed two experts on homegrown terrorism and says what they had to say sent a chill down his spine. He spoke with Luke Mogelson: “a staff writer for The New Yorker, who wrote “The Storm Is Here,” a visceral narrative work chronicling the rise of the movement that played a large part in the assault of the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021″ and Andy Campbell, “a reporter for HuffPost, just published a book on the pro-Trump extremist group the Proud Boys, the product of several years of tracking them at rallies, school board meetings and street brawls across the country.” Neither knew he was interviewing the other but their stories track closely — and their hair is on fire with worry about these people.
His piece sent a chill down my spine too:
This week, former President Donald Trump warned in a radio interview of “big problems” if he is indicted over his handling of classified documents, comments widely interpreted as a threat to stoke violent unrest. Election officials across the country have faced so much online vitriol that hundreds of lower-level officials have quit their positions out of fear for their safety.
But the climate of menace goes well beyond elections, Campbell said.
“I really do believe that, going forward, it’s not just going to be MAGA rallies. It’s not just going to be political violence at Proud Boys rallies or leftist rallies or B.L.M. events,” he said. “It’s going to be political violence at any civic event that happens to fall in the cross hairs of Donald Trump and company.”
‘Rapidly mutating’ right-wing movements
Before writing his book, Mogelson spent much of the previous decade living and reporting abroad in conflict zones like Afghanistan. He witnessed a mob killing of someone in Iraq, which gave him an understanding of what he called the “intoxicating” feeling that can whip a crowd of seemingly ordinary people into a frenzy.
“There were elements of Jan. 6 that reminded me of that,” he said, citing “the performative aspect” of the crowd’s expressions of anger.
When he began reporting on anti-lockdown groups that mobilized against the pandemic measures put in place by governors like Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, a Democrat, he immediately saw that the story was much larger.
“I was kind of taken aback by some of those images,” Mogelson recalled — particularly in Michigan, an open-carry state where, in April 2020, gunmen wielding military-style rifles rushed the State Capitol in Lansing to protest the coronavirus precautions.
“I soon realized that these groups and this movement was rapidly mutating,” he said.
Over the next year, he traced their evolution from an anti-lockdown movement to one that opposed the racial-justice protests in the summer of 2020 to what he called “a violent uprising against the government” on Jan. 6.
By that point, Mogelson had come to recognize many of the same people at different way stations along his reporting journey.
“It was literally the same groups and individuals that I met in April 2020,” he said.
The common thread between the seemingly disparate events he covered, Mogelson found, was “a sense of dispossession.” His subjects’ rage might be a response to feeling that their heritage was being taken away by racial minorities or immigrants or the sense that powerful forces in the government and in big technology companies were trying to steal their right to free speech.
Oh boo fucking hoo. I’m so sick of hearing this endless whine from people who seem to find the money to buy big screen TVs, huge trucks and massive arsenals of AR-15s and various other lethal weaponry. (Or how about all those well-off old supporters of these nasty jerks down in the Villages in Florida? What’s being taken away from them? They obviously have plenty of money, free time and a very nice retirement. ) These people are spoiled and pampered bullies who are pissed that they aren’t allowed to subjugate the rest of the country.
Why it’s hard to crack down on extremist groups
Campbell, who has been following the Proud Boys since 2017, said that his book was intended to serve as “a warning shot” to the American public.
“I wanted it to be a primer for the average person,” he said, noting how extremist groups like the Proud Boys had insinuated themselves into democratic functions like school board meetings.
“They’re latching on to political forces and giving themselves legitimacy through that,” he said.
Underscoring the point, members of Congress and administration officials complain of being hamstrung by a lack of authority to pursue members of groups like the Proud Boys, who often operate in a nebulous zone, taking advantage of freedom of speech and assembly as they build support and win political allies.
In the United States, it is not illegal to be a part of a domestic extremist group. To go after specific threats, the government has limited tools, meaning that federal officials often must find links to groups overseas in order to crack down on homegrown extremists or prosecute them under other provisions of law.
Complicating matters, Republican politicians like Trump — who instructed the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” during a presidential debate in 2020 — often provide rhetorical cover.
It has become a regular talking point in G.O.P. campaigns, for instance, to accuse the Justice Department of seeking to inhibit parents of school-age children from expressing themselves at school board meetings. But those applause lines actually refer to the Justice Department’s response to the way extremist groups have conducted themselves in those venues — showing up armed, in some cases, or shouting down school officials and parents they oppose.
“The Republican Party seems to not know what to do,” Campbell said.
He added, “It seems like their inability to rebut the Proud Boys and other extremists is pushing this machine forward so much faster and really making it hard for law enforcement to keep up.”
I don’t buy it. The Republicans know they are playing with fire but they see it as a political benefit. This helps them stay in power. The logic behind it is very familiar to anyone who’s read any history of the 1920s and 30s. That’s what we’re talking about. They are different arms of the same movement, each benefiting from the other in pursuit of the same goals.
