Inculcating hate
A friend from the reddest part of my county once described how GOP candidates there rally support. In every group of voters, find out what issue pisses them off, then wedge the hell out of it. As the late Howard Phillips put it, “We organize discontent.”
It’s just that on the right, wedge issues come and go (for those of a certain age) like fad products by Wham-O or their support for the U.S. Constitution. The issues are not the issue. Organizing discontent is.
Tess Owen at Vice News examines the controversy du jour in Los Angeles schools. Recognition of Pride Month that touched off parent protests:
This was grooming, said the protesters, many of whom were parents wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the slogan “Leave Our Kids Alone.” The June 2 protest quickly turned violent. Videos show parents and their right-wing supporters brawling with pro-LGBTQ counterprotesters, beating them, and kicking them.
It was hardly an isolated incident in the LA-area. Fights also broke out at two more protests in June, both outside Glendale School Board meetings. Like the earlier protest at Saticoy Elementary, many in the crowd were from the Armenian community. Videos of those brawls were shared widely across right-wing media circles, as influencers praised “Brave Armenian Dads” for “standing up to “trantifa.”
In the last year, culture warriors and extremists, bolstered by mainstream GOP policy and rhetoric, have gone all in on false narratives that claim educators are “grooming” kids by teaching them about Pride and the LGBTQ community. Christian nationalists, neo-Nazis, Proud Boys, and other extremists have menaced school board meetings, called in bomb threats to Drag Queen Story Hours, and faced off with counter-protesters across the country—all with the goal of making the LGBTQ community and their allies feel less safe.
The more conservatives feel out of the mainstream, the more reactionary they become and the more tightly bound together by shared grievances.
Hate crimes targeting the trans community were higher in LA than any other major city last year, an increase of nearly 70% compared to 2021, according to data collected by Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino.
Local activists and journalists say the far-right is becoming increasingly emboldened in southern California, as thought-leaders of the movement reach and radicalize new recruits, including parents.
“The parents were so violent,” said Kelly Stuart, a local photographer who’s been documenting the far-right around LA for the last few years, about the protest outside Saticoy Elementary. She followed and photographed some of the protesters that day as they marched around the perimeter of the school—out of sight from local law enforcement.
“They told me, ‘there’s no cops here now, we could just smash your head in,’” recalled Stuart, who is 62.
“So that kind of viciousness … has always been present” in the movement, historian Rick Perlstein told Fresh Air in 2020.
So why this issue now?
Owen suggests that “Critical Race Theory” (CRT) simply did not have the staying power to keep the discontent on the edge of a boil. “It was a little too nebulous and theoretical for it to really take hold.” Owen writes. “Grooming” carries more octane.
“I think they’re getting more radical. They’re finding a sense of identity and purpose, being in a group, feeling right, unified. It’s almost like mob violence, when they’re all chanting together. It’s like they’re getting high off it,” said Stuart. “When I leave the rallies, I’m so exhausted from the energy. It’s not personal, it’s just the energy of the crowd is so full of hate.”
Getting back to wedge issues:
“The combination of Trump and the pandemic created this elastic and familiarized network of villains and heroes in the culture wars. Not everyone who shows up to protests necessarily has the same depth of prejudice or embrace of violence,” said Brian Levin, who heads the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino. “But it doesn’t matter because what these wedge issues do is enable people from different backgrounds but who have extreme emotions to work together.”
Local culture war drama may be especially pronounced in progressive strongholds, like California, said Levin, because hard-right activists know that the only way they can leverage any sort of power is within local politics. The types of angry scenes that have recently played out in Glendale are unlikely to play out in Florida, for example, because extremists and culture warriors know they have an ideological ally in Gov. Ron DeSantis.
To every wedge issue there is a season. Maybe not like not wearing white after Labor Day —some are simply faddish and others, like fashions, come back around. Discontent is the thing. When one culture war issue loses steam, reactionaries will find another.
Right now grooming is all the rage. Literally. Except to understand it in context, “grooming” is in the eye of the beholder, observes Dave Neiwert, a chronicler of the alt-right, Neo-Nazis, and the like.