RW Johnson highlights the disturbing rise of extremist militias and fringe groups under Donald Trump’s influence, particularly as the 2024 election looms. Johnson examines how Trump’s rhetoric has emboldened these groups, who are prepared to use violence to challenge democratic processes. He also critiques the Democrats’ failure to address immigration issues and warns of potential chaos, regardless of the election outcome, driven by deeply polarized and volatile forces in American society.
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By RW Johnson
Considering what happened on January 6th 2021, the American and international press has been almost criminally dismissive of the many poor white gangs who have been attracted into Donald Trump’s field of force. ___STEADY_PAYWALL___ Yet they are a real factor – and Trump is perfectly aware of them, hence his statement in 2017 about the violent clashes in Charlottesville between Neo-Nazis and anti-Nazis: “you had people who were very fine people on both sides”.
The point to grasp is that Trumpism represents an utterly determined effort by the old white majority to resist an America with majorities of blacks, Asians and Hispanics. The Republicans – the party of Abraham Lincoln, of slavery abolition, after all – have been sucked in to do all they can to “clean” voter rolls of any dubious cases. At the same time Trump rallies his adoring followers against the Hispanic immigrants pouring across the Southern border, claiming they are often thieves, murderers, drug-dealers and the in-patients of lunatic asylums and jails that their governments are craftily getting rid of. Almost none of that is true, but Trump has worked up enormous feeling on the subject. Moreover, he doesn’t shrink from making admiring remarks about Robert E. Lee and other Confederate leaders as if he wanted to reverse the result of the Civil War. Naturally, the Trumpist masses also loathe wokery of all kinds, political correctness, abortion, affirmative action and any other liberal traits on offer.
Most of his followers cannot, will not imagine an America in which their sort of people are no longer in the majority. This trend has to be stopped at all costs. If Trump says the last election was rigged they feel that it would have been perfectly justified to overthrow it. And they have been mobilised as never before in the run up to 2024. It is an oddity of the American scene that most of the fringe militias and motorcycle gangs, although they effect names like the Rebels, Hell’s Angels, the Outlaws and so on, they are also tied in to very muscular and often very extreme forms of patriotism. They are a force to be reckoned with. There are between 250 and 300 militias in the US. The biggest are the Oathkeepers and the Three Per Centers but there are endless others, some local (the North Country Deplorables) or regional (the Michigan People’s Reactionary Force). Some of them include embittered ex-servicemen with a grudge against the government and a highly professional mastery of automatic weapons. What these groups like doing most of all is to get together, rehearse their grievances, shoot off their weapons and promise one another that they will soon take violent action to “put things right”. Often they see themselves as the descendants of the revolutionary Minutemen or even the Wolverines of Red Dawn.
Those who know this world better than me – and very few journalists bother to know anything about it – say that the trouble brewing for Jan.6th 2021 was visible for months beforehand and that the gangs and militias were gearing up for violence. (Typically they vastly over-promise and hugely exaggerate their capabilities.) The same observers warn now that there is a great deal of frantic, angry talk. The gangs and militias more or less all back Trump and assumed victory was in sight but the emergence of Kamala Harris with a poll lead has greatly upset them. They warn that there is probably big trouble ahead whether Trump wins or loses.
The point is that the Trump forces basically aim to push the electoral count towards a point where it has to be settled by Republican state legislatures or by the Republican Supreme Court. Many of the self-supposed Minutemen with their AR-15s intend to ride shotgun on this, adding their own air of menace. Moreover, they will start rounding up illegal immigrants, saying they are just helping the government. Some of the militias have done this in Arizona for years. Arizona has got a rich crop of militias.
If Trump then gets installed due to a lot of this very dubious manipulation of the electoral process, there will be bound to be a huge Democratic protest. This is particularly what the militias and Minutemen are waiting for: they call all such protestors “antifa” and they will attack the protestors without restraint, claiming they are defending the Trump administration. The Proud Boys and Three Per Centers are right up for this. They are already saying the election will be decided “by the bullet-box, not the ballot-box”. In practice they are preparing to enforce a Trump dictatorship.
If the Democrats win there will be a better rehearsed version of 2021. Even then we saw armed men showing up at any centre where votes were being counted, certified or just kept, armed men going into state legislatures. In marginal states like Arizona and Georgia they will aim to prevent the states from ever certifying the vote, thus forcing the outcome into the Republican state legislatures. If the Democrats still win there is likely to be a year of domestic terrorism. Drag queens, of all things, are mentioned as likely targets.
In a way the Democrats are culpable for this mess. They have resolutely failed to take note of the huge upswell of opinion against virtually uncontrolled immigration. They should have cracked down and imposed order as soon as Biden was elected, taking the sting out of the issue. Harris was the “border czar” but did nothing.And they are taking a fearsome risk by putting up Kamala Harris, a completely empty candidate with no real policies. Her first foray into economic policies – price control to stop rich corporations gouging the consumer with large mark-ups – merely revealed that she hadn’t the faintest idea. Producer prices and retail prices are perfectly aligned, so there is no price-gouging and Kamala didn’t seem to know the dreadful history of price controls. This merely revealed that Harris didn’t even seem to know a decent economist who could provided sensible ideas. Yet Washington is full of them. The reception of this wacky proposal was so bad that she will probably drop it, which would simply mean that she’s trying out ideas but wouldn’t know what to do if elected.Â
Perhaps because of this she is clearly frightened about the prospect of having to talk about policy. Invited to a dinner party where she would get questioned she had her staff organize a mock dinner party so she could get some ideas as to what to say. Pestered by the press for a sit-down interview she agreed at last provided Tim Walz could sit next to her and they could take questions half and half. What to think of a would-be President who needs to be baby-sat by another and more junior appointee just to answer a few questions ? There is a terrible risk that Trump will damage her as much as he damaged Biden in their only debate. And this time the candidate can’t be changed.
The larger point is that Trump’s strange and dishonest MAGA talk has successfully pulled into politics groups which were marginal or completely excluded before. For Trump everything that serves his ego is justified so he is quite willing to use such people. He is completely uncaring about constitutional constraints. If he were to lose again in 2024 it would be an unbearable slight to his ego so that simply can’t be allowed. One way or the other it would be sensible to expect trouble.
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Publish date : 2024-09-01 21:41:00
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