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Federal investigators have foiled a domestic terrorism plot, hatched by an anti-government extremist group, to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer and take hostages at the state Capitol. Thats according to an unsealed criminal complaint filed in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Michigan.

Six men face federal charges for conspiracy to commit kidnapping. Another seven face preliminary charges under the states anti-terrorism statutes, according to Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel.

The charges have sparked a broader conversation about the rise of what federal law enforcement refers to as domestic violent extremists. The Department of Homeland Security released its Homeland Threat Assessment two days ago, noting that last year was the most deadly year for domestic violent extremism in the United States since the 1995 Oklahoma City Bombing. The report says that white supremacist extremists are the most persistent and lethal threat of domestic terrorist attacks.

I have found, at least in the past, that sometimes the public and judges did not take these militia groups as seriously as perhaps they should have. Sometimes discounting them as crackpots, tinfoil hat wearers, that sort of thing. And in fact, that doesnt make them any less dangerous. I submit it possibly makes them more dangerous, said Barbara McQuade, a law professor at the University of Michigan and a former federal prosecutor.

Stateside's conversation with Barbara McQuade

Domestic terrorist groups are often hard to prosecute, according to McQuade. Many supporters of international terrorist groups can be prosecuted if the FBI finds that they provide services or monetary aid to those groups. But that same material-support statute does not exist for domestic terrorist groups.

Prosecutors, McQuade says, use the term left of boom to describe FBI agents or military personnels legal ability to disrupt terrorist groups as they near a planned violent incident. When it comes to domestic terrorism plots, McQuade explains, federal law enforcement has to have more extensive evidence of a planned attack before acting.

The closer you get to the incident, the more dangerous the group becomes because they got the weapons and theyre ready to go. So it is more difficult and challenging to take down these groups when theyre domestic groups because you have to get closer to boom, McQuade said.

Alexandra Minna Stern is the author of the book Proud Boys and the White Ethnostate: How the Alt-Right is Warping the American Imagination. She studies the recent rise of right-wing extremism in the United States and says that the past 20 years have given rise to what she calls the fourth wave of far-right movements--or what is often referred to as the alt-right. The groups that fall under the umbrella of alt-right arent monolithic, Stern says, and cover a wide range of far-right views and ideologies, she says.

Stateside's conversation with Alexandra Minna Stern

But what weve seen over the past two years, is really a more concerted rise of white supremacism and white nationalism and in particular, groups that are willing to take to the streets, take to the ground, and basically, as we see with the situation with Governor Whitmer, devise elaborate plots to overthrow sitting governors and to, in the grand scheme of militias, to overthrow democracy and the U.S. government.

Social media can be a recruiting ground for peopleusually young menwho get involved with extremist groups. The men charged in the alleged plot against Governor Whitmer first came to the attention of federal law enforcement early in 2020 through social media posts that talked about violently overthrowing members of state governments and law enforcement, according to the FBI complaint. Over the summer, the complaint says, the men gathered for weapons training and to lay out a plan to kidnap the governor from her vacation home and try her for treason. FBI agents say some of the men had planned to meet on Wednesday of this week to make a payment on explosives and exchange tactical gear.

Stern notes that the pandemic, a divisive political climate, and social unrest have created an environment in which violent extremism thrives. The stress and uncertainty of the current moment has created a dangerous pressure cooker, says Stern.

And were living in a context where we have a president who, with his tweetstorms and other actions, is actively and explicitly emboldening these types of actors. And all of this is leading up, I think in now 28 days, to a really defining election in this country. I would not be surprised if we saw, unfortunately, I dont like to say this, but if we saw further instances like this. Not just in Michigan but throughout the country.

See the rest here:
Michigan, militias, and terrorism: Experts give context to alleged Whitmer kidnapping plot - Michigan Radio

As the Boredoms have repeatedly proved, you can't have too many drummers. If anything, the lineup of Portland-based instrumental collective Secret Drum Band needs moreon their recent second album, Chuva (Moon Glyph), they've usually got two or three at a time.

Thankfully SDB also bring two things to the table that are even more urgently necessary than more drummers: antifascism (two songs use percussion parts originally improvised during a counterdemonstration at an alt-right rally) and environmentalism (two other songs were commissioned by the Portland chapter of the Oregon Native Plant Society, and almost every track uses field recordingsincluding a few of Amazonian ants).

SDB actually has four drummers on Chuva, but never all at once. Two of them are ensemble directors Lisa Schonberg and Allan Wilson, who also contribute synths, processing, field recordings, and occasional wordless vocals; the other two are Anthony Brisson and Heather Treadway. Wilson is formerly of !!!, and Schonberg and Treadway used to play together in Explode Into Colors. The new record also features at least eight guestsamong them guitarist Marisa Anderson and former Decemberists drummer Rachel Blumberg, playing synth mallets.

On her website, Schonberg explains that SDB's core members "document habitats and soundscapes in their compositions, with the goal of drawing attention to issues concerning endangered species, habitat loss, and other environmental issues." She also says that Secret Drum Band's music alludes to "Liquid Liquid, the Creatures, and Crash Worship."

I have irrationally strong feelings about Crash Worship, but I won't dispute the comparison beyond saying that SDB sound way less evil. I like the rough-and-ready feel of Chuva: the unfussy, energetic drumming centers acoustic rather than electronic sounds, and the elements that might read as "new age" (heavily reverbed chants, drifty synths, wilderness ambience) stick to supporting roles, inflecting the percussion with extra color and texture. The compositions evolve and progress in compelling ways, not just by adding and subtracting layers but also by shifting through distinct movements and sections.

The sound of Chuva isn't polished, but it isn't rough or unfinished either. There's no distortion, no dissonance, no noise to speak of. But this isn't wallpapery, unchallenging hippie bullshiteven though the music is warm, inviting, and sometimes serene, it's never directionless or lazy. Every track pushes forward with resolve and purpose, driven not by aggression but by confident collective strength. And that's punk as fuck.v

The Listener is a weekly sampling of music Reader staffers love. Absolutely anything goes, and you can reach us at thelistener@chicagoreader.com.

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Secret Drum Band build their beats as an act of collective strength - Chicago Reader

How much do we really know about Stephen Miller?

A senior adviser to President Donald Trump, the 35-year-old Miller has emerged as the leading far-right ideologue in this administration outlasting his only real competitor, Steve Bannon. By all accounts, Miller is the driving force behind Trumps most extreme anti-immigration measures from the separation of migrant families at the border to Trumps infamous Muslim ban. Now hes in the news for an entirely different reason: On Tuesday, he was the latest top Trump aide to test positive for coronavirus.

As my Vox colleague Jane Coaston pointed out, Miller delights in provocation for provocations sake. And yet, in this role, he has gone beyond triggering the libs to shepherding real policies with real consequences. Hes also been enormously successful at reinforcing his power in one of the most chaotic White Houses weve ever seen.

A new book called Hatemonger by journalist Jean Guerrero takes a deep dive into Millers background where he comes from, the events and people that shaped his worldview, and what he really wants. Its a fascinating look at Millers upbringing in southern California and the Trump-like family dynamics that turned him into a conservative firebrand.

Millers ambitions are all the more important in light of recent comments from a former Trump DHS official suggesting Miller has a list of shock and awe immigration orders to unleash if Trump wins a second term, orders that were unacceptable to issue in a first presidential term because they knew they would lose voters because they would be so extreme.

I reached out to Guerrero to talk about Millers life and ideology and, hopefully, get a sense of what those extreme orders might look like. Miller, Guerrero argues, might be a troll, but hes also much more than that and we dismiss him at our own peril.

A lightly edited transcript of our conversation follows.

The premise of your book is that we should take Stephen Miller seriously because hes someone who genuinely thinks hes on a quest to save the country. What does that mean?

It means hes a fanatic. I really believe that Stephen Miller is one of the few people in the White House who has a firm ideology and has invested in that ideology over the course of his life so much that its become inseparable from his identity. And that ideology is basically that multiculturalism poses an existential threat to Western civilization, as we know it.

So his entire obsession with the immigration system and trying to limit the number of people from different countries, particularly from Latin America and Africa, to come here, it goes back to that belief that multiculturalism is a threat to civilization, which is a prominent view among white supremacist groups and its why they want a white majority in this country.

These are ideas that Miller learned at a very young age and over the years invested more and more in them. My sense, based on the conversations I had with people who have known him since he was a kid, is that this has become his lifes mission and it drives everything he does now that he has real power.

Its a little surprising to hear you say that Miller has a firm ideology because he built his reputation as a troll, and we dont typically think of trolls as serious ideologues.

His friends tell me that, at first, they also couldnt tell whether he was joking, And maybe early on in his life, it was less about ideology and more about being a teenager and looking for attention and finding ways to stand out and wanting to make certain people laugh. But over the years, he learned that being provocative was a good way to get attention and power and so that become a key political tool for him.

So yeah, I do think Miller started out as a kind of troll but eventually the ideas he was flirting with became a huge part of his identity and he really believed it. This sense of mission he has is inseparable from his identity, hes consumed by it. Whatever lightheartedness he may have had when he was younger is gone we should see him above all as a committed ideologue.

I always wonder with these alt-right types if they began as trolls and picked up a coherent ideology later or if its the other way around. I guess its the former in Millers case, but also a little complicated because there was real resentment pretty early on in Millers life.

Even though I said he may have started out as a troll, its misleading to think of his early years that way. As you said, there was a lot of actual resentment present in his early years, particularly towards students of color, and the trolling was often a mask for that resentment.

Where did that resentment come from?

He started to express his conservative and contrarian views at a time when his family had lost a lot of money, and he had to move from a very affluent part of Santa Monica to a less affluent part. And he looked around at his high school, his very diverse public high school, where otherwise he mightve attended a mostly white private high school and he was clearly annoyed that so many of his class were getting special attention and having their voices elevated. And this is when he starts to express his resentments out loud. He becomes more vocal and more aggressive.

When I look at some of these clips of Miller, especially when he was younger, its so hard tell where the trolling ends and the earnest beliefs begin. Everything he says is tinged by that half-cocked grin, and you can see it still today. Is it just impossible to disentangle the performance from the ideology in Millers case?

I think theyre impossible to disentangle, partly because he takes such pleasure in triggering people. When he goes on television or gives interviews, he sometimes has this glimmer in his eye and will say things that are kind of humorous but its never totally clear if its a joke. But what hes really doing is trying to expose what he thinks is the false moral outrage of a lot of progressives this is his thing. So yeah, its trolling but its also a way of advancing his ideology because he believes trolling is an effective way to do politics.

There are a lot of bizarre anecdotes in the book, but the one about Miller and the high janitors is so revealing. Can you explain briefly what thats about?

He gave this speech at his high school where he was screaming, Why do we have to pick up our trash when we have janitors to do it for us. And I remember reading his friend, Chris Morriss justification of it. Oh, it was a joke. Obviously, it was a joke. It was just meant to get people to laugh.

One of the questions I wanted to answer was, how much of a joke was it really? I went back and interviewed a lot of his classmates and former friends and I dont think it was a joke. There were numerous instances, not just in high school but also in college, where he would throw his trash or leave his trash out and encourage others to do the same, saying, This is what we have the janitors here to do. And at one point, he told a teacher who was encouraging students at a rally to clean up after themselves, he interrupted her and said, No, dont listen to her. This is what we have janitors here to do. They need a job. So throw your trash on the ground.

It struck a lot of classmates as not only classist but racist. At Millers high school, there were a handful of janitors for this very large student population, and they were mostly people of color. So giving that speech the way he gave it made a lot of classmates feel like he was trying to incite a race riot at the school and thats why they had to push him off the stage, because he wouldnt stop talking and the student body was getting really riled up.

So what do you think hes doing in the White House? Does he really want to change the world or is the White House the ultimate trolling platform?

Its an interesting question. Nothing in any of my discussions with his colleagues in the White House have indicated that he has looked to influence other countries consciously. I do think that it would be a natural next step for Miller to try to spread his ideology overseas and coordinate with others and share his views in other countries, and try to turn that into some kind of global movement, as we saw Steve Bannon attempting to do.

I think Miller would be more effective and more dangerous than Bannon by the way, because I dont think that Bannon has a real ideology the way that Stephen Miller does. So far, hes been extremely focused on the United States. He has an almost tunnel vision for immigration policies in the US and thats what hes focused on. But I wouldnt be surprised he expanded his focus outward in the future.

What would you say is the most important thing people should know about Miller?

I think people should know that he is arguably the most powerful advisor in the White House. And he is a case study in radicalization, someone who was consumed by an extreme ideology at a very young age, and then went on to become one of the most powerful advisers in the White House, shaping not only immigration policy, but Trumps speeches and even the reelection strategy for 2020.

Why is Miller the one adviser, apart from Trumps family members, that has survived all these years?

Its a few things. The most important is that Miller gets Trump emotionally, psychologically, even spiritually. Part of it is that Miller grew up in a family that was very similar to Donald Trumps. Several people described Millers father to me as Trump-like. He was tangled up in numerous legal disputes and bankruptcies related to his real estate company over the years, as Miller was growing up. He is described in court documents as being a master of evasion and manipulation. He was described to me as being very combative. I think this experience helps Miller manage his relationship with Trump, helps him manage Trumps personality.

The other part of it is that Miller is always tasks himself as a devoted vehicle for Trumps agenda and is careful not to overshadow his boss. And this is partly one of the sources of his power within the White House. Whenever he wants something done, he invokes Trump. He invokes Trumps desires, Trumps demands. He invokes Trumps name. So hes constantly channeling Trump and this makes officials in the White House afraid to challenge him, because its like they would be challenging the president. And theyre aware of his special relationship with the president.

So this elevates Millers power within the bureaucracy, but it also elevates his power over Trump personally, because it works for Trumps ego, unlike other people who have exaggerated their influence in the White House. Miller is more comfortable in Trumps shadow.

What do you think Miller does after Trump? Does he find another political vehicle or is he likely to get involved some other way?

His initial goal was to be a prosecutor and then become a senator. I think becoming a prosecutor is not on his mind anymore, but I do think its possible that he might still run for office somewhere. I think its possible he might try and make a living as a commentator on conservative outlets.

I do think that if Donald Trump loses the election, Miller will double down on his ideology and look for new ways to elevate it through the media, something hes very good at doing. He understands the media and has been exploiting it since he was a teenager going on conservative talk radio in southern California. And if Trump wins in November, well, I think hes going to double down on his agenda and become even more powerful.

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How Stephen Miller became a top Trump aide in the White House - Vox.com

People like McCusker, Ambassador Marie Yovanovitch and the N.S.C. expert Lt. Col. Alexander Vindman are the sort of civil servants Michael Lewis celebrated in his book about Trumps assault on the bureaucracy, The Fifth Risk, another of Lozadas favorites. They do due diligence, they adhere to protocol. Their truth is not postmodern. They do their jobs without fanfare; they do not turn their work into self-aggrandizing performance art. Their rigor is what makes our federal government legitimate and credible, despite its flaws.

Impeachment was a hard case. Trumps shenanigans were illegal, and definitely unseemly, but they didnt rise to the level of bipartisan horror necessary for a successful conviction. In the end, the Democrats probably did themselves more harm than good. But what Trump on Trial makes clear is that the Republican response was an all-out assault on regular order, expertise, law, diplomacy and the quotidian chores of holding a democracy together. I had forgotten how blatant it was. Elements of the Civil Service have decided that they, not the president, are really in charge, said Devin Nunes, the California Republican. Matt Gaetz, the Florida Republican, paraphrased what he thought was the Democrats message: We the elite, we the permanent Washington, we the smart folks, have decided that this is not acceptable conduct. Or, as Trump told one of his rallies, Were dealing with people that dont respect you. The Michigan Democrat Elissa Slotkin, a former intelligence analyst and senior Defense Department official, saw herself in civil servants like Yovanovitch and Vindman: Their life was her life. It was an ethos shared by her friends, especially the ones who had sworn an oath in the military. Slotkin went back to the nations founding documents: The framers had warned against the danger of Americas leaders soliciting foreign interference in the countrys internal affairs. Hadnt this president admitted to doing exactly that?

There could not be a more obvious example of Yuval Levins dialectic. The Republicans were all about What do I want? The Democrats worried, How should I act? The parties had traded their traditional places. The counterculture never died, Lozada writes of the alt-right movement, summarizing the views of the journalist Angela Nagle. It just switched sides. Transgression now lives on the right, dogmatism on the left. The Democrats have become traditionalists. The Republicans, a most illiberal group of libertarians, tear down the pillars of the temple. The former Trump adviser Steve Bannons nihilism is the spiritual heir to Abbie Hoffmans jolly anarchy in the 1960s. What losers and suckers the traditionalists were! To read Trump on Trial in the context of What Were We Thinking is to be scalded. The pain is excruciating.

Carlos Lozada is a book critic, not a policy wonk. He doesnt propose specific solutions to our current state of disgrace, but he does offer a vision of American stability being eviscerated by the publics need to be entertained. This reminded me of the dichotomy that Machiavelli posited in The Discourses: the contest between virt and ozio. Virt is the quality that keeps a republic strong: It is rigor and responsibility and intellectual achievement, albeit with a distressing tinge of militarism. Ozio is indolence; it is the laziness that overtakes a republic when it is not at war or in crisis. In America, we experienced 70 years of unprecedented peace and prosperity, without a perceived existential threat, from 1946 to 2016, a bacchanal of ozio. In the process, far too many of us lost the habits of citizenship. Truth became malleable. Morality became relative. Achievement became pass-fail and, more recently, just showing up. Rigor was for chumps. You didnt have to do anything to become famous, except be an influencer. And to be an influencer, you didnt need to train or study, although plastic surgery branding certainly helped. You didnt have to serve or sacrifice; that was for chumps, too. This was the America that elected Donald Trump president. What were we thinking? We werent. Critical thinking was just too hard and another episode of Duck Dynasty or Keeping Up With the Kardashians always beckoned.

More:
Does an Intellectual History of the Trump Era Exist? It Does Now - The New York Times

Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

The Make America Great Again MAGA slogan is nothing new. On the evening of March 21, 1915, President Woodrow Wilson attended a screening of The Birth of a Nation. The blockbuster film was based on The Clansman, a novel written by Wilsons good friend Thomas Dixon. As in the novel, the film presented a resurgent view of the South and its glorification of the Ku Klux Klan. Wilson endorsed the film wholeheartedly, only to embolden a KKK white nationalist reign of terror on African Americans. The Klan created a shibboleth to accompany their resurgence and terrorism: Make America Great Again.

Ronald Reagan and the Republicans used the theme successfully throughout Reagans presidency. Decades later Tea Party Patriots, white nationalists, the alt-right and conservative Republicans proclaim the same MAGA. Only this time the invocation conveys more of an urgency and vitriol. They fear the growth of multiculturalism, socialism and leftists and a country the white majority is becoming a minority.

The leader of the emergent white nationalist movement, the one who gives voice to their fears, is none other than the billionaire and star of the reality show TheApprentice, Donald Trump, forty-fifth POTUS. With Mussolini aplomb and stand-up comedy theatrics, Trump has drawn out a subterranean cast of characters. Trump has been successful in using concepts, terms and colloquialisms easily understood by the deplorables. In fact, it appears that they enjoy each others company and Trumps political rallies. They have become a fun fest of character assignation and blatant lies about political rivals and their ridiculous policy positions.

Trump, acting as a CEO Master of Ceremonies, salutes his loyal assistants in the context of doing a good and then turns on former assistants, usually if they snipe publicly at Trump. While at rallies Trump has people in the crowd stand for ovations when they participate extemporaneously with favorable shouts. He is at this best when he departs from script to lampoon a political rival. Sometimes his is blunt in his criticism when he describes former security advisor, John Bolton, an idiot.

For those at rallies who have showered affection on Trump, when his fan base shouts I love you Trump responds in kind, I love you more. On the other hand, during his campaigns in 2016 and 2020, Trump had no problem telling people at his rallies to shut up hecklers, or punch them in the mouth, and he would pay their legal fees. Most importantly, Trump knows that as ringmaster of his own circus, media ratings will be high with such theatrics which translates into political exposure and advertising from big business.

However, with Trumps recent Covid revelation, and stock market drop, the jury is out on whether or not the media industrial complex will pull the plug on Trump. Revenues from advertising may decline if viewers show displeasure looking at a Covid president on the big screen in their houses. Clearly Trumps right-wing big show has been profitable for business according to a November 18, 2019 article in Fortune Magazine, by Alan Murray and David Meyer, all of this is in terms of GDP growth. But while productivity of an economy is one thing, wages and purchasing power is another. Yet Trump s able to sell the public on a good economy even though the Fed has been bailing out the multinationals by the trillions of dollars.

Underneath this sham is a personality likened to the megalomaniacs of 20th century Germany, Italy and Spain. This makes no difference to Trumps followers; they are energized and entertained by Trumps comical remarks, reminders of his multi-billion dollar success, and his lampooning of political rivals in both parties Low Energy Jeb (Jeb Bush), Lyin Ted Cruz, Crooked Hilary Clinton, Wild Bill Clinton, Little Marco Rubio, Crazy Bernie Sanders, Shifty Adam Schiff, Mr. Magoo (Jeff Sessions), Mini Mike (Michael Bloomberg), Fake Tough Guy (John Bolton), Nervous Nancy Pelosi and a litany for Sleepy Joe Biden, Sleepy Creepy Joe Biden, Slow Joe Biden, Basement Biden, OHiden, and Joe Hiden Biden.

No one indignity is spared, not even Mike Pounce aka Mike Pence Trumps Vice President.

Mocking insults go to the Fake News such as the Clinton News Network (CNN Time Warner), CON-cast (Comcast MSNBC), Amazon WaPo (Jeff Bazos owned Amazon and Washington Post), and Jeff Bazos himself as Jeff Bozo. Media personalities are also a target, Sour Don Lemon, Psycho Joe (Joe Scarborough), Wacky Glenn Beck. Television media programs are not exempt, Deface the Nation (Face the Nation), Meet the Depressed (Meet the Press) and Morning Joke (Morning Joe). Heads of State are made into cartoon characters such as Rocket Man or Little Rocket Man (Kim Jung-un, Supreme Leader of the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea), My Favorite Dictator (Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, President of Egypt) and Animal Assad (Bashar al-Assad, President of Syria).

Trump is admired, for all intents and purposes, by dictators such as Turkeys Erdogon, Russias Putin, Philippines Duterte, and Saudi Arabian Crown Prince, Mohammed bin Salman, who the CIA has identified as directly responsible for the brutal murder of Jamal Khashoggi, Saudi journalist and dissident. Trumps adoring public could care the least, and have never cared even with his shady alleged criminality in real estate, taxes, relationship to Jeffrey Epstein, impeachment, and sexual manhandling of women. Nor are they concerned about his former staff indicted and sentenced, and countless turnover within his administration.

Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, though enthusiastically supportive of Trump, appears to be guarded with his praise of Trump, especially with the Presidential elections within a month.

Most interesting are conservative Christians and Catholics who not only dismiss Trumps checkered past and present, but distort and manipulate scripturally comparisons of Trump to Cyrus the Great, a pagan Babylonian king who freed the Jews from captivity in Babylon to reclaim Israel. Point being that God can carry out her/his will in the unchurched like Trump, in the same way that God can work through pagan kings like Cyrus the Great to free Israel from captivity and bondage. Cyrus, as their argument goes, is the archetype of the ironic vessel (vessel theology) in which God carries out her/his plan of salvation, despite the superficial inconsistencies.

For conservative Catholics, as long as Trump is against abortion, anything he does on a personal level or supports as public policy contrary to Catholic social teaching can be justified. Ignored in this form of ethical triumphalism, is the fact that Catholic ethics calls for its faith community to form their consciences on Church teaching (Scripture and Tradition) based on the continuum of life ethics. This means that no one single overarching issue should take priority over others, unless ones conscience directs them in good faith otherwise. Nevertheless, both groups revel in the fact that with three Supreme Court picks, Trump will be able to overturn abortion and follow through on a complete list of conservative and libertarian public policies that the Right have been dreaming of for the last forty years. In all, the vessel theology for conservative Christians appears to be a scriptural form of money laundering while conservative Catholic antiabortion triumphalism appears to be a gaslighting technique, intended as a diversion from other highly import ethical concerns.

Arguably, both conservative Christians and Catholics might agree on vessel theology and the primacy of abortion in their support of Trump. This would justify their manic identity as both Christian and Republican; Democrat not being much better. Unarguably they both agree that the continuum of life issues such as the Churchs preferential option for the poor, the avoidance of environmental extinction, the end to endless wars and global economic domination of the world (PNAC), the elevated status of the military industrial complex, the development of a Space Force, unfettered neoliberal capitalism, increased poverty in the midst of exponential wealth, elite control of government, the threat to democratic freedoms through the new surveillance state, threats to civil liberties and rights in the Patriot Act and the National Defense Authorization Act, extrajudicial murders, secret FISA courts, CIA orchestrated coups in Ecuador and attempted in Venezuela, illegal and harmful economic sanctions placed on Venezuela, racial and class disparities in the criminal justice system, police lawlessness and brutality, economic devastation in all levels of education, neglect of infrastructure development in inner cities, lack of affordable housing and universal health care, capital punishment as justice, nuclear proliferation and the targeting of innocent civilians, nuclear annihilation of all known life on the planet, and the corruption of the two major political parties are of little importance or even sadistically supported or dissented upon relative to the issues.

Yet in all of this, Trump appears to be impervious to the assaults of his political foes. He never lets on that he is bothered by them, at least not in public. Even though he is behind in the polls Trump came off like a brawler. The debate became a hoot and then into a donnybrook which included Trump, Biden and moderator Chris Wallace. Trump took on both simultaneously; Biden putting in a few swings, while Chris Wallace was unable to reign in Trump unhinged. When Biden tried to go on the offensive explaining the advantages of the Green New Deal, Trump asked if Biden supported the GND to which Biden responded in the negative. Trumps counterpunch to Biden? You just lost the Left. Clearly the intensity of Trump was felt and his anger apparent, an anger that reflected a wounded animal.

After the debate the media agreed that the debate was a disaster, but nevertheless concluded that Biden was the marginal winner. Two more debates will tell more. But Trump has some help coming. If Trump can undermine voting, for example in Texas, by having governor Abbott limit ballot drop off ballots one per county as is being discussed, then Trump could very well win Texas and a huge number of electoral votes. And watch conservative governors go to work on this same strategy. Making it difficult to vote has proven to be highly successful for Republicans. Long waits in line, sometimes several hours in predominately poor districts, has proven to frustrate these voters. Suffice it to say, no Republicans in Congress have dissented from this tactic. And no Republicans have dissented at all from Trumps usurpation of the Republican Party. The exceptions of Jeff Flake, who resigned from the Senate, and House member Justin Amash who is now a Libertarian are few and far between. Others like Bob Corker have resigned quietly. In short, Trump will not be ruled out for a second term.

None of this feels right, as in reading Upton Sinclairs, It Cant Happen Here. Sinclair writes about a fictitious 1930s America where a deceptively polite group of individuals marketing the concept of Americanism takes over the country. It parallels 1930s Nazi Germany, and for that matter, the fascist takeovers of Italy and Spain, all democracies at the time. But the It Cant Happen Here scenario is not without actual historical context. In fact, during the 1930s a thriving Nazi Party was alive and well in the United States. Footage of a Nazi Party convention at Madison Square Garden, February 20, 1939, with 20,000 people in attendance, reveals a frightful scene of a rabid crowd, gathered under the pretense of a pro-Americanism rally, were automaton-like saluting allegiance to a massive image of a George Washington portrait with swastikas on each side. This is not insignificant given the zeitgeist then and the zeitgeist now. Known as the German American Bund, the pro-Hitlerorganization in the United States promotedNazi propaganda, combining Nazi imagery with American patriotic history. The largely decentralized Bund, as they were self-described, was active in a number of regions, but attracted support only from a minority ofGerman Americans.The Bund was the most influential of a number of pro-Nazi German groups in the United States in the 1930s; others included theTeutonia SocietyandFriends of New Germany(also known as the Hitler Club). Alongside allied groups, such as theChristian Front, these organizations were virulentlyantisemitic.

When Trump ran for office and was elected president there was a perception of a fascist coup and the appearance would have been cemented, had not Trump been talked down from a military parade on his inauguration. Now the perception is reality. During the debate Tuesday, Trump would not agree to a peaceful transition if he was voted out of office. The rationale was that with the mail in ballots and scattered locations to drop off ballots voter fraud would result which did not obligate him to relinquish the Office of the President, Moreover, when Chris Wallace asked Trump if he would denounce the Proud Boys, Trump instead told the Proud Boys and other alt-right groups to stand back and standby implying that their help might be needed. Thus, Trump refused to unequivocally condemn white supremacists and far-right groups who have respondedto ongoing protests against police brutality and racial injustice, instead pinning the blame for violent clashes on the left wing.Antifa is just as bad even though FBI reports indicate the direct opposite as reported to congressional committees by Director Christopher Wrey. The perception of fascism is now reality. The mask is off and the faade of a democratic society has been exposed.

Most disturbing is the fictional account of the Antifascists (Antifa) as a violent leftist terrorist group. Nothing could be farther from the truth. In an internal memorandum, FBI Director Christopher Wrey, found no evidence of Antifas involvement in national unrest, specifically with the George Floyd protests and riots as falsely reported by The Nation, June 2, 2020. The Washington Field Office memo states that no intelligence indicating Antifa involvement was initiated during the protests, as erroneously stated from Trump, Attorney General Barr, and various right-wing news outlets such as FOX News. On June 12, 2020, the New York Times in Federal Arrests Show No Sign That Antifa Plotted Protests, cleared Antifa and on June 22, 2020, the New York Times, 41 Cities, Many Sources: How False Antifa Rumors Spread Locally, described how propaganda against Antifa was spread through the media community, most likely form conservative politicians and political action committees. The attempt was to falsely blame the uprising on an orchestrated group such as Antifa, according to Glenn Kirschner, former FBI, counterintelligence. Blaming a left-wing group was a ruse created to gaslight the public and divert attention from the right-wing police tactics condoned by the Trump administration.

***

Various media outlets and activist groups have documented the rise of alt-right white nationalist groups. The PBS News Hour, as reported by Kenya Downs (October 21, 2016), identified the growing attraction to rightist groups. The Southern Poverty Law Center compiled a report, White Nationalist, (https://www.splcenter.org/7-15-20/), in which they report that the MAGA have attracted the alt-right such as neo-Nazis, the Ku Klux Klan, Proud Boys, Boogaloo Bois, neo-Confederates, Racist-Skinheads, Christian Identity. The weirdest and most dangerous, arguably, appear to be the QAnon. They allege that a cabalof Satan-worshiping pedophiles running a global child sex-trafficking ring is plotting against PresidentTrump. They warn that a day of reckoning is at hand involving the mass arrest of journalists and politicians. In no uncertain terms, QAnons day of reckoning is aimed at liberals the Left, code for socialists, anarchists, antifa, and communists.

None of these rightest groups have foresworn the use of violence or vigilante tactics, nor have they ruled out the use of violence against local and federal government. The Boogaloo Bois and their movement have even called for a Second Civil War and the Order of the Nine Angels, a Satanic neo-Nazi group in England and the United States, deifies Adolf Hitler as the head of their Order. What has proven to be most disturbing is that hate groups have increased 55% since Trumps campaign and presidency, noted by Jason Wilson of The Guardian, March 18, 2020.

So if the alt-right White Nationalists have surfaced within society, could it be possible that they have also emerged within the rank and file?

Jason Stanley, How Fascism Works: The Politics of Us and Them, 2018, and Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, 2017 argue that the eroding of human rights and civil liberties in the United States have, in effect, has transformed the United States into a quasi-fascist state, trending ever rightward. They cite policies and law such as the Patriot Act, 2001; National Defense Authorization Act, 2012, in which federal government agencies can spy and detain indefinitely suspects without signed judicial warrants or even probable cause. All of this rationalized as a result of the 9-11 event.

Expanding on their theses, Snyder and Stanley describe fascist movements, and societys attraction to them, based on the following: economic fears, immigrant xenophobia, the need for social stability and status quo, and above all the primacy of white Western European hegemony. Change with respect to diversity, pluralism, and collectivist economic arrangements frightens some people and thus creates forms of neurosis and paranoia to which fascist politics thrives. Examples of fascism include, but are not limited to, the absolute nature of the State, a militarist charismatic leader, and the eradication of diversity and multiculturalism. This has tremendous appeal to those who become emotionally destabilized by what postmodernists describe as the other. Moreover, a powerful dictatorial leader whose followers are drawn toward authoritarianism, is in essence the heart and soul of fascism itself.

Others such as Hannah Arendt in The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) argue that fascism in Germany was based on an attraction to a mesmerizing leader who convinces followers that civil liberties and human rights have become excessive and therefore undermines social cohesion needed for the well-being if not survival of the state. The implication is that liberal democracy undermines the common good and that a constriction on democratic rights is thus justified. Arendt concludes that there is no guarantee that democracies will uphold human rights and civil liberties and that vigilance to these threats must be a permanent feature of any democratic government. Tragically, Germanys democratic Weimar Republic, 1918 1933, lost sight of this vigilance. Hitler and likeminded fascists lacking any real opposition, quickly weakened the democratic institutions in Germany which then cleared the way for the Nazi Third Reich.

The rapid decline of German democracy and the Nazi assault on the democratic foundations of the Weimar Republic, then focused on Jews, Left-wing politics (labor unionists, socialists, communists, and Marxists) and various social deviants as the enemies of the Third Reich and Aryan race. The mastermind behind this propaganda assault was Joseph Goebbels, the Reich Minister of Propaganda for the Third Reich. Sensing the disposition of the German people, Goebbels took advantage of Germanys humiliating loss of World War I, and Germanys economic collapse after theWall Street Crash of 1929 further intensified their collective humiliation. Germany was already compensating the Axis powers for WWI and with its dependence on American loans from 1924 onwards German, once a proud and wealthy country of Western Europe found itself in a psychotic downspin. Then as the loans were recalled by the United States, the economy in Germany sunk into an even deeper depression. Investment in business was reduced or eliminated completely. Wages fell by 39% from 1929 to 1932 and people once employed full-time, fell from twenty million in 1929, to over eleven million in 1933. In the same period, over 10,000 businesses closed every year and poverty increased dramatically.

Hitler and Goebbels were able to capitalize on the vulnerability of the German psyche. With the Great Depression, Goebbels was highly successful in associating the economic failure of the Great Depression with the Weimar democracy. When combined with the resulting political instability within Germany, Hitler and Goebbels vitriolic propaganda pushed Germans to become further disillusioned and even hostile to the Weimar Republic. Hitler was to be the unquestioned leader of the German people and purge the Aryan Nation of parasites such as Jews (appealing to German anti-Semitism and blaming Jews for Germanys problems), political rivals, and the eradication of genetic aberrations form the German Aryan race.

In Hitlers biography, Mein Kampf (1925), Hitler develops the Jewish Doctrine of Marxism. Hitler argued that the survival of Germany was threatened by Marxist intellectuals who were predominantly Jewish.Goebbels, seeing an opening for further promoting the cause of Nazism, gave a speech February 1926 titled Lenin or Hitler? in which he asserted that communism or Marxism could not save the German people and would only usher in Bolshevik tyranny such as that of Russia. In 1926, Goebbels published a pamphlet titled Nazi-Sozi which attempted to explain how National Socialism differed from Marxist socialism and economic collectivism. National Socialism (Keynesian social spending) would rejuvenate the German economy, not Marxist socialism which happen to be a popular alternative to the horrendous effects of the German depression. The Marxists scholars in Germany, intellectually attacked by the Nazis, were known as the Frankfurt School. They argued that Hitler and Goebbels were making a false comparison between their policy recommendation for a democratic economy, not a Bolshevik collectivist model implemented by the Soviet Union. In fact, the Frankfurt School rejected both Stalinism and Fascism.

In order to convince Germans of their superior status as a race, Goebbels insisted that Hitler promote himself as an ubermench or superman in his 1935 Triumph of the Will. Goebbels argued that Hitler must promote his own cause as the Fuhrerprinzip or Fuhrer (prince leader) and demonstrate the evils of the democratic Weimar Republic. The film would serve to denounce the legitimacy of the Weimar Republic, call for a resurgence of the German will to power, ignite passions of German patriotism and thus set the stage for a Nazi coup detat. The timing was perfect. With the death of President Paul von Hindenburg, Hitler as Chancellor, would step in and abolish the Office of the President and declare himself Fuhrer. Finally, the call to National Socialism is contrasted with propagandized subhuman Bolsheviks, who because of Stalinist collectivism, suffer as a nation. Marxism is therefore dismissed comically as a viable economic option. Competing collectivist economic arrangements urged by labor unionists, socialists, anarchists and Marxists would be dismissed in patronizing theatrics. With this the Weimar Republic and its democratic foundations were destroyed.

***

The white nationalists assert that white people are a unique race, and as such, seek to maintain its white identity or white pride within a majoritarian white nation such as the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, and other white dominated countries. They believe they are being pushed aside and headed toward a minority status. Their agenda, specifically in the United States, is to support the dominance of white culture and ensure the rights of besieged white people. The assimilation of minorities into white society is therefore perceived to be a threat to the survival of the white race and its cultural heritage. Resistance to the inclusion of minorities through miscegenation, multiculturalism and immigration is axiomatic. In compounding the issue, Donald Trump endorsed white nationalists when he stated (August 15, 2017) that white nationalist demonstrators and counter-protesters in Charlottesville, North Carolina, have very fine people on both sides. And with Trumps refusal to denounce David Duke, Grand Wizard of the Ku Lux Klan, Trumps political sentiments have surfaced. The MAGA slogan, nonetheless, identifies the white nationalist vision.

The, MAGA, was adopted by Adolph Hitler and the Third Reich, taken straight from the Klan, and translated into Make Germany Great Again (MGGA). In fact, the MAGA has re-emerged in Germany over the past two decades with the German alt-right. It has become a catchall phrase for a loose group of extreme right-wing individuals and organizations who promote the fascist values of white nationalism. These groups tend to exhibit at least three of the following five features: nationalism, racism, xenophobia, anti-democracy and a white nationalist state advocacy of white domination. In a study by Anne Applebaum, Peter Pomerantsev, Melanie Smith and Chloe Colliver, Make Germany Great Again: Kremlin, Alt-Right and International Influences in the 2017 German Elections, Institute for Strategic Dialogue (2017), the authors argue that the MAGA theme was established in Adolph Hitlers Mein Kampf and the fascist doctrines set forth inThe Manifesto of the Fasci of Combat (Fascist Manifesto, 1919), and further enumerated inThe Doctrine of Fascism, purportedly written byBenito Mussolini, but more than likely the intellectual formulation of fascist Giovanni Gentile in 1932.

In the German context the MGGA denotes those who seek to define and defend a true German national identity from elements deemed to be corrupting of that identity, for example, Jews, communists, socialists, gypsies, dissident priests and ministers, union leaders and trade unionists, and those persons opposed to authoritarianism. This phenomenon has also developed in dominant white European countries including Russia. The resurgence, whatever the shibboleth, clearly has deeper roots in authoritarian and fascist traditions as argued in Theodor Adornos The Authoritarian Personality, 1950. During and after World War II, Adorno examined the psychological causes of the development of European fascism. Adorno concluded that there was a distinct personality associated with prejudice and intolerance that led to racist and fascist policies. The authoritarian personality is fundamentally one that is inflexible, rigid, and intolerant of uncertainty. They reject unconventional behavior as immature, inferior, degenerate, or even deviant. Moreover, authoritarians, identify with authority figures and the power that accompanies such positions. Any anti-authoritarian behavior is perceived to be a threat to authoritarians themselves and society. As a consequence of the authoritarian mindset is one formulated upon a neurotic fear and therefore forms a reaction to dissident ideas from its own. It seeks to suppress these views and the people that possess them and their cultures an any outward expression of these differences.

In psychoanalytic terms what emerges is a form of reaction formation which provides a framework for which authoritarians need not question their own beliefs or values, that is, compared to that of unconventional ones. For Adorno, the authoritarian personality then believes that members of a minority group are inferior in relation to the authoritarian archetype, in that, failure to assimilate or comply to given standards, relative though they are, are projected on to others and viewed as defiant of the state. Difference and nonconformity translate to subversive activity and a threat to the survival of society itself. The authoritarian person and state then react to this defiance or deviance by assigning those to, not only an inherently inferior status, but one of danger or evil. This tends to perpetuate itself within authoritarian societies and accompanying institutions and traditions. Understanding the context for this recent emergence of the MAGA is in order.

White Privilege

Minorities and anti-racists point to white privilege as the basis of white hegemony in the United States. White privilege refers to the historical advantages white people have over people of color. Jesse Myerson in White Anti-Racism Must Be Based in Solidarity, Not Altruism, The Nation, February 5, 2018, addresses political scientist David Kaibs argument that there are two faces of privilege. One face is composed of a higher quality of life, education, employment, living wage jobs, homeownership, retirement benefits, healthcare, etc. The second face is the societal privilege to dominate narratives, initiate dialogue and discussions, and monopolize control of public spaces. Though they are referred to as privileges, Kaib asserts that privileges should be defined as rights. Suffice it to say, white people have more access to these two privileges than blacks, and though white people are more likely to find themselves in managerial positions with some institutional power over blacks, these are a far cry from the power to influence national and international government and institutions as noted by Derrick Bell, And We Are Not Saved: The Elusive Quest for Racial Justice, 1987. White privilege thus maintains a social, political, and economic advantage over people of color, and in doing so, pits white people against people of color, specifically African Americans. The privileges that come from membership in dominant white groups, is prioritized by whites in order to maintain their very privilege.

At times this is reinforced by anti-racists who, in realizing their privilege, prefer not to be active in racial resistance since they might be outed for latent racist attitudes as Robin Di Angelo identifies in White Fragility: Why Its So Hard for White People to Talk about Racism. This also carries over to an oppressor/oppressed binary which offers no incentives for white people to live differently. In this binary, white people can only fall on the side of the oppressor and the inherent privileges that accompany whiteness. This model erases the history of white people engaged in personal, interpersonal, cultural, and systemic work to promote racial, social and economic justice. There is no recognized, historical alternative to toxic whiteness in this binary despite there actually being a history of anti-racist white people struggling to create an alternative white identity. This false narrative of white only racism needs revision, e.g., John Brown, the Abolitionists, Rev. William Sloan Coffin, etc.

White privilege undermines the democratic gains of people of color. Since 1865, with the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, African Americans have made some progress towards full democratic participation. White reaction has been to undermine and even rollback some of these gains. For example, at the end of the Civil War and Reconstruction Era, the Black Codes were unlawfully implemented while Jim Crow laws violated Reconstruction Era Civil Rights legislation. In overruling Plessy v. Ferguson, The Supreme Courts landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision was rejected by southern states by shutting down public schools throughout the South.

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 prompted states and local governments to intimidate and obstruct African Americans from voting. The Southern Strategy, orchestrated by Kevin Phillips and Richard Nixon intended to create dog whistle racist slogans to turn whites away from supporting civil rights and turning to regressive public policy supported by conservatives. The War on Drugs initiated by Bill Clinton and Joe Biden, disenfranchised millions of African American men through broken windows policing, racial profiling, stop and frisk police tactics, and three strikes legislation. All of this leading to a racist redux as described in recent scholarship by Michelle Alexander in The New Jim Crow and J. Michael Higginbotham in Ghosts of Jim Crow.

White Nationalism

The MAGA and white nationalists reject the white privilege argument and instead see themselves as the new oppressed minority. The philosophical underpinnings of white nationalism are, for the most part, derived from social Darwinism, Nazism, and fascism. Narrow cherry-picked passages by Christian fundamentalists use interpretations of Hebrew and Christian scriptures that support racist beliefs. White nationalists tend to believe that a conspiracy against whites is being promoted as part of an attempted white genocide. They usually base their evidence for this on a partisan activist government implementing public policies on behalf of minorities, and the declining birth rate among whites and the increasing birth rate among minorities and immigrants. Their white culture and traditions are dying. In response the white nationalists scapegoat minorities, progressive legislation, and if necessary, violence to protect themselves from extinction.

The alt-right (alternative right) has become a catchall phrase for a loose group of extreme right individuals and organizations who promote white nationalism. The alt-right, also describe themselves in terms of white power and white pride, is a movement in America who seek a resurgence or revolution in promoting the unique identity of the European heritage of white Americans. Its soldiers, as some describe themselves, are not lone wolves but highly organized cadres motivated by a coherent and deeply troubling worldview made up of white separatism, supremacy, virulent anticommunism, and Christian apocalyptic faith. In Bring the War Home, Kathleen Belew provides a history of a movement that consolidated in the 1970s and 1980s, around a potent sense of betrayal of American world domination only to be forced to retreat, specifically from the Vietnam War, a war they felt they were not allowed to win. According to Belew, government was to blame for Americas retreat as a world power and as a result, anti-government citizen groups and militia emerged, from Waco and Ruby Ridge, to the anti-government terrorist bombing on Oklahoma City, to a resurgence under President Donald Trump and the MAGA movement.

Many of the alt-right conclude, nonetheless, that waging war on their own country, the United States, was justified. They unified people from a variety of militant groups, including Klansmen, neo-Nazis, skinheads, radical tax protestors, veterans, and white separatists, to form a new movement of loosely affiliated independent cells to avoid detection. The white power and white pride movement operated with discipline and clarity, undertaking assassinations, armed robbery, counterfeiting, and weapons trafficking. Its command structure gave women a prominent place and put them in charge of brokering alliances and birthing future recruits. Belews disturbing and timely history recounts that war cannot be contained in time and space: grievances intensify and violence becomes a logical course of action.

Based on years of deep immersion in previously classified FBI files and on extensive interviews, American para-militarism and the birth of the alt-right has both overt and covert manifestations. This has become what historian Carol Anderson describes as white rage in White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide. She argues that it was white rage at work that sparked the riots and that the media and public at large ignored the kindling which stoked the flames. What fueled the unrest is a white backlash of resentment, anger, and even rage that African Americans and other minorities are being privileged over whites. This is clear in the tolerance of hyper policing and brutality directed at blacks. This has also enabled increasing displays of white rage in an insurgent white nationalist movement.

Critical Race Theorists such as Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, in Critical Race Theory argue that the compounding impact of marginalization felt by whites, as the dominant identity in the United States, further compounds resentment toward minority entitlement especially since this has resulted in financial loss for whites. There is some truth to this resentment. Cedric Robinson argues in Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition, that the wealth disparity as a result of a capitalist economic system, coupled with corrective measures by way of Affirmative Action and welfare policies, makes upward movement into a more equitable economic and social class all the more difficult, not only for blacks, but for whites as well. And this class struggle is one that elicits fear and anger. Anticipating this resentment Malcom X urges, I tell sincere white people, work in conjunction with us each of us working among our own kind. Let sincere white individuals find all other white people they can who feel as they do and let them form their own all-white groups, to work trying to convert other white people who are thinking and acting so racist.

The MAGA and White Nationalist movements emboldened by Trump have made fascism in the United States the acceptable norm. Hopefully with this election, the removal of Trump from office will quell the alt-right. Democracy is at stake.

NOTES

1. Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley (New York: Random House Publishing, 1964), p. 434.

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