“No longer are these conspiracy theories and very divisive and vicious ideologies separated at the fringes…They’re now infiltrating American society on a massive scale.”
Jacob Ware, a research fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who focuses on domestic terrorism.
Since AR-15s and the like not exactly fair and ordinary hunting firearms, and despite the fact that we even had a federal law that banned assault weapons from 1994-2004 (the statute had a built-in sunset clause), there are many American proponents of keeping that military-grade weapon street legal is to ensure a popular ability to take down a government with which they disagree… vehemently. That mass shootings, particularly in schools, colleges and places of worship, kill hundreds every year… virtually all with AR-15 style semiautomatic rifles that are readily and almost always legally available… should bother almost all of us. But it doesn’t. The notion of violently taking down a US government, that a segment of our electorate disagrees with, is rather openly touted with the apparent backing of the NRA.
As recently released footage of an insurrectionist mob attempting to overturn an election by violently seizing the Capitol, the January 6, 2021, attack, shows that well-armed cadres (many in militia uniforms) were waiting beyond the metal detectors deployed for Donald Trump’s pre-attack speech at the nearby Ellipse. It should give us pause at what almost happened. It didn’t. “Hang Mike Pence”? Might makes right? Many people believe that a civil war requires two clearly identified and uniformed factions, incumbents and rebels, squaring off a la the 19th century Civil War that tore our nation apart. Welcome to the 21st century where the world has provided ample examples of multiple factions (from Sudan to Haiti to Lebanon to Syria, etc.) otherwise.
Let’s start with what should by now be obvious: there are virtually no lone wolves mounting individual attacks. The Internet has fixed that reality. The purported “lone wolves” are Web-connected, mired in a conspiracy driven network of disinformation with relatively easy access to both their targets a vast array of available weapons. For those who prefer a more organized, military-style assault, stand back and stand by, because there are a rather large number of uniformed and training militia ready to welcome them. Three Percenters. Oath Keepers. Proud Boys. And whole lot more, often coordinating and communicating with each other. If you can get past their guards, you can find them training in the Idaho panhandle, eastern Washington State, Texas… and so many more welcoming venues.
Governors (like Texas Greg Abbott and Florida Ron DeSantis) and even legislatures refuse to follow even clear federal law or Supreme Court orders (Alabama) or are willing to find workarounds circumventing unpopular (to them) anti-gerrymandering, voting restrictions, plebiscites favoring abortion or rejected classroom/library restrictions. Explosions of violence, in the name of political causes, have become commonplace. Even members of Congress engage in hero worship for violent insurrectionists, and compromise has become a dirty word in our own federal legislature.
The GOP frontrunner has mounted a campaign openly embracing using the military to arrest his opponents, casting anyone opposing his autocratic ambitions with words that parallel and even replicate the blame-laden rhetoric of Benito Mussolini and Adolph Hitler. Detention, execution, crushing media, “vermin,” “retribution,” under the color of religion are repeated with abandon.
As noted by Ali Swenson and Michael Kunzelman, writing for the November 26th Associated Press: “As the 2024 presidential campaign heats up, experts on extremism fear the threat of politically motivated violence will intensify. Conspiracy theories such as ‘Pizzagate,’ QAnon and ‘Stop the Steal’ that demonized Donald Trump’ s enemies are morphing and spreading as he leads in polls for the Republican nomination…
“A federal jury convicted David DePape on Nov. 16 of attacking Paul Pelosi at his San Francisco home on Oct. 28, 2022. DePape had testified that he planned to hold Nancy Pelosi hostage and ‘break her kneecaps’ if the Democrat lied as he grilled her on government corruption. She was in Washington at the time of the assault… In previous online rants, DePape echoed tenets of the pro-Trump QAnon, which has been linked to killings and other crimes. Adherents falsely believe Trump is trying to expose prominent Democrats and Hollywood elites as Satan-worshiping child sex traffickers…
“Trump has ramped up his combative campaign rhetoric with talk of retribution against his enemies. He recently joked about the attack on Paul Pelosi and suggested former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chair Mark A. Milley be executed for treason… Threats against lawmakers and election officials are rampant, with targets spanning the nation’s political divide. A California man is awaiting trial on charges of plotting to kill Supreme Court Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, a Trump nominee.
“Trump’s loss to Democrat Joe Biden in the 2020 election did not end the spread of QAnon-influenced conspiracy theories or its unrealized prophecies. The leaderless movement often adopts beliefs from other conspiracy theories… ‘It’s been really good at evolving with the times and current events,” said Sheehan Kane, data collection manager for the University of Maryland-based Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism, or START.
“In a 2021 article, Kane and START senior researcher Michael Jensen examined QAnon-inspired crimes attributed to 125 adherents since the movement originated on 4chan in 2017. The researchers found that more ‘extremist offenders’ were connected to QAnon than to any other extremist group or movement in the U.S… ‘In 2020, millions of people were radicalized on behalf of this conspiracy theory,’ Kane said.
“DePape, the Paul Pelosi attacker, testified that his interest in right-wing conspiracy theories began with GamerGate, an online harassment campaign against feminists in the video game industry. Starting in 2014, misogynistic gamers terrorized female developers and other women in the industry with rape and death threats.
“Brianna Wu, one of the original targets of GamerGate, said she wasn’t surprised to hear it was linked to a politically motivated attack nearly a decade later. She said the misogynistic campaign emerged from the same online recesses that spawned far-right conspiracy theories such as Pizzagate and QAnon… ‘This is a pattern of radicalization that we’re seeing over and over and over in every single bit of politics,’ Wu said. ‘This is not a right-versus-left issue. This is a radicalization issue that is happening online. We need a policy response.’” Good luck on getting that response!
Unlike the 1930s, when many America leaders (from Henry Ford to Charles Lindberg) openly embraced Hitler and the Fascism, there is unlikely going to be a Pearl Harbor extrinsic event that will unite Americans against this toxic, demonizing Fascist-like tsunami building across the land.
I’m Peter Dekom, and will this country come to its senses, reunite and act as a functional country again… maybe not.
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