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Tuesday, May 19th, 2020

Soldiers of the boogaloo: David Neiwert on the far right’s plans for a new civil war

Author:     Chauncey DeVega
Source:    
Publication Date:     MAY 18, 2020 11:00AM (UTC)
 Link: Soldiers of the boogaloo: David Neiwert on the far right’s plans for a new civil war
Stephan:   America's gun psychosis, the insecurity of a certain cohort of lower-class largely overweight white men concerning their manliness, and their virulent White racism have combined to create the Red Hat Maga militia movement. These men and the women around them are not very bright, but they are violent, and it is that violence and the country's tolerance for it, that really concerns me not only for itself but what it tells us about the ubiquity of unspoken White racism in our society. As I said recently how would the media deal with an aggressive pack of Black men in camos armed with AK-47s storming into a state capital? How would the police react? How would the political class respond? We saw the precursors of the Red Hat Maga militia movement in Hitler's Brown Shirt, and Mussolini's Black Shirt militia movements. People that don't learn from history repeat it in their ignorance. Think of it as a kind of high fever warning us the national body is seriously ill.

The U.S. government has the official public policy of never negotiating with terrorists, paying them ransom or otherwise surrendering to their demands. The logic is simple: to give in to terrorists is to encourage more violence and other attacks.

It would appear that the state of Michigan does not follow the same policy.

Last Thursday, the Michigan state legislature announced it would not convene because of threats of violence and chaos by armed right-wing militias and other paramilitaries, as previously seen during the recent anti-lockdown protests.  

In what could be construed as an act of treason, President Trump recently ordered such paramilitary groups and right-wing thugs to take up arms and to threaten Democratic-led state governments such as Michigan’s in order to force them to “reopen” their state. Such behavior is part of a broader pattern of right-wing terrorism and violence in the United States where armed militias and paramilitaries have allied with the Republican Party in its effort to delegitimize and undermine democracy. Such an alliance is common to failing democracies and rising fascist movements. The example offered by the Nazi Party and Adolf Hitler in the 1930s is perhaps the most ominous.

Right-wing terrorism is and will be a future template for Trump and his movement against their perceived or real […]

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