To extremism researchers with decades of experience in the business of identifying and understanding radical groups with the potential for violence, last week marked a turning point.
IOW: WHITE SUPREMACIST TERRORISM HAS BEEN OUR MOST MAJOR THREAT SINCE OKLAHOMA CITY MURRAH BUILDING 9/11 NOTWITHSTANDING.
Sure woulda been great if thousands of people had been screaming that at the Executive Branch ever since Bush I. /snark
This article doesn’t mention white supremacist terrorism ONCE. I’m very disappointed in this piece. How are we supposed to move forward as a country if people continue to pretend it’s a huge mystery what the connecting factor is for all these extremists?
Dear ‘Experts’
The GOP is a cult. The Southern Strategy and 30-plus years of rage media have created a hate mega-group whose anger must be fed.
“Cassie Miller, a senior research analyst at the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), said she didn’t have a singular label for the Trump-motivated extremists involved in the attack on Congress.”
“Traitors”?
Magahideen?
I’m actually really bummed by this. TPM, if you can’t name white supremacist terrorism and cite the COUNTLESS journalists, activists, historians who have been talking about it’s rise since before Trump was in office, that would posit that you’re either bad at your jobs (you didn’t know) or cowards (you know and you’re scared). Which is it? Where can I go, as a terrified Black woman, for real journalists who aren’t scared/are unaware of the enemy? I’m kind of speechless right now that this article exists on TPM, which I’ve visited every single day for years. I see you guys as the adults in the room but this article is so tone deaf.
I live in rural northern New England. Saturday was a beautiful day so we did a big loop through Grafton Notch, around the Rangley Lakes, around Umbagog, down through Berlin, and back. We just couldn’t believe how many homes and businesses still have Trump flags flying and posters up. Some houses have a dozen flags and huge billboards covering the side of the house. “Stop Socialism. Reelect Trump” Several of these shrines look they they’ve been put up since the Capitol insurrection. I can’t for the life of me understand what these poor and hard-working folks see in Trump, except racism, resentment of the educated, Jesus!, and guns. Nonetheless, they love him and will be a serious problem for Biden and for our entire nation.
I’ve known lots of Trump supporters around here for many years. Until recently I’d only ever heard one person make openly racist remarks and another person make openly anti-Semitic remarks. But now if I spend time with these folks, I am sure to hear blatantly racist remarks–they call Stacy Abrams “Aunt Jemima”!–or at minimum racist innuendo. Trump has dragged these otherwise decent folks down to his level…and they adore him.
[“These are people who for years have been told that Trump is their only representative, and he’s their only connection to the political process and to government,” Miller said.]
And WHO THE FUCK told them? And WHY? And in WHAT MANNER?
I haven’t seen so much tap-dancing since I saw Gregory Hines in White Nights
So what in society to have laid the groundwork for where we are now?
President Biden has a lot of house keeping to do. I believe much of the failure to prepare and failure to respond promptly to the insurrection at the Capitol can be laid at the feet of pro-Trump higher echelon employees and appointees in the Capitol Police, FBI, and Pentagon. Their failure to act may be deliberate and/or gobsmacked disbelief that their own fellow travelers were overrunning and vandalizing and looting the nation’s capitol. They need to be discovered and held responsible.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964.
(It triggered the entire modern GOP.)
bingo
In extremists “Christian” news…
Well I was 2 when that took place, so then my only frame of reference is the afterwards. But that somehow doesn’t address the younger people, the adults born after 1964 that should also only know life after the Civil Rights Act passed and put into action.
Is how one reacts to Trump like a Rorschach test for our country?
I’m not far away, in the North Berkshires of W MA. Am well aware of the range of insurrectionist demographics (@bcarmel did a predictably masterful breakdown in the WaR threads) but the ones I see, locally, are the millbillies/hillbillies who have absolutely been left behind by the hollowing of the middle class. Lot of meth and heroin, lot of “I inherited this land/house and them BLM n-CLANG! are not gonna take it away from me”).
Trumpism is found across (nearly) all segments of white, and Latinx middle-class, society. It’s going to take decades to root it out.
Deplorebels?
Wise words: