Author, 'The Age of Insurrection: The Ongoing War on American Democracy,' in bookstores June 2023 (Melville House). Blogging at The Spyhop. I block shitheads.
I have the grim sense that before this is all over there will be a mass shooting at a Disney theme park. That’s what these eliminationists are setting up here.
1) A thread about Sarah Palin, who in many ways was the key figure in the transformation of the Republican Party into the know-nothing, anti-science, conspiracy-theory-loving, cultishly authoritarian Party of Trump it is today. W/ video.
The Boring Company was never a legitimate enterprise. Its entire purpose was to persuade states and municipalities to abandon mass transit initiatives by offering a tantalizing alternative that in fact would never work.
Just another con by our red-pilled billionaire.
If Trump is kept out of office through judicial fiat rather than being defeated in a fair election, his supporters will never accept the result. This country will become ungovernable.
Since the
@NYTimes
’ Pamela Paul seems to be obsessed with “cancel culture,” can we have a discussion about how Pamela cancelled any reviews of books (including mine) examining far-right extremism during her tenure as book-review editor (2013-2019)?
1) For some reason, folks on the right have extremely short memories when it comes to acts of right-wing political violence. This is especially the case when they are in the middle of a propaganda campaign to make "the left" look violent. A long thread with lots of pix follows.
Since
@elonmusk
and his redoubtable hired hands seem determined to obscure what happened on Jan. 6 and why Twitter executives were scrambling on Jan. 7, it seems essential to point out that Twitter in fact played a central role in Trump’s coup attempt: specifically, this tweet.
1) There’s been a lot of handwringing in the media pundit corps and centrist politicians these days about the loss of comity, post-Kavanaugh. And then Donald Trump made them all look absurd with his remarks at his rally last night. Thread follows.
Time to tell Republicans that we will be happy to work with them in bipartisan fashion when they demonstrate a commitment to democracy. And that can only begin with a concerted effort by Republicans to endorse factual reality, such as Biden’s win, and reel their voters back in.
Actually, the right didn't freak out because it didn't care. The Southern Baptist Convention had called for legalizing abortion in 1971. It wasn't until 1979, when the right realized it needed to find a new issue other than segregation to organize on.
The freakout you are witnessing from the left is very instructive. When Roe was handed down 49 years ago, pro-lifers didn’t riot, didn’t call for SCOTUS to be burned down, didn’t threaten the lives of justices, didn’t try to stack the Court. 1/ 🧵
Just one eensy-teensy problem with this, other than that it’s psychopathically fascistic: There IS no “Antifa organization” to designate thus. They’re not like ISIS or Proud Boys.
31) So, listen up, Chuck Todd, Evan McMullin, Susan Collins, and every other hand-wringing centrist wannabe: IT’S NOT BOTH SIDES. Only one side is trying to gin up a civil war in this country.
3) This is a remarkable moment in American politics: The President of the United States just declared an entire political party fundamentally illegitimate. And the media are treating it as just another of Trump’s crazy things.
Another reminder that "antifa buses" were classic right-wing projection. This was the scene heading to the 'Proud Boyy rally' in Portland last weekend. We have seen them busing in these thugs at every single far-right "Patriot" event on the West Coast for the past three years.
1) “Eliminationism” is a term you need not just to become familiar with, especially in today’s American rush toward authoritarianism. This will be a long, illustrated thread explaining what it means, how it works, and why Donald Trump is now our Eliminationist in Chief.
Let’s just say it: The GOP is now the party of conscienceless killers. Their platform is to consistently support the ability of men with guns to murder anyone Republicans don’t like. 1/
Today was the day it became indisputably and irrevocably clear that Republicans no longer care about our national security.
I mean, anyone who has followed the saga of the Russian attacks on our elections knew this, but they can't pretend they're patriotic any longer.
1) As someone who has spent the past four years covering the spread of white-nationalist violence in America, both at protests and in terrorist acts, the notion that these groups are “illusory” is not just absurd, it’s obscene. Thread follows.
As someone who spent two months covering the aftermath of the most widespread riots in at least 50 years, this never-ending fixation with illusory organized "white supremacist" groups couldn't be more absurd. It's 99% a media invention totally disconnected from reality
5) But this is the state we are at now. One side of the political aisle, and only one, appears intent on provoking a violent civil war in America. And it is the party currently in power.
1) So now we have self-described “progressives” like
@ggreenwald
and
@mtracey
telling us that the threat of white nationalism in the USA is “nonexistent” (as Tracey put it), and when called out for that GG chimes in and claims that we “needs be keep the threat in perspective.”
At some point, both the government and the public need to recognize that Peter Thiel is deliberately trying to sabotage the American economy as a major front in his push to destroy democracy and replace it with plutocratic autocracy.
3) Let's be clear: the GOP has been stoking these culture wars as a means of winning election since at least the days of Ronald Reagan and his presidency. But they embraced it openly beginning in 1992 with Pat Buchanan's "cultural war" speech.
An unremarked aspect of this fascinating thread is that the non-appearance of antifascists on the scene Jan. 6, played a critical role in the failure of Trump's coup attempt. 1/
1/ NEVER FORGET that hrs before
#January6th
, Trump initiated the designation of an imagined domestic enemy he called "Antifa" as a criminal terrorist organization & gave DHS broad powers to enforce against suspected non-citizen members & supporters.
New reporting suggests that Commander, President Biden’s dog, only bites Secret Service agents.
White House staffers are confused why people would be afraid of him: “Everyone loves him. He’s always so friendly.”
“I’ve never seen him [aggressive].”
7) But no one on the left actually talks about it or, for that matter, really even thinks about it much. There are no left-wing pundits talking about civil war. But you can find dozens of right-wing pundits doing so.
2) I've been thinking a lot about Palin in no small part because of the way Trump-hating Republicans like
@MeghanMcCain
are rewriting history by trying to blame Barack Obama for Trump, because apparently _he_, not the GOP, stoked America's culture wars when he was president.
8) However, this extremism had of course already bubbled up during the campaign -- reflected not just in her red-meat speeches but in the effect she had on crowds. This report from Al Jazeera still haunts me.
This is outrageous. No antifascist or BLM activist has killed anyone. In the past year and a half alone, white supremacists have killed 18 and counting. There is zero equivalency.
Dale Yeager will deliver the keynote on "Radical left-wing gangs" at this weekend's conference for FBI agents.
“There is no uptick in white supremacy violence," Yeager told me. "That’s a statistical inaccuracy.”
#CivilWar
is trending because authoritarian right-wing Republicans—notably including Rush Limbaugh—are explicitly encouraging it and pushing to destroy American democracy. It’s the radical right’s longtime fever dream bubbling to the surface.
@govkristinoem
Since refugees are here perfectly legally under international asylum laws, I assume you'll be taking them, then.
No? Oh, so when you say "illegal immigrants" you mean _any_ immigrants, don't you?
So when you say you're only opposed to _illegal_ immigrants, you're lying.
7) It emerged later that Palin had watched my appearance on CNN to promote the piece and had gone nuts, creating a huge fight within the campaign that she lost, thereby inspiring her to infamously 'go rogue' for the duration. Guess I did my part.
1) This year, 2019, marks an important centennial anniversary in America—but it is one that not only are we not celebrating, it’s also a significant moment most of us aren’t even aware of: the 100th anniversary of the Red Summer of 1919.
1) Gather ‘round, everyone, while I replay for you the tale of the Aryan Nations. This will be another ungodly long thread, but I promise: When we’re done, the “liberals are the real Nazis” fulminations of
@DineshDSouza
will thereafter just give you a big ol’ belly laugh.
@realjoeoltmann
Hilarious that you claim to call out leftist “liars” when you’re such a pathetically bad liar yourself. This is the guy charged with stealing a photo from Pelosi’s office, which he is carrying under the jacket. Also hilarious you can’t distinguish a badge from a vape.
4) This M.O. never ceased configuring Republican politics in the ensuing years, notably during the Bush years. But unquestionably the person who most made these culture the entire raison d'être of the GOP was John McCain's 2008 running mate, Sarah Palin.
32) Only one side talks about it. Only one side buys caches of guns to prepare for it. Only one side is sending clusters of activists into politically opposing communities with the intent of stirring up violence. Only one side makes up memes celebrating the murder of the other.
Seeing Paul Gosar emerging as a central player in the planning for the insurrection--particularly with his offer of pardons for all involved--reminded me of this snippet from the NYT's devastating video report on how it happened.
I’ve been watching the right-wing narrative regarding the Jan. 6 insurrection with keen interest, and realizing that the American right again intends to resort to its well-worn “waving the bloody shirt” gambit. A thread about what that will mean. /1/44
Turn on the Sunday shows and this is what you get—
ABC: The election was stolen
NBC: The election was stolen
CBS: The election was stolen
Fox: The election was stolen
27) And they are entirely right-wing. There is no counterpart to this on the left. Even the most rabid anarchist/communist/whatever group doesn’t direct this kind of rhetoric at its opponents. Moreover, the far left is a tiny and powerless faction. Unlike the alt-right.
2) Now, what many of them are actually talking about is street violence specifically. But of course, that means they're completely oblivious to their own behavior in that regard.
15) Palin was the proto-Trump, and the culture wars waged by Republicans he stoked to democracy-threatening levels were already fully inflamed by the time he arrived on the scene, thanks to Palin. John McCain made this happen. It's too late for excuses.
Idaho’s far-right extremists—first claiming that the hate-crime attack on the University of Utah women’s basketball team in Coeur d’Alene two weeks ago was a “hoax,” now saying it’s not a real crime—seem confused. So let me explain how the law got passed in Idaho in 1983. 1/49
Matt Taibbi tells Ben Shapiro that conservativism is appealing to young people because there's no sense of humor on the political left.
He goes on to praise Matt Walsh's transphobic hit piece "What Is A Woman" as a good example of political comedy
6) Our story ran in early October, but it unfortunately didn't make it onto the radar of the national media. Still, it remained a solid story that revealed a great deal about the political creature McCain and his campaign had unleashed.
29) Now he is describing half of America – the larger half that did not vote for him, and which now opposes his agenda at every turn – in such terms. Dismissing them as a “mob” and suggesting that they not only cannot govern but cannot BE governed is lethally dangerous.
8) They pay lip service to denying that they hope for it, but their constant obsessing and chatter about it tells us otherwise. Especially when they fantasize about the better world that would emerge afterward.
5) I became intimately familiar while on assignment in Alaska to examine Palin's connections to the extremist right, mainly the "Patriot"/militia movement, during her time on the Wasilla city council and then as the city's mayor. She had a fondness for the John Birch Society.
10) Of course, we also know who not only followed suit, but launched his entire political career on the back of this fraudulent and racist conspiracy theory.
4) I’m almost surprised that, after the remark about the rule of the mob, Trump didn’t then lead the crowd in a chant of “Lock her up!” That’s how brazen they have become.
20) And now we have gangs of heavily armed right-wing thugs, largely outsiders from rural and exurban areas, invading liberal urban centers with the full intent of provoking violence so that they can portray the American left as innately violent.
A number of journalists, myself included, observed this behavior and reported it. We were not, however, taken seriously. Instead, Andy Ngo—whose reportage was often an inversion of reality—was.
MUST READ: despite open violence,
#ProudBoys
weren't treated as a serious threat by law enforcement.
Why?
Damming article details falsified police reports, personal & financial ties, tacit support & willful ignorance.
By
@ddknyt
&
@alanfeuer
Story:
30) Yet to hear the centrist media figures and their favorite subjects, centrist politicians, discuss all this ferment, you would think that both sides are engaging in this kind of prewar rhetoric. It’s absurd.
17) Trump's narcissism dwarfs Palin's, but the politics of authoritarian and cultish faux "patriotism" is the same -- if anything, it's gone on steroids during the COVID-19 pandemic. It's a recipe for disaster and 100,000 dead.
9) The key here is that after the election, Palin didn't tone down the extremism, but rather stepped it up. She was one of the first figures from the GOP establishment to embrace the "Birther" conspiracy theories.
26) So now the faction that has long fantasized about civil wars is openly fantasizing about murdering their fellow Americans by various means, most of them as cruel as a good psychopath can dream up. These folks are fanatical authoritarians.
2) This is of course, classic Greenwald. The unfortunate truth is that this would-be icon of progressive politics in fact has a long history of minimizing, apologizing for, and empowering white supremacists, then wrapping himself in a self-righteous Free Speech blanket.
LOL. “I decided to become a right-winger because liberals can be smugly condescending when talking to minorities, unlike the conservatives who are just blatantly racist.”
I was once pretty woke. I get asked a lot what started my unwokening. It was a 2018 Yale study that found that white liberals—unlike white conservatives—dumb down their vocabulary when talking to people of color. I remember thinking: And we call them the racists?!
These chuds refuse to acknowledge that the Patriot Front boys were in fact fully unmasked in Coeur d’Alene last summer, and guess what? Not one was a fed. They all are far-right converts. They’re currently awaiting trial.
While I don’t condone violence, it is way past time to unmask the Feds terrifying our communities. Patriot Front or Antifa - the fit young men wearing khakis and black masks need to be identified.
The problem with the entire “the Russians are behind the fascist insurgency” narrative is that it’s a cop-out.
Yes, Putin’s been heavily involved in promoting fascist authoritarianism around the world. Yes, the USA is a target.
But they’re only exploiting pre-existing fissures.
The anti-DEI warriors who have held up the recent Alaska Airlines near-disaster as an example of why DEI is bad seem unaware that in fact the pilot with nerves of steel who landed the plane safely was a woman.
21) I’ve covered about a dozen of these events. I hang out among the alt-righters and militiamen who populate that side and listen to them. They all are brimming with eagerness to beat the shit out of liberals, and they’re prepared to kill if they deem it necessary.
11) Palin also played a key role in the increasing radicalization of the GOP, particularly through her connections to the Tea Party, which quickly became a major conduit for "Patriot"-style and Christian nationalist extremism.
A prediction: At some point, we will learn of concrete evidence that Trump sold national intelligence secrets to hostile enemies such as Putin, as well as to dubious allies such as the Saudis, from the Mar a Lago files.
33) So when we talk about the lack of civility in our common discourse, it’s important first to understand that that particular horse fled the burning barn many many moons ago. And again, it was not the left that lit the match.
6) However, these are the only two such incidents I can find involving leftist attacks on right-wing or other targets.
In contrast, here's a timeline that follows, of right-wing killers of the past decade. All of them targeting innocent people over political beliefs.
18) After Trump won, it only took a week or two for them all to shift gears and begin preparing to act violently in Trump’s defense. They ginned up the whole "violent radical left" storyline in the runup to Trump's inauguration.
22) The Proud Boys are a classic proto-Brownshirt operation in the formative stages. Look at the shirts their members have been wearing to the “free speech” events they organize with the intent of provoking a violent response.
23) What does that mean? Well, Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet murdered thousands of his own citizens in the 1970s simply for opposing him politically. He had right-wing death squads do most of the dirty work:
28) Moreover, it is the far right that now controls all three houses of government in the United States. And the most powerful of all, the president, has a long habit of using eliminationist rhetoric to attack his opponents: “Lock Her Up!” was just one of many such.
Tonight Rachel Powell is spending her first night in prison for her role in the January 6 attack.
We spoke to the mom of eight.
Watch the full report here on
@CNN
:
SPOTTED: Gavin McInnes, the found of the 'Proud Boys' and co-founder of VICE, spotted at the Columbia University Encampment Protest.
Video by
@yyeeaahhhboiii2
Desk
@freedomnews
.tv to license
1) Donald Trump’s press conference Wednesday, and the responses to it, are an important and perhaps historic moment, beyond the controversy. It made irrevocably clear that Trump intends to rule as an authoritarian, and his followers want that. Ridiculously long thread follows.
7/27/08
Jim David Adkisson, author of a manifesto urging violent war against liberals, opens fire inside a Knoxville, TN Unitarian Church during the youth performance of a musical, killing two and wounding seven. He tells investigators all liberals should be killed.
35) It is their authoritarian way, or the highway. Or given enough time and enough destruction of democratic norms at their proto-fascist hands, it will be their way or the helicopter.
All of this is being normalized by hand-wringing centrists and their "bothsiderism."
13) It gained real life in the Tea Party movement, which hosted organizations like the Oath Keepers that openly discussed preparations for a civil war. This is also where we saw it become common for people to talk among themselves about killing liberals.
1) Yesterday I ended discussion with an interlocutor who became abusive (life is too short to converse with shitheads) after I told him that, in my view, libertarians often are some of the worst authoritarians. So let me explain. Long thread follows.
1) I’d like to start a thread chiming in on the marvelous deconstruction of
@DineshDSouza
and his thesis that the Southern Strategy and subsequent party switch in the 1960s and ‘70s is a myth, courtesy of
@KevinMKruse
and Co. Consider this a kind of return to the present.
34) More to the point, their concern presupposes that both sides remain interested in democracy and normative political discourse. That is only true of one side in all this. The right has made clear that it has no such interest.
@MarkyGAG
You’re deluded if you think the fascists are going to differentiate between gay and transgender people. For them, you’re all worthy of death. They want to line you all up against a wall.
16) Palin has become something of a national joke now, dancing in a rainbow bear costume on 'The Masked Singer' to 'Baby Got Back.' But the nightmarish irony hit like lightning that night (March 11) the moment her segment ended: Trump addressed the nation on the coronavirus.
Anyone remember those halcyon days of 2009 when
@seanhannity
was polling his audiences on which kind of armed revolt against the Obama administration they preferred?
Good times, good times.
12) Indeed, as I explain in some detail in _Alt-America_, the militia/Patriot movement is where the whole “modern civil war” idea originated, and it has remained largely alive in the same sector in the intervening years.
37) Or haven’t they yet noticed that simply disagreeing with the radical right gets you labeled a “leftist”? Centrists may not be first in line, but they too eventually will become targets of right-wing authoritarians, especially those in power.
Fox's Jesse Watters on tonight's show: Sources tell us AG Barr "was just given a trove of smoking gun documents that could point directly at former President Barack Obama, revealing his powerful connection to 'Spygate' and the Russia hoax." --
@dcexaminer
36) So it would be nice if centrists recognized that their ideology (built around a logical fallacy – the Fallacy of the Middle – in any event) has failed them. It would be nice if they awoke to the reality that the radical right intends to target them just like the left.
1/21/09
Keith Luke, Brockton, MA: Luke, a neo-Nazi angry about the inauguration of Barack Obama, kills two and injures one in a rape and murder spree targeting "nonwhite people." He is halted before reaching a synagogue, and later convicted of murder.