Playing With Fire
The Republicans are playing with fire as they promote ideas
that can become a basis for political violence and can turn our vigilantes into
terrorists. Vigilantes are common in the United States as two recent cases have
shown. Kyle Rittenhouse shot three people in the belief that he was helping to
uphold the law and maintain social order. Travis McMichael and two other people
killed Ahmaud Arbery because they believed that he had committed a burglary. An
article in the New York Times by columnist Charles Blow suggests
that actions like these fit into our long tradition of White vigilantism, a
tradition that includes Bernard Goetz, who shot four Black teenagers in in New
York in 1984, and George Zimmerman, who shot Trayvon Martin in 2012.
Vigilantism is Different from Terrorism
The article also describes the prolonged southern campaign
of terrorism against Black people as another example of White vigilantism, but that
is a mistake. The terrorist campaign waged by the Ku Lux Klan and other
organizations was quite different from killings like those perpetrated by Rittenhouse,
McMichael, Goetz and Zimmerman. The latter were committed by lone individuals
who saw themselves as combatting crime, but none of them claimed to act to
advance a political program or objective.
In contrast, the southern terrorist campaign was an
organized effort to re-establish the political hegemony of the planter class in
the South after the end of Reconstruction in 1877. The campaign culminated in
the 1890’s, when the southern states rewrote their constitutions to establish
the system of legal segregation and to prevent Black people (and many White
people) from voting. After the elections of 1896, when the power of the planter
class had been firmly re-established, the terrorism was continued to make sure
that a cheap labor force kept working in the cotton fields. Rittenhouse,
McMichael, Goetz and Zimmerman were vigilantes, but they were not terrorists
because they were not parts of an organized political movement and did not act
in support of a political ideology.
A Terrorist Ideology for America
Some Republican leaders and propagandists are engaged in
defining and promoting a political ideology that could serve as a basis of a
terrorist campaign. The ideology is a claim that our democratic institutions
have become so corrupted and subverted that they no longer merit the support of
the American people, and that therefore, American patriots must act to reclaim
our democratic government.
The work of defining this ideology began with the effort by elements
of the Republican Party to delegitimize the elections of 2020. They have
created and promoted the Myth of the Stolen Election. They claim that Pres.
Biden was elected by means of massive, electoral fraud and that therefore, his
administration is not legitimate and should not be supported by American
patriots. This idea has recently received an expanded basis in Tucker Carlson’s
documentary series Patriot Purge.
Carlson claims explicitly that the United States is in the
grip of what he calls “the Second War on Terror.” In that war, the techniques
and attitudes that underlay Pres. Bush’s War on Terror have now been turned on
American conservatives. Carlson argues that in the Second War on Terror, the
FBI and the entire, American security apparatus are now devoting their efforts
to hunting down and arresting Trump voters. In his view, the invasion of the
Capitol on January 6 was a “false flag operation” in which agents of the FBI
deliberately created the riot in order to entrap and arrest Trump voters, and
he labels the death of Ashli Babbit “the Second War on Terror’s first kill.” If
you think that I am exaggerating, I encourage you to log into Fox
Nation and listen to the three episodes of Patriot Purge.
Carlson says that our country has already been engulfed by
organized, political violence that is being used by the political left to
stifle conservative dissent, and that therefore, conservatives must prepare to
defend themselves. They would be foolish to place their faith in a government
that is actively attempting to hunt them down and kill them. In fact,
conservative patriots may have no choice but to resort to violence to protect
themselves and to restore our democracy.
Vigilantes to Terrorists
Our country has millions of citizens who own guns and
believe that they should use those guns to maintain law and order and to uphold
our democratic values. People like Rittenhouse and McMichael have shown that
they are willing and ready to act as vigilantes. All that is missing to turn such
vigilantes into terrorists is a national political movement with a paramilitary
wing to recruit them and to provide them with the training and organization
that would convert them into fighters who are prepared to act as terrorists.
Today’s Republican Party could provide the basis for such a
movement. Republican politicians bill themselves as the champions of “real”
Americans, and the party promotes the Myth of the Stolen Election, which
provides a ready-made justification for political violence. The same
politicians have shown themselves to be willing to accept violent action as we
saw in Charlottesville in 2017 and in Washington on January 6. In addition,
major financial supporters of the party have shown themselves to be willing to
accept the Myth of the Stolen Election along with the violent action in return
for low taxes on business and reduced environmental regulation. Is it
unrealistic *to imagine the formation of a national, paramilitary force to
“maintain the peace” and to “protect our democracy?”
When Will We Have a Terrorist Movement?
Those who promote the Myth of the Stolen Election or the
Myth of the Second War on Terror are playing with fire. We have millions of
citizens with guns who already believe that they should act to enforce the law
and uphold the peace. Now, we have politicians
and propagandists telling them that their country is being stolen from them by
electoral fraud and by the Second War on Terror. How long will it be before a movement
emerges to convert our vigilantes into terrorists?
