We saw and ignored rising right-wing extremism - Now the GOP has weaponized it.
The MAGA GOP has birthed a paramilitary wing to coerce where it cannot convince
We saw the rise in right wing extremism coming. We should rightly be angry that so little was done to stop it. But no one could have predicted that the today’s GOP would embrace right wing extremists as the party’s paramilitary wing. It would have taken great imagination to foresee such a large break with American history and democratic norms.
The MAGA triumph over the Bushes and the Cheney’s puts to rest any notion that the GOP is a right leaning political party. It is not a party about policies at all. Rather, its sole focus is gaining and holding power.
The MAGA GOP will use any and every possible means to gain power. When the can, they put a legal fig leaf over the things they do. Their faction on the Supreme Court undermined the Voting Rights Act, took the federal courts out of the business of protecting us from radical gerrymandering, unleashed mountains of dark money into the political system, and is poised to allow state legislators rather than voters to choose presidential electors.
When they cannot legalize their means to gain power, they lie about them. In particular, the MAGA GOP has made a pact with nationalist extremists (a.k.a. domestic terrorists). They use these extremists as the party’s armed wing, legitimizing coercion, intimidation, and violence as “legitimate political discourse.”
Of course, it is not legitimate. It is illegal. Yet when the government does its job of enforcing the law against the MAGA GOP, the armed wing threatens more physical violence. Donald Trump made clear that the GOP embraces this extremist violence when he said there were “good people on both sides,” and again when he told those who attacked our capitol that he loved them.
The fully foreseen rise of right-wing nationalism
Way back in the 1990s, I worked at HUD. We were the biggest tenant in the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, where dozens of my colleagues were murdered when right wing terrorists blew up the building. The terrorists who committed the crime complained about Ruby Ridge and Waco. Today few people remember why those names were important. Back then, right wing politicians and their media friends used events in those places to attack the government for standing up to extremists.
A few years later, in 2002, the FBI said:[i]
Domestic right-wing terrorist groups often adhere to the principles of racial supremacy and embrace antigovernment, antiregulatory beliefs… On the national level, formal right-wing hate groups… represent a continuing terrorist threat... Racism-based hatred remains an integral component of these groups’ core orientations. Right-wing groups continue to represent a serious terrorist threat.
Seven years later, in a document marked unclassified for official use only, the FBI once again warned of rising right-wing extremism. [ii] That report cited as drivers of recruitment economic hardship, illegal immigration, gun control legislation, and the election of America’s first Black president.
No one can be surprised that, this past week, the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security sent a memo to local and tribal law enforcement warning of increased threats to federal and local law enforcement “following the FBI's recent execution of a search warrant in Palm Beach, Florida.”[iii] Those threats include “a threat to place a so-called dirty bomb in front of FBI Headquarters and issuing general calls for 'civil war' and 'armed rebellion.'" The threats are also personal - the memo cites, “multiple articulated threats and calls for the targeted killing of judicial law enforcement and government officials associated with the Palm Beach search.”
For decades, the forerunners of today’s MAGA GOP used threats of violence and actual violence for political ends. Every time the government does its job and enforces the law against them - for storming the Capitol, for attempting to kidnap a governor, or for stealing classified documents and hiding them in a golf club in Palm Beach - they threaten retaliatory violence.
The impossible-to-imagine adoption of right-wing extremism as GOP brown shirts.
It is possible that during Jim Crow, southern Democrats used the KKK as a paramilitary wing. (Today’s GOP does not even allow this question to be considered in schools around the country.) In the 1960s the great majority of Americas moved on. It simply could not have occurred to most citizens in the 21st century that our democracy would backslide to the point where one of our major political parties would use a paramilitary wing and political violence as a means of taking and holding power.
But Donald Trump did exactly that, and the GOP capitulated.
The FBI had been telling us for decades that these groups rallied around racist, anti-government, pro-gun rhetoric. Donald Trump gave them exactly what they wanted. He attacked Barack Obama, gaining popularity with the extremists by falsely claiming President Obama was born in Kenya. In 2016, he launched his campaign in a screed against immigration, calling Mexicans rapists. He decried “the deep state.” Then, on the campaign trail he told a crowd, “Hillary wants to abolish, essentially abolish the Second Amendment. If she gets to pick her judges, nothing you can do, folks… Although the Second Amendment people, maybe there is. I don't know." He said everything he needed to say to call up the militia.
Republicans did not call him out for hinting that violence was a means to achieve political ends. In a tweet that foreshadowed much of what came later, he posted:
Media desperate to distract from Clinton's anti-2A stance. I said pro-2A citizens must organize and get out vote to save our Constitution!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 10, 2016[iv]
The combination of racism, anti-government rhetoric, and the celebration of guns as a political tool resonated with the militias. But Trump did not just want their votes. He wanted his own militia, and he got it.
In 2017, the deadly clash at Charlottesville was the third in a series of right-wing attacks on civil rights protestors. Instead of condemning the violence as most Americans did, President Trump used the power of his office to excuse them. He said, “you had people that were very fine people, on both sides.”
Throughout his presidency, he courted these militias. Then came re-election time. In the same debate where he refused to say he would abide by the results of the election, he was asked to condemn the Proud Boys, a well-known paramilitary group. Instead, Donald Trump told them to “stand back and stand by,” thus putting the militia on notice that he would call them up when he needed them.
And on January 6th, that is what he did. As Cassie Hutchinson testified, he knew the crowd was armed, but he wanted the magnetometers taken away. These were his people; they were not there to hurt him. Then he sent them to the Capitol to fight like hell.
America defended itself that day. Since then, however, Donald Trump has strengthened his control over the GOP and continued to court the militias.
As we can tell from the FBI warning after the government REPO action at Mar-a-Lago, the armed wing of the MAGA GOP is still ready for deployment. And they are engaged in low level guerilla warfare even now.
We can stop this now
The next two election cycles will determine whether democracy can withstand this assault. Defeating the MAGA GOP will afford the Justice Department the time it needs to investigate and prosecute political crimes. Only the habit of losing will convince some of the extremists that they have joined a movement based on lies. Holding off the MAGA attack at the polls will allow those who still value the democracy to pass laws protecting voters and strengthening campaign finance rules, and to undo some of the damage the GOP’s faction on Supreme Court has wrought.
But winning will require standing up to the armed wing of the GOP. It is not without risk. Just this week a GOP candidate in Florida was removed from Twitter for encouraging citizens to shoot FBI agents on sight. It means redoubling efforts to fight intimidation at polling places. And it may mean persevering despite organized violence- as members of Congress did on January 6th.
Americans will always fight and die to protect our democracy- even if the enemy is home grown. No illusions. Just determination.
[i] FBI — The Terrorist Threat Confronting the United States
[ii] Rightwing Extremism: Current Economic and Political Climate Fueling Resurgence in Radicalization and Recruitment (fas.org)
[iii] FBI, DHS warn law enforcement agencies of rise in threats after Mar-a-Lago raid | Washington Examiner
[iv] Trump Says Maybe '2nd Amendment People' Can Stop Clinton's Supreme Court Picks - ABC News (go.com)