Tag: white supremacists

Frederick Douglass’s Ideas Should Be Studied – Especially Now

Nick Bromell’s new book powerfully conveys how integral he was to the shaping of modern America. Now that race is again at the very top of the political agenda, we are all the more in need of his words.

Frederick Douglass is one of the outstanding figures of American history. Full stop. Yet he is too often seen more narrowly as a key figure in the Black US history – important but still on the margins of America’s political thinkers.

A Google search reveals 13 million sites relevant to Douglass’s life and work, as well as numerous books and articles on the same. Nevertheless, Douglass remains relatively under-recognised. Hence, this fine new volume on Douglass’s political philosophy is a welcome and innovative addition.

It is also very timely – when race is again at the very top of the political agenda, even if submerged in the coded language and politics of election fraud and gerrymandering, or the politics of abortion, the unequal and continuing effects of the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, and rising levels of income and political inequality.

Ironically, it is Douglass’s favoured political party (the Republican party of Abraham Lincoln), that, under Donald Trump’s incendiary spell, is the standard bearer of the return of racist politics and theories including the Great Replacement theory. The work, ideas and political strategies of Frederick Douglass, Nick Bromell shows, were always and everywhere linked to practical politics, tactics and alliance-building strategies.

Douglass’s ideas are relevant today and should be studied and taken seriously by scholars, students, citizens and activists who want an approach that marries theory and practice to promote radical change in the United States (and, arguably, elsewhere too).

Bromell establishes the main lines of Douglass’s original contributions to political philosophy as rooted in his experience of enslavement but also as a fugitive from bondage as well as a free man. He used this philosophy to “promote Black political solidarity, to contest white racism, and to transform the nation’s understanding of democracy and democratic citizenship”.

Douglass’s project was nothing less than to reconstitute the US political system on multiracialism that would require decentring of whiteness and white power. Why? Because as it stood, America’s public philosophy could not explain why Americans were entitled to full citizenship, or suggest why any citizen would unite to form a political community. Nor did the existing philosophy empower or encourage citizens to unite against injustice.

These issues arose from the shortcomings and omissions of the Founding Fathers’ famous Declaration of Independence which failed to define who counted as a “man” and who did not. Thomas Jefferson et al took their own human-ness for granted and therefore counted as men – but what about those without such (white, elite) privilege? And why is every man so entitled? The Declaration was silent.

Secondly, where did natural rights liberalism stand on forming a political community beyond self-interest? What were the sources of community and solidarity according to the Declaration? Again, silence, and hence, citizens pragmatically sought to supplement sources of solidarity in racism, nationalism, and gender. This brought into the light the ghost in the American machine.

Finally, Douglass provided a theory of active citizenship that had to win and maintain rights and freedoms and not just be “endowed” with them from on high, as the founders had stated. But this, for Douglass, was a quiescent notion of citizenship, especially in the face of oppression, a notion that was either indifferent or resistant to expanding rights to excluded citizens. Rights endowed by elites could be taken away by elites.

Douglass’s philosophy effectively laid bare for all who would see that the surface of the Declaration and Constitution and Bill of Rights could seem open and democratic yet obscure anything approaching the basis of rights, of social solidarity against elite power, or the idea of an active citizenry defending and expanding democracy.

Hence, defeating slavery required more than abolition but a redefinition of politics and refounding of the entire political order to defeat white racism and establish a multiracial democracy. His personal experience of enslavement, as a fugitive, and a free man, were the sources of this new public philosophy, an innovation that has stood the test of time.

Also read: How Racism Has Shaped Welfare Policy in America Since 1935

Frederick Douglass was born enslaved (around 1817-18), escaped North to freedom, and went on to become a leading abolitionist, opponent of Northern racism, supporter of women’s voting rights, a leading author, editor, activist and political philosopher. He was even nominated to run for the vice presidency of the United States.

His public speeches drew large crowds, yet he was also physically assaulted on several occasions by white supremacists, but never cowed by them. Indeed, he outwitted and outfought them time and again. But almost everywhere in the United States, he had first to demonstrate to white audiences that he was indeed a human being, a man, with legitimate rights and freedoms. And above all, deserving of the dignity inherent in all human beings. He wanted to be seen.

When Douglass visited Britain and Ireland (in 1845) for example – he was treated for perhaps the first time in his life as a man and not as a Black man. He was elated with his reception wherever he spoke, and his British well-wishers even clubbed together to buy his freedom lest he be re-enslaved upon returning home.

Douglass expressed his astonishment thus:

“Eleven days and a half gone, and I have crossed three thousand miles of the perilous deep. Instead of a democratic government, I am under a monarchical government. Instead of the bright, blue sky of America, I am covered with the soft, grey fog of the Emerald Isle [Ireland]. I breathe, and lo! the chattel becomes a man. I gaze around in vain for one who will question my equal humanity, claim me as his slave, or offer me an insult. I employ a cab—I am seated beside white people—I reach the hotel—I enter the same door—I am shown into the same parlor—I dine at the same table—and no one is offended…. I find myself regarded and treated at every turn with the kindness and deference paid to white people. When I go to church, I am met by no upturned nose and scornful lip to tell me, ‘We don’t allow niggers in here!‘”

Douglass saw and condemned the utter poverty and famine that British colonial rule caused and presided over in Ireland and shared platforms with Irish nationalists, and was dubbed the Black American McConnell by the great Irish freedom fighter Daniel McConnell himself.

Even more profoundly, however, Douglass’s thinking was forever affected: he saw through the dark veil of race not as something natural and immutable, but as actively constructed, and therefore, changeable by human action and education. He saw a way through the walls and dark hard borderlines of white racism which helped him move towards a philosophy that was, ultimately, beyond race and rooted in humanity and dignity for all, rooted in self-respect, and therefore, respect for all.

It is this legacy that shines brightest from the many sources of enlightenment in Bromell’s carefully crafted study of one of America’s greatest public intellectuals, philosophers and activists.

‘The Powers of Dignity: The Black Political Philosophy of Frederick Douglass,’ Nick Bromell, Duke University Press, 2021.

This is why, in an otherwise outstanding analysis, the subtitle of Bromell’s book, The Powers of Dignity: The Black Political Philosophy of Frederick Douglass, raises a few issues of interest. I can understand that the subtitle confers an award of originality to the thought of Douglass as a Black man, formerly enslaved who, as a free man, crafted a system of thought, analysis and political action.

For some, the subtitle plays well into recognition of a great achievement of an African-American as an African American. And who can fundamentally challenge the need for such recognition given American history’s brutalities and white supremacy? And especially given that white supremacy remains alive and well and increasingly mainstreamed in the Trump-dominated far-right Republican Party?

Yet, it also further necessarily reinforces the racialisations of American life, further embedding and legitimising race as the core division – as opposed to or complementary to class and gender, for example – of American society and history. Be it as it may – Frederick Douglass might well have challenged the Black characterisation of his political thought or, more likely, at least held both views in tension, as was his way and a mark of his political and philosophical sophistication. In the end, and on reflection, Bromell’s book more than adequately expresses that tension of holding two views that would appear contradictory.

Douglass’s was a heroic and courageous life of struggle, with struggle as the essential source of the realisation of freedom, rights and human dignity, of the very meaning of freedom actually. Without struggle, rights are mere paper. To be alive rights must be exercised, lived, renewed and manifested –  democracy and freedom are not permanent or guaranteed by virtue of a written constitution or laws and, therefore, to be taken for granted. They must be lived and fought for by all – including whites upon whom liberty and rights appeared to be bestowed merely by virtue of their whiteness. His humane philosophy extended even to his enslavers – who are also enslaved within their own system of oppression.

But, the source of the manifestations of dignity lay within each person – to realise their human dignity one had to come to that position via struggle for dignity; and to the recognition that every human being was equal in their essence.

Also read: Comparing Race to Caste Is an Interesting Idea, but There Are Crucial Differences Between Both

Racism as a construction

In a very moving moment in Bromell’s study, Douglass speaks to the making of a brutal racist from one who was previously humane towards him when he was enslaved. Race and racism, Black and White identities, were a construction, not embedded in human nature. He describes how the new wife of his owner, a Mrs Auld, initially treated him as a human being and with respect, even teaching Douglass to read and write.

But though her husband forbade this progressive approach, Mrs Auld “lacked the depravity” required to dehumanise Douglass. She had to learn it, indicating her gradual corruption by “the fatal poison of irresponsible power”. As her husband prevailed, Mrs Auld learned first to deny Douglass access to books, and when he persisted in reading, to beat him with “utmost fury”, battling both him and her own conscience which knew she was wrong.

Beating Douglass was also suppressing that part of herself that recognised the harm she was doing to a fellow human being. She had constructed and became incarcerated in her own racist prison.

It was that construction of racialised identities that had made the American constitution and laws. Douglass’s outrage at this state is famously expressed in a speech he delivered on July 4, 1852, one of the most powerful and well known. “What have I, or those I represent, to do with your national independence? Are the great principles of political freedom and of natural justice, embodied in that Declaration of Independence, extended to us?…What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim” – You profess to believe, “that, of one blood, God made all nations of men to dwell on the face of all the earth,” “and hath commanded all men everywhere to love one another; yet you notoriously hate (and glory in your hatred) all men whose skins are not colored like your own”.

One of the most interesting things that Bromell brings out in his book is that Douglass’s philosophy was never one-sided, narrow or dogmatic. His approach was incisively analytical and held what might appear to be rival approaches or viewpoints in constructive tension. So, while he fought against white racists – physically and intellectually – and upheld the view of whites’ guilt, he did not succumb to the narrow confines of Black nationalism.

Interestingly, he also believed that to be free, Blacks had to organise themselves, separately from whites, at least for a time, because the poison of racism was too destructive to allow for multiracial organisations, even if that was the end goal of radical political change. Tactical separation, alliance building with whites, women, and others, within a constitution that could accommodate change and indeed was the inspiration for such radical transformations.

That stance put him at odds with many – black and white – at the time and indeed since then. Most importantly, it places Douglass’s thought in an intellectual movement that, while recognising race as the San Andreas fault in US society and history, rejects the idea that race is the only or even most significant core source of division, one that virtually unlikely ever to be overcome. It is rooted in the educability of white racists and the potential for united human progress. It challenges the claims of white racist theories in particular, and may explain why racial segregation is a preferred option of such racists. For keeping races apart is a way of reinforcing difference and preventing the recognition of Blacks’ essential humanity.

Also read: Book Review: The Foundations of White Anglo-American World Power

In his speeches to white Americans, he frequently spoke in starkest terms of what it is to be enslaved, what it means in practice, what it feels like to be so brutalised and demeaned. “The crack you heard, was the sound of the slave-whip; the scream you heard, was from the woman you saw with the babe. Her speed had faltered under the weight of her child and her chains! That gash on her shoulder tells her to move on. Follow the drove to New Orleans. Attend the auction; see men examined like horses; see the forms of women rudely and brutally exposed to the shocking gaze of American slave-buyers. See this drove sold and separated forever; and never forget the deep, sad sobs that arose from that scattered multitude. Tell me citizens, WHERE, under the sun, you can witness a spectacle more fiendish and shocking. Yet this is but a glance at the American slave-trade, as it exists, at this moment, in the ruling part of the United States.”

By such means he tried both, and simultaneously, to show how far from innocent white Northern experience the Black enslaved were, and how the suffering of those so oppressed was so human as to build a bridge towards the whites’ conscience.

Bromell points out, citing Angela Davis’s insight, that Douglass advanced a radical analysis of freedom in the context of enslavement – as it worked upon both enslaved and enslaver. The enslaved are aware that for them “freedom is not a fact… is not a given, but rather something to be fought for… [T]he slavemaster… experiences his freedom as inalienable and thus as a fact”.

However, the enslaver remains unaware that “he too has been enslaved by his own system”. And, even more, whites’ freedom was contingent too – on more powerful whites seeking to concentrate their own domination at the expense of the mass of white Americans. It is, therefore, our duty to exercise freedom in practice, rather than revere it in laws and documents that cannot guarantee rights and freedoms, because politics and life is a struggle for power and dignity.

To Douglass, human dignity came before rights; it was the bedrock of a decent, humane and liberal society. Yet, to that end the means would necessarily have to be violent, or at least as violent as the circumstances required. By this Douglass meant defensive violence – against aggression, in self-defence. There could be “no peace without justice, and hence the sword”. His was a fighting, struggling, activist philosophy against the status quo.

“Power concedes nothing without a demand.” And “if there is no struggle, there is no progress”.

In the end, Douglass was asserting only his right, and rights of oppressed Black Americans, to be treated as human, in a white Christian republic, summed up in these heart-rending words: “Am I a man?” Was this not the question asked by Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. a century later? Was it not the plaintive cry in his dying moments of George Floyd, as police extinguished his last breath?

Bromell’s careful academic study of the sources in enslavement and in fugitive freedom of Douglass’s thought and politics is a work of effective and rigorous scholarship, ultimately original and persuasive in its principal claim of locating in the life and work of Douglass an original and still-relevant public political philosophy that, though using the conventional language of natural rights liberalism extended and indeed broke with its inherent limitations to fashion a philosophy of unity, solidarity, struggles against all forms of oppression and injustice in a democratic republic.

But the book is a lot more than what to many might appear a dry academic text: it powerfully conveys in Douglass’s own words the cry of the oppressed, articulated by one whose ideas were rooted in enslavement, in his life as a fugitive, and one who drew from his own struggles to develop, against all odds, a humane philosophy that looked at race and racism as essentially constructed, and therefore, conquerable through popular struggle.

Inderjeet Parmar is a professor of international politics at City, University of London, and a fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences. He is the author of several books including Foundations of the American Century. His Twitter handle is @USEmpire.

Canada Designates Far-Right Group ‘Proud Boys’ as Terrorist Entity

Canada said the group, whose founder is a Canadian living in the United States, posed an active security threat.

Ottawa: Canada named the far-right Proud Boys a terrorist entity on Wednesday, saying it posed an active security threat and played a “pivotal role” in last month’s attack on the US Capitol that left five people dead.

Although the Proud Boys have never mounted an attack in Canada, public safety minister Bill Blair said domestic intelligence forces had become increasingly worried about the group. “There has been a serious and concerning escalation of violence – not just rhetoric but activity and planning – and that is why we have responded as we have today,” he told a news conference. He did not give details.

The group’s assets can now be frozen by banks and financial institutions, and it is a crime for Canadians to knowingly deal with assets of a listed entity. Anyone belonging to the group can be blocked from entering Canada.

The group’s founder, Gavin McInnes, is a Canadian who lives in the United States.

Also read: Capitol Rioters Planned for Weeks in Plain Sight. The Police Weren’t Ready.

US authorities have charged several members of the Proud Boys in connection with the January 6, 2021 attack in Washington.

Ottawa added 12 other groups to its list of terrorist entities – three neo-Nazi groups, eight organizations described as affiliates to al Qaeda and Daesh (Islamic State), as well as Hizbul Mujahideen, a Kashmiri group.

Blair said Canadian intelligence agencies had been working for months and in some cases years to gather evidence needed to list the groups. “Canada will not tolerate ideological, religious or politically motivated acts of violence,” said Blair.

Founded in 2016, the Proud Boys began as an organisation protesting political correctness and perceived constraints on masculinity in the United States and Canada, and grew into a group that embraced street fighting.

Former US President Donald Trump, asked last September whether he would denounce white supremacists and militia groups, called on the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by”.

The listing will likely have “a bit of a polarising response” on Proud Boys members, said Jessica Davis, a former senior intelligence analyst with the Canadian Security Intelligence Service spy agency.

“For some individuals this may have a dampening effect … However, there are probably some hard-core members who will be further radicalised by this,” said Davis, president of Insight Threat Intelligence.

Also read: Why Justin Trudeau Is Supporting Protesting Farmers in India

It is tough to say how many Proud Boys members there are in Canada, said Evan Balgord, executive director of the Anti-Hate Network of Canada. “Before the announcement there were about eight chapters,” he said by phone. “I would expect they’re pretty much done for here … under that name, they’re done.”

The group itself does not hold major financial assets, as far as Balgord knows.

The move underscored constitutional concerns about the Canadian government’s ability to designate a group as a terrorist entity, said Leah West, a national security professor at Ottawa’s Carleton University and former lawyer with the Canadian justice department.

Designations are impossible to challenge beforehand and difficult to address afterward, especially given that lawyers may be reluctant to provide counsel to members of a terrorist group, she said by phone.

(Reuters)

The Capitol Attack Was Enabled by America’s Failure to Address Poverty and Racism

The country has the resources, the skills and the techniques to address these interconnected issues, but not the will to see it through.

On August 12, 2017, Heather Heyer, a 32-year-old white woman, was killed when a car deliberately attacked counter-protesters after a white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. A man from Ohio who had demonstrated that day alongside a white nationalist group was charged with her murder.

Unsurprisingly, Donald Trump made a sickening comment defending the white supremacists, claiming there were “very fine people on both sides”. Trump’s many comments defending the racists drew praise from David Duke, the former grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, who had been one of the protesters in Charlottesville. Sarah Anderson observed:

“When President Donald Trump…[equated] anti-racism protesters with neo-Nazis, it was a big hit with the men who’d taken part in the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville. But Trump wasn’t just playing to the kind of racist crowd that marches around carrying Tiki torches and waving swastika flags in the streets. He was also sending a signal to those in the executive suites. Racism has always permeated this country up and down the income scale. And in our era of extreme concentration of economic political power, emboldening just a few men at the top can be tremendously dangerous.”

This ‘tremendous danger’ manifested itself on January 6, 2021, when it was the Republican party’s billionaire supporters who stood behind the carefully planned attack on the Capitol, intended as a coup to prevent Joe Biden’s confirmation as president. On January 16, 2021, Jamelle Bouie of the New York Times noted, “This mob had money.”

This was an understatement – the attack on the Capitol had the biggest money in the country behind it: it had the support of all the billionaires who had been bankrolling Trump’s presidency: the Mercers, Thiel, Loeb, the Koch brothers and the Adelson family, among others.

Brendan O’Connor emphasises, “The Capitol riot wasn’t a fringe ‘uprising’. It was enabled by very deep pockets….That siege was just one battle in a decades-long assault on democracy, funded by billionaire donors and corporate interests.” O’Connor continues:

“While law enforcement officials in Washington ought to be held accountable for their alleged culpability in the deadly violence at the US Capitol earlier this month, and the off-duty cops and members of the military who participated in it ought to be disciplined, the attempted auto-coup cannot solely be understood through the lens of policing and security. At least as much responsibility lies with the billionaire donors and corporate interests – in other words, the capitalists – who made this moment possible.”

Law enforcement collusion with white supremacists is a very old problem in the US that has grown enormously under Trump’s presidency. But the ‘failure’ of policing at the Capitol was a deliberate lack of police officers. Due to Trump’s scheming and his supporters in high places, the Capitol was left unprotected on that day: even the few National Guardsmen who had been deputed to help were assigned to traffic duties and were not near the Capitol.

US President Donald Trump gives an address, a day after his supporters stormed the US Capitol in Washington. Photo: Donald J. Trump/Twitter via REUTERS

Cedric L. Alexander, writing for CNN on January 17, 2021, noted that the Capitol riot was a stunning reminder of America’s ongoing, long-standing policing crisis. On the one hand (he writes), there was the problem of likely collusion between some white racist police officers and the white supremacist rioters of January 6, many of whom believed they had been ‘invited’ by the president to the Capitol to stop Congress from the constitutionally mandated counting of electoral ballots, in an attempt to overturn the 2020 election.

On the other hand, there certainly was collusion at higher levels, led by Trump himself, that left the Capitol police overwhelmed by the onslaught they faced: one Capitol officer died from his injuries. But it was their colleagues in the DC metropolitan police, a sister agency, who suffered far worse: they were maced, Tasered, stripped of their badges and ammunition and beaten by the angry crowd. These officers confirmed that the mob, with its Confederate flags, had expected to meet no resistance and repeatedly told these officers that they were ‘on their side’.

Also Read: The Past, Present and Future of India’s Capitol Hill Moment

Steven Sund, the head of the Capitol police, resigned after the attack. But speaking later to journalists, he said that “there was reluctance by senior officials involved in security in Congress and at the Pentagon to have the National Guard put on standby.” The House of Representatives’ sergeant-at-arms, Paul Irving, told Sund he was not comfortable with the ‘optics’ of declaring an emergency ahead of the demonstration, while the sergeant-at-arms at the Senate, Michael Stenger, suggested to Sund that he should only informally seek for the National Guard to be put on standby. Sund claimed that his increasingly panicked calls for help were ignored by senior officials until too late, when the mob was already rampaging inside the Capitol.

A supporter of U.S. President Donald Trump smashes a window as they storm the Capitol building in Washington DC, January 6, 2021. Photo: REUTERS/Stephanie Keith

Reports describe many members of the mob meeting little resistance and walking into the Capitol, having ‘pushed past police.’ and confident that the police would not shoot them. Several commentators, including the New York Times, note that, from the point of view of racist white police officers, ‘Whiteness is seen as friendly and unthreatening.’ Even when the mob had stormed the Capitol, Trump initially would not allow the National Guard to be called in – this decision was ultimately taken by acting secretary of defence Christopher Miller without Trump’s support. Because Trump continued to resist sending in the National Guard, it was Pence who took the lead, authorising Miller to do so. Pence had been identified as a ‘traitor’ by some in the mob, for defying Trump’s request to refuse to certify the election results: they were threatening to hang him.

Far from condemning the rioters, Trump was deeply sympathetic to them in the short video he released when he called for them to leave, telling them, “We love you, you’re very special” and repeating his lie that the ‘landslide’ election had been ‘stolen’ from him.

Many commentators noted the massive difference between the police response to the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020 and their response to Trump’s mob on January 6, 2021. Quartz noted, “Police treated Black Lives Matter protesters and the violent pro-Trump mob very differently,” and under a photo of a large Confederate flag being carried through Congress, it tersely observed, “Not even during the US Civil War did the Confederate flag breach the US Capitol.”

Julian Borger emphasised the blatant racism behind this difference: “The contrast between the law enforcement reaction to the storming of the Capitol on Wednesday and the suppression of peaceful protests in the summer is not just stark – it is black and white.” He noted that over 5,000 National Guard troops using teargas, batons and horses were used to clear an entirely peaceful, mostly Black crowd near the White House on June 1, 2020. In contrast:

“The mob that stormed the seat of US democracy on Wednesday had openly talked about such a plan, were explicitly intent on overturning a fair election, and some had hinted they might be carrying guns. They were almost all white. Many were openly white supremacists, and yet the thin Capitol police collapsed in their path.”

A demonstrator with Black Lives Matter holds up a sign during a protest in front of the White House in Washington, US, July 8, 2016. REUTERS/Joshua Roberts

Some commentators have been guarded in addressing the racism of white police officers: Alexander only goes so far as saying:

“Never in American history has the legitimacy of police departments across the country been in greater peril. The killings of George Floyd and too many other unarmed, Black Americans, have already created a crisis in policing. This has been exacerbated by Trump, who has politicized his support for the police.”

Jason Wilson is more direct:

“The presence of off-duty officers, firefighters and corrections officers from other agencies around the country in the protest crowd was a reminder of how members of a lawless movement have been able to find a place in their [police] ranks. Since the violent invasion of the Capitol by pro-Trump extremists seeking to overturn the election of Joe Biden, at least two Capitol police officers have been suspended, and at least 12 more are reportedly under investigation for dereliction of duty, or directly aiding the rioters.”

Wilson notes that the friendliness that some of the Capitol police officers showed the mob was unmistakable:

“Some officers were filmed offering apparent assistance or encouragement to the mob – whether by posing for selfies with Confederate flag-waving protesters, or directing protesters around the building while sporting a Maga cap…. Mike German, a former FBI agent, said he saw the failure of police to protect the building as following the pattern whereby ‘militant far-right groups have been given impunity’ throughout the Trump era…. Pointing to similar attacks on state capitols in Virginia, Michigan, Idaho, Georgia and Oregon in 2020, German asked: ‘How many times do they have to storm a capitol before it’s taken seriously?’ In the wake of the riot – and near misses for elected [Congress] officials who the mob had in its sights – former Capitol police officers who have been involved in lawsuits over decades alleging employment discrimination against black officers, have claimed that their sustained and repeated warnings about racism in the [Capitol police] department were ignored.”

German emphasised that it is because senior officials have been turning a blind eye that far-right militantism has spread so rapidly through police ranks under Trump: “‘They’ve been doing it because the police have been letting them do it. They’ve been doing it because the FBI have been letting them do it,’ he said.” America has failed to deal with deeply entrenched racial bias, particularly in law enforcement.

Also Read: The Many Flags That Flew During the US Capitol’s Storming and What They Represent

Speaking with Senator Cory Booker on January 19, Stephen Colbert said, “We were together, I think, in June of 2020. And on that [June 1] night two things had just happened. I believe that in Lafayette Square, near Black Lives Matter Plaza, Trump had sent out Federal law enforcement troops to pepper spray, to gas, to rubber bullet peaceful protestors … so he could have his Bible-holding moment – and I believe that was the same night that Rand Paul prevented the passing of the Anti-Lynching Legislation in the Senate. You were a little upset that night. How do you feel when you see the lack of preparedness by security forces on the day of the president’s rally [of his seditionist mob that thereafter attacked the Capitol] compared to how the Black Lives Matter protestors were treated on that day [June 1, 2020]… and on many days in many cities?”

Cory Booker replied:

“It’s the hurtful hypocrisy that many in this country know very well – the different treatment that is given to different groups of our nation…. We have two different justice systems – we have two different levels of treatment and so, yeah, it hurts and it frankly enrages me, and what makes me more worried is not simply that this exists, but that so many people are comfortable with this! It doesn’t disturb them at the core of their being …. And we’re failing in this country – it’s a poverty of empathy, failing to all join together in common cause, to deal with this…persistent dislocation that exists within criminal justice, within law enforcement, within our society.”

Alex Vitale, an expert on race and law enforcement, says:

“Over the last 40 years we have seen a massive expansion of the scope and intensity of policing. Every social problem in poor and non-white communities has been turned over to the police to manage. The schools don’t work; let’s create school policing. Mental health services are decimated; let’s send police. Overdoses are epidemic; let’s criminalize people who share drugs. Young people are caught in a cycle of violence and despair; let’s call them superpredators and put them in prison for life.”

Like so many other supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement, he calls for defunding the police – and using these funds to support communities in fundamental ways, so they don’t need policing. He emphasises that it is, above all, in poor and non-white communities that ‘every social problem’ gets turned over to the police, because support services simply don’t exist to address them.

The US, the richest country on earth, has failed to deal with racism and poverty. They are closely connected, mutually constituting each other. Non-white communities are the poorest and most disadvantaged – and because they are the most vulnerable they are discriminated against. Dr Martin Luther King Jr was very aware of the mutual constitution of race and class.

Jamelle Bouie recently discussed Dr King’s final book before his assassination, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community?. Bouie says:

“Like much of his written work, it is very interested in tackling questions of political economy and their relationship to racial oppression. King had a keen sense of the ways in which the ‘Negro question’ was a labour question, and he returned to that idea again and again in interviews, essays and books.”

Dr King also said:

“Now there is nothing new about poverty. It’s been with us for years and centuries. What is new at this point though, is that we now have the resources, we now have the skills, we now have the techniques to get rid of poverty. And the question is whether our nation has the will …”

Dr King’s question is still alive in 2021: does America, which has the resources, the skills and the techniques, have the will to address poverty and racism?

Karin Kapadia is an independent researcher.

The Trump Coup D’Etat and Insurrection Was Long in the Making, And Will Continue

The most significant driver in the development of right-wing populism arises from billionaire right-wing donor networks, especially the Koch brothers’ complex.

President Donald Trump’s long-advertised and planned coup d’etat and insurrection – backed by a mobilisation of armed fascists – was long in the making and is not yet over. Its repercussions in American political life are set to continue long after Trump has vacated the White House. And the fascist genie remains out of the bottle, as extremists plan protests on January 20.

Right-wing extremists – in and beyond the Republican party – allied with their police and other supporters are already planning nationwide attacks and protests on January 20, the day of the inauguration of President-elect Joseph Biden. They have been emboldened by Trump’s support for their insurrectionary invasion of the Capitol building on January 6, and encouraged by somewhat diminished but largely continued loyalty to Trump among Republican leaders and voters.

From evidence emerging in the past few days, it is clear that the storming of the Capitol was coordinated from the White House and involved the Capitol police, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Department of Defence and Homeland Security. A full independent and public inquiry is required to investigate the extent of the conspiracy that enabled, facilitated, aided and abetted the fascist attempt to prevent Congress from certifying the verified results of the 2020 presidential elections.

Biden calls out Trump and GOP Big Lie technique

For all his relative passivity since his election victory, Biden has called out the Nazi character of the forces that Trump has amassed and enabled from the White House, allied to his white supremacist advisers and officials. Biden noted the ‘Big Lie’ technique Trump and his allies in the GOP have championed – the constant repetition of a lie until it so confuses people that it becomes an accepted ‘truth’ to millions. Biden has compared Trump’s mendacity machine to that of Hitler’s propaganda minister, Goebbels.

Biden has also openly stated what is obvious to anyone with eyes to see that had it been Black Lives Matter protestors who had dared to storm the Capitol, they would have been “treated very, very differently than the mob of thugs that stormed the Capitol. We all know that’s true…” There is little doubt that there would have been a massacre in Washington, DC.

He might have added that peaceful anti-fascists were teargassed, flash-bombed, pepper-sprayed and shot throughout 2020’s nationwide demonstrations against racist police violence. Indeed, police and sheriffs across the US protected and mobilised armed right-wing extremists during those peaceful protests.

Also read: QAnon and the Storm of the US Capitol: The Offline Effect of Online Conspiracy Theories

And Biden should have acknowledged and rued the fact that the national leadership of the Democratic party did not lift a finger against such police violence and called for police crackdowns and extra powers to suppress peaceful marches and rallies.

Yet, this may well represent Biden’s finest hour, to call out storm-trooper politics and its GOP allies, and help sweep into history’s dustbin the fascistic Donald Trump.

Writing on the wall

Observers have pointed out that the writing was on the wall on January 6, for anyone willing to look. There was the storming last summer by armed white supremacists of the Michigan state legislature and attempts to kidnap and execute the Democratic Governor Whitmer, and subsequent arrest by the FBI of over a dozen right-wing extremists, including from groups well represented on January 6. The same threats were made against the governor of Virginia and other states.

There were and are Trump-directed threats, followed by death threats, against Democratic and Republican election officials across Georgia, Arizona and other states, and the branding of anyone who dissented as ‘traitors’. There were good reasons why the fascist mob wanted to ‘execute’ Vice President Mike Pence as they poured through the police-opened doors of the Capitol – Trump had already declared him a traitor.

It was clear that Trump returned to the White House earlier than expected from his Christmas break precisely in order to coordinate the messaging, planning and execution of a violent attempt to overturn the election by any means necessary. This was clear as day to everyone except the police.

The insurrection was planned

According to the Wall Street Journal – a staunch ally of right-wing authoritarianism and the Trump regime – there was no routine “threat assessment” by either the FBI or the Department of Homeland Security regarding the planned and publicised pro-Trump demonstrations. Such assessments are routinely made ahead of peaceful leftist and anti-fascist demonstrations. Why would there be if the administration aims to violently overthrow the election and keep Trump in office as the Great Leader?

The Washington Post noted that the Department of Defence had disarmed the Washington DC national guard ahead of the rally, knowing it would delay mobilisation and deployment should the need arise: The Post noted that “the Pentagon prohibited the District’s guardsmen from receiving ammunition or riot gear, interacting with protestors unless necessary for self-defense, sharing equipment with local law enforcement, or using Guard surveillance and air assets without the defense secretary’s explicit sign-off…”

Protesters wave American and Confederate flags during clashes with Capitol police at a rally to contest the certification of the 2020 US presidential election results by the US Congress, at the US Capitol Building in Washington, US January 6, 2021. Photo: Reuters/Shannon Stapleton/File Photo

Videos of Capitol police opening barriers to protestors, and stepping aside to allow them into the Capitol building, have become available. PBS sources claim that they and several congressmen and women barricaded themselves into a room, and prayed for their lives, after seeing police abandoning their posts inside the building.

And, oh yes, there are numerous official reports showing large-scale white supremacist and right-wing militia infiltration of America’s police and other law enforcement agencies. A 2017 FBI report showed that white supremacists pose a “persistent threat of lethal violence” that has produced more fatalities than any other category of domestic terrorists since 2000. Internal FBI policy documents also warned agents assigned to domestic terrorism cases that the white supremacist and anti-government militia groups they investigate often have “active links” to law enforcement officials. Unsurprisingly, few police departments prohibit officers from joining white supremacist organisations, while the Department of Justice has no strategy to deal with the issue.

No threat assessment, prevention of prior preparation, infiltrated police forces, and officers to open the doors and step aside. This is the stuff that coups are made of.

Billionaires stand behind Trumpism

There is little that is truly spontaneous about what’s been happening in US right-wing politics for the past two decades at least. And despite our yearning to hold a specific individual responsible, monstrous though his regime is, individuals are enabled by forces and conditions beyond their control or making.

The most significant driver in the development of right-wing populism arises from specific initiatives of billionaire right-wing donor networks, especially the Koch brothers’ complex. This includes the Mercer and DeVos families and Sheldon Adelson, among others who are central to Koch donor networks. They disagree on aspects of Trump’s ‘conservatism’ and leadership style, but share a love of limited government (with coercive policing), corporate welfare, low taxes and a war on the poor.

Also read: A Few Sobering Lessons for India from Washington’s Day of Infamy

According to research at Harvard University, from around 2003, Koch et al united and invested billions of dollars to build a major ecosystem of faux grassroots (astroturf) organisations, and networked with policy advocacy, ideological and protest groups staffed by over 2.5 million largely paid ‘volunteers’ across the US.

The Tea Party exploded onto the scene, with Koch network funding and organisational support in and around the GOP across numerous states, driving the party’s elected representatives further to the right than GOP’s own voters. They created the machinery for the extreme right that provided the platform for Trump’s racist ‘birther’ movement, his incendiary 2016 election campaign, and mobilisation of white supremacists and neo-Nazis in the country.

David Koch (L), Charles Koch (R) and Donald Trump in a combination image. Photo: Reuters/Files

The GOP establishment called those right-wingers ‘bomb-throwers’. They knew what was happening and aided, abetted and appeased the extreme right; indeed, they benefitted electorally in 2010, declaring President Barack Obama an illegitimate president leading an illegitimate political party. In 2020, they refused to challenge Trump’s lies about the election results. The gap between right-wing-inspired, propaganda-induced beliefs and real-world realities opened into a chasm, as the US sank into post-truth politics.

But the Koch-constructed infrastructure of extremism was also aided by the likes of the Heritage Foundation, whose leaders had declared as far back as 1991 that they wished to build a ‘conservative’ establishment of media, think-tanks and advocacy groups to wrest power from liberals and the left. Billionaire Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News was surely one of their greatest triumphs, though it’s now victim of the monster its own news division under Roger Ailes created.

That Koch-manufactured ecosystem blossomed, showered with millions of dollars of ‘dark money’, was used during the Trump years: particularly by the far right to organise protests, including armed resistance to COVID-19 lockdowns. Though encouraged by Trump, they were not and are not subject entirely to his or GOP control.

Trump’s ‘truthful hyperbole’ – key to mass manipulation

President Trump has long understood mass psychology and manipulation. Biden categorised him correctly – Trump is in the mould of the greatest liars in world politics. In his 1987 book Art of the Deal, Trump outlined the notion of ‘truthful hyperbole’: “I play to people’s fantas­ies … People want to be­lieve that something is the biggest and the greatest and the most spec­tac­u­lar. I call it truth­ful hy­per­bole. It’s an in­no­cent form of ex­ag­ger­a­tion.” Not that innocent when applied to baseless claims of election fraud, the illegitimacy of political opposition, and demands for total cult-like loyalty from all – and a coup d’etat against democratic government.

As ever, Antonio Gramsci, the great anti-fascist leader of the Italian communist party and intellectual, summed it up. He might have been writing about Trump himself – though he was actually analysing the politics of Benito Mussolini. For Gramsci, fascist politics was all about the “creation of concrete fantasy”, the mobilisation of the “irrational elements in the human psyche”. The aim? Nothing less than to move “a dispersed and shattered people to arouse and organise its collective will…”

Also read: Social Media Giants Finally Confront Trump’s Lies. but Why Wait Until the Capitol Was Stormed?

If politics is perception, perception is reality, and facts become malleable. Alternative facts are always available. And that’s the terrain on which Trump acts so effectively, his message honed, his language incendiary, inciting violence. And conservative Americans – bombarded with a sophisticated propaganda fact-producing machine for decades which have engineered a new hardwired common sense – believe they are victims, who have lost position and power in “their” country to minorities, immigrants and ungrateful foreigners. And they retain almost complete faith in Donald Trump – he remains approved of by almost 90% of Republican voters, and not held responsible for what happened at the Capitol by almost 70% of them.

And it’s not over yet

There are economic, geographical and racial divisions in the American electorate that demonstrate a deep schism, a rupture, in the social fabric. Add to that support for Trump that is immune to the impacts of his incitements to political violence against all opponents, including Republicans who dare stand up to intimidation.

Factor in rival sources of news and information, Fox for Republicans and CNN, MSNBC, ABC, etc., for Democrats, and there appear near-unbridgeable rifts in American society. Fox, which has lost right-wing viewers since the 2020 election, seems to be winning them back with supportive coverage of the January 6 Capitol storming. Some of their interviewees peddled a new conspiracy theory: that anti-fascists had infiltrated the protest and instigated the insurrection, leading to five deaths.

The mental maps occupied by American voters amplify the other divisions, fears and anxieties. And their sense of the ‘enemy within’. Mentally, they appear to live in different countries, in different realities, believing different truths.

Despite public intellectual Henry Giroux’s claims that “we no longer live in the shadow of authoritarianism.. [but] have tipped over into the abyss,” the public reaction to the fascist storming of the Capitol amid calls for Trump’s removal from office, suggest that opposition to fascism remains powerful.

Nevertheless, Giroux is right to suggest that “Under Trump’s rule, lies, ignorance, encouragement of white supremacy and thirst for violence has taken on a more lethal direction….These forces have deep historical roots in the United States”.

And those forces have a future in Biden’s America, as Trump’s law enforcement agencies prepare to “protect” the January 20 inauguration.

Inderjeet Parmar is professor of international politics at City, University of London, and visiting professor at LSE IDEAS (the LSE’s foreign policy think tank). His Twitter handle is @USEmpire.

Capitol Rioters Planned for Weeks in Plain Sight. The Police Weren’t Ready.

Insurrectionists made no effort to hide their intentions, but law enforcement protecting Congress was caught flat-footed.

The invasion of the US Capitol on Wednesday was stoked in plain sight. For weeks, the far-right supporters of President Donald Trump railed on social media that the election had been stolen. They openly discussed the idea of violent protest on the day Congress met to certify the result.

“We came up with the idea to occupy just outside the CAPITOL on Jan 6th,” leaders of the Stop the Steal movement wrote on Dec. 23. They called their Wednesday demonstration the Wild Protest, a name taken from a tweet by Trump that encouraged his supporters to take their grievances to the streets of Washington. “Will be wild,” the president tweeted.

Ali Alexander, the founder of the movement, encouraged people to bring tents and sleeping bags and avoid wearing masks for the event. “If D.C. escalates… so do we,” Alexander wrote on Parler last week — one of scores of social media posts welcoming violence that were reviewed by ProPublica in the weeks leading up to Wednesday’s attack on the capitol.

Thousands of people heeded that call.

For reasons that remained unclear Wednesday night, the law enforcement authorities charged with protecting the nation’s entire legislative branch — nearly all of the 535 members of Congress gathered in a joint session, along with Vice President Mike Pence — were ill-prepared to contain the forces massed against them.

On Wednesday afternoon, a thin line of US Capitol Police, with only a few riot shields between them and a knot of angry protesters, engaged in hand-to-hand combat with rioters on the steps of the West Front. They struggled with a flimsy set of barricades as a mob in helmets and bulletproof vests pushed its way toward the Capitol entrance. Videos showed officers stepping aside, and sometimes taking selfies, as if to usher Trump’s supporters into the building they were supposed to guard.

Also read: As Video Goes Viral, Twitter Users Ask Why Indian Flag at US Capitol Protests

A former Capitol policeman well-versed in his agency’s procedures was mystified by the scene he watched unfold on live television. Larry Schaefer, a 34-year Capitol Police veteran who retired in December 2019, said his former colleagues were experienced in dealing with aggressive crowds.

“It’s not a spur-of-the-moment demonstration that just popped up,” Schaefer said. “We have a planned, known demonstration that has a propensity for violence in the past and threats to carry weapons — why would you not prepare yourself as we have done in the past?”

A spokesperson for the Capitol Police did not respond to a request for comment.

In recent years, federal law enforcement agencies have stepped up their focus on far-right groups, resulting in a spate of arrests. In October, the FBI arrested a group of Michigan extremists and charged them with plotting to kidnap the state’s governor. On Monday, Washington police arrested Enrique Tarrio, the leader of the far-right group the Proud Boys, on charges of burning a Black Lives Matter banner.

Conversations on right-wing platforms are monitored closely by federal intelligence. In September, a draft report by the Department of Homeland Security surfaced, identifying white supremacists as the biggest threat to national security.

The warnings of Wednesday’s assault on the Capitol were everywhere — perhaps not entirely specific about the planned time and exact location of an assault on the Capitol, but enough to clue in law enforcement about the potential for civil unrest.

Pro-Trump protesters clash with Capitol police during a rally to contest the certification of the 2020 US presidential election results by the US Congress, at the US Capitol Building in Washington, US, January 6, 2021. Photo: Reuters/Shannon Stapleton

On December 12, a poster on the website MyMilitia.com urged violence if senators made official the victory of President-elect Joe Biden.

“If this does not change, then I advocate, Revolution and adherence to the rules of war,” wrote someone identifying themselves as I3DI. “I say, take the hill or die trying.”

Wrote another person: “It’s already apparent that literally millions of Americans are on the verge of activating their Second Amendment duty to defeat tyranny and save the republic.”

The easily overpowered police force guarding the Capitol on Wednesday posed a stark contrast to the tactics deployed by local police during this summer’s Black Lives Matter protests. Then, the city felt besieged by law enforcement.

On June 1, following a few days of mostly peaceful protests, the National Guard, the Secret Service and the U.S. Park Police fired tear gas and rubber bullets to disperse a nonviolent crowd in Lafayette Square outside the White House to allow Trump to pose with a Bible in front of a nearby church.

“We need to dominate the battlespace,” then-Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said on a call with dozens of governors, asking them to send their National Guard forces to the capital.

On June 2 — the day of the primary election in Washington — law enforcement officers appeared on every corner, heavily armed in fatigues and body armour. Humvees blocked intersections. Buses full of troops deployed into military columns and marshalled in front of the Lincoln Memorial in a raw show of force. Police kettled protesters in alleys. Choppers thudded overhead for days and sank low enough over protesters to generate gale-force winds.

Such dominance was nowhere in evidence Wednesday, despite a near-lockdown of the downtown area on Tuesday night. Trump supporters drove to the Capitol and parked in spaces normally reserved for congressional staff. Some vehicles stopped on the lawns near the Tidal Basin.

The contrast shook Washington’s attorney general, Karl Racine, who seemed to be almost in disbelief on CNN Wednesday evening.

“There was zero intelligence that the Black Lives Matter protesters were going to ‘storm the capitol,’” he remembered, after ticking down the many police forces present in June. “Juxtapose that with what we saw today, with hate groups, militia and other groups that have no respect for the rule of law go into the capitol. …That dichotomy is shocking.”

The question of how law enforcement and the national security establishment failed so spectacularly will likely be the subject of intense focus in coming days.

David Carter, director of the Intelligence Program at Michigan State University, said that sometimes, the best intelligence in the world doesn’t translate into adequate preparedness. Perhaps the security officials responsible for protecting the Capitol simply could not envision that a crowd of Americans would charge through a police line and shatter the glass windows that stood as the only physical barrier to entering the building.

“I go back to the 9/11 commission report,” Carter said. “It was a failure of imagination. They didn’t imagine something like this. Would you imagine people were going to break into the Capitol and go into the chambers? That failure of imagination sometimes makes us drop the ball.”

This article was originally published on ProPublica. ProPublica is a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative newsroom. Sign up for The Big Story newsletter to receive stories like this one in your inbox.

Why Donald Trump’s Language Is So Dangerous

A recent study reported that every extremist murder in the US in 2018 had links to far-right ideology.

The US House of Representatives has denounced President Donald Trump for tweets attacking four Democratic Congresswomen of colour calling on them to “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime-infested places from which they came”. The resolution, which passed by 240 to 187 votes on July 16, condemned the “racist comments that have legitimised fear and hatred of new Americans and people of colour”.

In response to Trump’s threat, the four Democratic congresswomen, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib, who have come to be known as “the squad”, made clear that they would not be marginalised or silenced.

Trump responded to the House vote, by tweeting: “I don’t have a racist bone in my body.” But the House clearly felt otherwise.

The vote was historic and constituted the first time the House has voted to rebuke a president in more than 100 years. Mindful of the message that Trump’s statements send to American citizens and the global community, House representatives made clear that the US has no room for “racism, sexism, antisemitism, xenophobia and hate”.

Also read: Trump Lauds Arrest of Hafiz Saeed After ’10-Year Search’ as Result of US Pressure

Since his election, Trump has tapped into the latent and overtly racist feelings of some of his supporters and legitimised their bigotry. Fringe groups such as neo-Nazis, white supremacists, and skinheads marked Trump’s victory in 2016 with a Nazi salute. No longer on the fringe, these groups saw Trump’s election as their coming-out party.

Instead of unequivocally condemning these groups, he has pandered to them, leading to dangerous consequences. A recent study reported that every extremist murder in the US in 2018 had links to far-right ideology, making it one of the deadliest years in recent history.

While Trump sees no link between his behaviour and the rise of right-wing white nationalism, Democrats disagree. US speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi recently asserted that what Trump means by “make America great again” is to “make America white again”. Trump hit back by claiming that Pelosi was the racist.

Driving division

During the presidential campaign and during his time in office, Trump has thrived on making racist and xenophobic attacks against a diverse set of people, from Latinos to Muslims. But he has a longer history of racist discrimination against African Americans.

In 1973, he was sued by the Nixon administration, accused of violating the Fair Housing Act after officials alleged his real estate company was refusing to rent out properties to black tenants. The case was settled in 1975. In 1992, he had to pay a fine for removing black and female dealers of the tables in the Trump Plaza and Hotel Casino, when big rollers requested it. Trump also played an essential role in spreading the “birther movement”, which accused President Barack Obama of not being born in the US.

Also read: Trump Administration Begins Raids Targeting Undocumented Immigrants

Though the US has always been one of the more diverse countries in the world, whites have always been the majority. This will change by 2045 when whites are projected to comprise 49.7% of the population compared to 24.6% for Hispanics, 13.1% for blacks, 7.9% for Asians, and 3.8% for multiracial populations. These changes have driven fears by a subset of the white people that they will feel like foreigners in their own country.

According to a 2018 Pew Research Center survey, most Americans think that growing up in a racially and ethnically diverse US is a good thing, but this is divided along partisan lines. While 70% of Democrats believe that diversity makes the US a better place, only 47% of Republicans do. This means that Trump’s strategy of attacking immigration and diversity resonates with his supporters.

Studies show that people who exhibit high levels of racial animosity are more likely to support Trump. Other studies show that the way voters feel about sexism and the importance of tackling it also affected their probability of voting for Trump, much more so than how they felt about the economy.

Trump’s comfort zone

But the focus on the politics of race, ethnicity and religion distracts voters from Trump’s actual political policies, something he has had difficulty defending. In responding to Trump’s tweets, all four Democratic Congresswomen tried to bring the focus back to issues that they believe their supporters care about such as health care, gun violence and, in particular, detentions of migrants on the US border with Mexico.

Trump’s comfort zone is making personal attacks and engaging in identity politics, but he has frequently defended himself – arguing that because he has friends that are African American, Hispanic, Jewish or Muslim, he is not a bigot or a racist.

As Trump sees it, he is just politically incorrect. But such political incorrectness has become a signifier for covert or overt racist sentiments – and studies show it has led to an increase in racially charged violence and discrimination.

Also read: Lessons India Can Take Away from Trump’s Unlawful Blocking of Twitter Followers

Trump’s racist tweets also have global ramifications. Violating human rights and dehumanising and degrading minority groups have become more acceptable in the US of 2019. In response to the controversy surrounding Trump’s tweets, world leaders have been silent and hesitant to criticise. But the House’s condemnation may be a turning point for how much bigotry the world is willing to tolerate from its leaders.

Natasha Lindstaedt is a professor in the Department of Government, University of Essex.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.The Conversation

Washington White Nationalist Rally Sputters in Sea of Counter-Protesters

“Unite the Right 2”, a white nationalist rally held in the heart of Washington, drew two dozen demonstrators but was overwhelmed by thousands of counter-protesters.

Washington: A white nationalist rally in the heart of Washington drew two dozen demonstrators and thousands of chanting counter-protesters on Sunday, the one-year anniversary of racially charged violence in Charlottesville, Virginia.

A large police presence kept the two sides separated in Lafayette Square, in front of the White House. After two hours and a few speeches, the “Unite the Right 2” rally ended early when it began to rain and two police vans took the demonstrators back to Virginia.

Sunday’s events, while tense at times, were a far cry from the street brawls that broke out in downtown Charlottesville a year ago, when a local woman was killed by a man who drove his car into a crowd of counter-protesters.

“Unite the Right 2” had been denied a permit in Charlottesville this year, but did secure one for Washington. Organisers had planned for up to 400 protesters.

At the head of the white nationalist group was Virginia activist Jason Kessler, who helped organise last year’s event in Charlottesville. He emerged with a handful of fellow demonstrators from a subway station holding an American flag and walked toward the White House ringed by police, while counter-protesters taunted the group and called them Nazis.

Dan Haught, a 54-year-old computer programmer from Washington, was attending his first protest at the White House holding a sign that said “Back under your rocks you Nazi clowns.”

“We wanted to send a message to the world that we vastly outnumber them,” Haught said.

Police said that as of 6 pm ET (2200 GMT) they had made no arrests and would not give a crowd estimate. Late in the day, a small group of counter-protesters clashed with police in downtown Washington.

The violence last year in Charlottesville, sparked by white nationalists’ outrage over a plan to remove a Confederate general’s statue, convulsed the nation and sparked condemnation across the political spectrum. It also was one of the lowest moments of President Donald Trump’s first year in office.

At the time, Trump said there were “very fine people” on both sides, spurring criticism that he was equating the counter-protesters with the rally attendees, who included neo-Nazis and other white supremacists.

On Saturday, Trump condemned “all types of racism” in a Twitter post marking the anniversary.

Anti-fascists and families

Kessler said Sunday’s rally was aimed at advocating for “free speech for everybody,” and he blamed last year’s violence in Charlottesville on other groups and the media.

He thought Sunday’s rally went well in comparison.

“Everybody got the ability to speak and I think that was a major improvement over Charlottesville,” Kessler told Reuters. “It was a precedent that had to be set. It was more important than anything.”

The counter-protest which began earlier in the day was a smattering of diverse groups – from black-clad anti-fascists, to supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement to families who brought children in strollers. Tourists took pictures and both protesters and observers zoomed around on electric scooters.

Sean Kratouil, a 17-year-old who lives in Maryland, was wearing a vest with “Antifa” on the back and said he was there to help start a movement of peaceful anti-fascists. He said he was concerned that when rallies turn violent, it makes his side look bad. “Public perception is key,” he said.

In the picturesque college town of Charlottesville, hundreds of police officers had maintained a security perimeter around the normally bustling downtown district throughout the day on Saturday. Vehicular traffic was barred from an area of more than 15 city blocks, while pedestrians were allowed access at two checkpoints where officers examined bags for weapons.

Hundreds of students and activists took to the streets on Saturday evening. Many of the protesters directed their anger at the heavy police presence, with chants like “cops and Klan go hand in hand,” a year after police were harshly criticised for their failure to prevent the violence.

On Sunday morning, activist Grace Aheron, 27, donned a Black Lives Matter T-shirt and joined hundreds of fellow Charlottesville residents who gathered at Booker T. Washington Park to mark the anniversary of last year’s bloodshed.

“We want to claim our streets back, claim our public space back, claim our city back,” Aheron said at the park.

Charlottesville authorities said four people had been arrested on Sunday.

(Reuters)

It’s Time to Take the Nazi-Trump Comparisons Seriously

It’s important to recognise the dangerous mix of moral turpitude, dereliction of duty and incompetence in Donald J. Trump’s presidency before we fall deeper into fascism and moral tragedy.

It’s important to recognise the dangerous mix of moral turpitude, dereliction of duty and incompetence in Donald J. Trump’s presidency before we fall deeper into fascism and moral tragedy.

Neo-Nazis stand off with anti-racist protesters in Charlottesville. Credit: Flickr/Evan Nesterak

Neo-Nazis stand off with anti-racist protesters in Charlottesville. Credit: Flickr/Evan Nesterak

The slide towards bleak historical periods can be difficult to recognise in the moment – often it only seems obvious in retrospect. But it’s hard to miss in the US in this early part of the 21st century.

Dangerous signs are everywhere. In the New Yorker, Robin Wright writes of a coming Civil War. Holocaust survivors are issuing warnings about the similarities of this period to the rise of the Nazi era.

While no two events are the same, there are lessons and events in history that can be used to shine a light on the present. Those lights, if we choose to follow them, can guide us to avoid the tragic errors of the past.

The presidency of Donald J. Trump, hoisted on the shoulders of white supremacists, is a glaringly dangerous period for the US. It’s important to recognise this dangerous mix of moral turpitude, dereliction of duty, and incompetence before we fall deeper into fascism and moral tragedy.

Similarities to Hitler

There are some similarities between both Hitler’s and Trump’s rise to power.

For starters, both rose to power with minority support. The Nazi party received just 3% of the vote in the 1924 parliamentary election; in the 1933 election, the party won 33% of the votes. At his peak, Hitler managed to muster just 39%. (Contrary to myth, he never won a popular election outright.)

Trump took over the Republican Party with a similar style of demagoguery and dumb luck, ultimately winning the presidency with 3 million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton due to the arcane Electoral College process.

Likewise, both Hitler and Trump used decrees as a tool for consolidating authoritarian powers and disorienting the opposition. Trump’s continual issuance of executive orders, starting from the first days of his presidency, has served to not only subvert the normal legislative process, but to destabilise opposition by scattering the efforts of the left. By comparison, Hitler issued more than 400 decrees against Jews over a six-year period, in a constant and brutal decimation of rights, and ultimately, lives.

Trump’s recent move to try to compel the Department of Justice to seize 1.3 million IP addresses on a Trump protest site’s visitor logs is just the most recent nibble at the rights of his opposition. The department was forced to back off that request under pressure, but more efforts will follow.

Both Hitler and Trump have used bullying and threats to keep government officials in line. Nazi supporters intimidated, beat, and assassinated some of their opponents. Trump is no Hitler – not yet – but he’s turned his Twitter account into an intimidation tool and managed to keep the majority of his party in line with him, even with neo-Nazis chanting “Heil Trump” in the streets.

Where Hitler manipulated weak top officials by joining the conservatives to win the majority in parliament, Trump has co-opted GOP leaders by allowing some to call the shots on their favored foreign and domestic policies.

Trump’s rise to power

What were the conditions that brought us to a Donald Trump presidency?

First, Republicans systematically weakened the labor class and their unions with a relentless dismantling of many of their hard-fought rights, beginning in the 1980s during the Reagan administration.

Second, the Democratic Party took labor for granted. During the Clinton administration the ill-conceived North American Free Trade Agreement was signed in 1993, and the World Trade Organization (WTO) was formed in 1995. While both garnered support as a means for more US jobs, the reality was a loss of jobs or a decline in wages for many, causing hourly labor wages to decline from $40-50 to $10-15 an hour in some sectors.

Democrats continued on the same path during the Obama administration, pushing new and even more ambitious trade pacts like the Trans Pacific Partnership.

The result of this decades-long assault? Millions have moved from the middle class to lower middle class and into poverty, while upper corporate executives and stockholders reap the rewards. Is it any wonder that disaffected Democrats moved away from their party?

In his 2004 campaign for president, candidate Howard Dean (full disclosure: one of us privately worked for his campaign in Maryland) recognized the rising anger among the poor and lower-middle class at forces beyond their reach. Dean described his approach in 2003 by saying that he wants to be a candidate for the “guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks.” The corporate media widely panned his description, and yet Dean’s remark predicted Trump’s rise in this last election.

Later, Barack Obama pointed out that same group of Americans at a private campaign fundraiser in California in 2008, albeit in more disparaging terms. “They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations,” Obama suggested, seemingly embodying the exact sort of condescension these voters suspected top Democrats of harboring for them.

Recognised but not addressed, these groups fled the Democrats who failed to acknowledge the degradation of jobs and lives for a large swath of America. Many ran right into the arms of a demagogue.

Charlottesville

Yet recent events prove that it’s not just economic inequality that threatens the foundations of the American society. Also to blame is a resurgent white nationalist movement that’s been emboldened by this administration’s refusal to condemn it. Charlottesville was ground zero in a clash of fascism versus movements for equality, peace, and justice.

Yet for traditionally minded Americans, including many conservatives, seeing the home of Thomas Jefferson overrun by Nazi symbols can be a catalyst for change – if more Republicans find their moral courage and Democrats develop a consensus to begin to address the needs of Americans who have been forgotten.

Trump’s impromptu news conference on August 14 exposed a president denuded of any principles and knowledge of our history. Extolling racism and favoring fascism, Trump solidly demonstrated his unwillingness to change. A few Republicans have begun to publicly express their repugnance, notably Senators Lindsey Graham, Jeff Flake, and Bob Corker. Corker gave perhaps the strongest statement, declaring, “The president has not yet been able to demonstrate the stability nor some of the competence that he needs to demonstrate in order to be successful.”

Where are the rest? Heather Heyer, the young woman who died in Charlottesville when she was mowed over by a fascist terrorist, had more courage in her convictions than any of Trump’s miserable looking staffers and congressional cronies.

The great enablers of Trump must be exposed for their immorality and lack of courage. More members of the Republican Party must gather their courage and come together with Democrats and independents to hold Trump and his lackeys accountable. Meanwhile, progressives need to come up with a compelling left populist alternative to the far right’s racially tinged fascism.

Adil E. Shamoo is an associate fellow of the Institute for Policy Studies, a senior analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus, and the author of Equal Worth – When Humanity Will Have Peace. Bonnie Bricker is a contributor to FPIF.

This article originally appeared on Foreign Policy in Focus.

Republicans Balk at Trump’s Return to Blaming ‘Many Sides’ For Charlottesville

In a combative news conference, Trump backed off from his Monday statements explicitly denouncing the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis and white supremacists for the violence.

US citizens residing in Argentina shout anti-Trump slogans as they protest outside the U.S. Embassy against a visit by US vice president Mike Pence in Buenos Aires, Argentina, August 15, 2017. Credit: Reuters/Marcos Brindicci

US citizens residing in Argentina shout anti-Trump slogans as they protest outside the U.S. Embassy against a visit by US vice president Mike Pence in Buenos Aires, Argentina, August 15, 2017. Credit: Reuters/Marcos Brindicci

Washington/New York: US President Donald Trump inflamed tension after a deadly rally by white nationalists in Virginia by insisting that counter protesters were also to blame, drawing condemnation from some Republican leaders and praise from white supremacists.

In a combative news conference, Trump backed off from his Monday statements explicitly denouncing the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis and white supremacists for the violence that erupted at a “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, and reverted to his weekend contention that “many sides” were to blame.

“You had a group on one side that was bad,” Trump said on Tuesday. “And you had a group on the other side that was also very violent. And nobody wants to say that. But I’ll say it right now.”

Trump later said, “I think there is blame on both sides and I have no doubt about it,” adding that there were “very fine people” on both sides.

At the weekend rally against the removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee, commander of the pro-slavery Confederate army during the US Civil War, many participants were seen carrying firearms, sticks, shields, and lit torches. Some wore helmets.

Counter-protesters came equipped with sticks, helmets and shields.

James Fields, a 20-year-old Ohio man who is said to have harbored Nazi sympathies, was charged with murder after the car he was driving plowed into a crowd of counter protesters, killing 32-year-old Heather Heyer on Saturday and injuring 19.

A memorial service for Heyer is planned in Charlottesville on Wednesday.

Trump‘s remarks drew swift criticism from many Republican leaders.

“No, not the same,” former Massachusetts governor and Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney wrote on Twitter. “One side is racist, bigoted, Nazi. The other opposes racism and bigotry. Morally different universes.”

US senator Marco Rubio of Florida, who vied with Trump for the Republican presidential nomination, also responded in a series of Twitter posts.

“The organizers of events which inspired and led to #charlottesvilleterroristattack are 100% to blame for a number of reasons,” Rubio began.

“Mr. President, you can’t allow #WhiteSupremacists to share only part of the blame. They support idea which cost nation and world so much pain … the #WhiteSupremacy groups will see being assigned only 50 percent of the blame as a win,” Rubio added.

Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke applauded Trump for his “honesty & courage” on Twitter. Richard Spencer, the head of a white nationalist group, wrote on Twitter that he was “proud of him for speaking the truth.”

Richard Trumka, the president of the AFL-CIO labor federation representing 12.5 million workers, resigned from Trump‘s American Manufacturing Council, joining a series of chief executives in doing so.

White House officials hoping to put the controversy behind them, worried the conference would revive and intensify the controversy. Asked about next steps, one official said: “I think next steps are just to stop talking.”

Hours later, the White House sent its regular “evening communications briefing” of talking points on the “news of the day” to Republican lawmakers, copies obtained by multiple news organizations, including CNN and the Atlantic, showed.

The first summary point read: “The President was entirely correct – both sides of the violence in Charlottesville acted inappropriately, and bear some responsibility.”

(Reuters)

Trump Blames ‘Many Sides’ for Charlottesville Violence Again

Trump reverted to his position that both sides were at fault, a day after bowing to pressure to condemn the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazi and white supremacists.

US President Donald Trump answers questions about his responses to the violence, injuries and deaths at the "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville as he talks to the media in the lobby of Trump Tower in Manhattan, New York, U.S., August 15, 2017. Credit: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque

US President Donald Trump answers questions about his responses to the violence, injuries and deaths at the “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville as he talks to the media in the lobby of Trump Tower in Manhattan, New York, U.S., August 15, 2017. Credit: Reuters/Kevin Lamarque

New York: President Donald Trump insisted on Tuesday that left- and right-wing extremists became violent during a weekend rally by white nationalists in Virginia, reigniting a political firestorm over US race relations and his own leadership of a national crisis.

Trump, who drew sharp criticism from Republicans and Democrats for his initial response, reverted on Tuesday to his position that both sides were at fault for the violence, a day after bowing to pressure to explicitly condemn the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazi and white supremacist groups.

Appearing angry and irritated, the president maintained that his original reaction was based on the facts he had at the time. Blame, he said, belonged on both sides.

“You had a group on one side that was bad, and you had a group on the other side that was also very violent. And nobody wants to say that, but I’ll say it right now,” Trump said, referring to right- and left-wing protesters.

From there, the back and forth with reporters turned tense.

“Not all of those people were neo-Nazis, believe me. Not all of those people were white supremacists by any stretch,” Trump said of the participants in the deadly protest. “There was a group on this side. You can call them the left … that came violently attacking the other group. So you can say what you want, but that’s the way it is.”

The violence erupted on Saturday after white nationalists converged in Charlottesville for a “Unite the Right” rally in protest of plans to remove a statue of Robert E. Lee, commander of the pro-slavery Confederate army during the US Civil War.

Many of the rally participants were seen carrying firearms, sticks and shields. Some also wore helmets. Counter-protesters likewise came equipped with sticks, helmets and shields.

The two sides clashed in scattered street brawls before a car plowed into the rally opponents, killing one woman and injuring 19 others. A 20-year-old Ohio man, James Fields, said to have harbored Nazi sympathies, was charged with murder.

Two state police officers also were killed that day in the fiery crash of the helicopter they were flying in as part of crowd-control operations.

‘Many sides’ 

Addressing the melee for the first time on Saturday, Trump denounced hatred and violence “on many sides.” The comment drew sharp criticism across the political spectrum for not explicitly condemning the white nationalists whose presence in the Southern college town was widely seen as having provoked the unrest.

Critics said Trump‘s remarks then belied his reluctance to alienate extreme right-wing organizations, whose followers constitute a devoted segment of his political base despite his disavowal of them.

Yielding two days later to a mounting political furor over his initial response, Trump delivered a follow-up message expressly referring to the “KKK, neo-Nazis and white supremacists and other hate groups” as “repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans.”

Trump‘s detractors dismissed his revised statements as too little too late.

His remarks on Tuesday inflamed the controversy further. Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke immediately applauded Trump on Twitter.

“Thank you President Trump for your honesty & courage to tell the truth about #Charlottesville & condemn the leftist terrorists in BLM/Antifa,” Duke wrote, referring to Black Lives Matter (BLM) and anti-facists.

Democrats seized on Trump‘s latest words as evidence that Trump saw white nationalists and those protesting against them as morally equivalent.

“By saying he is not taking sides, Donald Trump clearly is,” Democratic Senate leader Chuck Schumer of New York, said. “When David Duke and white supremacists cheer your remarks, you’re doing it very, very wrong.”

In a similar vein, Virginia governor Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, said Trump‘s characterization of the violence missed the mark.

“Neo-Nazis, Klansmen and white supremacists came to Charlottesville heavily armed, spewing hatred and looking for a fight. One of them murdered a young woman in an act of domestic terrorism, and two of our finest officers were killed in a tragic accident while serving to protect this community. This was not ‘both sides,'” he said.

Administration officials, hoping to put the controversy behind them after the remarks on Monday, worried that the controversy would now last for days and, potentially, affect the president’s ability to made legislative and policy achievements.

Asked about the White House’s next steps, one official said: “I think next steps are just to stop talking.”

Fallout 

Richard Trumka, president of the AFL-CIO labor federation representing 12.5 million workers, became the latest member of Trump‘s advisory American Manufacturing Council to resign in protest, saying, “We cannot sit on a council for a president who tolerates bigotry and domestic terrorism,” Trumka said. “President Trump‘s remarks today repudiate his forced remarks yesterday about the KKK and neo-Nazis.”

Three other members of the council – the chief executives of pharmaceutical maker Merck & Co Inc, sportswear company Under Armour Inc and computer chipmaker Intel Corp –  resigned on Monday.

In his remarks on Tuesday, Trump also sympathized with protesters seeking to keep Lee’s statue in place but offered no equivalent remarks for those who favored its removal.

“You had people in that group … that were there to protest the taking down of a very, very important statue and the renaming of a park from Robert E. Lee to another name,” Trump said.

Trump also grouped former presidents George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, two of the nation’s founding fathers, together with Confederate leaders such as Lee, Jefferson Davis and Stonewall Jackson, who fought to separate Southern states from the Union, noting that all were slave owners.

“Was George Washington a slave owner? Will George Washington now lose his status? Are we going to take down statues to George Washington? How about Thomas Jefferson? … Because he was a major slave owner,” Trump said.

On Tuesday, Trump explained his initial restrained response by saying: “The statement I made on Saturday, the first statement, was a fine statement, but you don’t make statements that direct unless you know the facts. It takes a little while to get the facts.”

In what became at times a heated exchange with reporters shouting questions, Trump said, “You also had people that were very fine people on both sides.”

He said that while neo-Nazis and white nationalists “should be condemned totally,” Trump said protesters in the other group “also had trouble-makers. And you see them come with the black outfits and with the helmets and with the baseball bats. You got a lot of bad people in the other group too.”

(Reuters)