On 3 February 2020, a year ago, I wrote:
Last night I saw a segment on Chris Hayes’s All In with A. C. Thompson of ProPublica and Brandy Zadrozny of NBC. There are no clips that I can find anywhere. I had to pull up the entire program so I could rewatch it and think about it.
But it was was a really good outline of the radical extremists we’re facing in this country and I wanted to be able to talk about it. Radical extremists. This isn’t new. What is new is the idea of a second civil war right out in the mainstream. Our MAGA relatives are all over it, cheering it on.
Thompson said there are a whole spectrum of far-right characters, such as the Boogaloo Bois, who identify as libertarian; the Proud Boys, which he called “an ultra-nationalist street gang”; Qanon (he sort of dismissed this as “just” conspiracy theorists); and the militia types like the Oath Keepers, which are really dangerous because they’re well-trained, often military or law enforcement types. In all cases, their political identity evolves around violence. Thompson also noted that groups that were BLM (pro-police) and previously reluctant to engage have now been radicalized by the events of January 6, 2020.
Zadrozny reminded us that it’s easy to ridicule Qanon but then filled in a lot of violent fantasy detail on that group,* underpinned by their idea of “the storm”—a judgment day when all the people they hate will be marched out and executed publicly. She reminded viewers that this also is not new. Remember the “Jounalist / Rope Tree” T-shirts? Remember the violence at trump rallies? She named other things that were clues, and said journalists who have been reporting this story were absolutely not surprised by anything that happened on January 6th.
When asked for concerns, where it goes from here, Thompson said, “My honest and worried prediction is that there will be an act of mass-casualty terrorism over the next year and that we need to be prepared for that. … There are a lot of people who seek to do harm to this nation, and it’s very easy to get a gun or build a bomb.”**
This is really sobering commentary, and I urge you to seek it out if you have access.
• • •
This was really interesting to read in light of what has happened—and not happened—in the last year.
It also makes me nervous.
I have been called a “hater” to my face more than once by people who have known me for a long time and should know better. And yet … the real haters, to my eyes, are the people-groups mentioned in this commentary—particularly the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys. (Qanon, while not specifically engaging in violence that I know of, yet, has certainly inspired it: remember the young man who showed up at a DC pizza parlor with an AR-15, ready to shoot up the place for harboring child sex trafficking that he’d “learned” about on Qanon websites?)
Those people attacking the Capitol last year, they sure looked hateful to me. But even since that violent day, violence seems to be lurking just below the surface of every public interaction. I’m thinking, say, of those people in Franklin, Tennessee, last August, who harassed medical personnel who spoke at a school board meeting, for example, screaming and banging on their cars as they tried to drive away. I’m thinking of the people who show up at school board meetings sporting yellow stars on their clothing, the sort that Jews were forced to wear by the Nazis. I’m thinking of the spate of bomb threats to historically black colleges and universities that started on 1 February and still continues, which is being investigated as a hate crime. I’m thinking of the hater who took Jews hostage at a synagogue in Dallas, Texas, last month. I’m thinking about trump, speaking at a rally and stirring up the ignorant—that’s hateful.
I actually think calling someone a hater because she doesn’t agree with your politics is pretty hateful too. I’m not proud of being called a hater—it makes me kind of sick, frankly—but I do know where I stand. (On the side of truth/facts, just to start. Democracy. Justice. Kindness. Antiracism. Voting rights. I could go on.)
However, I am angry. And I’ve said this before.
On the same day I watched the interview discussion of radical extremists, Congresswoman Katie Porter was interviewed about what she’d experienced in the Capitol on January 6, 2021. She related a story, now familiar, of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez coming to her office to hide from the mob overrunning the Capitol: Porter welcomed her in and said, “Don’t worry, I’m a mom, I have everything we need.” And AOC responded, “I hope I get to be a mom; I’m afraid I’m going to die today.”
This made me weep out loud in my living room. Not tearing up. Crying. Sobbing.
This is why my rage level is through the roof. It’s the politics of hatred, people.
* They have now also moved into COVID resistance, characterized by alternative treatments such as ivermectin, which have proven to be harmful, and the straight-up crazy stuff like drinking their own urine.
** As we have seen over, and over, and over in this country, to our great sorrow.
Wanderlustful 