Democracy Is Messy-- But Fascism Has Nothing To Do With Democracy

I was just 16 when I got my only paid job ever working for a political campaign. I operated the elevator in Bobby Kennedy's Senate campaign headquarters in Manhattan. I was thinking of Kennedy today in regard to the Trumpist terrorists' pictures I see parading around with their assault weapons protesting public health measures designed to save our country from the pandemic. "Democracy is messy, and it's hard," Kennedy famously said. "It's never easy." I don't remember when he said it or in what context. He was assassinated on June 6, 1968, just as my teenage years ended.

Neither fascism nor political assassination, however, are part of messy democracy. Yesterday the NY Times published an essay by Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Neil MacFarquhar, The Coronavirus Becomes a Battle Cry for U.S. Extremists. Short version: "White supremacists seek to stoke the fear and disruption caused by the pandemic to push their agenda and to recruit. America’s extremists are attempting to turn the coronavirus pandemic into a potent recruiting tool both in the deep corners of the internet and on the streets of state capitals by twisting the public health crisis to bolster their white supremacist, anti-government agenda."

I admire how Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer is standing up to them and I was happily surprised to see Mississippi Tate Reeves ignore them and back off from his open-up-the-state decision after he saw the pandemic infections badly spiking in his state. And I despise how California Governor Gavin Newsom is terrorized by them-- although maybe the pretend Sir Galahad is more terrorized by his corporate financiers than by the clowns-in-camoflage.

Although the protests that have broken out across the country have drawn out a wide variety of people pressing to lift stay-at-home orders, the presence of extremists cannot be missed, with their anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic signs and coded messages aimed at inspiring the faithful, say those who track such movements.

April is typically a busy month for white supremacists. There is Hitler’s birthday, which they contort into a celebration. There is the anniversary of the Oklahoma City bombing, the domestic attack 25 years ago that killed 168 people and still serves as a rallying call for new extremist recruits.

But this April, something else overshadowed those chilling milestones. It was the coronavirus, and the disruption it wreaked on society, that became the extremists’ battle cry.

Embellishing Covid-19 developments to fit their usual agenda, extremists spread disinformation on the transmission of the virus and disparage stay-at-home orders as “medical martial law”-- the long-anticipated advent of a totalitarian state.

“They are being very effective in capitalizing on the pandemic,” said Devin Burghart, a veteran researcher of white nationalists who runs the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, a Seattle-based research center on far right movements.

What success the groups have had in finding fresh recruits is not yet clear, but new research indicates a significant jump in people consuming extremist material while under lockdown. Various violent incidents have been linked to white supremacist or anti-government perpetrators enraged over aspects of the pandemic.

The New Jersey Office of Homeland Security and Preparedness said in March that white supremacists have encouraged followers to conduct attacks during the crisis to incite fear and target ethnic minorities and immigrants. “We have noticed domestic extremist groups taking advantage of the Covid-19 pandemic by spreading disinformation,” Jared M. Maples, its director, said in a statement. The coronavirus has been dismissed as a hoax, painted as a Jewish-run conspiracy and, alternatively, described as a disease spread by nonwhite immigrants, he said.

Last month, the Department of Homeland Security warned law enforcement officials throughout the United States of the mobilization of violent extremists in response to stay-at-home measures, according to a senior law enforcement official and a congressional staff member, who were not authorized to discuss the warning publicly.

A department memo dated April 23 noted the recent arrests of individuals who had threatened government officials imposing coronavirus-related regulations. The memo was distributed to law enforcement “fusion centers” that counter terrorism nationwide and to congressional committees, the officials said.

Extremist organizations habitually try to exploit any crisis to further their aims. While not monolithic, a spectrum of organizations-- from anti-immigrant groups to those with a variety of grievances and those that overtly espouse violence-- found something to like about the coronavirus.

“They view it as a chance to turn people,” said Megan Squire, a professor at Elon University in North Carolina who tracks online extremist chatter.

New material sprouts regularly on Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, while those exiled from mainstream platforms migrate to less-policed venues, including Telegram, Reddit, 4chan and gaming sites.

One subculture known as “accelerationists” lives in constant expectation of a race war that will topple the federal government. The pandemic became the latest in a long line of possible igniters.

Some label their expected second civil war “the boogaloo,” and experts have tracked a spike in interest in the term on social media, plus a proliferation of advice on how to prepare.

The name is a pop culture reference derived from a 1984 movie flop that became a cult classic called “Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo.” It went through various mutations and emerged sometimes as the “Big Igloo or the “Big Luau.” That is why adherents sometimes wear Hawaiian shirts, say those who track them. Many such shirts were in evidence when armed protesters stormed the state capital in Lansing, Mich., Thursday and they have appeared in rallies across the country.

Enthusiasts riff on the name, calling themselves “boojihadeen” or “the boog.” Not all those in the “boogaloo” movement are white supremacists, but groups who track hate culture find some overlap in terms of Nazi iconography and other extremist symbols.

There are some 125 such groups on Facebook, more than 60 percent created this year, according to a report from the Tech Transparency Project of the Campaign for Accountability, a nonprofit watchdog group.

Facebook, which had previously said it wrestled with the term because it is also the name of a popular music genre, issued a statement on Friday saying it would remove posts that link the term to violence. “We’re updating our policies to prohibit the use of these terms when accompanied by statements and images depicting armed violence,” said a Facebook spokesman, who spoke on the condition of not being identified, as per company policy.

A common thread found on the internet is that Americans might soon be pitted against their government. In one YouTube video called Top 5 Boogaloo Guns, which has more than 340,000 views, the host warns of “a tyrannical government and you have got to take to the streets and take care of business.” The speaker was wearing a Hawaiian shirt decorated with pineapples and grenades.

Engagement with violent extremist content online in states with extended stay-at-home orders grew 21 percent in early April compared with the eight previous months, according to a report by Moonshot CVE, a start-up that monitors extremist searches on Google.

ISD Global, a London think tank that studies American social media, found that subscriptions to extremist channels also jumped markedly.

There is special concern that impressionable adolescents, bored and spending countless hours online, will be swayed by the hateful material.

This concern was amplified by the revelation in the Estonian newspaper Eesti Ekspress that a leader of a neo-Nazi organization called the Feuerkrieg Division was 13 years old. He had discussed setting up a terrorist training camp, shared bomb-making information and vehemently opposed a proposed merger with the Atomwaffen Division, another accelerationist group that endorses violence.

After President Trump tweeted that he was temporarily stopping immigration in response to the pandemic, the mood among white power advocates ranged from jubilation to cautious optimism.

When Mr. Trump’s suspension proved temporary, some still celebrated that a once fringe talking point had gone mainstream, while others expressed disappointment online.

“Whoop-dee-do,” wrote one critic on a Telegram channel frequented by white supremacists.

Several recent plots have been linked to people that frequented such discussions.

Timothy R. Wilson, 36, an extremist suspected of planning an attack on a Missouri hospital, was killed in a shootout with F.B.I. agents in late March. An F.B.I. statement said he was “motivated by racial, religious, and anti-government animus.”

The federal government sought to harness the pandemic as an “excuse to destroy our people,” Mr. Wilson wrote on an online channel for violent neo-Nazi groups, Dr. Squire said, while also describing it as a Jewish “power grab.”

An Arkansas man, Aaron Swenson, 36, had used an alias to “like” more than a dozen “boogaloo” Facebook pages, said the Tech Transparency Project report. He then went on Facebook Live on April 12 to announce that he was hunting for a law enforcement officer to ambush and execute in Texarkana, Texas, where the police arrested him, according to a police statement.

Mr. Swenson, who remains in jail on $85,000 bail, was charged with making terroristic threats, evading capture and carrying a weapon illegally. He plans to enter a plea of not guilty, said Rick Shumaker, the chief public defender for Bowie County, Texas. No court date has been set.

In a twist, the coronavirus prompted at least one white supremacist to reinvent himself as a disease expert.

Previously, Tom Kawczynski advocated turning New England into a white-run monarchy. After the pandemic erupted, he recast himself as a virus expert, starting a “Coronavirus Central” podcast that is among the most popular on coronavirus themes offered by Apple.

Mr. Kawczynski’s former sentiments did not entirely disappear. With virus cases expanding in New York and elsewhere nearby in early April, he suggested on Twitter that New England had to work “independently for survival.”

Tom Guild is the progressive alternative to one of the half dozen most right-wing Democrats in Congress, Blue Dog Kendra Horn. Tom teaches law at Oklahoma City University and, after armed right-wing terrorists succeeded in forcing Stillwater to reverse its ruling mandating all people using the newly reopened salons, barber shops, restaurants, gyms, museums, movie theaters, etc, I asked him about the rise of fascism during the pandemic. He told me that "It is very concerning that America has a wobbly national government, led by a president who seems to be in over his head-- way over his head. When someone seriously suggests to his chosen scientific experts at a public press conference that household disinfectants can be injected or ingested by humans to kill the coronavirus, he’s clearly not only ignorant but not firing on all cylinders. Wealth and income inequality create a giant chasm between a tiny group of haves and a huge cohort of have nots and create social unrest and destabilization. Massive poverty magnified by unemployment headed to twenty-five percent in a short period of eight weeks creates the mass instability that is fertile soil for crackpots, extremists, and demagogues. Hopefully people’s better angels will prevail. However, the current crisis has accentuated preexisting problems and given racists, anti-Semites, the KKK, xenophobes, and demagogues a climate in which to sow their hate, unleash their venom, and try to manipulate and take advantage of people who in what used to pass for ordinary times wouldn’t give them the time of day. It’s an unsteady, wobbly, and fertile stage for crackpots to exploit. I want to hope that America is better than this and I think rational thinking will prevail. But it is scary to imagine that the haters could make headway in a difficult and painful time in our country’s history. My favorite prayer is, 'God please grant me patience, and could you please hurry.'"





Eva Putzova, an Arizona progressive, taking on a conservative Blue Dog incumbent, also noted that "The terrorist threats from white supremacists, anti-semites, and right wing extremists, encouraged by the President with a wink and a nod, are quite disturbing. The COVID-19 pandemic and stay-at-home orders have  provided them with an excuse to target immigrants, government officials, liberals, Jews, and others as a threat to their 'way of life' they believe. One difficulty in responding to their armed incursions into public spaces is that most people are adhering to the public health recommendation to stay home-- so the streets belong to those who flout those recommendations. We need more public officials to speak out and condemn these armed mobs of white extremists, and we need to insist that law enforcement protect public officials and prosecute those who threaten them in accordance with the law. But most importantly, we need a resurgence of democratic involvement at all levels of society to counter the armed thuggery of the few. This means voting of course, but it also means other forms of active, creative, political  participation consistent with the current constraints of public health restrictions. We simply cannot allow fascist mobs to take over all public spaces while the majority of us are avoiding others and trying to stay safe."

My uncle witnessed Mussolini's final splash on the world stage