In the final minutes of last week’s televised presidential debate, a few days before he tested positive for Covid-19, Donald Trump was asked by the moderator, Chris Wallace, whether he would call on his supporters to stay calm and desist from civil unrest in the immediate aftermath of next month’s election.
Trump pointedly declined the invitation. Instead, he replied: “I’m urging my supporters to go into the polls and watch very carefully, because that’s what has to happen. I’m urging them to do it.”
For those who monitor the activities of far-right militia groups and white-supremacist paramilitaries, Trump’s remarks were as welcome as jet fuel being used to quell a wildfire. Indeed, since they were made the FBI launched a series of arrests of militia members and others plotting to kidnap the Michigan governor, Gretchen Whitmer, and attack law enforcement, adding to a sense of a nation spiraling out of control as November’s election approaches.
“The militias will absolutely seize on [Trump’s comments],” said Steven Gardiner, who tracks militias at the progressive thinktank Political Research Associates. “The possibility of armed factions with military-style rifles showing up at polling places is very troubling.”
Devin Burghart, the director of the anti-bigotry organization the Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, had a similar sinking sensation when he heard Trump’s words. “My first thought was ‘Here we go’. This is the stuff of our worst nightmares.”
The US president’s clarion call to his supporters to intervene at polling places on election day comes at a perilous moment. As the country is battered by the combined winds of the pandemic and Trump’s personal battle against the virus, the Black Lives Matter reckoning over racial injustice, and the pending turbulent election, the US is not only more virulently divided than at any time in decades, it is also more heavily armed.
FBI background checks – a direct indicator of gun sales – almost doubled year-on-year this summer, a reflection of the jitters that abound. As America arms itself, deadly weaponry is increasingly finding its way on to the streets, borne by self-styled private militias and culminating in violent clashes that have caused bloodshed in several US cities.
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
