US Politics

In the United States, a “demoncrat” is an occasional slur among conservatives for a Democratic Party politician or voter, implying that the party is, well, demonic.

While demoncrat is not quite popular usage, the concept, it turns out, is widespread. A recent poll by the Public Religion Research Institute indicates that 18 per cent of Americans believe that the “government, media and financial worlds in the U.S. are controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who run a global child sex-trafficking operation.”

Similar numbers believe “a storm is coming soon” and that “true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.”

As with the original 2016 Pizzagate conspiracy — in which Democratic officials, including Hillary Clinton, were accused of involvement in child sex-trafficking — and the larger QAnon conspiracy movement, the enemies are Democratic Party politicians or voters. How did we get here?

Apocalyptic perspectives

Conservative propaganda organs such as Fox News, One America News Network and Newsmax circulate these fantasies to their viewers, but I would like to suggest they do not originate there. Their beginnings may have more to do with apocalypse, an important element of Christian theology that is dominant among conservative white Christians, especially evangelicals.

Apocalypse is cluster of ideas that characterizes two books in the Bible: Daniel and Revelation. The context for both books were similar theological crises: How was it that God’s people — Jews or followers of Jesus — could suffer so under a hostile empire?

The Book of Daniel was written in the context of oppression. In the 160s BCE, Seleucid emperor Antiochus IV forbade Jews from circumcising their boys. The sacred Jerusalem temple may have been violated with a statue of Zeus. A military parade turned into a planned massacre, with Jews murdered or sold into slavery.

The Christian right draw from apocalyptic narratives of good versus evil.
(Shutterstock)

While it’s not as clear what kinds of persecutions early followers of Jesus faced in the Roman Empire, the Book of Revelation also addressed questions of why God allowed his followers to face misery and destruction. In the apocalyptic theology they articulated, Daniel and Revelation hit upon some new answers to the problem of suffering.

God, it was thought, had cosmic enemies whose servants control the human empires that persecuted God’s people. God would intervene soon in a cosmic battle to restore his kingdom, bringing reward or punishment in an afterlife.

Apocalypse repopulated the cosmos with divine beings, including the invisible powers that sponsored their political opponents. What marks apocalyptic theology is this extreme moral dualism, in which one’s political opponents are the enemies of God, controlled by demonic forces.

While apocalyptic theology has always been part of Christianity, it was rejuvenated in the 19th century and became dominant in white evangelicalism. It informs the world view of conservative white Christians, many of whom regard their political opponents in the Democratic Party as demonically controlled — even worshippers of Satan.

Democracy “left behind”

Democracy and apocalypse are incompatible. The Left Behind series, by Christian fundamentalist authors Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins, is a fictionalization of the apocalyptic events portrayed in the Book of Revelation.

In the novels, the charismatic Antichrist is elected as the secretary general of the United Nations where he imposes a one-world religion, takes away Christians’ religious freedoms and violently persecutes believers. Conspiring behind the scenes with international financiers — and aided by hypnosis — he rises to power through democratic elections that he manipulates.

Elections, in other words, do not confer legitimacy. The authors, as well as the series’ Christian characters and readers, understand the larger supernatural forces conspiring behind elections: The demonic manipulates the democratic. And aside from demons, apocalypse breaks democracy’s norms because extreme moral dualism delegitimizes one’s opponents.

British director Vic Armstrong directs the 2014 production of Left Behind, starring Nicolas Cage.

In a new research article, I argue that Left Behind illuminates why conservative white Christians have come to imagine themselves as persecuted: they have been compelled in recent decades to share political and cultural power with other groups. With 80 million copies of the series sold, Left Behind both reflects and influences readers in its mode of apocalyptic politics, where political opponents are portrayed as the servants of Satan who must be resisted, sometimes violently.

Read more:
Evangelical leaders like Billy Graham and Jerry Falwell Sr. have long talked of conspiracies against God’s chosen – those ideas are finding resonance today

Disinformation researcher Abbie Richards categorizes different conspiracy theories.
(Abbie Richards), CC BY

Abbie Richards, an American disinformation researcher, recently ranked contemporary conspiracy theories. It is no accident that some of the conspiracy theories most detached from reality and most dangerous have Satanic or religious components in which the world is ruled by a “supernaturally powerful group.” Such conspiracies are descendants of — or close cousins to — apocalypse.

But even in the absence of belief in demons, apocalyptic politics marks the conspiracy theories behind the “Big Lie” that the 2020 election was stolen from President Trump. And conspiracy theories invite counter conspiracies.

Read more:
One year after the January 6 Capitol attack, the US is still dealing with the fallout from Trump’s ‘Big Lie’

Rolling Stone recently reported new allegations in the investigation of the Jan. 6 insurrection that “Stop the Steal” rally organizers were planning with members of Congress and White House officials.

Chief of Staff Mark Meadows developed a PowerPoint to share plans to manipulate America’s creaky electoral machinery to overturn the democratic will of the voters and to swear in the defeated Donald Trump for a second term.

In apocalyptic politics, all uses of power by the good side are considered fair. It contends that the demoncrats, illegitimate even if elected, must be prevented from seizing power from God’s chosen people in his favoured nation. More

Extremist groups continue to ‘metastasize and recruit’ after Capitol attack, study findsThe report says that while some groups were gripped with paranoia by the arrests, others began targeting local politics In the year since the 6 January insurrection, many US extremist groups haven’t fully recovered from blows landed by increased scrutiny of law enforcement and purges from big tech social media platforms, a new report has found.Will the hundreds of Capitol rioters in court ever be held truly accountable?Read moreThe research, by the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab, found that 12 months after the attack on the Capitol by a pro-Trump mob some far-right groups had been gripped by paranoia as authorities traced and arrested participants. But others had reorganized, often with an emphasis on local-level politics and a developing eco-system of far-right social media.The report warned some groups have “made troubling progress by shifting to alternative online platforms, embracing rhetoric to engage more broadly with the mainstream conservative base and engaging in new political activities, particularly public health and education issues at the local level”.The report’s author, Jared Holt, combined investigative reporting along with monitoring and analysis of open source information to produce a report on the characteristics of US extremism movements a year after the Capitol attack.The report details how extremist movements were riddled with paranoia following the capitol riot, with members holding widespread suspicion of each other and law enforcement, leading many members to be discouraged from attending public events.Big tech companies also purged many extremists off their platforms, forcing them to disperse across the internet on to smaller, more obscure sites, without a unifying place to congregate online. The Guardian has reported how the adoption of smaller platforms and less sophisticated alt-tech made extremists vulnerable to data scrapes, breaches and hacks.The report links how some entrepreneurs have responded by creating alternative platforms, independent from current mainstream digital providers. The report quotes the Gab chief executive, Anrew Torba, who says he is trying to build a “parallel Christian economy”.The report warns of the rise of far-right influencers inside these alternative social media platforms and the dangers that they could bring.It said: “These developments offer extremists sufficient conditions to continue metastasizing and recruiting. Though most online tools adopted by extremists enable them to reach smaller audiences than those possible on mainstream social media, they may be more effective in intensifying the radicalization of individuals already engaged with them.”Some extremist movements have tried to re-enter the mainstream by hitching on to suburban conservative causes, even adopting traditional political methods like forming non-profits, phone banking and hosting conferences.“As fruitful opportunity for creating outrage and hate, extremists have embraced emotionally charged social issues as an entry vehicle into mainstream online discourse,” the report said.Far-right figures like the former top Trump aide Steven Bannon have encouraged a “precinct by precinct” strategy, a ground-up approach that focuses on local politics. The Guardian recently reported how far-right groups have shifted their focus to local communities.TopicsUS Capitol attackUS politicsThe far rightnewsReuse this content More

Bobby Rush, only politician to win against Obama, to retire from CongressDemocratic representative from Illinois faced Obama in a House primary in 2000 and beat him by more than 30 points The only politician ever to beat Barack Obama will retire from the US Congress at the end of the year.Marjorie Taylor Greene a ‘Democrat or an idiot’, fellow Republican saysRead moreBobby Rush, a Democratic representative from Illinois, faced Obama in a House primary in 2000 – and beat him by more than 30 points. Obama went on to win a US Senate seat in 2004 and become America’s first Black president five years later.Rush said Obama, then 38, “was blinded by his ambition” and moved too soon, against the wrong target. Obama said he had his “rear end handed to me”.Rush, 75 and first elected to Congress in 1992, is a minister and social activist who co-founded the Illinois Black Panther party and was described by Politico on Monday as “a legend in Chicago politics”.In a video, he said: “I have been reassigned. Actually, I’m not retiring, I’m returning home. I’m returning to my church. I’m returning to my family. I have grandchildren. I’m returning to my passion.“I will be in public life. I will be working hand in hand with someone who will replace me.”Rush’s district is solidly Democratic but political rune-readers still found worrying signs for the national party. Rush is the 24th Democrat to announce that they will not run in 2022. Only 11 Republicans have said the same.Two of those, Adam Kinzinger of Illinois and Anthony Gonzalez of Ohio, voted to impeach Donald Trump over the Capitol riot and subsequently concluded they had no place in a party he dominates.Republicans are favored to take back the House in November – despite their supporters having physically attacked it, in an attempt to overturn the presidential election, on 6 January last year.Rush made headlines during his time in Congress. In 2012, after the shooting death in Florida of the Black teenager Trayvon Martin, he showed solidarity by wearing a hooded sweatshirt on the House floor.“Racial profiling has to stop,” he said. “Just because someone wears a hoodie does not make them a hoodlum.”It earned Rush a reprimand for violating rules regarding wearing hats in the chamber.Martin’s father, Tracy Martin, praised Rush and told the Washington Post: “This is something that needs to be talked about … This is a country of freedom of speech.” Rush could raise eyebrows with sharp comments, as when he dismissed an anti-violence plan by an Illinois Republican senator, Mark Kirk, as a simplistic “white boy” solution to a complex problem.Congressman Bobby Rush escorted off House floor for wearing hoodieRead moreHe also pushed legislation designating lynching as a hate crime, named for Emmett Till, a Black Chicago teen whose killing in 1955 fueled the civil rights movement.Born in Georgia, Rush served in the US army and became involved in civil rights campaigning. In 1969, he was arrested and convicted on a weapons charge.In his video on Tuesday, he said: “My faith tells me that there’s a reason I’m still here. By all rights, I should have been murdered on 5 December 1969, the day after the police assassinated [the Black Panthers leader] Fred Hampton.“They came for me the next day, shot down my door, but by the grace of God my family and I were not home.”Elected as a Chicago alderman, he made an unsuccessful bid for mayor before entering Congress. Just before the 2000 primary against Obama, one of Rush’s sons was shot dead. Rush subsequently focused on gun control.He is also a cancer survivor.“I am not leaving the battlefield,” he said. “I am going to be an activist as long as I’m here in the land of the living, and I will be making my voice heard in the public realm – from the pulpit, in the community, and in the halls of power.”TopicsUS CongressDemocratsIllinoisBarack ObamaUS politicsnewsReuse this content More

One year ago, some witnesses to the assault on the Capitol building in Washington, D.C., referenced zombies when describing the mayhem as the mob of Donald Trump supporters broke into the building and people sought safety.

“It was like something out of a zombie movie,” recalled a photographer who was at the scene, speaking of seeing hordes of rioters. Similarly, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said it “almost felt like a zombie movie” as she described hiding and seeking shelter.

In the 20 years that zombie apocalypse narratives have grown and reached critical mass in popular media, such comparisons at an insurrection at the seat of American democracy — where five people died and scores more were injured and traumatized — are disturbing, but unsurprising.

More significant, however, is that zombie apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic narratives have become popular during the same economic and cultural currents that gave rise to Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement and his presidency.

Rioters loyal to Donald Trump climb the west wall of the the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021.
(AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Glut of post-apocalyptic narratives

Depictions of the end of civilization on Earth, especially after the advent of nuclear weapons, have often focused on the spectacle of disaster, as discussed by writer Susan Sontag in her classic 1965 essay “The Imagination of Disaster.”

In many post-apocalyptic narratives that have become prevalent in the past two decades, like Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road or the television series The Walking Dead, the actual disaster itself is less significant than life in the aftermath.

Literature scholar Connor Pitetti notes this diversification of the apocalyptic imagination in his essay “The Uses of the End of the World: Apocalypse and Postapocalypse as Narrative Modes.” He writes that in the 21st century, narratives about the bomb have been joined by those pertaining to more diverse “eschatological powers” — forces bound in some transcendent and otherworldly way with end times and the final history of humankind.

Actors portraying zombies in ‘The Walking Dead’ rehearse at Universal Studios Hollywood in Los Angeles, in June 2016.
(AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Cultural critic Laurie Penny writes that “more post-apocalyptic entertainment has come out in the beginning of this century than in the entirety of the last one.”

Broken civilization?

But why should this be the case? Some scholars of history, literature and culture suggest that if people come to believe civilization as we know it is irreparably broken, the prospect of its end may become an appealing fantasy.

One factor may be the desire for alternatives in a world where contemporary consumer capitalism is often presumed to be inevitable, rather than a human choice, as noted by the late historian Tony Judt in his book Ill Fares the Land.

It becomes easier, says literary critic Fredric Jameson, “to imagine the thoroughgoing deterioration of the Earth and of nature than the breakdown of capitalism” — or even
“to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism,”
in the words of cultural critic Mark Fisher.

Economic insecurity, inequality at play

Writing about the dangers posed by Trumpism, interdisciplinary political scientist Thomas Homer-Dixon notes the key factors giving rise to it “include stagnating middle-class incomes, chronic economic insecurity and rising inequality.” Additionally, he writes, while “returns to labour have stagnated and returns to capital have soared,”
right-wing ideologues inflamed white fears that whites are being “replaced.”

Trump’s principally white constituency views the increasing diversification of the American populace as a threat.

Smoke fills the walkway outside the Senate chamber as rioters are confronted by U.S. Capitol Police officers inside the Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021.
(AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

During his campaign, Trump — elected amid this populist, nativist backlash — vowed to be a wrecking ball laying waste to the edifices of the Washington, D.C., establishment. The sentiment was similarly voiced by his former senior strategist Steve Bannon, who in 2017 characterized Trump as a “blunt instrument” with which to “deconstruct the administrative state.”

This appetite for destruction wasn’t Trump’s creation; rather, Trump has given voice and license to the forces of reaction and backlash.

Reaction, backlash

A sense of perverse pleasure in imagining the end of democratic law and order was evident in the Capitol assault a year ago, especially in the often absurd and mythically styled costuming of some of the insurgents. It ranged from sinister white supremacist, extremist paramilitary garb to the familiar 1776 getup of Tea Partiers, but also vaguely frontiersman-like furs and pelts, and of course the pseudo-tribal cosplay of Jacob Chansley, the notorious QAnon shaman.

As news footage from the day shows, bizarre outfits did not mitigate the rage and violence that marked the attempted coup. Nor do they detract from the dangers posed by the MAGA movement.

Commentators have noted how the extremist ideologies of Trump supporters are entwined with a revival of religious impulses. These are often focused on stark contrasts between goodness and evil and the possession of secret knowledge that fuels conspiracy theories and “end times” apocalyptic speculation.

Read more:
QAnon and the storm of the U.S. Capitol: The offline effect of online conspiracy theories

Seeking authenticity in ashes

Penny argues that the proliferation of apocalyptic narratives exist “somewhere between wish fulfilment and trauma rehearsal.”

An example of this can be seen in discussion groups and message boards enthusing over the prospect of a zombie apocalypse.

A common refrain, widely merchandized on decals, T-shirts, mugs and beyond, has become: “The hardest part of the zombie apocalypse will be pretending I’m not excited.”

Such statements reveal a sort of hopeful nihilism: a sensibility that seeks, gleefully, to demolish and destroy in the vague assumption that life in the ashes will be better, truer and more authentic.

In a zombie apocalypse, this may be seen in characters who come into their own as hyper-competent bad asses when resisting zombies (a trope notably parodied in the British zombie comedy Shaun of the Dead), but also characters who face zombie enemies against whom violence is not merely sanctioned but morally imperative.

The Capitol dome is seen beyond a perimeter security fence at sunrise in Washington, D.C., in March 2021.
(AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Zombie warnings

So have the zombies been trying to warn us about Trumpism this whole time?

The question is not nearly as glib as it seems. Cultural preoccupations, such as the disaster films Sontag wrote about in 1965, almost invariably provide a window into societal anxieties and fears on one hand, and wishes and desires on the other. Unfortunately, such insights often only reveal themselves with the benefit of hindsight.

Sontag’s writing articulated the pervasive fear imbued by the Cold War’s threat of nuclear war. At the same time, however, they expressed faith that societal institutions — government, the military, science — would prevail.

Sadly, our obsession with post-apocalyptic scenarios is largely borne of the loss of such faith. More

One year ago, some witnesses to the assault on the Capitol building in Washington, D.C., referenced zombies when describing the mayhem as the mob of Donald Trump supporters broke into the building and people sought safety.

“It was like something out of a zombie movie,” recalled a photographer who was at the scene, speaking of seeing hordes of rioters. Similarly, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said it “almost felt like a zombie movie” as she described hiding and seeking shelter.

In the 20 years that zombie apocalypse narratives have grown and reached critical mass in popular media, such comparisons at an insurrection at the seat of American democracy — where five people died and scores more were injured and traumatized — are disturbing, but unsurprising.

More significant, however, is that zombie apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic narratives have become popular during the same economic and cultural currents that gave rise to Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) movement and his presidency.

Rioters loyal to Donald Trump climb the west wall of the the U.S. Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021.
(AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

Glut of post-apocalyptic narratives

Depictions of the end of civilization on Earth, especially after the advent of nuclear weapons, have often focused on the spectacle of disaster, as discussed by writer Susan Sontag in her classic 1965 essay “The Imagination of Disaster.”

In many post-apocalyptic narratives that have become prevalent in the past two decades, like Cormac McCarthy’s novel The Road or the television series The Walking Dead, the actual disaster itself is less significant than life in the aftermath.

Literature scholar Connor Pitetti notes this diversification of the apocalyptic imagination in his essay “The Uses of the End of the World: Apocalypse and Postapocalypse as Narrative Modes.” He writes that in the 21st century, narratives about the bomb have been joined by those pertaining to more diverse “eschatological powers” — forces bound in some transcendent and otherworldly way with end times and the final history of humankind.

Actors portraying zombies in ‘The Walking Dead’ rehearse at Universal Studios Hollywood in Los Angeles, in June 2016.
(AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

Cultural critic Laurie Penny writes that “more post-apocalyptic entertainment has come out in the beginning of this century than in the entirety of the last one.”

Broken civilization?

But why should this be the case? Some scholars of history, literature and culture suggest that if people come to believe civilization as we know it is irreparably broken, the prospect of its end may become an appealing fantasy.

One factor may be the desire for alternatives in a world where contemporary consumer capitalism is often presumed to be inevitable, rather than a human choice, as noted by the late historian Tony Judt in his book Ill Fares the Land.

It becomes easier, says literary critic Fredric Jameson, “to imagine the thoroughgoing deterioration of the Earth and of nature than the breakdown of capitalism” — or even
“to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism,”
in the words of cultural critic Mark Fisher.

Economic insecurity, inequality at play

Writing about the dangers posed by Trumpism, interdisciplinary political scientist Thomas Homer-Dixon notes the key factors giving rise to it “include stagnating middle-class incomes, chronic economic insecurity and rising inequality.” Additionally, he writes, while “returns to labour have stagnated and returns to capital have soared,”
right-wing ideologues inflamed white fears that whites are being “replaced.”

Trump’s principally white constituency views the increasing diversification of the American populace as a threat.

Smoke fills the walkway outside the Senate chamber as rioters are confronted by U.S. Capitol Police officers inside the Capitol in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021.
(AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta)

During his campaign, Trump — elected amid this populist, nativist backlash — vowed to be a wrecking ball laying waste to the edifices of the Washington, D.C., establishment. The sentiment was similarly voiced by his former senior strategist Steve Bannon, who in 2017 characterized Trump as a “blunt instrument” with which to “deconstruct the administrative state.”

This appetite for destruction wasn’t Trump’s creation; rather, Trump has given voice and license to the forces of reaction and backlash.

Reaction, backlash

A sense of perverse pleasure in imagining the end of democratic law and order was evident in the Capitol assault a year ago, especially in the often absurd and mythically styled costuming of some of the insurgents. It ranged from sinister white supremacist, extremist paramilitary garb to the familiar 1776 getup of Tea Partiers, but also vaguely frontiersman-like furs and pelts, and of course the pseudo-tribal cosplay of Jacob Chansley, the notorious QAnon shaman.

As news footage from the day shows, bizarre outfits did not mitigate the rage and violence that marked the attempted coup. Nor do they detract from the dangers posed by the MAGA movement.

Commentators have noted how the extremist ideologies of Trump supporters are entwined with a revival of religious impulses. These are often focused on stark contrasts between goodness and evil and the possession of secret knowledge that fuels conspiracy theories and “end times” apocalyptic speculation.

Read more:
QAnon and the storm of the U.S. Capitol: The offline effect of online conspiracy theories

Seeking authenticity in ashes

Penny argues that the proliferation of apocalyptic narratives exist “somewhere between wish fulfilment and trauma rehearsal.”

An example of this can be seen in discussion groups and message boards enthusing over the prospect of a zombie apocalypse.

A common refrain, widely merchandized on decals, T-shirts, mugs and beyond, has become: “The hardest part of the zombie apocalypse will be pretending I’m not excited.”

Such statements reveal a sort of hopeful nihilism: a sensibility that seeks, gleefully, to demolish and destroy in the vague assumption that life in the ashes will be better, truer and more authentic.

In a zombie apocalypse, this may be seen in characters who come into their own as hyper-competent bad asses when resisting zombies (a trope notably parodied in the British zombie comedy Shaun of the Dead), but also characters who face zombie enemies against whom violence is not merely sanctioned but morally imperative.

The Capitol dome is seen beyond a perimeter security fence at sunrise in Washington, D.C., in March 2021.
(AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

Zombie warnings

So have the zombies been trying to warn us about Trumpism this whole time?

The question is not nearly as glib as it seems. Cultural preoccupations, such as the disaster films Sontag wrote about in 1965, almost invariably provide a window into societal anxieties and fears on one hand, and wishes and desires on the other. Unfortunately, such insights often only reveal themselves with the benefit of hindsight.

Sontag’s writing articulated the pervasive fear imbued by the Cold War’s threat of nuclear war. At the same time, however, they expressed faith that societal institutions — government, the military, science — would prevail.

Sadly, our obsession with post-apocalyptic scenarios is largely borne of the loss of such faith. More

Marjorie Taylor Greene a ‘Democrat or an idiot’, fellow Republican saysCongressman Dan Crenshaw throws barb at congresswoman in spat over his support for using Fema to operate Covid testing sites The extremist Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene “might be a Democrat – or just an idiot” – according to a fellow hardline conservative.US reports global record of more than 1m daily Covid casesRead moreDan Crenshaw, a Texas congressman and former Navy Seal, threw the barb back at the Georgia congresswoman in a spat over his support for using the Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) to operate Covid testing sites.The US is experiencing a crippling surge of Covid cases thanks to the infectious Omicron variant, with more than 1m recorded on Monday and lack of access to testing hampering state and federal responses.Greene has consistently spread Covid conspiracy theories. On Sunday, she was permanently suspended from Twitter, for spreading misinformation.That drew support from Donald Trump, who without discernible irony called Twitter “a disgrace to democracy”, said Greene had “a huge constituency of honest, patriotic, hard-working people”, and added: “Keep fighting, Marjorie!”Regardless, on Monday Greene was temporarily suspended from Facebook, for spreading misinformation.She took aim at Crenshaw on Instagram, writing: “No Fema should not set up testing sites to check for Omicron sneezes, coughs and runny noses.“And we don’t need Fema in hospitals, they should hire back all the unvaccinated [healthcare workers] they fired.“He needs to stop calling himself conservative, he’s hurting our brand.”Crenshaw responded on Instagram, saying: “Hey, Marjorie, if suggesting we should follow Trump policy instead of Biden mandates makes you mad, then you might be a Democrat – or just an idiot.”Greene has been repeatedly fined for failing to wear a mask on the floor of the House of Representatives.Crenshaw, however, has his own history of provocative behaviour.As the Houston Chronicle pointed out, “Before calling for federally funded testing sites, Crenshaw used to share wild posts to social media, before Greene took office, including posting action movie-style videos of him beating up Antifa members.”More than 827,000 people have died in the US from Covid-19.TopicsRepublicansUS politicsOmicron variantCoronavirusnewsReuse this content More

Inside the FBI’s Capitol riot investigation: will the attackers be held accountable? As Republicans spread a revisionist history of the insurrection, its perpetrators are celebrated and even elected to public officeIt’s been one year since a mob of Donald Trump supporters stormed the United States Capitol, as the “stop the steal” rally demanding to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election turned into a deadly insurrection.After the attack, the Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation mobilized one of the largest criminal investigations in American history. Those efforts have so far resulted in more than 700 federal cases and counting, with more suspects expected to be charged. But for all that we have learned about the insurrection and the people who took part in it, crucial questions remain about the fallout of the attack for the far right and what it means to hold its perpetrators accountable.Federal prosecutors want the arrests and convictions of those responsible to act as a deterrent against extremism and future attempts to undermine democracy, experts say, but despite more than 150 guilty pleas so far, the legacy of 6 January is already contentious. A judicial debate has emerged over the appropriate sentencing for rioters, while trials in the coming months will test whether prosecutors can secure convictions on more serious charges facing far-right extremists.The fundamental understanding of what happened on 6 January is also being increasingly contested, as Republican lawmakers and rightwing media attempt to whitewash the events and reframe the insurrection as an act of justified political protest. More than any court case, researchers say, this revisionist narrative may have long-lasting implications for the far right and for political violence in America.The suspectsIn the months after the insurrection, law enforcement officials investigated hours upon hours of videos from the day, thousands of social media profiles and hundreds of thousands of tips from the public. They have arrested hundreds, sometimes raiding homes where suspects had stockpiled weapons and ammunition.As the arrests rolled in, researchers began to get a more complete picture of who was involved in the attack. The people charged came to Washington DC from nearly every state in the union, and ranged from teenagers to senior citizens. Beyond sharing a fervent support for Trump and belief in election conspiracies, no single profile has emerged.Overall the suspects are overwhelmingly male – about 80% according to research from George Washington University’s project on extremism – and the average age is 39. The vast majority of suspects are white. Many belonged to far-right militias and white nationalist groups that played an outsize role in the attack, but most had no direct affiliations with extremist organizations.“They’re sort of your nextdoor neighbor,” said Kurt Braddock, an assistant professor of communication at American University and extremism researcher. “It shows how far far-right ideologies have extended.”There were white-collar workers, people who came with their family members and a cross-section of other Trump supporters radicalized into committing political violence. Many believed in the QAnon conspiracy movement that viewed Trump as a messianic figure who would return to office and destroy a cabal of liberal elite pedophiles.The charges and sentencingAlthough the charges range from misdemeanors such as trespassing to violent assaults against Capitol police officers, the bulk of cases that have come in front of a judge so far have involved individuals pleading guilty to minor charges. Except for some high-profile rioters – including “QAnon shaman” Jacob Chansley, who was sentenced to 41 months in prison after pleading guilty to a felony charge of obstructing Congress – most of the sentences doled out have not exceeded several weeks in prison. Many of the rioters have received no jail time at all, instead receiving fines or probation.There have been significant differences between how US district court judges have approached sentencing and cases. One group of judges has questioned why prosecutors are seeking jail time for misdemeanor offences such as trespassing on Capitol grounds. US District Judge Trevor McFadden, a Trump appointee, made comparisons between Black Lives Matter protesters and the 6 January attackers and told a defendant that he was “acting like all those looters and rioters last year”.(McFadden did, however, later reject a defendant’s claim that he was being treated unfairly compared with leftist protesters in Portland.)Other judges have vehemently rejected the comparison to BLM, and have insisted that participants in the riot face serious consequences for their involvement. US District Judge Tanya Chutkan stated that the siege was an unprecedented attempt to “violently overthrow the government” and “stop the peaceful transition of power”. Chief US District Judge Beryl Howell questioned why prosecutors were letting rioters accept lighter misdemeanor plea deals and lamented that “the government has essentially tied the sentencing judge’s hands”.“No wonder parts of this public are confused about whether what happened on 6 January at the Capitol was simply a petty offense of trespassing, with some disorderliness, or was shocking criminal conduct that posed a grave threat to our democratic norms,” Howell said.The more complex cases and serious charges will probably go to trial in the coming months, researchers say, including those involving members of the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Three Percenters and other far-right militias.One member of the Oath Keepers, Jason Dolan, already admitted as part of a plea deal that he traveled with other militia members and stashed an M4 rifle at a Comfort Inn a short drive outside the Capitol. In December, 34-year-old Matthew Greene became the first member of the Proud Boys to plead guilty in a felony conspiracy case, with prosecutors stating that he and other Proud Boys coordinated their actions using programmable radios and dressed to conceal their affiliation with the group. After the riot, Greene allegedly ordered more than 2,000 rounds of assault-rifle ammunition, bragged that his group “took the Capitol” and told a friend to study guerrilla warfare and be ready to “do uncomfortable things”.The criminal trials this spring for felony charges such as obstructing Congress and a multi-defendant conspiracy case against members of the Oath Keepers may reveal new details about the level of coordination and planning that went into the attack on the Capitol. But they will probably also present difficulties for prosecutors. The government has already succeeded in dismissing some pre-trial defense objections, such as whether the common charge of “corruptly obstructing an official proceeding” was unconstitutionally vague, but more challenges will come.“It’s going to get complicated very quickly,” said Seamus Hughes, deputy director of the program on extremism at George Washington University. “You’re going to get into uncharted water with this prosecution at some point, just by the sheer number.”The investigationThe FBI received more than 250,000 tips related to the siege, including family members turning in relatives and Facebook friends reporting old high school acquaintances. One suspect, New York state’s Robert Chapman, told a match on the dating app Bumble that he had stormed the Capitol and bragged about making it all the way to the National Statuary Hall. “We are not a match,” the other Bumble user replied, according to court filings, before sending a screenshot of their exchange to law enforcement.More than 80% of cases cite some form of social media as evidence for the charges, but the FBI’s investigation goes far beyond relying on amateur online sleuths and combing through social media profiles. Law enforcement has also used invasive technology and surveillance tactics that could expand law enforcement powers and have implications for future investigations.In addition to using facial recognition software to identify rioters, itself a deeply controversial practice, law enforcement appears to have expanded its use of geofencing search warrants – a process that involves using data from digital services to locate people within a certain area during a given time period. In practice, it means that authorities can demand Google hand over anonymized user location data, then ask for specific users’ private information, including their names, emails and phone numbers. Dozens of Capitol rioter cases cite Google location data in their court filings, according to a Wired investigation.“It’s going to set a precedent for geofencing,” Hughes said. “If they can get enough successful prosecutions … that will be something that’s used in future investigations.”The FBI’s use of surveillance has come under additional scrutiny in recent weeks after a New York Times investigation found that the bureau deployed surveillance teams to monitor Portland activists’ protests against policing, a move that civil rights groups condemned as domestic spying.Whitewashing the attackAs the FBI has carried out its investigation, there has been a parallel effort to create a different narrative of the insurrection. Republican politicians and conservative media have been on a months-long campaign to whitewash the attack on the Capitol. Over the past year they have settled on a story that presents 6 January as a largely peaceful protest for legitimate election grievances, sometimes baselessly claiming that any violence was the result of antifa or leftist infiltrators.Prime-time Fox News host Tucker Carlson in November aired a three episode special entitled Patriot Purge that uncritically interviewed rightwing activists with ties to the white nationalist movement, who claim that the FBI investigation is an unjust political crackdown on conservatives. Carlson states in it that there is a leftist “purge aimed at legacy Americans” and features sympathetic interviews with people who took part in the insurrection. Two Fox News contributors quit over the special, with one suggesting that it would lead to violence.Many of the rioters have embraced a burgeoning celebrity status within the far right. Some suspects refer to themselves as “1/6ers”, and have launched online fundraising campaigns where they identify as political protesters and victims of government persecution. One collective fundraising page for the approximately 40 suspects being held in pre-trial detention has already raised hundreds of thousands of dollars and sells hoodies emblazoned with the slogan “free the 1/6ers.”Other high-profile suspects have created individual pages to capitalize on their notoriety. Richard “Bigo” Barnett, a self-described white nationalist who stole a document from speaker of the house Nancy Pelosi’s office and was photographed putting his boots up on her desk, launched a fundraising site that doubles as a manifesto for his anti-government views.“Richard Barnett’s picture at Speaker Pelosi’s desk has become the face of the new anti-federalist movement,” Barnett’s website states on its fundraising page. “We will not go gently into that good night. Click below to donate to the fight.”The group being held in pre-trial detention at the Correctional Treatment facility in Washington DC has also banded together while incarcerated, calling themselves the “Patriot Wing” and attempting to become far-right influencers. These suspects include numerous members of extremist groups such as the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, as well as others facing more serious charges of violence and conspiracy related to the insurrection. They have started writing open letters and reportedly passed around a handwritten newsletter in the jail, in which they boast about reciting the pledge of allegiance and singing the national anthem together.Some Republican lawmakers have amplified this far-right narrative that the suspects being held in pre-trial detention are political prisoners and unjustly suffering for their beliefs. Representatives including Marjorie Taylor Greene, Paul Gosar, Matt Gaetz and Louie Gohmert have rallied in support of insurrection suspects and staged an attempt to visit the jail, claiming a conspiracy to mistreat the prisoners and that their detention was evidence of Marxism and totalitarianism. Meanwhile, more mainstream Republican lawmakers have stonewalled a House committee investigation into the roots of the attack, and Trump allies have refused to cooperate with subpoenas.All these developments – the solidifying of in-group identity among the more dedicated insurrections, the financial support for rioters and Republican lawmakers’ willingness to paint them as martyrs – concerns extremism researchers about the long-term effects of 6 January. Even if those responsible face significant prison sentences, there is little incentive for them to de-radicalize once incarcerated.“You may get to a point where folks who spend their time in jail come out and are basically provided a kind of a rockstar status within the movement,” Hughes said.The revisionist history of 6 January has also correlated with a declining interest among Republicans in punishing those involved. After the insurrection there was wide bipartisan support for prosecuting rioters, but a Pew Research Center study in September found the number of Republicans who believe it is important to hold those responsible legally liable for their actions significantly declined over the course of the year. Involvement in the events of 6 January is also apparently not disqualifying for Republicans seeking public office. At least 10 people who attended the Washington rally have now been elected to various positions, according to HuffPost, including three in state legislatures.What concerns some extremism researchers is that while it’s critical for prosecutors to secure convictions for those involved in the insurrection, these broader problems remain of how deeply embedded the far right has become in American politics. Even if authorities may be better prepared against future rallies aimed at subverting the democratic process, the reaction from rightwing media and some Republican lawmakers has threatened to legitimize far-right ideology and resorting to political violence to achieve their goals.“January 6 exemplified what the far right is now,” Braddock said. “But it definitely doesn’t end with January 6.”TopicsUS Capitol attackRepublicansUS politicsfeaturesReuse this content More