The far right

Subterms

    More stories

    • 200 Shares169 Views

      in Elections

      How US police failed to stop the rise of the far right and the Capitol attack

      by

      Sign up for the Guardian’s First Thing newsletterThe alleged complicity of some police officers in the attack on the US Capitol has led to fresh questions about how law enforcement and other public agencies around the US have approached a surging far-right street protest movement during the life of the Trump administration.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 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.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.They did this at the same time that colleagues in the DC metropolitan police, a sister agency, say that they were maced, tasered, stripped of their badges and ammunition and beaten by the angry crowd.Mike German, a former FBI agent and fellow at the Brennan Center for Justice, said he sees 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.In what he called a “multifaceted failure” in Washington, German said the central problem was a “failure to recognize a threat for what it was”. Far-right groups, he said, “have been engaging in militancy for months”.Pointing to similar attacks on state capitols in Virginia, Michigan, Idaho, Georgia and Oregon in 2020, German asks “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 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 department were ignored.Meanwhile, agencies around the country have announced investigations into their own officers who were present at the Capitol riot.In Houston, an 18-year-veteran officer resigned after the Houston police department announced an investigation into his alleged actions at the rally. In Virginia, two officers who participated in the riot, and at one posed for selfies in front of a statue of Revolutionary General John Stark, are now facing criminal charges.The actions of a serving officer in Boston are under investigation, while in California, the Los Angeles police department has launched a joint investigation with the FBI to determine whether or not any of its officers attended.It’s not just rank and file officers who are having to answer difficult questions. In Oklahoma, Canadian county’s pro-Trump Sheriff, Chris West, last Friday denied that he had participated in the riot following the rally, which he said he attended as a “patriotic citizen”, despite social media posts claiming to identify him in the crowd inside the Capitol.West later refused to answer questions from local journalists about deleted Facebook posts in which another Facebook user said that he and West had pushed past Capitol police to enter the building, and in which West himself allegedly aired conspiracy theories about election fraud, and appeared to contemplate a violent response.Elsewhere, Butch Conway, the recently retired 24-year sheriff of Gwinnett county, Georgia, attended the rally but claims not to have participated in storming the Capitol.Other current and former public safety officers were part of the melee. A retired firefighter was arrested for allegedly throwing a fire extinguisher at Capitol police and in Maryland, a corrections officer is being investigated by the Charles county sheriff’s department for their actions at the rally.Some police officers who did not attend the rally have nevertheless expressed support for the crowd’s actions, or promoted the conspiracy theories that spurred them on. In Maine, the chief of that state’s own capitol police, reportedly shared coronavirus- and Black Lives Matter-related conspiracy theories on his Facebook page in recent months.In Pinal county, Arizona, the pro-Trump “constitutional sheriff” Mark Lamb made a speech on 6 January that contained vague allegations of criminal conduct by Hillary Clinton, and urged his listeners to “fight for the constitution”. Last August, near the height of 2020 electioneering, Lamb asserted in a speech to the Arizona Police Association that “the constitution is hanging by a thread”.The large number of police and other sworn officers who either participated in, or sympathized with a large scale act of public disorder once again highlighted the significant number of serving police officers who were discovered to have been radicalized, or even to be members of extremist groups during the period in which Trump has dominated US politics.Between 2015 and 2020, police officers were revealed as having ties to far-right groups such as the Proud Boys, the Three Percenters, and the League of the South – all three of which had members on the ground at the Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville. In Texas, Florida, Louisiana and Michigan during that time, some officers were even revealed to have been recruited to the Ku Klux Klan.In 2019, Reveal reported that dozens of serving police officers around the country were members of extremist groups on Facebook.This isn’t new … We shouldn’t treat it as if it has come out of nowhereUS authorities have repeatedly nominated the presence of extremists in law enforcement agencies as a national security issue. In 2015, the agency noted that various extremist groups had “active links to law enforcement officers”.German, the Brennan Center fellow, published a report last August on the ongoing problem of far-right militancy among law enforcement officers. He said “law enforcement has become politicized since 9/11, and even more so under the Trump administration”.While the incoming Biden administration has raised the possibility of new anti-terror laws to deal with the threat of far-right violence, Brennan argues that they should instead, through the justice department, ensure that current laws are consistently applied to far-right militants, including those in uniform.“This isn’t new”, he says. “We shouldn’t treat it as if it has come out of nowhere”.He points out that some of those involved in the Capitol riot have been involved in similar incidents over months or years, and because they have been repeatedly caught on tape, “we know their names, we know their criminal histories”.“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. More

    • 150 Shares149 Views

      in US Politics

      America is broken – can Biden and Harris put it back together?

      by

      In another age, Joe Biden’s promise to heal the nation might have been regarded as the kind of blandishment expected from any new leader taking power after the divisive cut and thrust of an American election.But the next president will repeat the oath of office on Wednesday sealed off from those he governs by a global pandemic and the threat of violence from his predecessor’s supporters. Biden steps into the White House facing the unprecedented challenge not only of healing a country grappling with the highest number of coronavirus deaths in the world but a nation so politically, geographically and socially divided that seven in 10 Republicans say the election was stolen from Donald Trump.Surging Covid infections would have discouraged the crowds who usually turn out on the National Mall to welcome a new president. But the storming of Congress by right-wing extremists and white nationalists in support of Trump has prompted an almost total shutdown of the heart of American governance.Even before the assault on Capitol Hill, Biden warned that deepening partisanship was a threat to the stability of the United States.“The country is in a dangerous place,” he said during the election campaign. “Our trust in each other is ebbing. Hope is elusive. Instead of treating the other party as the opposition, we treat them as the enemy. This must end”.•••The enormity of the challenge was made starkly clear by the sacking of the Capitol. Most Americans recoiled in horror at the sight of their compatriots, some dressed as if ready for war, smashing up congressional offices, beating police officers and threatening to hang the vice-president. Five people died, including a member of the Capitol police.Yet more than 70% of Republicans agree with the protesters’ core claim that November’s election was rigged and say Biden is not the legitimate president. What will it take to even begin to heal the country, as Trump is likely to maintain his role as agitator in chief? The incoming president also faces a moment of racial reckoning in the wake of Black Lives Matter protests that have given new urgency of demands for America to reconcile with a bitter past and present.Polarisation is not going to go away no matter what he does in the short termCan Bideneven hold together the Democratic party, as its more liberal wing advocates for police reform, a green new deal and public healthcare – not policy positions which all moderates support.“We are so polarised that polarisation is not going to go away no matter what he does in the short term,” said Charles Franklin, director of the respected Marquette opinion poll in swing state Wisconsin.“The question is whether over a little bit longer term, let’s say over the course of the year, whether Biden can win over a segment of the population to create a majority that is both willing to give him a chance and is not unhappy with his performance. That’s up in the air but I don’t think it’s inconceivable.”The clamour for change that elected Barack Obama and then Trump has not gone away, and large numbers of Americans continue to believe the system does not work for them. For many Democrats, the key to addressing that is to think big and deliver while the party controls both houses of Congress, which may be for no more than two years.The incoming president faces the immediate challenge of intertwined health and economic crises caused by a pandemic that has killed nearly 400,000. Trump’s mishandling of coronavirus has left testing and vaccination rates woefully short of his promises, and unemployment claims are rising sharply again as the economy struggles with the latest wave of shutdowns, infections and deaths.Biden is likely to be judged swiftly on his ability to accelerate the pace of inoculations, presenting the opportunity to create early goodwill and momentum.In an early sign that he wants to be seen to act decisively, Biden on Thursday outlined $1.9tn in emergency relief, called the American Rescue Plan, including $400bn to deliver 100m vaccines in his first 100 days. The plan also directs more than $1tn to Americans through individual economic stimulus payments of $1,400 and increased unemployment benefits. It proposes more than doubling the national minimum wage to $15 an hour alongside other measure to alleviate child poverty.Biden has said the plan is only an interim measure and that more money will come. But even the present proposal will be too much for most Republicans in Congress and the bill will provide an early test of how far they are prepared to cooperate or if they will pursue the same obstructionist strategy deployed against Obama.Biden has the advantage of control but only by a slim margin in the House of Representatives and by relying on Vice-President Kamala Harris’s casting vote in the Senate. A lack of votes for the full package may force Biden to scale back his proposals but with them the incoming president put down a marker.David Paul Kuhn, author of The Hardhat Riot: Nixon, New York City and the Dawn of the White Working-Class Revolution, about the Democrats’ loss of their traditional blue collar base, said the incoming president has spoken more clearly about the struggle of working class communities than any since Bill Clinton in the 1990s.“Biden’s done a good job in sounding measured in a hyper-polarised environment, and that’s really important,” he said. “He gave several speeches targeted towards Obama-to-Trump voters. He acknowledged that they were forgotten and that he sees them now. Those were comments that we haven’t heard from any Democrat, like on the dignity of work, since Clinton. It was a significant step in the right direction.”Biden’s ability to deliver across a range of issues is something that preoccupies his supporters. Some Democrats are haunted by what they regard as a central lesson from the Obama years – the failure to seize the opportunities offered by the Great Recession when he took office in 2009, to reform an economic system that has worked against most Americans for at least four decades. To a part of America, Obama lookedto have rescued the banks while abandoning millions of ordinary people who lost their homes to foreclosure – helping drive some of the shift to Trump in 2016.Biden gave several speeches targeted towards Obama-to-Trump voters. He acknowledged that they were forgottenKuhn said Biden would do well to heed the lesson: “Barack Obama was talking about a new New Deal leading into December 2008 but there was no new New Deal. When Joe Biden was vice-president, there are the voters who lost the most jobs during the Great Recession while they saw stimulus payments going to the fat cats on Wall Street.”The pandemic has helped lay the ground for bold policies by once again exposing deep economic inequalities and the precarious financial position of large numbers of Americans. But Biden will have to tread carefully over key legislation pushed by the left of his party, particularly the green new deal which is hugely popular among some Democrats but reviled in parts of the country. Some Democrats think a relatively easy path would be a major spending bill to rebuild crumbling infrastructure, such as dangerously old bridges and dams, as well as new projects like high-speed rail. It would not only offer a vehicle to address some environmental issues but provide jobs and investment in some of the most neglected parts of the country.“An infrastructure bill might include a lot of clean energy but it would not be mistaken for the green new deal. It’s a good compromise that’s actually conceivably possible,” said Franklin.“I think infrastructure, of all the issues we deal with, it’s one that most easily resonates with working people, whether it’s construction work or highways, or water mains or electrical utilities. The irony is Trump talked a lot about infrastructure but never put forward a bill, when his own party probably would have thought it was pretty good.”•••Another challenge for Biden is to develop policies to address a sense of abandonment felt in mostly white rust belt and midwestern rural communities that were once solidly Democratwhile also addressing racial inequality and discrimination.“Biden talked about blue collar workers in his background, the people he grew up with,” said Franklin. “I thought that was an attempt to reach that disaffected blue collar, but not theneo-nazi Klan racist segment of the population. He tried to speak directly to those folks in a way that many see the Democratic party more generally is failing to do.”Kuhn said Biden should go further: “If he’s talking about common cause, he can push back against this fashionable notion in the United States that these families living pay cheque to pay cheque, that their struggle through life is actually a ‘privilege’ because they are white. Clearly, some portion of the American right feel that their frustrations don’t matter, because they happen also be white. ”Lilliana Mason, a professor of politics and author of Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity disagrees. She sees communities that provided bedrock support for Trump’s white nationalism and questions whether Biden will find backing even for programmes that help them.“There’s this increasing inequality which has created this kind of rural white Republican identity that’s based on white rural people feeling condescended to and that no one really listens to their needs,” she said. “But there’s also this resentment that their tax dollars go to the cities and to black people. They don’t want their tax dollars to help other people, meaning black people, even while it helps them.”The structural inequality that is rooted deep within our society must be addressedThose resentments may run even deeper if Biden follows through on promises to confront the challenge of building racial reconciliation in the age of resurgent white nationalism.Any incoming Democratic president faces pressure to address the legacy of centuries of systematic racism. The killing of George Floyd by the Minneapolis police, the wave of Black Lives Matter protests that followed and Trump’s feeding of hate has given an added urgency to demands for action.In his victory speech after beating Trump, Biden said he would “battle to achieve racial justice and root out systemic racism in this country”. His choice of Kamala Harris as vice-president was read as a statement that he will take racial equality seriously and he has nominated the most diverse cabinet in US history.But Biden failed to heed a call from the National Association for the Advancement Colored People to go further and create a new cabinet post “for racial justice, equity and advancement”. The NAACP president, Derrick Johnson, called the move a “bold action” that would demonstrate the incoming president’s commitment to elevating racial justice as a priority.“The structural inequality that is rooted deep within our society must be addressed, and after four years of regression on social, civil, and political matters that profoundly impact the American people, specifically, black people, we must prioritise the transformation of our nation into a more just, equal society in which all Americans can succeed and thrive,” he said.Biden has promised a raft of investments in creating in creating business opportunities, promoting homeownership and giving more education and training opportunities to underserved communities.But the new president remains cautious about how police reform will be read in the rest of the country. He told civil rights leaders that the cry to “defund the police” after Floyd’s death was misunderstood and damaging to the Democratic party, particularly candidates for Congress and in state races. Organisers in the rural midwest said the slogan, and the violence around some protests, was a major reason Trump’s vote went up in November, even in swing counties twice won by Obama.“That’s how they beat the living hell out of us across the country, saying that we’re talking about defunding the police,” Biden said last month according to an audio recording of a meeting published by the Intercept.He promised that there will be significant changes to the police but said how they are framed is important in winning broader public support. Franklin said there is a path that could unite not divide Americans.“When you ask about defund the police, it’s about 20% that favour of that. But when you talk about reform the police and hold police accountable, it’s like 70% or 80% in favour. Policing is very high on everybody’s list.”Biden will remain under pressure from black voters who were instrumental in his defeat of Trump, turning out in large numbers in midwestern cities to offset the white rural vote. They will want to know that their concerns are not just being heard but addressed, and that police reforms run deep as a litmus test of the new president’s commitment to racial reconciliation.Biden will also be under pressure from African American members of Congress, not least the majority whip, James Clyburn, who rescued the new president’s primary campaign a year ago.At the time Clyburn spoke of his own fears a year ago as he urged primary voters in South Carolina to back Biden who was on the back foot after a humiliating defeat in Iowa. “We are at an inflection point. I’m fearful for my daughters and their future and their children and their children’s future,” he saidThat speech helped Biden win South Carolina. A year later, it gives Clyburn leverage and the new president’s ear in ensuring the promise of racial reconciliation is not compromised by the desire to win over discontented whites.Biden’s criminal justice plan includes scrapping disparate sentencing for drug crimes that frequently results in longer sentences for African Americans for similar offences to those committed by whites, and for decriminalising marijuana.Biden also has a political incentive to confront voting rights for minorities given the escalation in Republican-controlled states of voter suppression which disproportionately keeps black people away from the polls.•••There are other policies likely to win support among large numbers of Americans, including some Trump voters, that would benefit underserved communities in particular.Biden has promised to write off up to $10,000 in student debt owed to the federal government. Democratic congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said the issue was a litmus test of the new president’s commitment to helping the working poor.“There are a lot of people who came out to vote in this election who frankly did it as their last shot at seeing whether the government can really work for them,” she told the New York Times. “If we don’t deliver quick relief, it’s going to be very difficult to get them back.”Biden will be attempting to heal the divide in the face of what is expected to be a drumbeat of hostility from Trump who shows every intention of continuing to whip up anger and hate. At the core will be the claim that Biden stole the election, a powerful mantra among a section of voters that will keep the pressure on Republican legislators not to cooperate with the new president.Mason said whatever Biden does, the divisions in the country will remain stark.“It’s not just that those Trump supporters don’t like it that Biden’s president,” she said, “it’s that they fully believe that the election was stolen and he’s an illegitimate president. And as long as there are Republican leaders who are going to keep telling them that lie, they’re going to keep believing it. So to that extent, I don’t see any way to get away from a whole bunch of domestic terrorism happening during Biden’s term.” More

    • 150 Shares129 Views

      in US Politics

      Washington: man arrested with fake inaugural ID and loaded gun – report

      by

      Officers in Washington DC arrested a Virginia man who tried to pass through a Capitol police checkpoint carrying fake inaugural credentials, a loaded handgun and more than 500 rounds of ammunition, CNN reported, citing a police report and a law enforcement source.Capitol police officials could not immediately be reached for comment.Responding to news of the arrest, the Democratic US representative Don Beyer of Virginia said the danger was real and the city was on edge as Joe Biden’s inauguration approaches.“Anyone who can avoid the area around the Capitol and Mall this week should do so,” Beyer wrote on Twitter.US law enforcement officials are gearing up for pro-Trump marches in Washington and all 50 state capitals this weekend, erecting barriers and deploying thousands of national guard troops to try to prevent the kind of violent attack that rattled the nation when Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol on 6 January.The FBI warned police agencies of possible armed protests outside all 50 state capitol buildings starting on Saturday and through Biden’s inauguration on Wednesday, fueled by supporters of Donald Trump who believe his false claims of electoral fraud.Michigan, Virginia, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Washington were among states that activated their national guards to strengthen security. Texas closed its capitol through inauguration day.Steve McCraw, the director of the Texas Department of Public Safety, said in a statement late Friday that intelligence indicated “violent extremists” could seek to exploit planned armed protests in Austin to “conduct criminal acts”.The attack on the US Capitol in Washington was carried out by Trump supporters, some of whom planned to kidnap members of Congress and called for the death of the vice-president Mike Pence as he presided over the certification of Biden’s victory.The Democratic leaders of four congressional committees said on Saturday they had opened a review of the events and had written to the FBI and other intelligence and security agencies to find out what was known about threats, whether the information was shared and whether foreign influence played any role.“This still-emerging story is one of astounding bravery by some US Capitol police and other officers; of staggering treachery by violent criminals; and of apparent and high-level failures – in particular, with respect to intelligence and security preparedness,” the letter said.It was signed by the House intelligence chair, Adam Schiff, the homeland security chair, Bennie Thompson, the oversight chair, Carolyn Maloney, and the judiciary chair, Jerrold Nadler.Officials have trained much of their focus on Sunday, when the anti-government “boogaloo” movement flagged plans to hold rallies in all 50 states.In Michigan, a fence was erected around the capitol in Lansing and troopers were mobilized. The legislature canceled meetings next week, citing credible threats.“We are prepared for the worst but we remain hopeful that those who choose to demonstrate at our Capitol do so peacefully,” the Michigan state police director, Joe Gasper, said.The perception that the 6 January insurrection was a success could embolden domestic extremists motivated by anti-government, racial and partisan grievances, spurring them to further violence, according to a government intelligence bulletin dated Wednesday first reported by Yahoo News.The Joint Intelligence Bulletin, produced by the FBI, Department of Homeland Security and National Counterterrorism Center, further warned that “false narratives” about electoral fraud would serve as an ongoing catalyst for extremists.Thousands of armed national guard troops were in the streets in Washington in an unprecedented show of force after the assault on the Capitol. Bridges into the city were to be closed along with dozens of roads. The National Mall and other landmarks were blocked off.Experts say the capitals of battleground states such as Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania and Arizona are at most risk of violence. But even states not seen as likely flashpoints are taking precautions.The Illinois governor, JB Pritzker, said on Friday that while his state had not received any specific threats he was beefing up security around the capitol in Springfield, including adding about 250 state national guard troops.The alarm extended beyond legislatures. The United Church of Christ, a Protestant denomination of more than 4,900 churches, warned its 800,000 members of reports “liberal” churches could be attacked.Suzanne Spaulding, a former undersecretary for the Department of Homeland Security, said disclosing enhanced security measures can be an effective deterrent.“One of the ways you can potentially de-escalate a problem is with a strong security posture,” said Spaulding, a senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “You try to deter people from trying anything.“ More

    • 238 Shares189 Views

      in US Politics

      If Trump looks like a fascist and acts like a fascist, then maybe he is one | Nick Cohen

      by

      Assurances that “fascism couldn’t happen here” are always appealing in Anglo-Saxon countries that think themselves immune because “it” never did. The US and UK did not experience rule by Nazism or communism in the 20th century and the ignorance our lucky histories fostered has weakened our defences in the 21st.Even after all that has happened in Washington, apparently serious voices insist we cannot compare Donald Trump to any variety of fascist. Conservatives habitually say that liberals call everything they don’t like fascist, forgetting that the moral of Aesop’s fable was that the boy who cried wolf was right in the end. They used to chortle about “Trump derangement syndrome” that spreads in stages like cancer until sufferers “cannot distinguish fantasy from reality”. They have bitten their tongues now that the reality of Trumpism is deranged mobs trying to overthrow democracy.Their silence was broken last week by the historian of Nazism, Richard Evans, who with the effortless ability to miss every point a professorship at Cambridge bestows, decided now was the moment to denounce his colleagues, Timothy Snyder and Sarah Churchwell. They might compare the Trump and fascist movements but “few who have described Trump as a fascist can be called real experts in the field”, he wrote in the New Statesman with an audible sniff. “Genuine specialists”, such as, and since you asked, himself, “agree that whatever else he is, Trump is not a fascist”.Before we get to why the argument matters, I should say the New Statesman needs to expand its fact-checking department. Snyder, whose work on how democracies turn into dictatorships is essential reading, does not say that the Trump movement is “fascist”. He writes that “post-truth is pre-fascism and Trump has been our post-truth president”. Churchwell’s astonishing studies of how German Nazis and American white supremacists fed off each other are a revelation. (And I come from the old left and thought I had learned about everything that was rotten with America at my mother’s knee.) When asked, she says she too is careful and characterises the Trump movement as “neo-fascist”.The use of “fascism” in political debate is both a call to arms and a declaration of war. For once you say you are fighting fascism there can be no retreat. By talking of “pre-fascism” or “neo-fascism”, you acknowledge that the F-word is not a bomb you should detonate lightly; you also acknowledge the gravity of the times.The alternatives look like the euphemisms of formerly safe societies that, like Caliban, cannot bear to see their face in the mirror. The Trump leadership cult, the attacks on any source of information the leader does not authorise, the racist conspiracy theories, the servile media that amplify the leader’s lies are not “conservative” in any understanding of the term. How about populist? If it means anything today, populism is supporting the people against the elite. But what could be more elitist than denying the result of the people’s vote with the big lie, the Joseph Goebbels lie, that Trump won the election he lost and then inciting brainwashed followers to storm democratic institutions? Followers, I should add, who included men dressed in “Camp Auschwitz” T-shirts and waving Confederate flags and wannabe stormtroopers crying “sieg heil!” and “total negro death”. “Far right” and “extreme right” are no help. They are just polite ways of saying neo-fascist.In his The Anatomy of Fascism, Robert Paxton, the pre-eminent authority on its ideology, wrote that the Ku Klux Klan in 1867 rather than Mussolini’s squadristi in 1920 could be seen as the first fascist movement. As with the Nazi party, the embittered officers of a defeated army formed the Klan. They mourned the defeat of the Confederacy and did not accept the legitimacy of the US government. They had uniforms, white robes rather than leather jackets, the fantasies of racial supremacy and deployed terror to maintain the subjugation of African Americans. Last week, police sources told the Washington Post they were shocked to see “former law enforcement and military personnel as well as senior business executives” among the Washington mob. If they had known the history of military and bourgeois support for fascism, they would have been less surprised. It isn’t always powered by “the left behind”.Paxton said last week that he had “resisted for a long time applying the fascist label to Donald J Trump”, but Trump’s incitement of the invasion of the Capitol “removes my objection to the fascist label”.Republicans fear assassination if they vote to impeach Trump. Rupert Murdoch’s broadcasters are delivering barely veiled threats of violent insurrection if the Democrats pursue impeachment. “We see what’s happening around this country, how 50 state houses are being threatened on Inauguration Day,” warned one. “This is the last thing you want to do.” I can see three objections to calling a large section of the Republican party pre-fascist. The first can be dismissed with a flick of the fingers as it comes from a self-interested right that has to pretend it is not in the grip of a deep sickness – and not only in the United States. The second is the old soothing “it can’t happen here” exceptionalism of the Anglo-Saxon west, which has yet to learn that the US and UK are exceptional in the 21st century for all the wrong reasons. The third sounds intelligent but is the dumbest of all. You should not call Trump or any other leader a pre- or neo-fascist or any kind of fascist until he has gone the whole hog and transformed his society into a totalitarian war machine.The example of the stages of cancer, so beloved by believers in Trump derangement syndrome, explains the stupidity. Imagine you are a doctor looking at pre-cancerous cells or an early-stage cancer that has not grown deeply into tissue. The door bursts open and a chorus of Fox News presenters and Cambridge dons cry that “real experts in the field” agree that on no account should you call it cancer until it has metastasised and spread through the whole body. A competent doctor would insist on calling a fatal disease by its real name and not leave treatment until it was too late to stop it. So should you.• Nick Cohen is an Observer columnist More

    • 138 Shares199 Views

      in US Politics

      Far-right website 8kun again loses internet service protection following Capitol attack

      by

      Sign up for the Guardian Today US newsletterA far-right website that was among the platforms used to organize the deadly violence at the US Capitol has again been forced to find new internet service protection after a shell company owned by two Russians and registered in Scotland cut ties with the platform’s internet host.The website 8kun, which was previously known as 8chan, has long been one of the preferred platforms of the far right and followers of the baseless conspiracy theory QAnon. It was used by rioters ahead of the 6 January attack to mobilize other “patriots” to “help storm the Capitol”, with some on the message board debating which politicians to kill once they got inside.In the aftermath of the riot, users continued to post content fomenting violence, including maps of government buildings to target and combat techniques for a proposed civil war.It wasn’t the first time the platform was linked to acts of violence. Its predecessor site 8chan was linked to a series of white nationalist terrorist attacks, including the massacres in Christchurch, New Zealand and El Paso, Texas.8kun has faced significant hurdles to remain online since at least 2019, when the El Paso attack occurred. All websites on the internet are kept online by a network of services including web hosts and domain name registrars. 8kun has had a loyal internet provider in Washington state-based VanwaTech, whose CEO has repeatedly defended its connections to the hate site in the name of freedom of speech.But the site also cannot function without platform protection services that prevent DDoS attacks, or distributed denial of service attacks, and few providers have been willing to work with it.Following its removal from Cloudflare, 8kun, throughVanwaTech, worked with Oregon-based CNServers LLC for DDoS protection. That company, too, cut ties with 8kun when it was alerted to the site’s violent history.Since October 2020, 8kun received DDoS protection from DDoS-Guard, a company that provides protection to a number of controversial websites, including neo-Nazi site the Daily Stormer. 8kun’s ties to DDoS-Guard were first reported by the security researcher and journalist Brian Krebs.This week, DDoS became the latest company to cut ties with 8kun’s hosting company VanwaTech, following inquiries from the Guardian.8kun is now being hosted by the US-based firm FiberHub, which is based in Las Vegas, Nevada, according to analysis from independent web researcher Ron Guilmette viewed by the Guardian.FiberHub does not provide infrastructure directly to 8chan but does support VanwaTech as a client, the co-founder and chief technology officer Rob Tyree confirmed to the Guardian by email.“We have received no reports that content hosted by VanwaTech supported by our infrastructure is in violation of our terms of service or acceptable use policy, which includes a requirement to abide by all US federal and state laws and regulations,” Tyree said. “Should we receive any such reports, we would follow our internal policies and observe any legal requirements to resolve those matters as swiftly as possible.”DDoS-Guard, the company that provided services to VanwaTech until earlier this week, was registered under a limited partnership, a financial structure in Scotland that allows non-residents to create companies with little scrutiny, on 24 November 2017 by Aleksei Likhachev and Evgeniy Marchenko – two Russian businessmen who remain owners of the company today. The partnership under which DDoS-Guard is registered is called Cognitive Cloud, and is listed at an address in Edinburgh’s Forth Street.Speaking from the southern Russian city of Rostov-on-Don earlier this week, Marchenko told the Guardian that 8kun was not a direct client of DDoS-Guard, but that his company provided services to VanwaTech. He described DDoS-Guard as a global information security service. It hosted “thousands of websites”, he said, adding that it merely provided VanwaTech with “transit protection services” to stop it from falling victim to DDoS or other “brute force” attacks.“It looks like they host some dubious sites like Qanon/8chan/8kun. I still don’t understand what are they about and have no information about their content or activity,” he added.“We are not related to any politic issues and don’t want to be associated inany sense with customer hosting such toxic sites like QAnon/8chan,” Machenko said after the company severed ties with VanwaTech.Asked why he used a company based in Scotland, Marchenko said: “Why not? The UK is very comfortable for business. I visited London one time, 14 years ago.” He said: “We don’t support any illegal activity. We know nothing about what happened in Washington or support one side or another. This company [VanwaTech] is just one of our many customers.”DDoS-Guard’s other clients include the Russian ministry of defence, as well as media organisations in Moscow. The firm’s webpage links to an official ministry history, which sets out recent steps the Kremlin has taken to ban the use of smartphones by Russian soldiers, after a series of leaks.“It’s OK to earn money from the Russian government or from any other government. It’s just business,” Marchenko said.DDoS-Guard’s Edinburgh office is at 18 Forth Street, a terrace of small Georgian townhouses in the eastern part of Edinburgh’s new town, There was no evidence of any office belonging to Cognitive Cloud at that address or any of the five other neighbouring townhouses. An employee at a neighbouring business said in his 7 years working there he had never met anyone from Cognitive Cloud but had frequently fielded requests to take mail and parcels for the firm. A manager at Edinburgh Office said Cognitive Cloud was not a tenant at the address but referred the Guardian to another company of a different name based in London, to which she said mail addressed to Cognitive Cloud is meant to be forwarded.The Scottish number listed on the site for DDoS-guard is disconnected. A tech support representative contacted through the Russian phone number on the site said the majority of its clients are based in Russia and declined to answer any other questions.Marchenko said its Edinburgh office was an “EU subdivision” staffed by a “representative”.VanwaTech did not respond to request for comment. More

    • 188 Shares169 Views

      in US Politics

      Costumes at the Capitol can't disguise the ugly truth of far-right violence | John Ganz

      by

      A common refrain one hears from both the left and right is that their foes are just “cosplaying”. The word is a Japanese portmanteau of “costume” and “play”, and originally referred to people dressing up as characters at comic book conventions. Now it’s used, more or less metaphorically, to mock anybody who seems lost in a fantasy world. Its cousin, “performative”, has become similarly popular as a word to dismiss actions being carried out purely for appearance’s sake.This strikes me as strange, because the “cosplay” label is often applied precisely to the kinds of people who clearly are no longer playing around, and who are willing to make good on their pretensions. As we learn more about last week’s attack on the Capitol, the intensity of the violence and the seriousness of the participants’ murderous intent becomes ever clearer. This was not people “cosplaying” a violent mob – it was a violent mob. One wonders who is really off in fantasy land: the people cracking skulls, or those insisting that the skull crackers aren’t really doing it, for some reason? It is time to acknowledge that fancy and imagination are doing serious political work for the far right.There is some truth in the idea that these latter-day fascists are playing out an imaginary game. Some of them even wore outlandish costumes to storm the Capitol, determined to look the part of the marauding barbarian horde. This is not a new or minor part of political history. Karl Marx wrote in 1852 in his Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon, reflecting on the coup that brought Napoleon III to power, that in “epochs of revolutionary crisis” men “anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in time-honoured disguise and borrowed language”.With his deflating wit, Marx describes how the French revolutionaries of 1789 used Roman costume to invoke an air of historical tragedy; then their heirs in 1848 modelled themselves after their revolutionary forefathers, essentially cosplaying the cosplayers. For Marx, imagination supported the work of politics by transferring actions to a grander and more exciting scene. Once their revolution was accomplished, the bourgeoisie took off their togas and returned to their offices. Napoleon Bonaparte wrote in his diary: “Imagination rules the world. The defect of our modern institutions is that they do not speak to the imagination.”A superficial glance at the movement that stormed the Capitol last week discovers the predominance of fantasy over reality. Many were adherents of the bizarre online cult of QAnon, which has concocted an increasingly baroque metaphysical world, totally impervious to empirical fact, around Trump’s infallibility and ultimate victory. The imaginary basis of the storming of the Capitol comes straight from the pages of The Turner Diaries, a vile neo-Nazi novel written by the late William Luther Pierce, which envisions the mass lynching of journalists and politicians.This is not a recent trend for the extreme right, either. In his 1985 book The Occult Roots of Nazism, the historian Nicholas Goodrick-Clarke traces the mystical dreams of Aryan superiority and ultimate world conquest to crackpots and tiny millenarian sects in turn-of-the-century Germany and Austria who were disenchanted with the modern world. Many of the symbols and ideas they cooked up later became the basis for the pomp and pageantry of the SS. Like many of the weekend militia members and QAnon acolytes who showed up at the Capitol, what begins as mere eccentric hobbyism can turn sinister.It must be admitted that the people Goodrick-Clarke describes in his book – stealing off to the woods in outlandish druid outfits, performing made-up rituals – are in fact quite silly. But perhaps it’s this very unseriousness, this retreat from the disappointments and defeats of real life, that provides the appeal of political fantasy. A similar process takes place in the extreme right’s use of “ironic” memes and jokes that revel in their own absurdity: irony suspends the rules that usually govern people’s lives, allowing them to say and do things without “really saying them”, to engage in a kind of camp play-acting, until, of course, they feel comfortable really believing it, and drop the pretence. Online accounts with cartoon frog avatars traffic in racist or sexist memes that are nasty in content but also playful in spirit. It is possible to reassure oneself that mischief is meant rather than real harm.The left and liberal reaction to this type of “playing around” is to get (justifiably) upset and insist on seriousness – which unfortunately makes the “playing around” all the more fun and satisfying, because now it actually shocks the lame, hypocritical libs. The other response is to refuse to take this behaviour seriously, and to call it “cosplay”. A balance must be struck between penetrating the pathetic core of these fancies, and the way they are meant to create an air of mystery, grandeur and superiority, and taking seriously what their emergence means as both the symptom and cause of dangerous politics.Perhaps Napoleon was right when he said that “imagination rules the world”. For some people, it seems like realisation of the fantasy of “greatness”, rather than anything lying behind the fantasy, is the entire point. The left should exercise imagination a little, too – not to engage in similar delusions of grandeur, but to expand their horizons of what is possible. While keeping sight of the facts on the ground, this should be a reminder that reality is more mutable than it seems. If the right has fantasised itself into almost realising a dystopia, perhaps the left can stand to be a little more utopian, and imagine the kind of world where these forces would finally be vanquished. More

    • 188 Shares199 Views

      in Elections

      Riots, effigies and a guillotine: Capitol attack could be a glimpse of violence to come

      by

      A guillotine outside the state capitol in Arizona. A Democratic governor burned in effigy in Oregon. Lawmakers evacuated as pro-Trump crowds gathered at state capitols in Georgia and New Mexico. Cheers in Idaho as a crowd was told fellow citizens were “taking the capitol” and “taking out” Vice-president Mike Pence.As a mob of thousands invaded the US capitol on 6 January, Trump supporters threatened lawmakers and fellow citizens in cities across the country. Compared with the violent mob in Washington, the pro-Trump crowds elsewhere in the country were much smaller, attracting dozens to hundreds of people. But they used the same extreme rhetoric, labeling both Democratic politicians and Republicans perceived as disloyal to Trump as “traitors”.As the FBI warns of plans for new armed protests in Washington and all 50 state capitols in the days leading up to Biden’s inauguration, and fresh calls for extreme violence circulate on social media forums, the intensity of the nationwide pro-Trump demonstrations and attacks last week offer evidence of what might be coming next. Some of the pro-Trump demonstrations on Wednesday did not turn violent. The dozens of Trump supporters who entered the Kansas state capitol remained peaceful, according to multiple news reports. In Carson City, Nevada, hundreds of Trump supporters drank beer and listened to rock music while denouncing the election results, the Reno Gazette Journal reported.But in Los Angeles, white Trump supporters assaulted and ripped the wig off the head of a young black woman who happened to pass their 6 January protest, the Los Angeles Times reported. A white woman was captured on video holding the wig and shouting, “Fuck BLM!” and, “I did the first scalping of the new civil war.”In Ohio and Oregon, fights broke out between counter-protesters and members of the Proud Boys, the neo-fascist group Trump directed in September to “stand back and stand by”. Proud Boys also reportedly demonstrated in Utah, California, Florida, and South Carolina.And in Washington state, Trump supporters, some armed, pushed through the gate of the governor’s mansion and stormed onto the lawn of Democrat Jay Inslee’s house. In Georgia, where lawmakers were evacuated from the state capitol, members of the III% Security Force militia, a group known for its anti-Muslim activism, had gathered outside.An effigy of Gov. Kate Brown is tarred and feathered by pro-Trump Supporters and anti-lockdown protesters at the Oregon State Capitol. pic.twitter.com/XSmHI82cXD— Brian Hayes (@_Brian_ICT) January 6, 2021
      Militia members, neo-Nazis, and other rightwing extremists have discussed multiple potential dates for armed protests in the coming days, researchers who monitor extremist groups say, with proposals ranging from rallies or attacks on state capitols to a “million militia march” in Washington.The FBI’s intelligence bulletin has warned of potential armed protests from 16 January “at least” through inauguration day on 20 January, but researchers say that energy had not yet coalesced around a single event. Public social media forums where Trump supporters have gathered to discuss plans are full of dramatic, contradictory rumors, but experts say that more concrete plans are likely being made in private and in smaller forums that are more difficult to infiltrate.The United States has no shortage of heavily armed extremists who have been openly calling for a new civil war, from members of the Boogaloo Bois – a nascent domestic terrorism group that has been linked to the murders of two law enforcement officers – to militia leaders such as Stewart Rhodes, the Yale-educated founder of an anti-government group that recruits policy and military officers, who was photographed outside the capitol during the mob invasion last week.Accusations at public protests that Democratic politicians are dictators, tyrants and “traitors” and suggestions that white Americans need to seize power back from their elected officials, have been intensifying for more than a year, fueled in part by furious demonstrations against public health measures that forced businesses to close to prevent the spread of the coronavirus, which has disproportionately killed Black and Latino residents.Before they stormed the US Capitol last week, angry crowds of white Americans, some armed with rifles, had staged chaotic demonstrations at state capitols in Michigan, Idaho, California and elsewhere, often calling law enforcement officers “traitors” when they would not let them pass.On 6 January, the news that Trump supporters were forcing their way into the capitol was greeted with cheers at pro-Trump protests in other states. “Patriots have stormed the Capitol,” a protest organizer in Arizona announced, prompting chants of “USA!” according to the Arizona Republic.“Supposedly, they’re taking the Capitol and taking out Pence,” the organizer of an Idaho protest told a crowd of about 300 people, according to the Spokesman-Review. The crowd cheered.In Washington DC, part of the mob at the capitol had been captured on video shouting “Hang Mike Pence!” after the vice-president refused to give in to Trump’s repeated demands to deny the results of the election and name him the winner.Signs and rhetoric linked to the QAnon conspiracy theory, which holds that Trump is fighting a secret war against a powerful network of elite pedophiles, were present at multiple state events last week.In Salem, Oregon, where an effigy of Democratic governor Kate Brown was tarred and feathered before being burned, the protest outside the statehouse turned violent, as Proud Boys clashed with counter-protesters. In Colorado, an estimated 700 people gathered at the state capitol to protest, many of them not wearing masks, and Denver’s mayor announced he was closing municipal buildings early as a precaution.In Arizona, where 1,000 Trump supporters gathered to protest the certification of Biden’s victory, the guillotine outside the state capitol had a Trump flag on it, and the Trump supporters who had brought it gave an Arizona Republic reporter a written statement, which included a list of baseless allegations of election fraud, and demands for new fraud audits and investigations.“Why do we have a guillotine with us? The answer is simple,” the statement read. “For six weeks Americans have written emails, gathered peacefully, made phone calls and begged their elected officials to listen to their concerns. We have been ignored, ridiculed, scorned, dismissed, lied to, laughed at and essentially told, no one cares.“We pray for peace,” the statement concluded, “but we do not fear war.” More

    • 200 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      Trump's British cheerleaders are rushing to denounce him. It's too little, too late | Owen Jones

      by

      As smoke billowed out of the Capitol, some of Donald Trump’s US apologists – the appeasers, the opportunistic cheerleaders, even some true believers – suddenly discovered consciences. In Britain, rightwing commentators had even less reason to embrace the man who remains US president: domestic support for him here has always been negligible. Cheerleading for Trump in Britain has always been a conscious choice, and it is all the more striking because it comes without the excuse of external pressure or cynical self-interest: indeed, it carries the price of damaging the cheerleaders’ credibility even among many Conservative voters.Those who made that choice in Britain are now attempting to walk away whistling from the crime scene, but apologism for the figurehead of the international far right – including the self-confessed Nazis who stormed the US legislature – should come with accountability. Fraser Nelson is editor of the Spectator, which presents itself as a respectable centre-right publication – its summer party is attended by senior Tory and Labour figures and BBC journalists alike – even as it publishes columns bemoaning there is “not nearly enough Islamophobia within the Tory party”.Last week, Nelson joined the ranks of British conservatives abandoning their fallen hero, writing a column entitled “Trump’s final act was a betrayal of the people who voted for him” – itself a questionable claim, given one YouGov poll showed more Republican voters backed the storming of the Capitol than opposed it. It stands in stark contrast to another of his columns from three years ago, headlined “A new, more reasonable Donald Trump presidency might just be on the way”, endorsing suggestions the president would “gravitate to the middle”.The Spectator is chaired by former flagship BBC interviewer Andrew Neil, who can now be found beating his chest and declaring: “There is one name responsible for what is happening on Capitol Hill tonight and that name is TRUMP.” And yet no British publication gave such generous space to Trump and Trumpism as the Spectator, publishing articles with headlines such as “The intelligent case for voting Trump” and “Trump will be much, much better for Britain”, or crowing “Donald Trump’s victory marks the death of liberalism”. There is a broad consensus that what paved the way for Wednesday’s insurrection in Washington DC was the deliberate (and baseless) delegitimising of the presidential election, and in November, the Spectator was publishing articles such as “Trump is right not to concede” and “Can you really blame Trump for refusing to accept the election result?”The U-turns are suddenly coming thick and fast. Former Tory MEP Daniel Hannan often positions himself as a genteel rightwing Brexiteer: polite, well-read, thoughtful, eschewing demagoguery. This weekend, he did not hold back, penning a fiery polemic entitled: “Donald Trump is guilty of treason: political violence in a democracy is never justifiable”. Let’s reflect, then, on another of his pieces, written less than four months ago, headlined: “Trump’s flaws are many, but he’d be better for Britain than Biden”. Hannan also repeated the phoney narrative that it was a uniquely violent left who were the real threat. “God knows I’m no fan of Trump,” he tweeted the day before the election, “but is it really disgruntled Republicans that people are boarding up their shops against?”Hannan has been joined by Douglas Murray, one of the most successful rightwing authors of our age, who once demanded that “conditions for Muslims in Europe must be made harder across the board”, denounced Muslims as a “demographic timebomb” and suggested London had become a foreign country because in 23 out of its 33 boroughs, “‘white Britons’ are now in a minority”. Murray, too, pointed to the boarding up of Washington DC as Americans voted. “Doubtless Democrats will blame Republicans and lazy media will blame all sides,” he solemnly predicted, “but this town is not bracing for disgruntled Trump-ists to smash it up.” In a Telegraph column in August headlined “It’s in the UK’s national interest for Trump to triumph”, Murray accepted the president had flaws – among which he included boastfulness and “devotion to exaggeration”, but, oddly, not Islamophobia, racism or describing neo-Nazis as “very fine people”. Casually discarding the man he lauded, Murray now gravely intones: “Only Trump is to blame for the Capitol chaos”.For so long, Trump’s opponents have been accused of hysteria, of exaggeration, even of “Trump derangement syndrome”. But when we organised mass protests against him, we did so because we recognised Trump represented a serious incipient fascist threat. For British rightwingers who denied or downplayed that threat, it was always clear that while they might regard him as vulgar – or felt polite society compelled them to say so – they had rather a lot of sympathy for his political platform. With Trump finally going, Trumpism will not suddenly vanish, across the Atlantic: but as these receipts show, nor will it do so here. More