Wednesday, April 17, 2024

MAGA Extremists Will Become MUCH More Violent if Trump Wins

 


A new movie, Civil War, purports to explore a potential future in which the United States dissolves into fratricidal violence. All indications are that the film (which I have not seen) is critically sophisticated and thought-provoking. Michelle Goldberg, writing in the New York Times, notes that “it’s not a stretch to interpret the film as a premonition of how a seething, entropic country could collapse...”

 

As Goldberg is right to point out, the specter of political violence hangs heavily over the US. It is no longer an abstraction or hypothetical. Assaults such as those on Stephen Scalise and Paul Pelosi, to say nothing of the terrorist attacks of January 6, 2021, have engendered a climate of tension and fear.

 

But for all the very real tragedy that has already transpired and the genuine cause for apprehension as we face the future, it is important that we remain clearly analytical about what is likely to happen moving forward. There is a real danger that political violence will escalate, but the general sense of how and why that would occur is misguided. Most people worry about the potential for violence by MAGA extremists if Donald Trump loses the election this coming November. But a sharp escalation of political violence in the event of Trump’s defeat is highly unlikely. Rather, a surge of political violence by MAGA extremists is almost certain in the event of Trump’s victory.

 

Predicting what violence is likely to occur if Trump loses does not require occult powers or mysterious calculations. We only have to consult the record of what happened the last time that Trump lost an election. For all of Trump’s warnings of a “bloodbath” in the event of his defeat in 2024, the aftermath of the 2020 election all but proves that such dire prognostications are not likely to pay out.

 

There was violence after November 2020, but it peaked on January 6, 2021. The terrorist mobs that stormed the Capitol wounded police officers and suffered fatalities, and in the immediate wake of that awful day a frenzy of expectation developed among the fascist militias who had been most instrumental in the atrocities of January 6. Posters appeared everywhere calling for Trump’s supporters to “refuse to be silenced” and to join an “armed march on the Capitol and on all state capitals” scheduled for January 17, 2021.

 

Initially there seemed to be real reason to fear that January 17 would be another terrible day. But in the wake of the ratification of Joe Biden as President Elect it became clear that all of our sovereign institutions, from the Congress to the military to governors' mansions in all fifty states, would stand firm in support of the legitimate transfer of power. Knowing that any armed provocation would be met with a lethal response, fascist terrorists took the better part of valor on January 17, 2021. The day was not “silent,” but the loudest sounds of protest came from crickets.

 

What is most important to note in using January 17, 2021 as a gauge to predict what will happen after the election of 2024 is the fact that at that time Donald Trump was still president of the United States. Despite the fact that their Dear Leader was still Commander-in-Chief and possessed of the full powers of the presidency, fascist extremists remained in their hidey-holes on the single day when their violent assaults might have made the biggest impact on the nation’s psyche. If they did not go on the rampage then, how likely is it that they will do so while Joe Biden is not only the sitting President, but has been given another four years in office?

 

Any fears that violence will attend Trump’s defeat are rooted in an exaggerated estimation of his supporters' political convictions. Even the most extreme fascists in Trump’s coalition know that he is an utterly corrupt and incompetent clown. Dying to keep that man in office while he was still there was not worthwhile. Dying for the slim chance that you could somehow force him back into office over the will of the voters will be even less motivating.

 

If Trump wins the 2024 election, however, the entire motivational structure of Trump’s most extreme supporters changes. With Trump coming into office the impetus for fascist extremists to engage in acts of terror will be irresistible. Again, this is predictable because the fascists themselves are not fools. They know exactly what kind of venal grifter they are dealing with in Trump.

 

Committing acts of terror (say, assaulting a Planned Parenthood Clinic or a meeting of Campus Democrats) as Joe Biden is leaving office (or shortly after Trump has been sworn in) will force Trump to choose. Will he uphold the “rule of law” and risk alienating his base supporters, or will he remain true to the “war of us versus them” rhetoric that has propelled his political rise since 2015, and use his power to help effect “retribution” on “those animals” as he consistently promises on the campaign trail? Trump himself has little interest in any questions of governance, so the only way that fascists can guarantee that government power will be used against the “wrong people” will be to begin assaulting those people in the early stages of Trump’s second term, and force him to show the world where he stands.

 

That is the juncture at which we here in the US have arrived as a nation. If Joe Biden is elected, the specter of political violence may not go away immediately, but it will begin to recede. If Trump is elected, the political violence we have seen until now will barely qualify as a beginning. In that event, everyone should watch closely and take heed. If the full power of the US government falls into the hands of the fascist terrorists who engineered January 6, this country will not be a safe place for anyone possessed of an independent mind or a decent civic conscience.

4 comments:

  1. Well said, Andy. What America and Americans need is an alternative set of progressive stories and myths. Listen to Christopher Lydon's conversation with Richard Slotkin: https://radioopensource.org/american-disorder/
    Your old friend Paulo (in Bern)

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  2. Thanks, Paul. I listened to the conversation between Lydon and Slotkin, and it was very insightful and intriguing. The process Slotkin describes is real and he is no doubt right that intellectuals here in America have been remiss in failing to engage it. Two points I would make: 1)Alternative myths would be good, but reclaiming the myths that already exist would serve well too. The Founding, the Frontier, the Civil War, and the Good War should all belong to greater mainstream of American political life, not the fascists who make up the MAGA movement. All of the dark aspects of those moments feed MAGA (the plutocratic cronyism of the Founding, the racial animus of the Frontier and the Civil War, the isolationism and fascist sympathies of people like Charles Lindbergh during the "Good War"), all of the more positive and constructive dimensions of those myths belong to those who still believe in American democracy (the dedication of the Founders to protect the rights of the minority, the inspiration of the Frontier that took us into space and the moon, the animating passion of the Civil War to end slavery which impelled the Civil Rights movement, the courage of those who fought WWII to end fascism and oppose genocide). In these cases we do no even need new "progressive myths"- Americans as far from one-another on the political spectrum as Liz Cheney and Bernie Sanders can all agree on the interpretations of those myths that I outlined above. 2)The myth-making process Slotkin describes is too slow to help us right now. Even he, I think, would agree. Whatever flaws in the subtle mechanisms of discourse brought us to this place, only the cold hard facts will save us now, which is that Trump is an unscrupulous grifter who will destroy democracy if he has the chance, and that anyone with common sense enough to see that danger has to come to the polls in November and cast a vote to prevent that happening.

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  3. Yes, the Civil War is an existing myth that can be claimed or reclaimed by the left (and I'm not thinking of the Democratic establishment, as in terms of policy every Democratic president since Clinton has been to the right of Ronald Reagan, as Slotkin rightly points out). The Good War myth is irredeemably lost to the left, as there hasn't been a just American war since 1945.

    "The myth-making process Slotkin describes is too slow to help us right now. Even he, I think, would agree." Not would: Slotkin says so. Right now the task is to prevent Trump's reelection.

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  4. Calling any myth "irredeemably" lost misconstrues how myths work. The frontier was declared officially closed in 1890, but that didn't prevent John Wayne and Clint Eastwood from having very lucrative careers. The legacy of WWII can be claimed by all those who oppose Trump (not just "the left") precisely because conditions now eerily mirror those of the 1930's and 1940's. Trump's collusion with Putin and his dissemination of fascist rhetoric here at home echoes the perfidy of figures like Charles Lindbergh and George Van Horn Moseley back then, and the work of Jack Smith invokes the courage of men like O. John Rogge during the fight against Hitler. I am getting this all from Rachel Maddow's podcast and recent book, but her calling what happened back then a "Prequel (the title of her book)" to what is happening now holds water.

    In any case, as you and I agree, the question of which "myths" are available to whom is academic, because it is too late to activate the glacial forces of public discourse in the battle against Trump. The myth that I would contend serves Trump most effectively is one that Slotkin doesn't mention- the "con man with a heart of gold." Americans have been conditioned for centuries by characters like Tom Sawyer, Professor Harold Hill, and Bugs Bunny to believe that underneath the lying, cheating exterior of a con man lies an irreverent, fun-loving scamp who ultimately means well. Trump is testimony to the power of that myth, because no amount of "pussy grabbing" obscenity seems capable of awakening his followers to just what a vicious, irredeemable crook he really is. But here again we just have to keep repeating the facts and hope that they ultimately have a broader reach than the myth.

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