After the Storm – Progressive.org – Progressive.org

The January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol dramatized the threat from the far right in a way that the United States hasnt seen since the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing, which killed 168 people. January 6 sharpened battle lines and intensified far-right militancyyet it also highlighted a number of questions and uncertainties that far-rightists are facing as they enter a new period, now that Donald Trump is no longer in the White House.

Removing Trumps twisted charisma from the picture might inflame factional infighting, but it might also clear the way for newer leaders with stronger organizational skills.

As President, Trump echoed and validated far-rightists more than any of his predecessors, with his racism and misogyny, demonization of political opponents, celebration of violence, and blatant authoritarian tendencies. In the final months of his administration, Trump refused to accept his electoral defeat, a stance that fueled far-right politics in a way no other President has done.

Tens of millions of people have bought into Trumps fraudulent claim that the vote was rigged, thereby calling into question the legitimacy of the U.S. government itself. The great majority of those who stormed the Capitol, according to one detailed study, had no apparent affiliation with far-right organizations, but rather were normal Trump supporters suddenly ready to use force to overturn a presidential election.

The far right has grown dramatically in recent months, but its newer adherents are not yet well organized, and their long-term commitment to the movement is uncertain.

Insurgency reflects the far rights contradictory relationship with the established order. Far-rightists want to bolster systems of oppression and exclusion that have been integral to U.S. society since the beginning. Yet theyre deeply angry at the status quo and the people in power.

Part of this anger comes from a fear of losing the relative social privilege and power they traditionally held over oppressed groups; another part comes from a sense of being beaten down and disenfranchised by elites. This double-edged anger coalesces into the belief that economic and political elites are using people of color, feminists, immigrants, and LGBTQ+ people to weaken and destroy white Christian America.

Far-right anti-elitism is real, but it doesnt challenge real social or economic hierarchies. Rather, it takes peoples sense of disempowerment and channels it in ways that bolster inequality and oppression all the more.

The U.S. far right encompasses several different ideologies. Most notorious is white nationalism, an openly racist doctrine that literally aims to establish an all-white nation through migration, mass expulsion, or genocide. White nationalism is promoted by such groups as Patriot Front, but its less common among far-rightists than other ideologies that bolster racial oppression in ways that are easier for proponents to deny.

The Proud Boys, for example, advocate Western chauvinism (i.e., European cultural dominance) but also include people of color as members; notably, the groups current leader, Enrique Tarrio, identifies as Afro-Cuban. The Oath Keepers, a leading Patriot movement group, routinely scapegoat and demonize Muslims and immigrants but uphold color-blind ideology, which reinforces racial oppression by denying that its there.

Other major far-right ideologies dont center on race at all. The theocratic wing of the Christian right wants to take dominion over society, meaning that it advocates a form of supremacism based on religion rather than race. One of the largest theocratic formations, the New Apostolic Reformation movement, has a multiracial membership and active branches in Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Christian right mobilization efforts have largely centered on issues of gender and sexuality through campaigns opposing abortion rights and LGBTQ+ rights.

Another type of far-right ideology is conspiracism, which interprets political and social conflict primarily in terms of imagined plots by sinister cabals. The QAnon movement, which claims that a network of satanic, cannibalistic pedophiles secretly controls the Democratic Party and many key institutions, is only the most recent well-publicized incarnation.

Conspiracism can be found in most branches of the far right. Its roots trace back to the long history of antisemitism but also numerous anti-Catholic, homophobic, and anticommunist witch hunts that have occurred repeatedly in U.S. history.

The Patriot (or militia) movement, which fears a plot by globalist elites to impose tyranny on the United States, draws from all of these ideological currents and adds another: the glorification of individual property rights. This is the belief that freedom is fundamentally about owning and controlling property without government regulation or limits. Property rights ideology is an expression of class privilege because it bases peoples civic worth on whether or not they are owners.

How will these ideologies interact in the months and years ahead? Which themes and beliefs will gain ground within the far right, especially among newer members?

Ideological diversity sometimes fuels sectarian conflict. Yet several of the U.S. far rights biggest upsurges of the past forty years have been powered by different ideologies converging and interacting in dynamic ways. In the weeks following the November 2020 election, the pro-Trump Stop the Steal movement provided an umbrella for such convergence, as QAnon conspiracists, Proud Boys, and neo-Nazis not only marched together but began to borrow each others slogans and symbols.

Beyond ideology, the events of January 6 and Trumps departure from the White House two weeks later raise a number of questions about the mindset of far-rightists and how they view their current situation. These questions can help us understand some of the movements internal dynamics and possible courses of action.

One question is how far-rightists regard the January 6 Capitol takeover. Strictly speaking, if its aim was to overturn Bidens election and keep Trump in the White House, then the attack failed. This led to what observers called confusion, disillusionment, and infighting among hardcore Trump supporters, some of whom coped with their sense of defeat by claiming, absurdly, that the Capitol takeover had been orchestrated by antifa posing as Stop-the-Steal activists.

To other far-rightists, however, the Capitol attack was a heroic moment, a mass action that brought Congress to a standstill for hours and sent politicians a warning they could not ignore. One Patriot activist described January 6 as one of the most powerful things that I was ever a part of and will ever be a part of.

The event gave the movement a martyr in Ashli Babbitt, who was fatally shot by a Capitol Police officer when she tried to enter the building, bolstering calls for greater militancy and commitment. A post-Trump upsurge of far-right violence was already likely, and the polarizing effects of January 6 intensify this, whether through heightened enthusiasm or growing desperation.

Another question facing far-rightists is whether Donald Trump will continue to be a rallying figure going forward. During his presidency, far-right attitudes toward Trump diverged widely. At one extreme, most QAnon supporters viewed him in superhuman, messianic terms. Christian theocrats often compared Trump to Cyrus in the Biblean unbeliever who nonetheless served as an instrument of God.

Yet many members of the alt-right, whose skillful online activism in 2016 helped Trump win the nomination and the presidency, quickly came to believe that he failed to deliver most of his promises on immigration, trade, and foreign policy.

The attitude of some on the far right shifted after January 6. Many Proud Boys, previously staunch supporters, called Trump weak and a total failure for agreeing to leave office and for dissociating himself from the violence at the Capitol, while many QAnon followers felt betrayed by his failure to arrest Democrats and other opponents en masse, as they had predicted he would do. Yet some alt-rightists hope that Trump might now be more effective at combating the conservative establishment than he had been as President.

Donald Trump got eleven million more votes in 2020 than he did four years earlier, despite his disastrous handling of the pandemic and the recession, among other failings. He remains popular within the Republican Party and among forces further to the right.

Yet its unclear whether he will continue to play an active leading role, which has mixed implications for his movement. Removing Trumps twisted charisma from the picture might inflame factional infighting, but it might also clear the way for newer leaders with stronger organizational skills.

The Capitol takeover raised major questions concerning far-rightists attitudes towardand relations withthe police. The January 6 attackers physically assaulted more than a hundred Capitol Police officers, one of whom was attacked with a chemical spray and died from a stroke the next day. Yet they also carried thin blue line flags, and some off-duty cops are believed to have participated in the attack.

Those on the far right have long tended to support local cops but oppose federal law enforcement, yet deeper complexities are involved.

Solidarity with police became a far-right rallying point in the spring and summer of 2020, in the face of the Black-led mass protests against police violence after the murder of George Floyd. Yet members of the boogaloo movement rejected President Trumps law-and-order rhetoric and called instead for cops to be killed, to help further their movements goal of provoking a civil war. Boogaloo activists stepped up these calls after the Capitol takeover.

Other far-right groups have shifted in their attitudes toward law enforcement. The Proud Boys, founded in 2016, initially positioned themselves as a vigilante arm of the Republican Party and enjoyed friendly relations with police. But after the November 2020 election, they found themselves in physical confrontations with cops, notably at a New Years Day protest in Salem, Oregon, after which members of the group made a show of stomping on a thin blue line flag.

The Patriot movements relationship with police is more complex. Some leading groups within the movement (the Oath Keepers, and the Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association) specifically recruit members of law enforcement. But the movement also has a history of armed confrontations with cops, most dramatically the 2014 standoff at Cliven Bundys ranch. Clivens son Ammon Bundy leads the group Peoples Rights, which has promoted the belief that the county sheriff is the only legitimate law enforcement official.

Given this complicated background, its likely that many far-rightists, especially newly radicalized activists, are uncertain or conflicted in their attitudes toward police. This will likely continue to be a point of significant debate.

But the far right is certain to remain a serious force, because its supremacist and exclusionary politics speak to widely held fears and, in distorted ways, address real social tensions and problems.

It would be a serious mistake to rely on the state repressive apparatus to stop this threat. As Cloee Cooper noted in a February 22 article on Progressive.org, The mechanisms of repression and policing aimed at suppressing the far right inevitably get turned on communities of color and the left.

Instead, we need grassroots-based organizing and activism to confront organized far-right forces and defend communities that are under attack, with space for people to act in different ways and with different politicsmilitant and nonmilitant, leftist and nonleftist.

At the same time, we cant let the insurgent far right present itself as the only real oppositional force. We must offer liberatory visions and strategies that speak to the disempowerment and isolation that most people in this society experience to varying degrees, and that the far right feeds on.

Against the far rights twisted anti-elitism founded on bogus conspiracy theories, supremacism, and exclusion, we must offer radical critiques based on systemic analysis, egalitarianism, and solidarity.

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After the Storm - Progressive.org - Progressive.org