January 6th, the far-right, and the dangerous consolidation of the means of violence on one side of the political spectrum.
January 6th's half-assed putsch attempt, ginned up by Trump and his sycophants in congress, while shameful and frightening, was hardly a coordinated coup. That shouldn't give us much comfort, however. What was made eminently clear was that law enforcement and security personnel largely welcomed and coddled the rioters with whom many of them evidently sympathize. Apart from a single shot fired that killed a woman as she and other insurrectionists tried to force their way into the House Chamber (where congresspeople and staffers sheltered between gallery pews), very little force was exerted against the rioters as they roamed freely through the halls of Congress. I joked that nobody told me we'd defunded the police already, but rather than a case of negligence and lack of preparation, what we witnessed was a blatant dereliction of duty as cops inside the Capitol took smiling selfies with imbecilic terrorists. Some who broke in scaled walls and smashed windows for a felonious photo op, some wore “Auschwitz staff" sweatshirts and were invited past barricades by friendly police. When finally, after hours of occupation, looting and desecration, passive cops gently escorted the rioters out, some holding old ladies' hands to help them down the Capitol steps.
Many have commented on the clear double standard between law enforcement's treatment of peaceful racial justice protestors all throughout 2020— unnecessarily violent and hostile from sea to shining sea— and January 6th’s nearly all-white, pro-Trump rioters to whom police were stunningly cordial and understanding. Of the vastly different responses, examples abound: Many remember Capitol police flipping disabled protestors out of their wheelchairs during a peaceful sit-in for health care in the very same building in 2017, and federal troops were out in force to intimidate and brutalize Black Lives Matter demonstrators as they exercised their constitutional right to non-violent protest in D.C. last summer. But despite knowing well ahead of time that hordes of Trump's goons would be descending on the mall, an appropriate security presence was conspicuously absent. This should be no surprise to anyone who's been paying attention in recent years or indeed who knows much about American history. Far-right protestors, who are often armed and whose rhetoric is consistently violent, are typically treated with kid gloves while those on the left are frequently subject to shocking violence, especially if they're black, indigenous or people of color. While police violently and sometimes fatally besieged protestors this summer in the Pacific Northwest, they ignored the provocations of neo-Nazis, Proud Boys and other pro-Trump and white supremacist groups also present. Around the same time, armed anti-mask, anti-government militias were allowed to storm and occupy state capitols across the country without consequence. There are countless examples of this quintessentially American dichotomy to cite from more distant American history of course, from Tulsa and Rosewood to Indigenous ethnic cleansing to the forgotten massacres of striking laborers and their wives and children. But rather than offer another piece of commentary lamenting this country's sordid history and inequitable present, I want to ask specifically that we consider how woefully unprepared we are to resist a competent, concerted and violent effort to subvert our democracy.
The United States has a serious problem with far-right and white supremacist infiltration of law enforcement and the military, an issue the FBI has internally discussed since at least 2006, but done nothing about. And while many on the right arm themselves and engage in hateful, violent rhetoric whether they're members of extremist groups or not, they have up until now managed to effectively direct focus away from the very real threat they themselves pose and onto the largely unarmed, unorganized “left” including phantoms like ANTIFA that, alas, don't even exist in any meaningful, organized way.
Corporate media and the centrist Democratic Party establishment are partly complicit in helping create these conditions, wittingly or not, as are those liberals, who, in seeking civility or reconciliation with "moderate" supporters and enablers of Trump and fascism in this country (and who have accepted narratives about the threat of socialism in the interest of restoring political "normalcy") have unwittingly allowed for the far-right to advance relatively unchecked.
It is imperative for the longterm survival of American democracy that the left mobilize to pressure Democrats to champion meaningful, material improvements in the lives of the working class so as to plug the grievance spigot of which the far-right makes effective use. But, and I'll be blunt, in the short term, we also need to be concerned about the fact that the far right not only has the winking support of law enforcement, they also happen to have all of the guns. While those with military experience or who are training in preparation for some real or imagined threat are a relatively small group, the segment of the population now conditioned to sympathize with and support them is larger than at any time in recent history. And while violent far-right extremists are often closely associated with elected Republicans (they even elected some QAnon people to congress last year), there is essentially no "far-left" counterweight in the United States, and indeed what passes for "far-left" in most media narratives are people who (correctly) peacefully agitate within the system for things like universal health care and a living wage. The tiny fraction of the left who believe in armed revolutionary struggle are currently Juuling on podcasts, not advocating for tactical community defense.
I'm not championing a leftist emulation of the Michigan Militia per se (though surely even in writing this I'm probably starting or adding to an existing FBI dossier), but the left needs to at least start talking about the following realities; that our most vulnerable communities, which are often densely concentrated, are policed by people who cannot be trusted not to kill unarmed black civilians if called, and who both anecdotal evidence and studies show are very sympathetic (and indeed are all-too-often themselves) far-right extremists; that "conservatives" pretty much have all the guns; that the military and even the National Guard have shown that they are reluctant or unwilling to intervene in domestic unrest in most cases; that the courts and the greater criminal justice system doesn't hold law enforcement accountable; that the problem of far-right extremism will not go away when Trump leaves office; that if the interests of capital at any point happen to align with a legitimated far-right movement there will be very little to stop that movement from seizing and holding power; and that the Democrats who are supposed to represent us are largely incapable of or unwilling to do their jobs to protect us and to defend our institutions. On that last point, instead of immediately working to remove or contain a psychopathic lunatic with the nuclear codes and throwing his treasonous cohort out of Congress on the night of the 6th, Democrats took part in a performance of collegial civility and righteous outrage alongside Republicans and have thus far equivocated somewhat about following through to comprehensively investigate and indict the people responsible for inciting the insurrection.
It is likely that tens of millions of Americans will continue to live in an echo chamber of disinformation as conspiracy movements like QAnon gain traction and news outlets to the right of Fox News rapidly seduce Trump's die-hard base. The economic fallout of the post-Covid era will exacerbate political tensions and it is unlikely that the Biden administration, such as it is, will be willing to fight for the tangible policy measures history has shown can effectively undermine far-right narratives. Furthermore, hollow pandering to various liberal constituencies paired with the continued handholding of corporate America will also cause many on the left to disengage. We may very well find ourselves in an extremely dangerous situation in the near future, where a competent and charismatic fascist could easily take up mantle of Trumpism and make devastating use of its violent fringe.
I don't know what the answer is exactly, and the prospect of concerned urbanites and progressives training and arming themselves as people committed to at least presenting the impression of a formidable obstacle to fascist insurrection sounds like very little fun. There aren’t very many examples of such groups in the United States. The Puget Sound John Brown Gun Club is one of the more active such "community defense" organizations that has a significant membership or group structure. They describe themselves as an “anti-fascist, anti-racist, pro-worker community defense organization committed to accountable, community-led defense”. They acted as armed security for protestors in the other Capitol Hill in Seattle this summer, and when present were supposedly a disincentive for Boogaloo Boys, Proud Boys, neo-Nazis and their friends in the police to escalate violence. As it turns out, far-right thugs prefer to be the only ones with scary guns. Similar groups in the pro-gun leftist space include the Socialist Rifle Association (which boasts nearly 70,000 Twitter followers), the Latino Rifle Association, and the Liberal Gun Club, each of which provides a space for those on the left interested in personal and community defense and gun policy. Some groups advocate for firearm-based defense for communities targeted by white supremacists, like the Not Fucking Around Coalition and Jews for the Preservation of Firearm Ownership.
It's reasonable to ask whether, in a functioning democracy, we should need people with weapons guarding protests and peacefully autonomous zones like Seattle's CHAZ, or in our communities. But in case you hadn't noticed, the United States is no longer a fully-functioning democracy if it ever was one, and the nation's police have almost universally shown where their sympathies lie. Police unions overwhelmingly endorsed Trump and routinely wade in to defend even the most heinous acts by their members. Driving across the country recently I saw countless "Blue Lives Matter" flags flying alongside Trump flags, the stars and stripes, even the Confederate stars and bars. The unholy marriage of Trumpism, white supremacy, secessionism, conspiracy obsession, historical revisionism, and fascism has been orgiastically consummated, and we all await its hideous progeny.
Many on both the left and right predicted that the end of 2020 would see significant violence in the streets no matter the outcome of the election. Thankfully, with only a few exceptions, we were wrong. But we got lucky, mainly because Trump and his confederates are bafflingly incompetent and in the end balked at fully unleashing the eager terrorists in their corner. The assault on the Capitol wasn't an aberration or the last gasp of Trump fascism, it was a test, and the government security apparatus— into which we poured three quarters of a trillion dollars last week— failed to keep a group of complete morons from getting close enough to our elected representatives to not only impede the function of democracy, but to kill them if they'd so intended. No doubt this episode will be used to rustle up more fear and funding for the police state and security contracts, but you can fortify the coop all you want—the fox is already in the henhouse.
I don’t like guns. While we can hope for meaningful gun control like an assault weapons ban or a national registry, not only are we highly unlikely to get either of those things any time soon, but the millions of assault rifles currently out there wouldn't suddenly disappear if we did. We have to first recognize that we are at an impasse where our hope for a better nation and the reality that we quite literally need to protect our communities and our democracy from a real and existential threat collide. If we go back to brunch and ignore the fact that however calm things may seem, we still stand opposed by a well-armed, well-funded and emboldened extreme right that is insidiously accumulating power— and that even in the most extreme circumstances law enforcement may not protect us— we run the very serious risk of soon reliving the events of January 6th, but with a very different result.
Twitter: @aidan_kahn
Insta: @canaidan
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