Encouraging Mob Violence Leads to Disaster

A classmate’s lecture asserted Trump’s encouragement of self-appointed armed vigilantes, militias, and MEGA toughs, filled with racism and hostility toward rules of law and order, would blow over. But those guys think they’ve the right to use weapons to make the rest of us to do what they want. Once tasting power people don’t lay it aside easily. Adding prejudice poisons the land. Add weapons and official encouragement, watch out.

FBI Director Christopher Wray testified that political violence is nearly a daily phenomenon. The FBI itself has been targeted. Threats against the FBI have spiked, “includ[ing] a bomb threat at FBI headquarters … calls for ‘civil war’ and ‘armed rebellion,’” and a nail gun was fired into one FBI office. The FBI erected additional barriers around its Washington headquarters because of the threats.

Attacks on the courts threaten fair and impartial justice – like the 2020 murder of U.S. District Court Judge Esther Salas’s son and the shooting of her husband in their family home in New Jersey. Recent violence includes an attack on Justice Kavanaugh’s life and the murder of a retired circuit judge in Wisconsin. Threats against federal judges and their families are “a disturbing trend” and “on the rise….” Some 1,100 serious threats were leveled against one judge for a temporary order on Trump’s first travel ban. 60 Minutes reported a 400% jump in threats to federal judges over five years.

Members of the Congress, governors and other state officials have been attacked and threatened.

• Since 2011, Representative Gabby Giffords was shot and suffered severe brain injury from an assassination attempt; Representative Steve Scalise was shot and seriously wounded by a terrorist; and Representative Rand Paul was tackled from behind, fracturing five ribs.
• Threats to members of Congress doubled since Trump’s 2020 election defeat and continue to soar. One anonymous video showed a man with a gun following Rep. Torres saying “I got something for you.” Another left “a dead rat with a noose around its neck and a brick with a family member’s name” on Rep. Tom Reed’s doorstep.
• On the very morning he was interviewed, Republican Representative Dusty Johnson of South Dakota reported “one of my offices received a threat against my life” among other threats. “My address, a picture of my home where my family lives was posted on kind of an anti-Dusty Facebook page.”
• Others described their fear of threats to CNN.
• Just a decade earlier, Senators Patrick Leahy of Vermont and Tom Daschle of South Dakota received letters with anthrax spores.

Replacing law, order and democracy, with fear, violence and intimidation endangers everyone. Official encouragement or support aggravate it. Authorities in Franco’s Spain stole children from their parents for money. Drug lords in Columbia and Mexico absorbed forces of law and order. Gangs demand payments or force children to join. Authorities disappeared 43 students in Mexico. Families run away only to be turned down at the US border and forced back. Breakdown of law and order is serious business. Authorities’ ability to act with impunity, as if rules were irrelevant to them, makes everyone slaves. When society gives up on law and order, no funding of police solves the problem.

Storming the Capital disempowers the people. Force, violence and intimidation make us surrender everything that’s precious. That’s where officially encouraged mob violence leads.

— If you think I’m on target, please pass it on. For the podcast, please click here. This commentary was scheduled for broadcast on WAMC Northeast Report, on October 18, 2022.

The Threat of White Nationalist Violence

A number of us have been trying to communicate that Confederate symbols reflect the ideology that underlies much of the gun movement, various private militias and armed organizations.[1] White nationalist racism has been evident for decades at gun shows, militia get-togethers and in their social media. With NRA help, they’ve been working to refight or reverse the results of the Civil War.  Their guns are intended to give white nationalists political power, and the killing sprees, often with streaming video, are welcomed to generate copycats and trigger the new war, which they’re convinced they have the weapons to win. They are not for democracy in America; the Confederacy is the future, not the past.

Reporting makes it look like school shooters are a random bunch of deranged individuals. But those killers study white nationalist literature, read the manifestos and watch the videos of their predecessors. Nothing is truly random. White nationalist antipathy toward African-Americans, people of color, Jews, Muslims and liberals leads to murders in churches, Temples, Mosques, grocery stores, and concerts.  These extremists are fundamentally disloyal, arming themselves for war against America.

Their disloyalty drives taking law into their own hands. Dislike for rules about grazing on federal lands led to an armed standoff with park rangers. Dislike for election results led to storming the capital. As their arrogance spreads, we’re all in their sights.

After the Civil War, supporters of the defeated Confederacy used murder to reduce their opponents’ voting power. Malcolm Nance, whose new book, They Want to Kill Americans, I strongly recommend, updates that story. Terrorists have no moral scruples. All of us are potentially in their sights.

Of course the white nationalists are being taken for a ride. Nance eloquently summarized a point analysts and economists have been trying to make, that under the white-nationalist-driven-Republican Party, most Americans “would see none of the profits of America but would literally pay for the wealth and prosperity of the richest of the rich.” Neo-Confederates haven’t connected their financiers and candidates with damage instead of service to the working classes who make up the bulk of the whites these racist extremists claim to defend. They’re for a lawless jungle run for the benefit of wealthy kleptocrats.

So what do we do?

First, we can take the wraps off investigating domestic terrorism – it should have been obvious since McVeigh bombed the Oklahoma City federal building in 1995 that homegrown white terrorism is a major problem in the U.S, and getting worse. But because of ties between violent white nationalist groups and the Republican Party, Congress hasn’t dealt with it effectively, though the FBI is finally catching up.

Second, despite the Court, we can put limits on guns; we can remake the illegitimate Court; and, if necessary, rewrite the Second Amendment.

Third, with our votes, we can make Republican support for violent extremists toxic.

Fourth, vote – we can wrap up our skepticism and get ourselves, family and friends to the polls. The religious right, their white nationalist allies, and corporate supporters can tell you voting pays huge dividends. There are enough of us to restore our country – if we get ourselves, families and friends to the polls.

— If you think I’m on target, please pass it on. For the podcast, please click here. This commentary, with minor changes, was scheduled for broadcast on WAMC Northeast Report, on July 19, 2022.

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[1] See my Unfit for Democracy (NYU Press, 2016), chap. 8.

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF GUNS

<< For the podcast, please click here. >>

The Court has a gun rights case and the NRA recently sent me an incendiary invitation to join. So let’s talk about guns and the people who carry them.

There are a lot of stereotypes about who is dangerous and who is not. People assume that rural populations are less dangerous. Actually I think that stereotype is wrong. Many who live with few neighbors get used to doing whatever they want and assume they’re within their rights. Crossing people not used to being crossed can be dangerous. I’ve lived in rural areas on vacation and have had lovely experiences, but I understand from friends what could happen when, for example, they tried to keep hunters off their own property. It wasn’t pretty and doesn’t accord with what most of us think are our property rights, but our friends got the message and shut up.

City folk are a bit different. There are so many of us that conflict is likely, for the same reason that traffic accidents are more likely in cities. But city people live with restrictions. Most of us understand that rules are necessary so that we can live in close proximity to each other. And by and large we solve problems by avoidance.

Throw guns in the mix. Guns aren’t just an equalizer; they’re a dominator. With a gun in your pocket, you don’t feel like you have to back down. Pull it out and you control the situation. It seems relevant to me that our friends’ experience in a rural area was connected to guns. With a gun, you can feel strong, tough, like you don’t have to back down because the other guy better.

I grew up with a temper and don’t even want to imagine what would have happened if I’d grown up with a gun. I like myself better without one and learned to use my head instead of my fists or a weapon. That generally put me in a much better place than those who have behaved in uncivil ways toward me.

Holding a gun is similar to participating in a mob. With people around you urging action it becomes increasingly hard to hold back, so that mobs do things that individuals would not. That psychology also affects juries – holdouts need partners or the psychological pressure becomes too much.

Put guns in the hands of people in a mob and you have an incendiary combination – people storming government offices, threatening public officials, planning to kidnap the governor of Michigan, intimidating members of Congress, or settling scores with opposing demonstrators. States trying to authorize people to drive into demonstrations are showing the belligerence of mobs, of angry people with guns at the ready. Power corrupts and people who can make laws blow up in their heads the justification for throttling their opponents. With guns or cars driven into demonstrations, the damage is deadly.

Guns and politics don’t mix – they lead to more violence than good sense. That’s been true across the world; we don’t need it here. In proportion to population, the Civil War was one of the most deadly in human history and the current partisan divide echoes those divisions, over Confederate monuments, violence, race and immigration. We don’t need to repeat it. We don’t need anything encouraging violence like gun rights decisions telling a large part of the country it can’t protect its people, Black or white, and encouraging another part of the country to settle disputes violently. We don’t need decisions edging us toward civil war, as the Court infamously did in 1857.

— If you agree with this commentary, please feel free to share it. This commentary was scheduled for broadcast on WAMC Northeast Report, November 16, 2021.

An Author of our Constitution on Risks from How we Choose the President

Those of you who are regular listeners to my commentary may have guessed that I’ve been working on a study of the American Constitutional Convention. So, going systematically through some of the records, I happened on a statement by Gouverneur Morris – that’s his name, not a title. He and his family were quite wealthy – they owned much of what is now the Bronx – but he had good friends in Pennsylvania and his friends there invited him to join the Pennsylvania delegation to the Constitutional Convention, in which he played a prominent role. A few years later, he wrote a letter to the President of the New York State Senate about the method of choosing the President of the United States, a subject which drew a lot of discussion in the Convention, both for and against. Morris wrote:

[E]very mode of electing the chief magistrate of a powerful nation hitherto adopted is liable to objection. The instances where violence has been used, and murders committed, are numerous; those, in which artifice and fraud have succeeded against the general wish and will, are innumerable.  And hence it was inferred, that the mode least favorable to intrigue and corruption, that in which the unbiassed voice of the people will be most attended to, and that which is least likely to terminate in violence and usurpation, ought to be adopted.  To impress conviction on this subject, the case of Poland was not unaptly cited.  Great and ambitious Princes took part in the election of a Polish King.  Money, threats, and force were employed; violence, bloodshed, and oppression ensued; and now that country is parcelled [sic] out among the neighboring Potentates, one of whom was but a petty Prince two centuries ago.

No method is perfect. As George Washington wrote in a letter I quoted a couple of weeks ago, little can protect a country “in the last stage of corrupted morals and political depravity.” No matter how they see themselves, those who tried or supported the effort to take the presidency by intimidation, violence and force of arms, came close to laying this country open to violence from every quarter – marauders, gangs, thugs and civil war – which can only result in despotism. No one can know who will be on top or for how long. Stalin did a systematic job of executing those who helped the Communists take over. Putin and similar dictators around the world seem to be doing the same thing.

I don’t know if any of the various gun-toting, white supremacists and extremists who think of themselves as conservatives or patriots ever hear or give my commentary a moment’s thought. Nevertheless, reaching them seems to me one of the most important things a commentator can attempt. Somehow, I wish I could get across the notion that resolving our disagreements with guns is the most dangerous thing any of us can do to our country and the least likely to end up creating the world they or any of us want to believe in. If they think of themselves as supporting the little guy, look at Columbia or El Salvador – the very places people are desperately trying to flee. The likelihood is strong that those who live by the gun, not only die by the gun but turn themselves into thieves and crooks along the way. There is no patriotism in that, no way to make America great again, better or greater in the future. It is universally self-destructive.

— This commentary was scheduled for broadcast on the WAMC Northeast Report, on July 20, 2021.

A Plan to Beat Back the Far Right

A new article in Foreign Affairs contrasts the comprehensive response to the violent wrong in Europe and the tepid response here. It strikes me that we still have to win the immediate political battles because the Republican allies of the extremist wrong have been blocking action for years – blocking investigation, blocking regulation, blocking investment in all forms of helpful peacemaking. But the reporting by Cynthia Miller-Idriss and Daniel Koehler is sobering to say the least.

A Taste of Their Own Medicine

I find myself getting angrier by the day and wanting to give the extremists, the alt-WRONG, the Trumpistas, the people who think the road to greatness is violence against each other, a taste of their own medicine. They chanted “Lock her up” and I want to lock HIM up, and THEM too.

More than that, I keep thinking of the loyalty oaths we had to sign in the 50s and 60s, spread by Joe McCarthy and used to attack liberals. It was very effective in destroying the pro-labor movement, the left that called for measures to make life better for working people. That was what the McCarthy loyalty oaths took down. The left morphed, of course. In the 60s it switched to integration and the women’s movement so that the Trump crowd could now slander the left claiming we liberals don’t care about workers.

But now, like the old loyalty oaths, it’s time to make people swear under penalties of perjury that they have never brought guns or other weapons to demonstrations, or into public buildings, or threatened public officials with them. It’s time to fence in those who believe that politics is a blood sport, decided not by votes but by force. This goes much deeper than Trump and it needs to be removed from the body politic. Maybe the alt, the racists, misogynists and extremists who are afraid of fair competition with Blacks and women will morph into something more constructive – though I don’t have a prayer that they will ever understand that we all do better when everyone does better.

The South took back their loss in the Civil War with continued violence, guerilla violence where necessary until they took over a part of this nation and ruled it for a century of segregation and intimidation. Now it’s time to finish the job of taking this country back and threaten and intimidate those who think threats, intimidation, assault and murder are fine means of politics. This country has no place for people who put victory and murder above democracy. We talk about violence in this country but the way-over-the-top racists are the problem and before we tear down the prisons, we should use them to lock the violent racists up. What goes around comes around and that includes gun violence as well as biological violence by refusing to abide by the rules of public health, overwhelming our hospitals and killing people both ways. They don’t believe in life. When you take away the idea that they care about human life, what you are left with in the anti-abortion hysteria is misogyny. Blacks and women, that’s what these extremists are afraid of. They are cowards in daily life trying to claim bravery with their weapons, mobs and threats.

Frankly, it’s very disturbing that there are people who still support the monster called Trump, who will work against any non-Trumper in politics even though there are no Trump policies – he got rid of every idea as soon as he announced it: love the uneducated but support the rich; love the workers in middle-America but ditch the infrastructure projects he promised. He lies to his most devoted supporters because he can.

The biggest dupes of Trump are the ones in the Red hats. He’s filled their minds and bellies with words. And turned many into traitors.

— This commentary was scheduled for broadcast on the WAMC Northeast Report, on January 12, 2021.

No prior violence at the Capitol was instigated by the person responsible to “take Care that the Laws be faithfully executed….”

WP listed 7 incidents in the history of the U.S. which involved violence at the U.S. Capitol, Elahe Izadi, A history of violence at the U.S. Capitol, WP, March 28, 2016, available at https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/local/wp/2016/03/28/a-history-of-violence-at-the-u-s-capitol/.

Makenzie Koch, A history of shootings, other violent attacks at the US Capitol, available at https://fox4kc.com/news/a-history-of-shootings-other-violent-attacks-at-the-us-capitol/, Posted: Jan 6, 2021 / 03:56 PM CST / Updated: Jan 6, 2021 / 03:56 PM CST reported “Since the Capitol was opened in 1800, there have been two other shootings and several other serious attacks.”

I can remember reporting of several of those incidents, going back to the 1954 attack by Puerto Rican nationalists, when I was in Junior High School.

Never before has the person acting as Commander-in-Chief been the leader and supporter of the violence – effectively a traitor. There have been many warnings going back several decades that gun rights groups and those gathering at gun shows, private militias and congregation of militia organizations, have been preparing to attack federal authorities. One of that number, Timothy McVeigh, bombed a federal building in Oklahoma City, killing hundreds, including the children in a day care center in the building. But those warnings ran afoul of politics because the gun rights groups were allied with one of the political parties. Enough, people with guns planning conspiracies against the government and against people whose politics differ from theirs, must be stopped. Those involved in the violence at the Capitol must be tried, convicted and sentenced, from the top down.

Trump’s Final Days

There’s been much news about whether Trump would use force or declare martial law to stay in office. Trump bumped that off the news by declaring he wouldn’t sign the stimulus and relief bill, then signing it after widespread criticism. Perhaps he’s abandoned using force to stay in office. But he’s taken many steps to set up the possibility. Ignoring the Senate confirmation process and civil service protections, he put his most reckless and irresponsible supporters in acting positions. He tested which federal forces would and which would not respond to his commands to take over parts of America, in defiance of state and local officials. Typically, Trump sends ambiguous messages to his [quote] “Second Amendment supporters” and others, to get them thinking about how they can keep Trump in power. If they create enough chaos, he’s ready to take advantage. If not, he’ll claim he was trying to keep the peace.

There are signs that Trump’s armed mobs are revving up. In my last book, I brought together reporting and studies about the threat of domestic terrorism, but so far America hasn’t grappled with the problem. There’ve long been warnings. People from areas with many armed right-wingers have been telling those willing to listen about the threats, intimidation and violence unleashed on surrounding communities. The threat has only been getting worse. As Time Magazine summarized:

white nationalists have become the face of terrorism in America. Since 9/11, white supremacists and other far-right extremists have been responsible for almost three times as many attacks on U.S. soil as Islamic terrorists ….

They’ve been talking for decades about using their guns to defend against what they label federal tyranny – which means making war on the United States. Unlike legitimate gun owners who keep their guns for sport or to defend their homes, they’ve threatened, shot at or killed members of Congress, federal judges, poll workers, park rangers, demonstrators, and blew up the Oklahoma City federal building, injuring hundreds and slaughtering the children in its day care center. Donald Trump read Hitler closely, and knows that Hitler was brought to power by his unofficial armies of thugs, called “Brown Shirts.”

Whether Trump, or his supporters, have abandoned the idea, we need to think of this as a risk, not a certainty. But if Trump resorts to violence, the Army can stand up to its Commander-in-Chief by refusing to obey illegal orders, while governors, police and the National Guard will be charged to defend America. No doubt some are sympathetic to the white nationalists; others, one hopes most, are disgusted by the effort to overthrow the Constitution of the United States, to violate the oath they, most of us, have taken to defend this country.

The third section of the Fourteenth Amendment barred anyone who’d taken an oath to support the Constitution and then “engaged in insurrection or rebellion against” this country from holding any office under the United States, or any State. Rebels were traitors.

We must let any potential traitors know that this generation of Americans has no room for insurrection, for people who put their racial hatreds above loyalty to country. There is no right to commit treason, to try to overthrow the constitutional government of the United States by force and violence. Those are crimes against all of us.

The Civil War is over; the so-called “lost cause” should stay lost, so that government of, by and for all the people, not just armed and dangerous people, shall survive.

— This commentary was scheduled for broadcast on WAMC Northeast Report, on January 5, 2021.

What about those demonstrations?

The Black Lives Matter movement is being waylaid by provocateurs and others who want to use the opportunity to loot stores or, as one hoodlum did, shoot people on camera and then, apparently craving notoriety, tried to give himself up to police who ignored him because he’s white and they were convinced all bad things are black.[1]

That’s part of the reason Martin Luther King was so determined that his people be completely nonviolent. People like John Lewis had their heads cracked. Four little Black girls were blown up in their church. Emmet Til and lots of others were murdered, including white people working in solidarity with the African-American population struggling for freedom. How many murders, how many lynchings does it take to convince people that the African-Americans were innocent victims, not perpetrators.

Thousands of people were killed and lynched. Do we have to go through that again. We’re taught the police are brave. How brave do you have to be to shoot people in the back? How brave do you have to be to shoot a woman asleep in her bed, or a man putting his key in his door, or keep a knee on a man’s throat as he dies? None of them were armed. But seven shots paralyzed Jacob Blake. 41 shots killed Amadou Diallo – who never had a chance or a weapon. Abner Louima was attacked and sexually brutalized by police. When will it be enough? When will it ever stop?

We’re told there are good cops, that most cops are good cops. I’d be delighted if they’d act the part, if they’d stop the bad ones from committing murder, if they’d participate in drumming people like that out of the force. One former policeman in our area came here to live because he had exposed massive corruption in the New York City Police Department and, regardless of those supposedly good cops, cops drove him out of town, initially by attempted murder. Where are those good cops when we need them?

Where people aren’t allowed to protest in peace, they may have to find a different way to protect themselves while making their point. Perhaps they’d do better putting Black Lives Matter t-shirts on everyone and circulating on busy streets without congregating or waving signs. Perhaps they’d do better using the time working on the election. Do Trump, and other bigots, with and without guns, have to be driven out of power, before it’s possible to deal with the real violence? There’s what’s called a ground game to be fought to win this election – letters, calls, information, rides – lots of organizations are working on it and lots of people are trying to help out. People of color need friends in high places to get what they deserve. Martin Luther King was in league with President Johnson – King was the greater man but Johnson had the power. Perhaps the demonstrators would do better to skip the streets and take the White House. Perhaps that would deny Trump and the hoodlums who support him anything to scare people with. Perhaps going for votes would outfox them and put the truly violent elements in our society in their cages.

— This commentary was scheduled for broadcast on WAMC Northeast Report, on September 1, 2020.

[1] CBSN, Chicago, reported: “As for Rittenhouse showing up with his hands in the air, appearing to turn himself in, the sheriff said officers did not realize what he was trying to do.”

How Can Trump Be Stopped?

I wonder what Germans could have done to stop Hitler in 1932, before or after he had the keys to power.

One option was to fight back. Some believe we have to. Actually, some Germans fought back well before the takeover, but the German government was much harder on leftist fighters than on Hitler’s Brown Shirts. Leftist violence, justifications aside, became an authoritarian excuse, the way Trump wants to use any defense of democracy here.

The major alternative is the Mahatma Gandhi/Martin Luther King nonviolent response. Leaders of protests – against Trump, abuse of our Black and Brown fellow citizens, and against the violence, racism and murders by the Alt-screwy – overwhelming choose nonviolence.

That got India free of Britain but Muslim Pakistan left largely Hindu India anyway. Martin Luther King’s nonviolent approach ended formal legal segregation and won new Civil Rights Laws but left too many African-Americans out of the education, jobs, homes and opportunities they deserved, another partial victory. Maybe that’s all we get in life.

And we can vote. We must vote. Whatever we do on the streets will be backed or undercut by what we do at the polls. It may be an act of faith, but it will prove the most important prayer we’ll ever voice.

Why? I think violence is doomed and we must stay clear of it. Actually, King wasn’t nonviolent. That’s a hard truth, but King’s success depended on his own supporters getting their heads cracked in front of cameras for national television – not unlike what Trump’s troops are doing to people in Portland. There were many, Black and White, who, like John Lewis, had the courage to board busses for the Freedom Rides toward violent racists waiting with firebombs to force them out of the busses and with clubs to bludgeon and bloody them when they came out. I never had that courage, but have enormous respect for those who did. I played a bit part in the Civil Rights Movement, from the safety of legal offices and demonstrations where I didn’t expect trouble – I Marched on Washington to hear King describe his dream, and I joined demonstrations in places like New York City. The movement needed more bravery than I had.

Why? Because some people are moved by changes in national sentiment and by the bravery and decency they see on television news. Let’s be clear, we need institutions of power to back off, like Marco’s Army did in 1986, when confronted with “streets gradually teeming with people to quietly face off … armored tanks …[with] linked arms and prayers and flowers and songs.” But if it’s Duarte’s violence in today’s Philippines, Tiananmen Square in 1989 where peaceful pro-democracy protestors were crushed under relentless tanks, instead of Manila with flowers in 1986, if it’s either bloodthirsty repression or a sense of humanity that stops the armies short, it matters what the soldiers do and what the generals do. Trump is shaping a force under his command and preparing troops with practice maneuvers against demonstrators. Unfortunately, it’s not clear that the public will recognize nonviolence or who’s attacking whom when Trump creates violent incidents, or how the regular Army will respond.

If those in command of the guns, tanks and other weapons, say to each other this is not what we do in a democracy, then Trump better leave fast, maybe to visit his dear friend Vladimir Putin. But if they react that it’s a sadistic joy to mow the unarmed down, no arms could stop them.

There’s another issue. Recent events eroded respect for some police departments. But, depending how events go, there could be significant confrontations between the Alt-Screwy and pro-democracy protestors. In that case the police may be all we have. Yes there must be ways to reform the way they operate, but it’s not just that they have to learn community policing, it’s also us who have to invite the police in, break bread with them, so that we get to know each other. We do need them.

— This commentary was scheduled for broadcast  on WAMC Northeast Report, on July 28, 2020.