I wrote this exactly a year ago, and today – as Texas Gov. Abbott has pardoned convicted killer Daniel Perry – is, sadly, a good day to repost it: The open embrace of violence plays a key role in the broader rightwing mobilization against democracy.
We are staring at the contemporary American Right’s true face, at the essence of what defines the reactionary political project. It is a terrifying sight. Even if it is not news or surprising, it remains shocking and terrifying. And I believe it is important to articulate that. 2/
All strands of the Right – Republican elected officials, the media machine, the reactionary intellectual sphere, the conservative base – are openly and aggressively embracing rightwing vigilante violence. 3/
This all sends a clear message: It encourages white militants to use whatever force they please to “fight back” against anything and anyone associated with “the Left” by protecting and glorifying those who have engaged in vigilante violence – call it the Kyle Rittenhouse dogma. 4/
White vigilante violence is obviously not a new phenomenon. It was especially prevalent during moments of racial progress, in response to the first attempt of interracial democracy after the Civil War, for instance, or in rejection of the civil rights revolution of the 1950s and 60s. 5/
But the celebration of Kyle Rittenhouse and the pardoning of Daniel Perry still mark a key moment, capturing the significant radicalization of rightwing politics in the past few years, after the election of the first Black president and again since the anti-racist protests of 2020. 6/
We need to think about the embrace of vigilante violence as a strategy in the Right’s fight against democracy and as a part of the broader reactionary counter-mobilization: It serves as a tool to suppress protest and intimidate the majority. 7/
Beyond just functioning as a tool for upholding political power, white vigilante violence also serves as a way to enforce the underlying reactionary vision for which there is no majority support in America – and no one understands this better than the Right itself. 8/
The Right envisions a society in which white conservatives are enabled to serve as deputies of the white nationalist state to help keep those “others” in check, and to enforce a reactionary social and moral order through the threat of vigilante violence. 9/
Every time I mention how the Right is embracing vigilantism, I get a flurry of “Where were you when those woke barbarians destroyed our cities in the summer of 2020?! The violence is coming from the Left!!!” replies. 10/
This idea has become dogma on the Right: That the country is facing an onslaught from a powerful, radically “Un-American,” extremist “Left” that is violently threatening to destroy everything the nation is supposed to stand for. 11/
Rightwing extremism was never fully purged from mainstream conservatism. And after Obama – often derided as a radical “socialist” – was elected president, the idea that more drastic action was urgently needed was spreading fast into the center of conservative politics. 12/
The summer of 2020 further escalated this perception of imminent threat: It has become a key element of rightwing political identity to view the protests that erupted after the murder of George Floyd as – as irrefutable proof that “the Left” had started its full-on assault. 13/
This interpretation provides a permission structure for the embrace of political violence. Building up this supposedly totalitarian threat from the “Left” enables the Right to justify its actions within the long-established framework of conservative self-victimization. /end
Add comment