Morning Briefing: Far Right Threats and Right Wing Media Outrage
Morning Briefing: Far Right Threats and Right Wing Media Outrage
As Former President Donald Trump is set to 'surrender and be arraigned on criminal charges,' the far right has made violent threats and right-wing media figures have stoked outrage.
Morning Briefing: Former President Donald Trump “will surrender and be arraigned on criminal charges stemming from 2016 hush money payments.” Supporters and opponents of the former President have gathered near the courthouse in Manhattan, where the former President will appear in court after he is “fingerprinted, photographed and formally charged.”
Aimenn Penny, a member of the White Nationalist group White Lives Matter, was arrested and charged for allegedly using “Molotov cocktails on a church hoping to burn it down and stop a drag show,” and Penny allegedly “traveled an anti-LGBTQ protest in Wadsworth, Ohio, where he handed out racist and anti-LGBTQ propaganda while dressed in military garb.”
The Nationalist Social Club (NSC-131), a neo-Nazi White Supremacists group, reportedly distributed racists propaganda in neighborhoods in New Hampshire, and members of NSC-131 staged a protest in Portland, Maine which concluded with a “physical altercation between them and counter-protesters.”
An event organized by the Trans Radical Activist Network (TRAN) and Our Rights DC was cancelled by the organizers, “citing concerns for the safety of trans participants.”
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Ben Collins reports that “the threats, which were collected in a report by the nonprofit research group Advance Democracy, targeted Bragg, Attorney General Merrick Garland, Soros and law enforcement. Advance Democracy’s report said they ‘had not identified any definitive plans by users to engage in violence or any large-scale organizing activities.’ However, users on the pro-Trump forum encouraged those who did not want to ‘form organized militias’ to ‘take on lone wolf mentalities,’ ‘weaponize suicidal people’ and ‘make the jurors public knowledge.’ Rhetoric from the former president has done little to quell supporters’ anger, and has at times appeared to play into accelerationist ideas. In a post to Truth Social shortly after news of his indictment, Trump said that the United States was now a ‘third world country’ and that ‘the country is dying.’ Trump had previously warned of the potential for ‘death and destruction’ if he faced criminal charges.” [NBC News]
Annika Brockschmidt and Thomas Lecaque write that “Fascists need martyrs—they need blood to sanctify the ground they walk on, and to call for even more sacrifice from supporters. Trump hasn’t explicitly spoken of “Blutzeugen” yet, of “blood witnesses,” as the Nazis called their “martyrs,” or of a “baptism of blood,” as Hitler and his cronies called the Nazis regarding their failed coup of 1923. But he doesn’t have to at this point to make the parallel more obvious—because Ashli Babbitt has long become a martyr of the movement, as Jeff Sharlet has shown, as have the still-living insurrectionists behind bars (who can, conveniently, still record propaganda songs). It was a moment that took the new Trumpist version of the Lost Cause—i.e., the ‘Stolen Election,’ which functions as the Trumpist ‘stab in the back’ myth—to new theological heights, having remnants of the faithful coming together, honoring their martyrs, and vowing that vengeance shall be theirs.” [Religion Dispatches]
Ann Neumann interviews Jeff Sharlet: “I wanted to find a kind of hope, but I did not want to find a hope of like, ‘We can do it!’ Because I don’t know if we can. But I know that we can struggle. Lee Hays was incredibly brave at a moment in his life and was broken by it, and Harry Belafonte was brave every moment of his life. He wasn’t broken, but he didn’t win. If we’re going to pay attention to the right, we need to pay attention to the deep strata of the struggle for freedom, right? Because this fight isn’t new, it’s old. And it’s ongoing, although it does take new shapes. We are in one of the scarier moments that we have ever confronted – all the more reason to understand what came before and how they endured; not how they survived, because they didn’t win. As we confront this fascist moment – I see this as a global fascist moment – we’re going to need some imagination. There is little on the table right now.” [The Guardian]
What to expect from Radical Reports: Morning Briefing provides a daily round-up of reporting on the Radical Right; Extremist Links offers a weekly round-up of extremists activities including the white supremacist and militia movements; Narratives of the Right delivers weekly analysis of the current narratives in far right online spaces and promoted by right-wing media; and Research Desk provides monthly highlights research and analysis from academia on the Radical Right.
Who is the central figure (not the flag draped MAGA but the one they are accosting) in the picture at the top of this email?
Who is the central figure in the picture at the top of this email?