The radicalisation of the Republican Party in America under the aegis of Donald Trump continues to present disturbing new realities. Domestic Terrorism by the Right. Election officials are being threatened and now sent letters with white powder, which could be Fentanyl and other deadly substances. Domestic terrorism is a right wing phenomenon. Extremists on this side of the political spectrum are happy to threaten violence, brandish weapons, and do bad stuff. Trump has ushered in a new level of domestic terrorism into the United States. The ex-President who wouldn’t accept defeat has role modelled this kind of extreme behaviour for others to follow.
Trump Led Terror By Domestic Extremists
The conservative playbook is to point the finger at radicals on the left, when in actual fact it is invariably their own mob which regularly resorts to violence and threats. Remember that Trump was going on about election fraud long before the 2020 election was held. A word of advice in life, beware of those who loudly accuse others of crimes and bad behaviour because he who shouts loudest usually has more to hide. Those who accuse others of adultery are, often, the adulterers in their relationship. This is called deflection and is a well-established stratagem by autocratic leaders like Putin and Trump.
Right Wing Acts Of Violence & Terror
The United States has a long history of extremist behaviour on the right. Presidents have been assassinated and many individuals murdered on this basis. President Abraham Lincoln was shot dead by John Wilkes Booth, whist watching a theatrical performance. The south who had lost the Civil War would have their retribution on the President who nominally ended slavery. JFK would be gunned down in Texas and another President with Liberal leanings would have his reign cut short. RFK, the brother, would follow shot dead in New York. Martin Luther King Junior, the black civil rights leader, would, also, be shot dead. These are only the most high profile, as there have been many other egregious acts of violence committed by extremists on the right in America.
Deflection In The Age Of Trump
Those on the right continually ‘cry wolf’ about the dangerous left. Conservative leaders paint any resistance as socialist plots. The FBI under Hoover spent most of its formative decades in the 20C going after those on the left. They infiltrated groups like the Black Panthers and the counterculture movement more generally and portrayed them as violent radicals. The land of the free beat up on any one with different ideas about how things should be run. Lots of lies and exaggerations were fed to the American public. Now, we have a GOP full of election deniers and extremists. The Speaker of the House believes The Big Lie. This is despite numerous judicial investigations proving there was no election fraud. Trump knew he was going to lose the 2020 election and developed a strategy where honest defeat was not possible. He knew because he had overseen the most incompetent administration the US had seen in many years. A million people died from the Covid pandemic because of the poor response by his government. Trump was voted out of office because he is a liar and a fraud.
Economic Pressures & Social Unrest
The international reputation of the United States has been indelibly damaged due to the Trump presidency. Trust has been lost and Biden has had to work overtime to try and retrieve some of this. The global economy has been in the grip of high inflationary cost of living pressures upon ordinary citizens. Corporations have protected their bottom lines by increasing prices. Record profits have been declared. Wars in Ukraine and now Israel have seen energy prices spike to the detriment of consumers and businesses. There are housing crises in America and Australia with rents going through the roof due to shortages of available rental stocks. Central banks have raised interest rates and made things worse. The high inflation is caused largely by supply side shocks and bottlenecks. Governments should be targeting fiscal spending in the housing sector to facilitate the building of more rental housing. Americans would do well to remember the Trump presidency years and just how dysfunctional and dangerous they were.
Cowards With Guns
Cowardly dickheads with guns, threats, and bombs would do well to remember that law enforcement has a long memory. They will be caught and prosecuted eventually. Meanwhile, the GOP continues to lose elections, as Americans wake up to a Supreme Court infiltrated by right wing dark money. 83% of Americans don’t want abortion to be a criminal offence. The GOP will keep losing elections until they realise these things. Hands off women’s reproductive rights. Hands off books in schools with your ridiculous banning. Hands off democracy! Domestic terrorism by the Right will only hasten the demise of the GOP as a viable political force.
“Now, when we’re thinking about January 6, we should always be thinking about a broad group of people, not all of whom had plans to become violent and storm the Capitol that day. But in the case of Tarrio and the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers and affiliated groups who have now been found guilty and sentenced for seditious conspiracy, they were planning to do this.
They were violent. And they’re part of a long, decades-long movement of white power activists and militant right activists who have waged war on the United States since the early 1980s. So this is still not the maximum sentence; 22 years, the headlines are reading long sentence, but the prosecutors were asking for 33.”
Robert Sudha Hamilton is the author of Money Matters: Navigating Credit, Debt, and Financial Freedom.
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