Greg Sargent looks at the growing Proud Boys seditious conspiracy being charged by the federal government over January 6th and what it means for the white supremacist domestic terror networks in 2022.
It’s tempting to dismiss all the 1776 talk as something akin to adolescent revolutionary cosplay. But the way 1776 comes up in the indictment — combined with some surprising new details it reveals — should prompt a serious look at how far-right extremist groups genuinely think about the long struggle that they envision themselves waging.
In short, groups such as these generally are driven by a dangerous vision of popular sovereignty. It essentially holds that the will of the truly authentic “people,” a flexible category they get to define, is being suppressed, requiring periodic “resets” of the system, including via violent, extralegal means.
Such groups aren’t going away anytime soon. We should understand what drives them.
I mean it's white supremacist dogma, but there is somewhat more to it than that.
In this context, while all the 1776-oriented talk might seem like posturing, it points to something real and enduring on the far right.
It isn’t easy to pin down the Proud Boys, who tend to define themselves as defenders of Western civilization. But Kathleen Belew, an expert in right-wing extremism, has discerned hints of white power ideology in some of the group’s symbolism and messaging.
As Belew notes, the white power movement includes opponents of non-white immigration, militia groups, and white supremacists, loosely bound by an ideology centered on the violent defense of whiteness. On Jan. 6, numerous such groups and adherents attacked the Capitol.
Tarrio’s views appear pretty convoluted. In a 2021 interview, he admitted that the 2020 election had not been stolen from former president Donald Trump, and went through the motions of disavowing the Jan. 6 violence. Yet he openly celebrated the “fear” that members of Congress felt of “the people,” and helped mobilize Proud Boys to mass around the Capitol that day.
So how to make sense of that, as well as the broader tangle of ideologies on the far right?
A helpful framework comes from Joseph Lowndes, a scholar of the right wing at the University of Oregon. As Lowndes notes, a longtime strain in American political culture treats procedural democracy as itself deeply suspect, as subverting a more authentic subterranean popular will.
For such ideologues, what constitutes “the people” is itself redefined by spasmodic revolutionary acts, including violence. The people’s sovereignty, and with it the defining lines of the republic, are also effectively redrawn, or even rebirthed, by such outbursts of energy and militant action.
In this vision, Lowndes told me, the “people” and the “essence of the republic” are “made new again through acts of violent cleansing.” He noted that in this imagining, the “people” are something of a “fiction,” one that is essentially created out of the violent “act.”
“This regeneration through violence is going to be with us for a long time," Lowndes said, "because it is fundamental to the right-wing political imagination.”
Lurking behind all the 1776 cosplay, then, is a tangle of very real radical and extreme ideologies. Importantly, they’re sincerely believed in, and they aren’t going away.
Straight white Christian men are "we the people" and everyone else is suspect. Rights, citizenship, and lives can be taken at a whim.
In the end, they're bullies.
Bullies need to get punched in the mouth.
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