Two weekends ago, Trump loyalists gathered in Washington for the “Justice for J6” rally, a supposed show of solidarity with the “political prisoners” arrested for their alleged (or confessed) participation in the Jan. 6 Capitol attack.
Trump’s Republican-fascists and their propagandists have elevated these hooligans, vandals and (in many cases) terrorists to the status of martyrs and patriots as a way of legitimizing their anti-democratic movement, creating sympathy among Trump’s faithful that can be exploited for fundraising and, of course, recruiting and encouraging more extremists to the cause.
Despite warnings from the Capitol Police, DHS and other authorities that more violence was possible, the rally on Sept. 18 was a tame and peaceful affair. No more than a few hundred Trump cultists attended, greatly outnumbered by law enforcement and the news media. This low turnout was widely mocked among the chattering class, liberals and progressives of the “resistance” and others who oppose Trump and his movement.
As I have argued before, such reactions are shortsighted and ill-advised — another example among many of the way America’s political class, news media and the public at large still does not understand the nature of the threat they face from the Republican-fascist movement and the larger white right.
Experts on domestic terrorism have repeatedly warned that in the aftermath of Jan. 6 many militant Trumpists and other neofascists are operating more covertly, perhaps by breaking up into small cells that are difficult for law enforcement to track and apprehend. Right-wing militants and terrorists are more likely to attack “soft targets” as opposed to widely publicized events and locations where law enforcement is sure to be present.
As seen in Michigan and elsewhere, right-wing militants are likely to focus their attention at the state and local level where law enforcement assets are more porous and likely targets are, in general, more vulnerable to attack.
But in fact the real power of Jan. 6 and its aftermath is difficult to measure by such standards. Those events, and Republican efforts to rewrite the history of that day, have increasingly normalized right-wing political violence as acceptable — if not, in fact, a preferred and desired way of obtaining and keeping political power.
In keeping with Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels’ “Big Lie” strategy, a large majority of Republican and Trump voters actually believe that the 2020 presidential election was “stolen” from Donald Trump — and, in effect, from them as well. Public opinion polls also show that a significant percentage of Republicans believe that the violence and coup attempt on Jan. 6 was a “patriotic” or at least understandable action that was necessary to “defend” democracy and Trump’s presidency.
On a daily basis, neofascist white supremacist opinion leaders and other propagandists on Fox News and across…
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