next_migration | Thoughts on elections and terrorism (Reply)

For those who wish to continue to live in a more or less democratic society, by which I mean one in which citizens are allowed to have some say in who rules over them and how, the 2022 elections and contemporaneous legal and illegal actions have given us both good and bad news. First, the good news.

Hundreds of election-denying Republicans did get elected, but these were largely from jurisdictions that would always willingly vote for Republican extremists anyway. In swing states or districts, sane reality-based Republican candidates did well, and Republican candidates running on the Big Lie and promising that their constituents would in future be thrown off voting rolls or have their ballots discarded as needed to ensure right-wing victories did terribly. Cuckoo candidates in almost all of the key swing states of 2020—Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia—took a beating. Indeed, the good people of Michigan were so outraged by the efforts of the ruling minority to impose a total abortion ban that the Democratic Party overcame a significant gerrymander to win the state legislature.

In the short term, this buys American democracy some time. Had the cuckoos—that term is applicable in two senses—taken power in the swing states, the plan would have been to sabotage those states’ elections in 2024 to swing them to Trump. If enough non-Trumpists still managed to turn out that Trump lost, the gerrymandered legislatures and authoritarian executive officers would have simply declared that they were throwing out the state’s votes as “fraudulent” and submitting a slate of Trump electors to Congress. The likeihood that January 2025 would have seen the inauguration of a Führer was high. Thanks to the midterm results, that almost certainly won’t happen . . . in 2025. The planners of this campaign aren’t likely to stop trying, and they may get more subtle about it.

In the longer term, this is also good news for my view of the necessary Great Migration. I have hoped and presumed that there are significant regions to which migrants can go in the expectation of continuing to enjoy secular representative democracy. The strong results from Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania say that a majority of citizens of those states do wish to continue to have a voice in their government, and do not want to live under Christian nationalism. Migrants with similar preferences can therefore direct themselves to those states with confidence that, if the Union breaks up, they could form much of the heartland of a democratic nation.

Some secular democrats living in swing states in other regions may wonder about the political implications if the most democracy-loving are fastest to leave. If they care about avoiding a fascist takeover, should they not stick around Arizona or Nevada to chip in their votes? I wouldn’t. Both of those states are going to be in big trouble soon, and the chances that you personally will suffer severe losses by staying are much greater than the chance that your vote will make a difference to the fate of the nation. Leave it in Fate’s hands and get out if you can, please.

Now the bad news. Divided government historically has been good to prevent one party from doing too much of whatever they’d like to do, so the fact that the GOP has retaken the House of Representatives might be seen as desirable. However, the current crop of GOP Representatives is notably extreme, with a solid majority supporting a right-wing coup. They would vote for a coup again in 2024 if the opportunity presented itself, though we now have reason to hope that they will not be presented with that opportunity. But people who would support the outright termination of the U.S. Constitution will also violate it in plenty of smaller ways, and we can expect a lot of ugliness going forward.

Republicans have already said they will use their congressional investigative powers to make as much trouble for Biden as possible, possibly mounting formal investigations of everything from policy decisions (or implementations of previously set policies, e.g., the Afghan withdrawal) to his being related to a possible tax cheater. Obviously disturbed congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has previously expressed support for the mass murder of prominent Democrats, may be on the oversight committee. She is now claiming “There’s a lot of traitors and criminals that need to be held accountable,” including those who prosecuted violent January 6 insurrectionists and Nancy Pelosi for, it would seem, failing to be found and lynched, since the Speaker has nothing to do with prosecution of criminals.

This intention to use government institutions to persecute political enemies is not confined to the overtly QAnon brigade: USA Today reports that the powerful right-wing organization CPAC is urging the GOP to use their power to go after “woke” businesses, meaning those that object to any of a range of Christian nationalist social policies. Kevin McCarthy, incoming Speaker of the House, has already said that he won’t work with the (female) CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce (“which backed 23 House Democrats in the 2020 election”) and demands that that independent organization oust and replace her at his dictate. Risks to businesses are not wholly hypothetical: companies saw the financial punishment Ron DeSantis inflicted on Disney for expressing a lack of hatred for LGBTQ people and his threats to use the power of his office to close down a restaurant that did likewise.

Conservatives may even plan to use Congressional investigations not just against those who support some Democrats, but those who don’t endlessly give to Republicans. The same USA Today story reported that Greene threatened on white nationalist Steve Bannon’s podcast that “there are going to be investigations coming” against corporations that chose not to keep giving money to Republicans who supported the violent Jan. 6 coup attempt and continued to promote Trump’s Big Lie.

Think about that for a minute. Owners or executives of private enterprises may not only have to fear financial punishment dealt out by the machinery of the state if they express liberal opinions, but being dragged into McCarthyite witch-hunt style hearings if they fail to direct enough payola to the most rabid culture warriors. Conservative Supreme Courts have said that no limits can be placed on the ability of right-wing corporate tycoons and hedge funders to pour tens of millions of dollars into swinging an election because “money is free speech.” But now, if some corporate tycoons start to feel that they might want to engage in less pro-insurrectionist speech, they will be investigated, as if they were committing a crime?

What possible crime could it be, to fail to engage in enough unconstrained free speech about specified elections? What about the few, proud companies that never did donate to ultrarightists? Will they too be subjected to hearings to interrogate them as to why, to demand at least implicitly that the checkbook be brought out or else? Or is it only that if your company has written one check to Rick or Josh or Kevin or Marjorie, you must keep writing them, because they are entitled to keep receiving the expected money forever?

Of course, the very suggestion is blatant tyranny; no such investigation could be compatible with the First Amendment. Are we confident that Trump judges will agree? Even if you (still!) support Trump, you shouldn’t be happy to live under rulers so horrifically corrupt that they threaten to persecute or punish private companies that fail to fill their moneybags.

At the state level, in red or red-ruled states, Christian nationalism will continue to push itself farther and farther into American lives. The Texas right wing is now trying to make a law that could subject theaters to closure and criminal punishment if they allow people under 18 to see any performance in which any trans person acts in any capacity, or possibly if any person is seen, live or in a film or photo, wearing clothes considered to be inappropriate for their sex assigned at birth. (LGBTQ Nation notes that this could criminalize performances of some Shakespeare plays or showings of Mrs. Doubtfire; they failed to mention Nuns on the Run. We will just have to hope that it doesn’t extend to performances in which a female wears trousers.) The Christian-right-dominated Supreme Court can be expected to find reasons to tolerate all but the most extreme of these laws.

Extra-legally, fascist violence or threats of violence continue to escalate. On November 23, it was reported that so far 2022, “at least 124 incidents of anti-LGBTQ protests, threats and violent actions against drag events and venues” had been reported and tallied—and that wasn’t counting the Colorado Springs mass murder. These aren’t people defending their right to their own cultural preferences; they’re people who think they’re on the verge of gaining the power to crush anyone whose preferences differ. Remember, armed militias terrorizing people in the streets are a major sign of both impending civil war and impending collapse of democracy. It does not matter which group is the first target, so don’t brush off this campaign of terror if you’re straight and look it; if they gain enough power, and thereby numbers, eventually it will be all their perceived opponents and enemies.

Neo-Nazi “accelerationists” who hope to bring about a civil war in which they can slaughter many of the rest of us have been sharing instructions online about how to mount terrorist attacks on power and water supplies. Recently, 40,000 people lost electricity in Moore County, NC due to a knowledgeable attack on a power substation. While nobody has formally claimed responsibility, Nazis and Christian nationalists online express belief that the attack was inspired by the open existence of LGBTQ+ people in the area, as symbolized by an intended drag theater performance—and threatening that attacks will continue so long as the gays do.

You may be saying “Come on, Moore County is ‘solid Republican.’ Most of the people shivering in the dark must be cishet conservative Christians. Wouldn’t the ultraright be crazy to inflict suffering on their own people?” Terrorists don’t operate by that logic. Al-Qaida perpetrated a number of attacks in which most of the innocent victims were Muslims, whom they liked to claim to be defending. Partly, this is because they were hateful people who just enjoyed killing. But partly, if your goal is to tear down everything that most members of a society find good about that society, breaking the infrastructure and making everybody as miserable as possible are two good ways to do it.

When you are freezing in the dark, especially if you know the actual perpetrators are from your ingroup, you may be inclined to blame the government for failing to protect you, failing to guarantee the services on which your family depends. If someone in the household desperately needs those services, your desperation as you struggle to replace or survive without them will make you stressed, fearful, and angry. Some, in a kind of Stockholm Syndrome, will even start to think it would be better just to give the terrorists what they want. The Nazis are claiming online that “these attacks will only continue” if anyone is able to do drag, implying that they would stop the attacks . . . at least for the moment . . . if people stop doing drag. If you’re not a Nazi, but you’re not a drag fan either and you’ve got a disabled or feeble relative who might die without electrical power, might you not start thinking it would be easier just to suppress drag shows?

The Nazis are also sharing the idea that blackouts caused can be exploited to carry out terrorist attacks against human targets under cover of darkness, or to foment riots among targeted urban populations who are poorest and least able to provide individually owned alternatives to basic utilities. Urban riots would be used to justify even greater white nationalist militia violence, followed by anti-urban rhetoric and oppression by rural-dominated legislatures.

The end goal, of course, is a Fourth Reich. “Accelerationists” are so called because they believe that our current society is doomed to decline (I agree with that—but not for their reasons!), and they want to accelerate that trend and make life as hellish as possible for “normal” people, as fast as possible, so that they will be disarrayed and broken, and easily conquered or killed. People who are struggling to survive in a dangerous, miserable, collapsing world don’t have time to focus on such higher-order interests as their desire to preserve a free ballot or freedom of religion. People lose faith in a state that fails to preserve their access to basic needs and keep them safe from terrorist violence. A state whose citizens no longer have faith in it and will not or cannot stand up to defend it is much more easily conquered or overthrown.

I have said before that being unarmed and peaceful doesn’t prevent fascists from targeting you; it encourages them. So long as we have an active and escalating campaign of this nature, everyone in the targeted groups needs to be aware of it and consider making appropriate preparations.

First, though the recent terror attack on infrastructure was not in a highly urbanized area, there is clear encouragement among domestic terror groups to plan attacks on large cities, which are hated for their racial and religious diversity. I have argued repeatedly that migrants should avoid such cities for multiple reasons, including their high cost and low sustainability. Another potential reason is that if or as the campaign of civil war progresses, if you live in a smaller town with a significant conservative population, you’ll see a lower chance that your drinking water will be poisoned or someone will open fire on you with an assault rifle in the Wal-Mart.

People who may be specifically targeted in early stages, such as trans people or people who do drag, will of course want to live in more diverse and tolerant areas. However, this will not suffice when well-funded ruralites make a hobby of driving across country to assemble private armies to attack or menace the people not like themselves wherever they might be. The potential victims need to be prepared to defend themselves. I am happy to see Black militias and gay gun clubs forming—especially when they show up with long arms to stand between a bookstore or theater and a pack of Proud Boys with long arms, body armor, and hand weapons. (Note the disparities.) More of that, much more, will be necessary to convince the members of our fascist movement that their rightful place in society is not that of wolves freely terrorizing cowering sheep in the sheepfold.

Escalation it may be, and what Barbara Walter called a security trap, but the alternative is abject surrender, and your would-be overlords are not likely to stop at driving you back into the closet. Most young people these days are not eager to think this way, I know, but under enough pressure they will learn. I pray they will learn in time to protect themselves.

Whether you have the ability to defend yourself or others in this way or not, everyone who can manage it should make a few preparations for disruptions to ordinary services. This was always a good idea, given the way in which natural disasters, exacerbated by climate change and underfunded infrastructure maintenance, can cause unexpected breakdowns in services. Now, with a large contingent of men bragging that they plan to cut your power off (especially if you’re not white) and yet not getting rounded up and jailed, you’d really better think about what might happen if your city’s utilities get targeted by terrorists.

I’m not talking about buying a generator and a tank of gasoline, which few can manage: just about setting aside some clean empty bottles filled with drinking water (which can remain safe for years), a little extra food that can be eaten without heating or with alternative heating, and a cheap source of light, and thinking about what practical actions you could take to avoid actually dying of cold or heat if the power were cut during severe weather. Knowing your neighbors, and having people close by who would aid you and whom you would aid, is another layer of protection. It’s always been better to have preparations for disaster made in advance so you’re not among the people crowding the store fighting for the last gallon of water. That could be doubly the case in future, if attacks on infrastructure are coupled with packs of gunmen on the streets looking for “normies” to kill. The bad guys are telling us they plan to do that. We all should listen and take it seriously.