Saturday, January 16, 2021

When Are the Republicans Going to Deal With the Violent Extremists in Their Own Ranks?

Probably sometime between "never" and "when it can be scientifically proven that Hell has frozen over".

Those of us with decent memories, like the Rude Pundit, can recall that the DHS issued a report about white extremism in 2009. But the Republicans threw a massive hissy fit over it and the Obama Administration, to their lasting shame, retracted the report.

Trump's base comprised the extremist right. His initial statements on both the Tiki-Torch Nazis of Charlottesville and the 1/6/21 insurrection showed that he agtreed with the Nazis and the Seditionists. It's only when the blowback got severe that Trump issued mealymouthed retractions each time.

Republicans, especially Ted Cruz, Josh Lawley and the rest of the Caucus of Sedition, have been pandering to the extremist base of the GOP for years. They've been telling themselves that the extremist right have been made up of good people, true Americans.

Well, now we all should know better. The Trumpist Terrorists are disloyal Americans, traitors to the Constitution. They need to be torn out of the GOP, root and branch, if that party ever has a hope of surviving. Because those people are out there and they feel empowered because they were the only mob to invade the Capitol since the Redcoats.

I'm not worried too much by statements that taking their Twitter feeds and Facebook pages away will make it harder to find them. If there are fifty guys in a secure messaging group, plotting shit, you can bet your paycheck that at least four or five are feeding intel to the FBI.

25 comments:

  1. We will probably deal with ours long before you deal with your violent extremists if history is any guide.
    After all, your latest batch of violent extremists has been supported and encouraged for the past 4 years.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Like many of their approaches to the tyranny of ideas, they will just redefine what "violence" and "extreme" is, so that the terms express "love" (protection of their ideals) and "humility" (a humble soldier is an extreme soldier). But otherwise the behavior will not change. Just as they have weaponized fundamentalists in their war on ideas, the lost-cause knuckeldragger army is now their shock-and-awe muscle, and they won't let either go. What would they have otherwise, other than the naked conservative ideal that kings rule, serfs grovel, and the rest are tools in the system of control? That's not near as much fun, compared to violent extremism for the cause.

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  3. When my side’s goons invade the Capitol and try to overturn an election and erect a gallows on Capitol Hill, get back to me. Otherwise, STFU.

    ReplyDelete
  4. No way are Cruz and Hawley are "telling themselves that the extremist right have been made up of good people, true Americans."

    These two cynical and oleaginous thugs are too bright and too well-educated to believe their own propaganda. They most probably see their followers for what they are — a bunch of not-very-clever and terribly frightened people, panicked that they are getting left behind as society and the economy change, and unable or unwilling to adapt to the changes. They are the opposite of the pioneering and entrepreneurial spirit that built America. They are the dregs that got left behind.

    If America is to survive, it needs to get rid of the Cruzes and the Hawley and educate and inspire their followers. How to do that? Ah, that's the $64 trillion question.

    Yours very crankily,
    The New York Crank

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  5. During Trump's 2016 campaign he stated that he "loves the poorly educated." And there's one example above.

    Idiocracy.

    Dale

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  6. So Violence, when your side does it, that's ok? Occupying the Senate office buildings to prevent a legally nominated Justice of the Supreme Court is ok, but the Capitol, (just an office bhuilding when Congress is not in session) is not ok?
    Asking for someone to assasinate the sitting President is ok, but erecting a gallows as a symbol is Not OK?
    How disingenuous. How double standard. I like the Faux outrage.... You folks set the standard, and now you don't like it that the ther side is playing by your rules.

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  7. I really like how you're carrying water for the MAGA Terrorists, B. That tells me all that I need to know about your dedication to this country.

    The Congress was in session, you disingenuous twit. Your side's terrorists were trying to prevent the confirmation of a free and fair election. It was a putsch, a coup.

    That you can't find it within your blasted soul to condemn Trump's coup attempt tells me all that I need to know about you and the terrorists with whom you sumpathise.

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  8. Before we can "re-educate" these people we'll have to educate them.

    Your bluff has been called, *.

    LOL

    ReplyDelete
  9. One of the problems the Republicans keep crashing into is the whole "we can control them with god, guns and gays" strategy. It was never actually feasible, as no matter what you think of them, they are in fact human beings who will eventually catch onto the fact that they are being used like barnyard livestock.
    This is compounded by the fact that they have been fed a steady diet of right wing propaganda for so long that they can't be trusted to recognize reality when they see it, especially if the reality they are confronted with doesn't align itself with their propaganda.
    For example, believers in the QAnon constellation of outrageously farcical extremist bullshit now believe that Fergus was signalling them in Morse code with his hand movements in his hostage video.
    It's not going to be easy to reintegrate folks who are that level of delusional back into functioning society. Full stop.
    And there are millions of them, at least according to the report Facebook issued about its efforts to purge them from its platform.
    So in a very real sense, Ten Bears is correct about educating them, at least to the point where they have been reconnected with objective reality. What they choose to do with it is always going to be up to them, so there is not any "freedom" at issue here, but if we can't posit a simple shared reality to legislate from, then the government has, while not exactly been overthrown, at least rendered moot when facing the sort of quotidian tasks it is designed to accomplish.

    -Doug in Sugar Pine

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  10. B.’s Helsinki syndrome is simply a sign of the depth of the problem. We lucked out with no major event like Oklahoma City under Obama, but we can expect such an event or two this time. The radicals on the right will simply view the prosecutions over the Capitol riot as attempts to punish free speech, as they cannot conceive of their actions as being wrong. Expect expansion of the White Identity movement to drive these terrorist actions, as the radicalized members of the right-wing decide its resist now or “lose America” to the minorities.

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  11. Yah know what? I can see some sort of reason to admire tyrants of the past.

    Ramses II, he ruled one of the great civilizations of the past, putting his name on more statuary and monuments than any of his predecessors, one of the first examples of propaganda in the written word, and ruled a very long time.

    Herod the Great did pretty well for a small-timer, build Masada, the Second Temple, and kept his subjects and the Romans from going at each other for a while.

    But Trump? A performing ape whose reputation as a tough ass is all hat and no cattle? An arrogant coward, sending others in his place to do the dirty work he can’t taint his own precious hands with? Really? This is your Augustus, your Nimrod, your Alexander the Great?


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  12. Upon reassessment: this was a pretty damned sophisticated operation, to mount a riot as it were as cover for upwards of five squads, sixty trained para-military operatives intent upon capturing and lynching congresswomen to include Pelosi but specifically congresswomen of color as well as their own damned vice president. That's not grass-roots level sophistication.

    Which isn't to say I'm giving any of the yahoos who rioted a break for being suckers, rubes, that had one pulled over on 'em - if it were me if I weren't dead I'd be in jail.

    While I can see the roots clear back in the Carter Administration, this thing gestated through St Ronald of Ray-Guns years to sort of explode (surprise)(WTF?) with my neighbors in Idaho and Montana; fell back a bit to regroup through the Cheney Administration to explode eight years later as "tea-baggers", a bit more vocal, a bit more visible, a bit more extreme; to not really fall back and retrench under Our Very Own Tea Pot Dictator but emerge here at the end as a full-fledged Confederate Force. While history only repeats to those paying attention, to those paying attention this does not bode well.

    There's nothing 'liberal' about NAZIs and Confederates, reich-wing terrorism.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Hedley Lamarr : I want rustlers, cut throats, murderers, bounty hunters, desperados, mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits, vipers, snipers, con men, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, muggers, buggerers, bushwhackers, hornswogglers, horse thieves, bull dykes, train robbers, bank robbers, ass-kickers, shit-kickers and Methodists.

    Taggart : [finding pen and paper] Could you repeat that, sir?

    ReplyDelete
  14. Hedley Lamarr : I want rustlers, cut throats, murderers, bounty hunters, desperados, mugs, pugs, thugs, nitwits, halfwits, dimwits, vipers, snipers, con men, Indian agents, Mexican bandits, muggers, buggerers, bushwhackers, hornswogglers, horse thieves, bull dykes, train robbers, bank robbers, ass-kickers, shit-kickers and Republicans.

    Fixed it for you.

    ReplyDelete
  15. A wake up call, and an explanation of how the batshit took hold:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qud-CiuJTnI&feature=emb_title

    -Doug in Sugar Pine

    ReplyDelete
  16. B: So Violence, when your side does it, that's ok?

    Actually no. But then it was in response and without deaths or destruction.
    As to the gallows and noose it was erected by your radical right buddies.
    Or are you going to deny that too?

    Further your perception of violence is based and one sided considering many
    of the cases cited are far right false flag actions that mixed themselves in.
    You suffer from the radical right fake news or more properly called propaganda
    and your belief of it. They tell you its antifa you assume its true. The
    MiniTrue did there job and you took the hook, line, and sinker.


    Eck!

    ReplyDelete
  17. Everyone I know that's "antifa", "BLM" or anywhere left of Harry S Truman - Hell's Belles even the friggin' anarchists - stayed home with a really big bowl of popcorn.

    Not to mention the reich has been starting fires and blaming them on the "left" since 1933.

    ReplyDelete
  18. Eck: It was a "Bernie Bro" who tried to kill members like Scalise...Remember? One of "Yours".

    And I knew none of the folks who erected the gallows...in fact, on my blog, I strongly discouraged people from going....on Jan 5th.

    My point is not to defend the folks who were there, but rther to show the hypocrisy of the commenters here.

    ReplyDelete
  19. The St. Clair County Sheriff said that deputies had been called to Hodgkinson's house about half a dozen times in the past 20 years.[50] In 2006, Hodgkinson was accused of beating his foster daughter and charged with domestic battery but the case was dismissed when the alleged victim refused to testify. Had Hodgkinson been convicted, he would have been unable to legally purchase firearms.[51]

    In March 2017, a neighbor called police to complain about Hodgkinson firing a rifle at trees in their residential neighborhood. The officers who responded checked Hodgkinson's gun permit, then advised him not to shoot in the area but did not conduct an arrest.[50]

    Hodgkinson owned a home inspection business that had an expired license at the time of the shooting. Investigators believe that he had been living in a van in Alexandria for about six weeks at the time of the shooting.[52][50] Witnesses say he often parked the van near the ball field and nearby YMCA, and was a frequent visitor to the YMCA.[50] According to Tim Slater of the FBI's Washington field office, Hodgkinson "was running out of money. He was not employed at the time of the event, and he was looking for some local employment. He was married for 30 years, and it appears that that marriage was not going very well. It was just a pattern of life where you could tell things were not going well."[53]

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2017_Congressional_baseball_shooting

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  20. More irrelevant “whataboutism”. The guy who did that shooting WASN’T TRYING TO OVERTHROW THE GOVERNMENT!

    ARE YOU PICKING UP ON WHAT I’M PUTTING DOWN, HERE?

    ReplyDelete
  21. B:

    Bernie is not my bro. That and he is in my mind a bit player at most.
    I was not a supporter. Don't pull that crap on me.

    As a political independent I look everytime I hear events and I see idiots.
    Most of the time I get whiplash looking its the insane right and the loyal
    followers that are on the hook and have swallowed the line and sinker.
    Propaganda works that way its a polarizer and loads the target with noise
    preventing critical thinking. Those that drink the koolaid do not ask if
    its true or why is it that way, they just drink up.

    Every event when I looked I saw the same faces, many being picked up as
    we write. They appear in many states and many riots. Everyone of them had
    many players, the aggrieved protesters, looters-opportunists,, those that
    have a position opposed to the rioters, and the anarchists that would set
    the fires. I may have even missed a few. However tha facebook, instagram,
    Twitter, tindie, and other sites are being combed to put names and addresses
    to those faces. Is your face there, does it have an address.

    "And I knew none of the folks who erected the gallows...in fact, on my blog, I strongly discouraged people from going....on Jan 5th."

    I tried to parse that several ways... It implies you may have been there or
    hard prior knowledge of potential criminal acts to happen. That brings
    with it many other issues... Make sure you clear of this stuff, it tends
    to become reactive and return in unexpected ways. Your "friends" might
    feel your not on their side or worse.

    "My point is not to defend the folks who were there, but rather to show the hypocrisy of the commenters here."

    Ok, you need to put down the bottle, take a deep breath and stop wrapping
    your head in tinfoil. You have bought into the programming fully. You
    are not the sole provider of any truth and the major echo chamber propagating
    the propaganda. In electronics and computers we call that GIGO, garbage in,
    you get garbage out.

    Stop pleading for criminals as if they weren't. They did the cameras didn't
    lie. Facts, are the truth, they were there and did things.

    I've said it many times just stop, check what you saying its getting more
    reactive and plaintive every day. Your point of view is "they" couldn't
    have done that or someone else did it. that's what little kids say when
    caught. Seriously, you have no idea if they could, would, or not.
    You do not know the players and likely some are those would would not
    want to know. If that's not clear, read the published criminal histories
    of those already in hand. Some of those are not my or most anyones elses
    kind of people.


    Eck!

    ReplyDelete
  22. "Bernie Bro" is divisive, is someone else's narrative, someone stirring shit. The vast majority of Senator Saunders' (I-VT) supporters voted for both Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton. "Bernie Bro" is bullshit.

    Don't let the reich write the narrative.

    ReplyDelete
  23. TB,

    "Bernie bro" is not Bernie Saunders, he was the one of
    the wack job shooters that an around a while back and
    apparently quite obsessed. His thing was declared by
    issuing a screed that was off the rails.

    That talks to radicalization but not always by the side
    you may thing or even they claim. Propaganda is weapon
    that use right can motivate the people to do otherwise
    wrong things for creatively fashioned reasons What we
    may call getting the other side riled up.

    So the Bernies (both) are just another injection of
    noise from the wanna be voice of reason. Hence my
    calling them a bit player as they are mostly not
    relevant to the discussion of the rethugs cleaning
    up their act. That requires them to admit to their
    pink and purple unicorn thinking as invalid. that
    also requires the supporters to stop playing what
    about xzzy. We can see how that has been going.

    In the end you cannot argue with an irrational person.
    They have all the facts or can make up new ones to suit.


    Eck!

    ReplyDelete
  24. “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists.”

    Hanna Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism

    ReplyDelete

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