The wars to come
Police sure do seem to be enjoying their work recently. The right is loving it too. Here's a preview of how this plays out.
I saw the men with their long guns walking across the street toward a crowd of protesters who were near a line of police. The men were not police themselves. The crowd, mostly Black, swarmed the men, mostly white. What are you doing here? Why do you have guns? The men with the guns were there to protect things, they said. What those things were they couldn’t articulate as the crowd got more and more heated. I asked a nearby cop if he knew anything about these men, armed with assault rifles and wearing tactical gear. The officer admitted that police knew they would be coming that night.
The men were Oath Keepers and they were on that dark street in Ferguson back in 2015 for the one-year anniversary of the protests that kicked off following the police killing of Michael Brown. Myself, the protesters and the cops were there for the same reason. The men there that night represented the American right’s response to the unrest that took Ferguson the previous year following Brown’s death, which was unthinkably 10 years ago this August. They were the physical embodiment of the right-wing counter-movement to Black Lives Matter that we continue to see today, and their presence that night is a lesson for what is to come.
The right has been lusting for police violence in recent weeks as protests over U.S. support for Israel in its war with Gaza has spread to campuses around the country. Those protests have both galvanized the right and provided a convenient subject for outrage, which is a requirement for Republicans to be able to keep their voters fired up enough to vote against their own economic and social interests for GOP candidates. White America saw what happened in Ferguson and responded by voting Donald Trump into office. Those same reactionary forces are using these campus protests to stir up hatred for the left in general. The only question that remains is how vociferously the right will respond. It could look like the Oath Keepers arming themselves for a stroll down the streets of Ferguson. It could look much worse.
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The counter-movement that began with Ferguson had a few years of relative idleness during the Trump administration, then roared back to life following the killing of George Floyd in 2020 and the accompanying protests, as well as the right-wing backlash against COVID-era policies. The unrest and riots of the resurgent Black Lives Matter movement following Floyd’s killing — like Ferguson — pushed the right into action. That action came in the form of protests of their own, mostly at state capitols during the pandemic, then in places like Arizona on election night where Trump supporters demanded that election officials “stop the count” in order to ensure his victory. Finally, the American right had its day in the spotlight when its foot soldiers attacked the capitol in an attempted coup.
As I’ve said before, the right thought it was entitled to the insurrection. They thought they’d earned a riot of their own. They watched cities burn in the wake of Floyd, then watched Trump lose the election and said, “that’s enough.” Trump agreed with them, saying over and over again that he didn’t understand the outrage over January 6 when so many cities had been set ablaze throughout the summer preceding the attack on the Capitol. He continues to outline what he sees as unfair treatment of his supporters, contrasting it with his perception of acceptance of the campus protests.
“Why are Palestinian protesters, and even rioters, allowed to roam the Cities, scream, shout, sit, block traffic,” and on and on, Trump wrote last week, comparing it to his supporters who are “rudely shut and systematically shut down” when they’ve showed up in New York during his criminal trial there.
The sentiment that the left — personified by Floyd protests, the Black Lives Matter movement in general, and well before that, the unrest in Ferguson — has been “allowed” to cause havoc while Trump’s “America Loving Protesters” have been prevented from having their own say on the streets is a common refrain among the American right. But, in fact, neither Democratic politicians or law enforcement has really ever stopped Republicans and right-wing Americans from taking to the streets. As we saw in Ferguson, it’s actually the opposite that’s true: law enforcement has, in many cases, supported the counter-protests of the right.
At the state capitol in Michigan during the 2020 election, police stood idly by as armed Trump supporters walked about freely inside the building. (The same scenario played out in DC on January 6.) Police in Wisconsin were all too happy to see Kyle Rittenhouse roaming the streets with his assault rifle, having a friendly chat with him when they crossed paths before Rittenhouse killed a man. Time after time, law enforcement and even Democratic politicians have given far more leeway to right-wing protesters than they have to those on the left. If you don’t believe me, look at the scenes coming out of New York Tuesday night, when an army of NYPD officers — under the leadership of a Democratic mayor, a Democratic governor and a Democratic legislative supermajority — cracked down on protests at Columbia and elsewhere, arresting dozens.
And if you needed any other sign that law enforcement is enjoying their work beating up and arresting leftie college students, all you have to do is watch this video of the NYPD ripping down a Palestinian flag late Tuesday night and replacing it with the stars and stripes. The law enforcement glee on display is a troubling sign of things to come should there be further protests this summer, whether they be over the conflict in Gaza, a terrible police killing that has yet to occur, a mass shooting, or something else that I can’t even think of at the moment.
The American right is ready to go. They’re sick of all of this and have been since Ferguson. If the insurrection was practice, this summer will be a dress rehearsal.
Many on the right are now combining the left with a group and cause — Palestinian nationalism — that they deem not just to be their political enemy, but in many cases their religious one, as we saw with the election denier officials I recently exposed in Mississippi. And unlike the left, which has never had the police on their side, this counter-movement of American authoritarianism has the vast majority of U.S. law enforcement to back it up. Strap in, because things are bound to get ugly.
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P.S. The photo at the top of this post is from that pivotal day, 10 years ago this August, when I first drove into Ferguson. The second photo is from a year later, when the Oath Keepers arrived there to protect really nothing but their own fragility. It was taken by Lucas Jackson.
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In the coming days and weeks, I’ll discuss the potential for a right-wing backlash to campus protests with my longtime editor, Justin Miller, who is now at New York. I also plan to talk to Ken Klippenstein about his resignation from The Intercept over editorial and management disagreements. I’ll also have more updates on election deniers throughout the country working as election officials. The madness continues. - jg