The Cop Killer Coup
It is bad enough that the MAGA moto harkens back to the Klan. But most disturbing, I argue, is the MAGA connection to the Reich’s MGGA and the implications of what occurred under Nazi rule. In a study by Anne Applebaum, Peter Pomerantsev, Melanie Smith and Chloe Colliver, “Make Germany Great Again: Kremlin, Alt-Right and International Influences in the 2017 German Elections,” Institute for Strategic Dialogue (2017), the authors argue that the MGGA was strategically placed in Adolph Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Hitler was well aware of the MAGA effect on racist America. The use of this would fit well with his design to eliminate the undesirable elements that had emerged in Germany.
The Manifesto of the Fasci of Combat (Fascist Manifesto), written in 1919 by Benito Mussolini and Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, was also highly influential in Hitler’s writings. The Doctrine of Fascism, written in 1932, purportedly written by Benito Mussolini, but more than likely the intellectual formulations of fascist Giovanni Gentile, deepened Hitler’s appeal to fascism and a greater admiration for Mussolini. Nevertheless, the sad irony is, that the dark forces of German fascism have lineage in the American Klan and racist American institutions dating back to the origins of slavery itself.
In the context of Nazi Germany, the MGGA denotes those who seek to define and defend a “true” German national identity from elements deemed to be corrupting of that identity, for example, Jews, communists, socialists, gypsies, dissident priests and ministers, union leaders and trade unionists, and those persons opposed to authoritarianism. This phenomenon has also come to life, at least ostensibly, in dominant white European countries including Russia and the Ukraine. The resurgence clearly has deeper roots in authoritarian and fascist traditions as argued in Theodor Adorno’s The Authoritarian Personality, 1950.
During and after World War II, critical theorist, Teodoro Adorno, examined the socioeconomic and psychological causes of the development of European fascism. Adorno concluded that there was a distinct personality associated with classism, prejudice and intolerance that led to racist and fascist policies. The “authoritarian personality” is fundamentally one, according to Adorno, that is inflexible, rigid, and intolerant of uncertainty. This mindset rejects unconventional behavior as “inferior,” “degenerate,” and even “deviant.” Moreover, authoritarians identify with narcissists and the power that accompanies elite positions that they crave. Any anti-authoritarian behavior is perceived to be a threat to authoritarians themselves and the collective society as a whole. Adorno argues that the mindset is one formulated upon a neurotic fear of those who differ from themselves, described as the “other”, and a danger to one’s survival. The authoritarian seeks to suppress the views of the other and the people that also possess them.
QAnon’s "Day of
Reckoning" Sheriff
In psychoanalytic terms what emerges is a form of “cognitive dissonance” and “reaction formation” which provides a framework for which authoritarians need not question their own beliefs or values. For Adorno, the authoritarian personality then “believes” that members of a minority group are inferior in relation to the authoritarian archetype. Failure to assimilate or comply to the dominant customs and mores is viewed as an act of defiance. Difference and nonconformity translate to subversive activity and a threat to the survival of a culture and society. The authoritarian and their state then “react” to this defiance and deviance by assigning “evil” to those “counterculture” to themselves.
Minorities and anti-racists point to “white privilege” as the basis of white hegemony in the United States. White privilege refers to the historical advantages white people have over people of color. Jesse Myerson in “White Anti-Racism Must Be Based in Solidarity, Not Altruism,” The Nation, February 5, 2018, elaborates on political scientist David Kaib’s argument that there are “two faces of privilege.” In essence she argues that one face is composed of a higher quality of life, education, employment, living wage jobs, homeownership, retirement benefits, healthcare, etc. The second face is the societal privilege to dominate narratives, initiate dialogue and discussions, and monopolize control of public spaces. Though they are referred to as “privileges” these should be defined as “rights.”
Suffice it to say, white people in general have more access to these two privileges than blacks and other minorities, and though white people are more likely to find themselves in managerial positions with some institutional power over blacks and other minorities, these are a far cry from the power to influence national and international government and institutions. In Derrick Bell’s, And We Are Not Saved: The Elusive Quest for Racial Justice, 1987, white privilege thus maintains a social, political, and economic advantage over people of color, and in doing so, pits white people against people of color, specifically African Americans. The privileges that come from membership in “dominant” white groups Bell argues, is prioritized by whites in order to maintain their very privilege.
US Kekistan Flag
At times this is reinforced by anti-racists who, in realizing their privilege, prefer not to be active in racial resistance since they might be “outed” for latent racist attitudes as Robin Di Angelo identifies in White Fragility: Why It’s So Hard for White People to Talk about Racism, 2018. This also carries over to oppressor-oppressed binary which offers no incentives for white people to live differently. In this binary white people can only fall on the side of the oppressor and the inherent privileges that accompany whiteness. This binary negates to a large degree the history of white people engaged in personal, interpersonal, cultural, and systemic work to promote racial, social and economic justice. There is no recognized, historical alternative to toxic whiteness in this binary despite there actually being a history of anti-racist white people struggling to create an alternative white identity. This false narrative of white only racism needs revision, e.g., John Brown, the Abolitionists, Rev. William Sloan Coffin, etc.
White privilege undermines the democratic gains of people of color. Since 1865, with the passage of the Thirteenth Amendment, African Americans have made some progress towards full democratic participation. White racist reaction has been to undermine and even rollback some of these gains. For example, at the end of the Civil War and Reconstruction Era, the “Black Codes” were unlawfully implemented while Jim Crow laws violated Reconstruction Era Civil Rights legislation. In overruling Plessy v. Ferguson, The Supreme Court’s landmark 1954 Brown v. Board of Education decision was rejected by southern states by shutting down public schools throughout the South.
The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965 prompted states and local governments to intimidate and obstruct African Americans from voting. The “Southern Strategy,” originally conceived of by US Senators and Dixiecrats Strom Thurmon and Jesse Helms and orchestrated by Kevin Phillips and Richard Nixon, intended to create “dog whistle” racist slogans to turn whites away from supporting civil rights and turning to regressive public policy supported by conservatives. The War on Drugs initiated by Bill Clinton and Joe Biden, disenfranchised millions of African American men through “broken windows policing,” “racial profiling,” “stop and frisk” police tactics, and “three strikes” legislation. All of this leading to a racist redux as described in recent scholarship by Michelle Alexander in The New Jim Crow and J. Michael Higginbotham in Ghosts of Jim Crow.
The MAGA and white nationalists reject the white privilege argument and instead see themselves as the new “oppressed” minority. The philosophical underpinnings of white nationalism are, for the most part, derived from social Darwinism, Nazism, and fascism. Narrow cherry-picked passages by Christian fundamentalists use interpretations of Hebrew and Christian scriptures that support racist beliefs. White nationalists tend to believe that a “conspiracy” against whites is being promoted as part of an attempted white genocide. They usually base their evidence for this on a partisan activist government implementing public policies on behalf of minorities, and the declining birth rate among whites and the increasing birth rate among minorities and immigrants. Their white culture and traditions are dying. In response the white nationalists scapegoat minorities, progressive legislation, and if necessary, violence to protect themselves from extinction. (See “Why the US Isn’t Ready for Civil War,” Foreign Policy, https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/01/04/american-civil-war-january-6-capitol/).
GOP Superhero
The “alt-right” (alternative right) has become a catchall phrase for a loose group of extreme right individuals and organizations who promote white nationalism. The alt-right, also describe themselves in terms of “white power” and “white pride,” is a movement in America who seek a resurgence or revolution in promoting the unique identity of the European heritage of white Americans. Its “soldiers,” as some describe themselves, are not lone wolves but highly organized cadres motivated by a coherent and deeply troubling worldview made up of white separatism, supremacy, virulent anticommunism, and Christian apocalyptic faith.
In Bring the War Home, 2018, Kathleen Belew provides a history of a movement that consolidated in the 1970s and 1980s, around a potent sense of betrayal of American world domination only to be forced to “retreat,” specifically from the Vietnam War, a war they felt they were not allowed to win. According to Belew, government was to blame for America’s retreat as a world power and as a result, anti-government citizen groups and militia emerged, from Waco and Ruby Ridge, to the anti-government terrorist bombing on Oklahoma City, to a resurgence under President Donald Trump and the MAGA movement. Now with the anti-vax movement, in reaction to the mandatory COVID-19 immunizations, the MAGA are even more resolute in what they perceive as attacks on their freedom.
Many of the alt-right conclude, nonetheless, that waging war on their own country, the United States, was justified. They unified people from a variety of militant groups, including Klansmen, neo-Nazis, skinheads, radical tax protestors, veterans, and white separatists, to form a new movement of loosely affiliated independent cells to avoid detection. The white power and white pride movement operated with discipline and clarity, undertaking assassinations, armed robbery, counterfeiting, and weapons trafficking. Its command structure gave women a prominent place and put them in charge of brokering alliances and birthing future recruits. Belew’s disturbing and timely history recounts that war cannot be contained in time and space: grievances intensify and violence becomes a logical course of action.
Based on years of deep immersion in previously classified FBI files and on extensive interviews, American para-militarism and the birth of the alt-right has both overt and covert manifestations. This has become what historian Carol Anderson describes as “white rage” in White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of Our Racial Divide. She argues that it was "white rage at work” that sparked the riots and that the media and public at large ignored the “kindling” which stoked the flames. What fueled the unrest is a white backlash of resentment, anger, and even rage that African Americans and other minorities are being “privileged” over whites. This is clear in the tolerance of hyper policing and brutality directed at blacks. This has also enabled increasing displays of white rage in an insurgent white nationalist movement.
“Southern Strategy” Strom
In Critical Race Theory: An Introduction, Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic argue that the compounding impact of marginalization felt by whites, as the dominant identity in the United States, causes resentment toward minority entitlement especially since this has resulted in financial loss for whites. There is some truth to this resentment. Cedric Robinson argues in Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition, that the wealth disparity as a result of a capitalist economic system, coupled with corrective measures by way of Affirmative Action and welfare policies, makes upward movement into a more equitable economic and social class all the more difficult, not only for blacks, but for whites as well. And this “class struggle” is one that elicits fear and anger. Anticipating this resentment Malcom X urges, “I tell sincere white people, ‘work in conjunction with us - each of us working among our own kind.’ Let sincere white individuals find all other white people they can who feel as they do and let them form their own all-white groups, to work trying to convert other white people who are thinking and acting so racist” (Malcolm X, The Autobiography of Malcolm X: As Told to Alex Haley, New York: Random House Publishing, 1964, p. 434).
The MAGA and White Nationalist movements emboldened by Trump have made fascism in the United States the acceptable norm and the realization of the violent overthrow of the United States is a real option. And the underlying reasons for the justification of the violence and death, as witnessed on January 6, 2021, is the fascist white hegemony which continues to plague the American body politic. The next step in attempting to understand the coup is for the January 6 Committee to not only expose fascist-racist Americans for the insurrection, but to also investigate the possible role of big business and multinational corporations in this crime. The Third Reich was very comfortable with the billionaire class in both the United States and England.
What is a stake here is the peace of the nation and the promotion of social justice.
Ed Martin, Social Policy Review, Tubac, Arizona, Long Beach, California
May 6, 2023
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