In January 2019, Rick Joyner, head of Morningstar Ministries, an important New Apostolic Reformation parachurch organization,[1] claimed to have received a prophetic vision in a dream in the form of a sentence reading, “The Second American Revolutionary/Civil War is inevitable, it is right, and it will be successful.” The U.S., he continued, was “already in the first stages” of that war.[2]
Some Republicans worried publicly about how Trump could be tempting these forces. “The flags were American, the vibe 1932 Berlin,” noted GOP campaign strategist Rick Wilson[3] about a July 2019 campaign rally where Trump prompted a 13-second roar[4] from the crowd taunting the Democrats’ “Squad” in Congress—Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA), and Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI). Wilson continued on to describe Trump’s reelection bid as “about his ethnic animus and stoking the resentful edges of society into…[a] race war. Conservative-leaning Washington Post columnist Kathleen Parker likewise warned, “Trump has essentially declared a ‘race war,’ for lack of a better term, on minority leaders and their constituents.”[5]
In September 2019, one of Trump’s closest evangelical advisers,[6] the Dallas megachurch pastor Robert Jeffress, also warned a civil war could be imminent. In a Fox News interview, Jeffress said he’d never seen evangelical Christians angrier than over the impeachment investigation. “And I do want to make this prediction this morning,” Jeffress continued, “If the Democrats are successful in removing the president from office, I’m afraid it will cause a Civil War-like fracture in this nation from which this country will never heal.’”[7]
Trump tweeted Jeffress’s prediction, made on Fox News, and tagged Fox News in the tweet.[8] The official Twitter account of paramilitary militia group the Oath Keepers responded: “This is the truth. This is where we are. We ARE on the verge of a HOT civil war. Like in 1859. That’s where we are.”[9]
Over the last several years, a narrative around the threat of civil war—and more specifically, a racial civil war—has been growing on the Right. The most dangerous versions of that narrative come from leaders with paramilitary forces, while other appeals seem intended to generate a heightened sense of crisis. Sometimes the racial aspects of that threat are made explicit, as when Michael Hill, head of the racist League of the South claimed that the U.S. is “headed for a real civil war”[10] against a “globalist-progressive coalition of Jews, minorities, and anti-white whites.”[11] Other times, it’s more opaque, as when longtime Trump adviser Roger Stone[12] warned, in mid-2017, that any Republican who voted for impeachment would “endanger their own life,” while actual impeachment would produce “a spasm of violence in this country, an insurrection, like you’ve never seen.”[13]
In either form, the message is effectively the same. As Nicole Hemmer, a Columbia University research scholar who studies right-wing communication, explains, “When the President invokes violence—as in a civil war—he sends encouragement to supporters already primed to perceive a coming apocalypse. In the world of white power, where a civil war is a race war, the President’s words have particular resonance.”[14] This increasingly common rhetoric, which appeals simultaneously to Donald Trump’s core supporters, the Christian Right, and the Patriot movement, didn’t emerge from nowhere. Rather, it’s rooted in a narrative adapted from a 1973 French novel, The Camp of the Saints, that some have taken as a guidebook.[15] In its simplest form, the narrative holds that the “White race” faces extinction, “replacement,”[16] or “genocide” due to high non-White birth and immigration rates (or non-White empowerment), and that patriots’ task is to “Repel the barbarians,” as Breitbart News summarized the book’s message.[17] In response to these perceived threats, right-wing forces around the globe choose cruel anti-immigrant policies, massacres intended to ignite racial civil wars, and, in the U.S., threaten a coming racial civil war to save Trump.
This modern narrative though, is rooted in far older tropes from colonial and imperialist periods.
White Terrorism and Its Victims
The historical roots of this narrative, for France and for the U.S., lie in the Haitian Revolution—which drove slave owners in Haiti to flee and culminated in Haiti’s independence in 1804—and fears or realities of slave insurrections in the U.S. South. Although long overlooked, the 1811 uprising led by Charles Deslondes and slaves from German Coast plantations near New Orleans was inspired by the Haitian Revolution and represented “the largest act of armed resistance against slavery in the history of the United States,” as historian Daniel Rasmussen writes.[18] After enslaved people revolted, the response was severe, as Louisiana elites asked President James Madison to permanently station troops in New Orleans in accordance with constitutional provisions to “[protect] planters from the dangers intrinsic in their slave-based society.”[19]
These existential fears persisted—and spread—after the abolition of slavery, in the U.S. and France, though the narrative shifted to warn that individual White nations, the White race, or Western civilization itself could be destroyed by differential fertility rates between the races and mass migration into White nations. Two U.S. books helped popularize this idea: The Passing of the Great Race by Madison Grant (1916), and The Rising Tide of Color: The Threat Against White World Supremacy (1920) by Lothrop Stoddard.[20] In France, a similar narrative began to spread around 1900 by a trilogy of novels by Maurice Barrès that introduced the term “le grand remplacement,” or “The Great Replacement.”[21]
Although the driving rhetoric in the early 20th Century concerned fears of Black revolt and White subjugation or diminishment, the most potent violence in U.S. history came from those already in political power, and it was directed downward. As historian Richard Hofstadter has argued, short of the American Revolution or U.S. Civil War, when political violence in the U.S. has achieved its purpose, “it has been, on the whole, the violence of those who already had position and power.”[22] That would also become a pattern in narratives of racial civil war.
In his seminal work Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880, W.E.B. Du Bois quoted a 1921 conference paper to describe how, after 1868, the Ku Klux Klan helped unleash a “‘crime-storm of devastating fury’” in which the “‘Southern states…relapsed into barbarism.’”[23] Danielle L. McGuire’s At the Dark End of the Street analyzed how rumors of Black men raping White women “sparked almost 50 percent of all race riots in the United States between Reconstruction and World War II.”[24] And the Equal Justice Initiative’s (EJI) study of nearly 4,500 post-Reconstruction “racial terror lynchings”[25]—2,000 of which took place during Reconstruction alone[26]—found that they served as a “tool…to reinforce Jim Crow laws and racial segregation,” and fueled the Great Migration of millions of Black people from the South “into urban ghettos in the North and West.”
More recent assessments of White supremacist violence demonstrate wide-ranging targets across racial and class boundaries. Today, White supremacist violence is directed against Jews, Muslims, Black and Latinx people, as well as Asian Americans.
A 2012 West Point study on right-wing violence since 1990 found an estimated 4,420 violent attacks, killing 670 people and injuring 3,053. Attacks were primarily directed against minorities as well as abortion facilities and providers.[27]
An Anti-Defamation League study of right-wing violence between 1993 and 2017 found “150 right-wing terrorist acts, attempted acts, and plots and conspiracies.”[28] The realized attacks killed 255 people and injured more than 600. Roughly 85 percent of these incidents were perpetrated by what the ADL characterized as either White supremacists (43 percent) or “anti-government extremists” (42 percent),[29] with an additional 11 percent committed by “anti-abortion extremists.”[30] The study also noted that while the Patriot movement has historically distanced itself from White supremacy, recently the “movement has willingly embraced…anti-Muslim hatred.”[31]
The ADL’s 2018 report found that “domestic extremists killed at least 50 people” and “[r]ight-wing extremists were responsible for 49 (or 98%) of the 50 domestic extremist-related killings in 2018.” Included in the deadly count was the attack on the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh that killed 11 and wounded seven others.[32]
On April 27, 2019, a gunman killed one and wounded three in a subsequent attack on the Chabad of Poway synagogue near San Diego. That gunman was inspired by the killing of 51 Muslims in two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, six weeks earlier, and the massacre in Pittsburgh.[33]
And scholar Sangay Mishra, writing in The Washington Post after the highly publicized 2017 murder of an Indian-born engineer in a Kansas bar, reported “more than 800 incidents since 9/11 involving physical violence, threat and vandalism against Arab Americans, Muslims, Sikhs, South Asian Americans and those perceived to be of Middle Eastern origin.”[34] A 2018 report by the organization South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT) recorded 213 violent incidents between November 2016 and November 2017, with 82 percent “motivated by anti-Muslim sentiment,” while 20 percent of the perpetrators “referenced President Trump, a Trump policy, or a Trump campaign slogan.”[35]
From “White Replacement” to Mass Murder
Today the “White Replacement”[36] narratives that took hold after Reconstruction have arisen again, in conspiracist theories such as the “Great Replacement”—which argues that massive non-White immigration into Europe and the U.S. will fundamentally alter those societies’ cultural foundations—and “White Genocide,” which holds that White people are threatened by a “Black revolt.”
The theories differ in some respects, and some researchers and advocates use the terms differently or interchangeably. Ideas of “White Genocide” (as well as “Black revolt”) have also dynamically changed over time in response to ideological opportunity. Depending upon the time and place, fears of “Black revolt” have encompassed slave rebellion, voter registration, school integration, or—as exemplified by one of the earlier contemporary uses of the term “White Genocide”—the introduction of land reform in post-apartheid South Africa. When anything White supremacists perceive as Black people altering society’s distribution of status, power, and wealth can be termed “Black revolt,” the definition of “White Genocide” isn’t limited to physical extermination but a hyperbolic sense of symbolic loss.[37]
But these terms share a common fear that White people are facing displacement—sometimes through immigration, sometimes through a redistribution of power and money (as the response to recent calls to “defund the police” generally suggest). And as Georgetown University researchers have found, White nationalists and White supremacists “often conflate or combine” the theories anyway.[38] Other, similar theories also echo these claims, such as Christian Right warnings about “Demographic Winter”[39]—which holds that low birth rates in Western countries leave a vacuum immigration must fill—or British author Bat Ye’or’s influential “Eurabia” project books, which suggest European Union elites are deliberately trying to replace White Europeans with Muslim immigrants.[40]
The main villains in these narratives are Western elites—politicians,[41] church leaders,[42] and intellectuals—who lack the moral values and strength to stop immigration because they are proponents of multiculturalism or “cultural Marxism.”[43]
As Paul Stocker, a senior fellow at the UK-based Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right, summarized it, “Demographic conspiracies argue that immigration and multiculturalism are not merely negative influences on society…. but the product of an intentional plan by elites to weaken or even eradicate national (or European) identity.”[44]
On the anti-immigration website The European Perspective, massive immigration from North Africa and the Middle East is characterized as the “colonization of Europe,” the “counter-colonization,” or “conquest” of Europe.[45] In the United States, the anti-immigration movement calls large-scale immigration from Mexico and Central America the “Reconquista”—the re-conquest of the southwestern United States—or the “invasion.”[46]
The other major component of these theories is the idea that at some point during this “replacement,” White people might turn to violent resistance. In a 1986 memo, John Tanton, architect of the modern U.S. anti-immigration movement, wrote, “The current situation…could be…vastly worse in another decade. The political power of the immigrants—legal and illegal—will be so great that nothing can stop it, and the greatest migration in the history of the United States will fundamentally transform our society and economy.”[47] Tanton coyly asked, in the face of such an existential threat, “Will the present majority peaceably hand over its political power to a group that is simply more fertile? … As Whites see their power and control over their lives declining, will they simply go quietly into the night? Or will there be an explosion?”[48]
It would be a mistake to see these various “White Replacement” narratives as isolated from mainstream conservative thought in Europe or America. Andrew Woods of the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right (CARR) noted that the “metapolitical purpose of radical right conspiracism is to develop ideas and narratives that will slip into mainstream political discourse and influence public opinion.”[49] Liz Fekete, director of the UK-based Institute of Race Relations, concluded, “the rhetoric of war has become normalised. The idea that European civilisation is threatened by Muslims and by immigration is part of mainstream European political thought.”[50]
These conspiracist claims are directly linked to several mass terrorist killings, with the massacres themselves linked causally to each other, with the killers intending that their acts of terrorism would eventually ignite a racial civil war in Europe, the U.S., Australia, or New Zealand. For example, the manifesto of the Christchurch, New Zealand, mass murderer explicitly sought “to incite violence in the US… with the ultimate aim of civil war, balkanization and the destruction of the ‘melting pot’-ideal.”[51] The New York Times found the manifestos and tactics of mass killers influenced at least a third of 347 attacks between 2011 and 2017. The Washington Post reported that “extremism experts” believe these mass killings spring from “a global network of white supremacy cells that communicate in much the same way as other global terrorist networks.” The Post quoted Kathleen Belew who suggested these killers shared “‘the same ideology…the same broad understanding of the world….and the common frame is readily apparent.’”[52]
The manifesto of Norwegian mass killer Anders Breivik, whose 2011 massacre of 77 people—mostly children—was intended to spark a “European Civil War” that would drive Islam from the continent,[53] exemplifies this. Breivik’s manifesto is almost entirely a compendium of articles and blog posts from the European and U.S. Far Right regarding Muslims, immigration, and the so-called Western crisis. Breivik, who was inspired by anti-immigrant political parties in Europe,[54] borrowed heavily from Peder “Fjordman” Jensen’s blog “Gates of Vienna”—Vienna being the location at which an Ottoman invasion was stopped in 1683—which was itself inspired by Bat Ye’or’s “Eurabia” project books.
Breivik’s manifesto mentions “demographic warfare” 75 times, often linking that concept to Ye’or’s opposition to massive Muslim immigration and subsequent “transformation” of Europe. In one instance, he wrote, “Western Europe is being invaded again, this time through demographic warfare (mass Muslim immigration in combination with high Muslim birth-rates).”[55] Breivik also frequently linked demographic warfare with Christian Right strategist William S. Lind’s ideas about “cultural Marxism”—variants of the concept Breivik mentioned over 600 times in the manifesto, according to analysis by former PRA Senior Analyst Chip Berlet,[56] and which Breivik defined as “the European hate ideology which was created to destroy our European cultures, national cohesion and Christendom.”[57]
Another of Lind’s strategic innovations was the concept of Fourth Generation Warfare (4GW), under which a non-state actor would contest the political legitimacy of a central government via an intensive, unrelenting barrage of ideological propaganda. While Lind’s articles for a military audience portray 4GW in terms of a war of disinformation, misinformation, and character assassination,[58] his less public writings, including a pseudonymous (aka Thomas Hobbes) 2014 novel, Victoria: A Novel of Fourth Generation War, reveal a preoccupation with catastrophic racial civil war. As researcher and writer Bruce Wilson noted, the book “favorably depicts white Christian militia groups overthrowing the federal government, helping out a resurgent Southern Dixie regime by vaporizing the black insurgent-controlled center of Atlanta with a tactical nuclear weapon, and carrying out the ethnic cleansing of African-Americans… and other ethnic groups such as Puerto Ricans.”[59]
Lind’s 4GW writings on his traditionalRIGHT blog openly endorse Great Replacement theory,[60] the mass expulsion of Muslims from Europe,[61] and the use of violence against Muslims in Europe[62] and Central American immigrants in the U.S.[63] In 2014, he suggested that mass shooters might be seen as 4GW actors. “If shooters here begin to be inspired by other shooters,” he wrote, “Such connectivity would create a new type of 4GW player…. One inspiring another to act is enough.”[64]
And so it has played out. As Andreas Önnerfors, a senior fellow at the Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right, has found, the manifesto of the Christchurch mass-shooter contains “compelling parallels to Norwegian terrorist Breivik in terms of the intentions to kill and the use of a language of power.”[65]
The Camp of the Saints Narrative
Many of the ideas expressed in the manifestos of mass killers like Breivik and the Christchurch shooter were first popularized by the deeply racist 1973 French novel The Camp of the Saints, by Jean Raspail. The novel’s message is simple and direct: non-White immigrants are arriving in large enough numbers to eventually fundamentally destroy White societies. The only defense against this invasion is expulsion of non-Whites who have already arrived and violent force against those en route. In the book, the reader is cast as both victim and hero, while liberal political elites and their allies are the main villains.[66]
Whenever real world events had mirrored events in Raspail’s novel or when he came out with a new introduction, Raspail expanded more directly upon the novel’s key points. In 2013, as increasing numbers of African and Middle Eastern refugees and migrants fled to Europe,[67] Raspail told a French interviewer, “There are only two solutions. Either we accommodate them and France—its culture, its civilisation—will be erased without even a funeral…. Or we don’t accommodate them at all.” He went on to suggest that “the measures we would have to take would necessarily be very coercive.”[68] In 2019, he added that unless immigrants and refugees from Africa or predominantly Muslim countries were turned away, “we will head inevitably towards a racial war.”[69]
What really popularized The Camp of the Saints was Breitbart News, which in 2014 began to propel the novel and its message into the conservative mainstream.[70] That meant Stephen Bannon, who headed both Breitbart and the psychological warfare firm Cambridge Analytica[71] (both heavily funded by billionaire Robert Mercer[72]), was uniquely situated to frame the 2016 presidential race around immigration.
Bannon had long been obsessed with The Camp of the Saints and The Fourth Turning: What the Cycles of History Tell Us About America’s Next Rendezvous with Destiny, by William Strauss and Neil Howe. Both books forecast the apocalyptic collapse of Western civilization, through either an immigrant invasion or civil war.[73] Subscribing to an anti-Muslim “clash of civilizations” perspective,[74] Bannon’s views also aligned with members of Trump’s camp, including former Attorney General Jeff Sessions,[75] his former-aide Stephen Miller,[76] and Trump himself.[77] Miller was also a fan of The Camp of the Saints, as leaked emails revealed.[78]
Bannon used his Breitbart News radio show to promote the novel and directed his website’s writers to use it to frame immigration developments as the novel coming to life.[79] As Breitbart News became an ideological bridge between the conservative mainstream and the then-emergent Alt Right,[80] it helped popularize sanitized neonazi ideas.[81] And, as a Harvard study of social media platforms during the 2016 presidential campaign found, Bannon’s outlet was pivotal to the conservative movement’s framing of immigration issues in terms of the “fear of Muslims and Islam” and a corresponding fear that “immigrants…in sufficient numbers…will impose their customs, culture, and religion on the U.S.”[82] A subsequent study by some of the same authors found that the influence of White nationalists “was only through Breitbart and the bridging function that it played in transposing the basic frames of the white supremacists to the rest of the right-wing media ecosystem…. That message framed immigration as primarily about fear of Muslims, and to some extent Africans and Mexicans, who would bring crime, disease, and terrorism.”[83]
After Trump won, the same sorts of ideas informed his policy and administration. Investigative articles by PRA[84] revealed that the Trump administration’s immigration policies and personnel were directly linked to John Tanton’s White nationalist network of organizations, which were the main right-wing publishers of The Camp of the Saints after 1990 and leading proponents of its central narrative.[85] Two of Tanton’s personnel moved into positions at the Department of Homeland Security, while one of Sessions’ aides went to the Department of Justice, and Stephen Miller directed policy from the White House. Anti-Muslim organizations heavily influenced by the “Eurabia” project influenced the Trump administration’ policies as informal advisors.[86] In short, The Camp of the Saints was fast becoming a guiding narrative for the entire Right, including the Republican establishment.[87]
This became apparent in mid-2018 when a small group of Central American migrants began a long, slow trek northward toward the U.S. border. As disinformation spread about the group—labeled a “caravan” by Trump and Fox News—militia members headed to the southern border to stop what conservative news had cast as an invasion,[88] and conservative writers—even including critics of Trump—began referencing The Camp of the Saints to describe the situation. Rod Dreher at The American Conservative suggested that U.S. decision-makers might soon face the choice of firing on the unarmed migrants, writing, “The raw logic of Raspail’s novel says that the only way to defend Western civilization from these invaders is to be willing to shed their blood.”[89]
Trump’s campaign speeches, tweets, and Facebook ads condemning the “invasion” spread the frame widely. The Washington Post reported that as of October 2019, Trump had made at least several hundred false or misleading claims using the word “invasion.”[90] The Guardian reported that between January and August 2019, “Trump’s campaign has used the word ‘invasion’ to describe migrants seeking entry at the US-Mexico border in 2,199 Facebook ads.”[91] And the message was further amplified by Fox News, as Media Matters researchers found: more than “70 on-air references to an invasion of migrants,” “At least 55 clips of Trump calling the surge of migrants an invasion,” and 21 instances of hosts Tucker Carlson, Brian Kilmeade, and Laura Ingraham using “invasion” rhetoric.[92]
When Fox News was not promoting the idea of an impending “invasion,” Carlson was busy promoting White nationalist themes that migrated from 4chan, earning him vocal far-right support.[93] At least a year before the El Paso terrorist attack on Latinx people in August 2019, Fox News was amplifying the Great Replacement theory that would be at the core of the killer’s manifesto.[94]
The Camp of the Saints and the Christian Right
It’s not just White nationalists, White supremacists, and neonazis who believe in some version of the Great Replacement. The Christian Right, which has its own relationships with the White nationalist anti-immigration movement, also developed a variant called “Demographic Winter.”[95] One major influence on the Christian Right’s thinking was Bat Ye’or’s “Eurabia” project books, which argue that Christians and Jews must unite to repel a Muslim invasion of Europe.[96] In 2002, Roberta Green, wife of Howard Ahmanson, Jr., a major Christian Right donor, co-authored a book, Islam at the Crossroads, which thanked Ye’or for her “invaluable insights” and cited three of her books.[97]
The Christian Right’s concern with global demography would be unveiled in 2007 at a World Congress of Families (WCF) conference in Poland, where the conference’s manifesto stated, “human depopulation is the true demographic danger.”[98] The following year, the WCF released a documentary, Demographic Winter, promoting the message, as journalist (and Public Eye editor) Kathryn Joyce put it, that “The white Christian West…is in danger of forfeiting itself through sheer lack of numbers to an onslaught of Muslim immigrants and their purportedly numerous offspring.”[99]
Eight years later, Trump seemed to speak to White evangelicals’ fears of demographic decline.[100] As evangelical historian John Fea observed, they saw in Trump someone who “would shelter them from Mexican strangers threatening white evangelical America. He would protect them from Muslims prepared to kill them and their families.”[101]
Existential fears and the need for strongman protection prompted the Christian Right to cast the president as an ancient monarch and his border wall as necessary to “separate us from cultural collapse,” as evangelical author Lance Wallnau put it.[102] As Robert P. Jones, author of The End of White Christian America, told Gregg Sargent of The Washington Post, for “‘white evangelicals who see the sun setting on white Christian dominance in the country, the wall is a powerful metaphor.’”[103] And there is strong support for Trump’s wall and cruel immigration policies among Trump’s closest evangelical advisers.[104]
According to an October 2019 PRRI poll, White evangelical Protestants are the only major religious group, joined sometimes by White Catholics, adopting a Camp of the Saints worldview: 75 percent of Republican White evangelical Protestants believe “immigrants are invading our country and replacing our cultural and ethnic background;”[105] 67 percent support building Trump’s wall;[106] 76 percent approve of Trump’s Muslim ban;[107] 68 percent believe we have no “responsibility to accept refugees into the country;”[108] and 36 to 39 percent favor separating children from parents at the border—the highest level of approval among any religious group.[109]
A further breakdown of this poll shows that 85 percent of White evangelicals overall favor a “restrictive immigration policy,” including specifics like building a wall (76 percent), banning Muslims (69 percent), restricting the number of legal immigrants allowed into the country (68 percent), and preventing refugees from entering the United States (54 percent).[110]
“Boogaloo” to a Civil War
In 2020, the idea of racial civil war began to take an even more literal turn with the emergence—amid the COVID-19 pandemic and Black Lives Matter protests—of a loose right-wing network called the Boogaloo or the Boogaloo Bois.
The Boogaloo[111] is a right-wing term for what adherents describe, with varying degrees of desire, as a second U.S. civil war, likely a racial one. Members of the network—which initially organized online, and today are recognizable for their mix of tactical gear, guns, and Hawaiian shirts[112]—first began showing up in person in Virginia in January 2020, threatening violence and incipient civil war if the Democratic-controlled state legislature passed gun control legislation.[113] The FBI arrested three alleged members of the neonazi group The Base days before the Virginia anti-gun control protest for plotting to kill people there.[114]
In more recent months, Boogaloo adherents have shown up at “Re-open” events protesting pandemic-related social distancing policies, as well as at Black Lives Matter marches and demonstrations. Both sets of protests also drew conservative supporters or counter-protesters from patriot groups, the Proud Boys, the Patriot Prayer movement, White supremacists, anti-vaxxers, and QAnon proponents, many of whom also support calls for civil war and Great Replacement theory.[115] The pattern of the protests, both online and in person, resemble a swarm attack that appears and disappears with no single controlling leader.[116] Chats leaked to Left Coast Right Watch revealed the Boogaloo contingent’s intention to co-opt the Black Lives Matter protests,[117] by goading police into a violent response. As one leaked exchange read: “We have to wait until it’s INTENTIONALLY lethal.” … “MAKE THEM SHOOT FIRST!!! It won’t be hard.”[118]
One of the more important consequences of these protests has been bringing White Republicans into closer contact with militias and White supremacists who long, respectively, for a civil war or a racial war.[119] White supremacists see the COVID-19 pandemic as a possible radicalizing agent that might foster greater receptivity to Great Replacement theory by the conservative, evangelical Republican base.[120] Previously, Great Replacement advocates claimed billionaire George Soros was financing massive immigration.[121] Now some say that Soros funded a laboratory where they claim the coronavirus originated.[122]
But the most dangerous proponent of the Boogaloo “civil war” isn’t any of its Hawaiian shirt-clad affiliates, but rather Donald Trump, whose tweets and statements have reinforced right-wing calls for such a conflict.
On January 16, the same day the FBI arrested alleged neonazis for planning an attack at the Virginia gun rights rally,[123] Fox Nation host Tomi Lahren claimed that any gun control legislation would result in a “major uprising” and “civil war.”[124] The next day Trump claimed the Second Amendment was “under very serious attack.”[125]
In April, Trump urged followers to “LIBERATE” three Democratic-led states that had embraced social distancing protocols.[126] And it was GOP, Tea Party, gun rights/militia, and dark money infrastructures, some with direct ties to the Trump’s administration, that orchestrated the ReOpen or “LIBERATE” protests.[127]
In late May, in response to the overwhelmingly non-violent protests against police brutality regarding the murder of George Floyd, Trump tweeted the segregationist-era threat, “When the looting starts, the shooting starts.”[128] Blaming violence or vandalism on “ANTIFA and the Radical Left,” Trump vowed to use U.S. military forces to stop the rioting, and instructed the nation’s governors to seek “total domination” over the protesters.[129] The Trump campaign ran more than 2,000 Facebook ads targeting Antifa, 88 of which included Nazi imagery.[130] (The number “88,” a well-recognized neonazi code for “Heil Hitler,” may have been inadvertent, but it’s not the first time that Trump or his campaign have used Nazi imagery in its communications.[131])
This larger political context created by Trump allowed the Boogaloo movement and other paramilitary and far right actors to conduct at least 136 violent and intimidating actions against peaceful, unarmed BLM protesters, according to confirmed, catalogued cases by PRA and others.[132]
In late May, Trump again threatened to use military force against Black Lives Matter protesters, just moments after Attorney General William Barr ordered federal police and the National Guard to violently clear demonstrators in front of a Washington, D.C., church, in order to facilitate a presidential photo-op.[133] And in July, Trump ordered federal law enforcement agents into several Democratic-governed cities to crack down on anti-racist demonstrations and alleged street crime.[134] As the nation watched footage of federal forces tear-gassing peaceful civilians, and anti-racist demonstrators abducted by unmarked federal forces, it seemed like the civil war the Right has long dreamed of might have begun.
This summer, Camp of the Saints author Jean Raspail died in France. The legacy he leaves behind is a powerful narrative utilized by White supremacists and others advocating a racial civil war, as well as justifying mass murder and White supremacy. But the threat of U.S. civil war, influenced by Raspail’s narrative and driven by racial grievance, is Trumpism, the authoritarian GOP, and armed right-wing paramilitaries.[135]
Endnotes
[1] Rachel Tabachnick, “Palin’s Churches and the Third Wave,” Talk to Action, September 5, 2008, http://www.talk2action.org/story/2008/9/5/0244/84583/.
[2] Rick Joyner, “The Second American Revolutionary/Civil War,” Morningstar Ministries, January 1, 2019, https://publications.morningstarministries.org/resources/word-week/2019/second-american-revolutionarycivil-war.
[3] Rick Wilson, “Trump Readies His Mob for the Race War,” Daily Beast, July 18, 2019, https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-readies-his-mob-for-the-race-war.
[4] Ashley Parker, “How a racist tweet became a Trump rally chant in three short days,” Washington Post, July 18, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-a-racist-tweet-became-a-trump-rally-chant-in-three-short-days/2019/07/18/bd81b798-a968-11e9-9214-246e594de5d5_story.html; Rick Wilson, “Trump Readies His Mob for the Race War,” Daily Beast, July 18, 2019, https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-readies-his-mob-for-the-race-war.
[5] Kathleen Parker, “Trump has essentially declared a ‘race war,’” The Washington Post, July 30, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/trump-has-essentially-declared-a-race-war/2019/07/30/ad6ae554-b305-11e9-8949-5f36ff92706e_story.html.
[6] Sarah Posner, “The Army Of Prayer Warriors Fighting Trump’s Impeachment,” HuffPost, December 19, 2019, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/white-evangelicals-trump-impeachment_n_5df950c6e4b08083dc5ae146.
[7] “Fox News contributor Robert Jeffress: If Trump is successfully impeached, ‘it will cause a Civil War-like fracture in this nation,’” Media Matters, September 29, 2019, https://www.mediamatters.org/robert-jeffress/fox-news-contributor-robert-jeffress-if-trump-successfully-impeached-it-will-cause.
[8] Donald J. Trump, “Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats can’t put down the Impeachment match,” Twitter, September 29, 2019, https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1178477534347960321.
[9] Stewart Rhodes, “Here’s the money quote from that thread…. We ARE on the verge of a HOT civil war. Like in 1859,” Twitter, September 30, 2019, https://twitter.com/Oathkeepers/status/1178549790847590400.
[10] Michael Hill, “The coming civil war in America,” League of the South, March 28, 2017, https://archive.vn/khv0L.
[11] Michael Hill, “Trump wins, globalists/progressive reeling,” League of the South, November 9, 2016, https://archive.vn/bwcrI.
[12] Craig Unger, House of Trump, House of Putin: The Untold Story of Donald Trump and the Russian Mafia, New York: Dutton, 2019, p. 51. Stone and Trump have been linked since at least 1987.
[13] Judd Legum, “Roger Stone promises a violent response if Trump is impeached,” Think Progress, August 24, 2017, https://thinkprogress.org/longtime-trump-adviser-says-any-politician-who-votes-for-impeachment-will-endanger-their-own-life-1dff6c47c976/.
[14] Nicole Hemmer, “Why it’s so scary when Trump tweets about civil war,” CNN, September 30, 2019, https://www.cnn.com/2019/09/30/opinions/trump-civil-war-tweets-make-america-less-safe-hemmer/index.html.
[15] James P. Pinkerton, “National Suicide,” The American Conservative, December 5, 2005, https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/national-suicide/; Virgil, “Decline and Fall: The Grim Message of The Camp of the Saints,” Breitbart News, November 24, 2014, https://web.archive.org/web/20200701134136/https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2014/11/24/decline-and-fall-the-grim-message-of-the-camp-of-the-saints/.
[16] Although Raspail did not use the word “replacement” in his novel, his nonfiction books focused on people under threat from extinction around the world. However, Raspail is credited with reviving the earlier French discussion of the “great replacement.” Renaud Camus is credited with re-introducing and popularizing the term “great replacement.” Camus treated Raspail as his “prophet.” Raspail’s novel, translated into several languages, is more widely known, while the term “the great replacement” is more widely used. See, for example, Rosa Schwartzburg, “The ‘white replacement theory’ motivates alt-right killers the world over,” The Guardian, August 5, 2019, at https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/05/great-replacement-theory-alt-right-killers-el-paso; Sasha Polakow-Suransky and Sarah Wildman, “The Inspiration for Terrorism in New Zealand Came From France,” Foreign Policy, March 16, 2019, https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/03/16/the-inspiration-for-terrorism-in-new-zealand-came-from-france-christchurch-brenton-tarrant-renaud-camus-jean-raspail-identitarians-white-nationalism/.
[17] Virgil, “Decline and Fall: The Grim Message of The Camp of the Saints,” Breitbart News, November 24, 2014, https://web.archive.org/web/20200701134136/https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2014/11/24/decline-and-fall-the-grim-message-of-the-camp-of-the-saints/. James Pinkerton, writing at The American Conservative, came to the same conclusion regarding Raspail’s message: “In Raspail’s view…repel the barbarians.” James P. Pinkerton, “National Suicide,” The American Conservative, December 5, 2005, https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/national-suicide/.
[18] Daniel Rasmussen, American Uprising: The Untold Story of America’s Largest Slave Revolt, New York: Harper Perennial, 2011, p.1.
[19] Daniel Rasmussen, American Uprising: The Untold Story of America’s Largest Slave Revolt, New York: Harper Perennial, 2011, pp. 1-3, 170, and 172.
[20] Stoddard’s book was subsequently published under the title The Rising Tide of Color Against White World-Supremacy.
[21] Rosa Schwartzburg, “No, There Isn’t a White Genocide,” Jacobin Magazine, September 4, 2019, https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/09/white-genocide-great-replacement-theory.
[22] Richard Hofstadter, “Reflections on Violence in the United States,” The Baffler, July 2015, originally published in 1970, https://thebaffler.com/ancestors/reflections-violence-united-states.
[23] W.E.B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America 1860-1880, New York: The Free Press (1935) 1998, p. 674.
[24] Danielle L. McGuire, At the Dark End of the Street: Black Women, Rape, and Resistance—A New History of the Civil Rights Movement from Rosa Parks to the Rise of Black Power, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010, p. 22.
[25] Lynching in America: Confronting the Legacy of Racial Terror, Montgomery, AL: Equal Justice Initiative, 2017, pp. 3-5
[26] Lynching in America: Targeting Black Veterans, Montgomery, AL: Equal Justice Initiative, 2017, p. 2; Reconstruction in America: Racial Violence After the Civil War, 1865-1876, Montgomery, AL: Equal Justice Initiative, 2020, p. 7.
[27] Arie Perliger, Challengers from the Sidelines: Understanding America’s Violent Far-Right, Combating Terrorism Center, West Point, November 2012, https://ctc.usma.edu/challengers-from-the-sidelines-understanding-americas-violent-far-right/.
[28] A Dark and Constant Rage: 25 Years of Right-Wing Terrorism in the United States, Anti-Defamation League, 2017, https://www.adl.org/education/resources/reports/dark-constant-rage-25-years-of-right-wing-terrorism-in-united-states, 1.
[29] Ibid.
[30] A Dark and Constant Rage: 25 Years of Right-Wing Terrorism in the United States, Anti-Defamation League, 2017, https://www.adl.org/education/resources/reports/dark-constant-rage-25-years-of-right-wing-terrorism-in-united-states, 4.
[31] A Dark and Constant Rage: 25 Years of Right-Wing Terrorism in the United States, Anti-Defamation League, 2017, https://www.adl.org/education/resources/reports/dark-constant-rage-25-years-of-right-wing-terrorism-in-united-states, 3.
[32] Murder and Extremism in the United States in 2018, Anti-Defamation League, January 2019, https://www.adl.org/murder-and-extremism-2018; “Additional Charges Filed in Tree of Life Synagogue Shooting,” Department of Justice U.S. Attorney’s Office Western District of Pennsylvania, January 29, 2019, https://www.justice.gov/usao-wdpa/pr/additional-charges-filed-tree-life-synagogue-shooting-0.
[33] Michael McGowan, “San Diego shooting suspect posted ‘open letter’ online,” The Guardian, April 28, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/apr/28/john-earnest-san-diego-shooting-suspect-posted-open-letter-online.
[34] Sangay K. Mishra, “An Indian immigrant is murdered in Kansas. It’s part of a spike in hate crimes against South Asians,” The Washington Post, March 7, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/03/07/the-kansas-murder-of-an-indian-immigrant-is-part-of-a-spike-in-hate-crimes-against-south-asians/.
[35] Rahda Modi, Communities on Fire: Resisting Hate Violence and Xenophobic Political Rhetoric, South Asian Americans Leading Together (SAALT), 2018, https://saalt.org/report-communities-on-fire-confronting-hate-violence-and-xenophobic-political-rhetoric/, 3.
[36] Rosa Schwartzburg, “The ‘white replacement theory’ motivates alt-right killers the world over,” The Guardian, August 5, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/05/great-replacement-theory-alt-right-killers-el-paso.
[37] See for example the recent exaggerated claims of “White genocide” against South African farmers in which an ill-conceived proposal for land expropriation without compensation, coupled with some violent attacks on farmers, became a White supremacist myth of genocide, amplified internationally by White supremacists, Fox News, and Donald Trump. Michael Bueckert, “Searching for white genocide in South Africa,” Africa Is A Country, February 26, 2018, https://africasacountry.com/2018/02/searching-for-white-genocide-in-south-africa/; Justin Ward, “The dangerous myth of ‘white genocide’ in South Africa,” Southern Poverty Law Center, August 23, 2018, https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2018/08/23/dangerous-myth-white-genocide-south-africa; Derek Litvak, “President Trump has embraced yet another white-supremacist talking point,” The Washington Post, August 23, 2018, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/made-by-history/wp/2018/08/23/president-trump-has-embraced-yet-another-white-supremacist-talking-point/; James Pogue, “[Letter from South Africa] The Myth of White Genocide,” Harper’s Magazine, February 28, 2019, https://harpers.org/archive/2019/03/catechism-of-the-waters-sea-lions-columbia-river/; Carolyn Holmes, “Tucker Carlson, those South African white rights activists aren’t telling you the whole truth,” The Washington Post, May 15, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/05/15/tucker-carlson-those-south-african-white-rights-activists-arent-telling-you-whole-truth/.
[38] Bridge Initiative Team, “Factsheet: White Genocide Conspiracy Theory,” Georgetown University, February 3, 2020, https://bridge.georgetown.edu/research/factsheet-white-genocide-conspiracy-theory/.
[39] Kathryn Joyce, “From the Archive: Missing: The ‘Right’ Babies,” The Nation, February 14, 2008, https://www.thenation.com/article/missing-right-babies/; Kathryn Joyce, “Review: Demographic Winter: The Decline of the Human Family,” originally published in The Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Spring 2008, http://kathrynjoyce.com/articles/review-demographic-winter-the-decline-of-the-human-family/; Kathryn Joyce, “Makers of Depopulation Doc Have a Past,” Religion Dispatches, June 10, 2009, http://religiondispatches.org/makers-of-depopulation-doc-have-a-past/.
[40] Paul Jackson, “2083—A European Declaration of Independence: A License to Kill,” pp. 81-100 in Matthew Feldman and Paul Jackson (editors), Doublespeak: The Rhetoric of the Far Right Since 1945, Stuttgart, GE: Ibedim-Verlag, 2014, p. 84; Sindre Bangstad, Anders Breivik and the Rise of Islamophobia, London: Zed Books, 2014, p. 147; Reza Zia-Ebrahimi, “When the Elders of Zion relocated to Eurabia: conspiratorial racialization in antisemitism and Islamophobia,” Patterns of Prejudice, 2018, https://www.academia.edu/37061358/When_the_Elders_of_Zion_relocated_to_Eurabia_Conspiratorial_racialization_in_antisemitism_and_Islamophobia.
[41] Denis McCormack, “Warnings of Weakness and White Western Suicide,” The Social Contract Press, Winter 1994-1995, https://www.thesocialcontract.com/artman2/publish/tsc0502/article_405.shtml; Rod Dreher, “Radicalization & Degeneration,” The American Conservative, March 15, 2019, https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/radicalization-degeneration-brenton-tarrant-white-supremacist/.
[42] Jason Horowitz, “Steven Bannon Carries Battle to Another Influential Hub: The Vatican,” The New York Times, February 7, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/07/world/europe/vatican-steve-bannon-pope-francis.html; Michael J. O’Loughlin, “Steve Bannon is ‘a good Catholic,’ Charlie Rose said on ‘60 minutes.’ Was he right?,” The Washington Post, September 11, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2017/09/11/charlie-rose-of-60-minutes-just-called-steve-bannon-a-good-catholic-is-that-true/; Media Matters Staff, “Anti-Semitic Fox News contributor Robert Jeffress attacks the Pope as a ‘globalist’ who wants ‘a one world government,’” Media Matters, November 2, 2018, https://www.mediamatters.org/lou-dobbs/anti-semitic-fox-news-contributor-robert-jeffress-attacks-pope-globalist-who-wants-one; Mark Townsend, “Steve Bannon ‘told Italy’s populist leader: Pope Francis is the enemy,’” The Guardian, April 13, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/apr/13/steve-bannon-matteo-salvini-pope-francis-is-the-enemy.
[43] David Neiwert, “How the ‘cultural Marxism’ hoax began, and why it’s spreading into the mainstream,” Daily Kos, January 23, 2019, https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/1/23/1828527/-How-the-cultural-Marxism-hoax-began-and-why-it-s-spreading-into-the-mainstream; Noah Berlatsky, “The Lethal Antisemitism of ‘Cultural Marxism,’” Jewish Currents, May 3, 2019, https://jewishcurrents.org/the-lethal-antisemitism-of-cultural-marxism/.
[44] Paul Stocker, “The great replacement theory: a historical perspective,” Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right, September 20, 2019, https://www.radicalrightanalysis.com/2019/09/20/the-great-replacement-theory-a-historical-perspective/.
[45] “The ‘Great Replacement’: Myth, conspiracy theory or reality? Part 1. Definitions,” The European Perspective, May 9, 2019, https://the-european-perspective.com/2019/05/09/the-great-replacement-myth-conspiracy-theory-or-reality-part-1-definitions/.
[46] Wayne Lutton, “The Mexican Conquest of the Southwest—Review of a Video, ‘Conquest of Aztlan,’” The Social Contract Press, Volume 12 Number 3 (Spring 2002), http://www.thesocialcontract.com/artman2/publish/tsc1203/article_1084.shtml.
[47] “‘WITAN Memo’ II,” Southern Poverty Law Center Intelligence Report Summer 2002, https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2015/witan-memo-ii.
[48] “‘WITAN Memo’ III,” Southern Poverty Law Center Intelligence Report Summer 2002, https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2015/witan-memo-iii.
[49] Andrew Woods, “The Hydra of Suspicion: Conspiracy Theories and the Radical Right,” Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right, June 17, 2019, https://www.radicalrightanalysis.com/2019/06/17/the-hydra-of-suspicion-conspiracy-theories-and-the-radical-right/.
[50] Liz Fekete, “Who facilitated the Christchurch terrorist’s journey through hate?” Institute of Race Relations (UK), March 21, 2019, http://www.irr.org.uk/news/who-facilitated-the-christchurch-terrorists-journey-through-hate/.
[51] Andreas Önnerfors, “‘The Great Replacement’—Decoding the Christchurch Terrorist Manifesto,” Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right (UK), March 18, 2019, https://www.radicalrightanalysis.com/2019/03/18/the-great-replacement-decoding-the-christchurch-terrorist-manifesto/.
[52] Weiyi Cai and Simone Landon, “Attacks by White Extremists Are Growing. So Are Their Connections,” The New York Times, April 3, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/04/03/world/white-extremist-terrorism-christchurch.html; Joe Heim and James McAuley, “New Zealand attacks offer the latest evidence of a web of supremacist extremism,” The Washington Post, March 15, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/new-zealand-suspect-inspired-by-far-right-french-intellectual-who-feared-nonwhite-immigration/2019/03/15/8c39fba4-6201-4a8d-99c6-aa42db53d6d3_story.html.
[53] Matthew Feldman and Paul Jackson, Doublespeak: The Rhetoric of the Far Right Since 1945, Stuttgart, GE: Ibedim-Verlag, 2014, pp. 15-6, pp. 7-35.
[54] Andrew Brown, “Anders Breivik’s spider web of hate,” The Guardian, September 7, 2011, https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/sep/07/anders-breivik-hate-manifesto.
[55] Anders Brehing Breivik (aka Andrew Berwick), 2083: A European Declaration of Independence, manifesto dated July 22, 2011.
[56] Chip Berlet, “Updated: Breivik’s Core Thesis is White Christian Nationalism v. Multiculturalism,” Talk to Action, July 25, 2011, http://www.talk2action.org/story/2011/7/25/73510/6015.
[57] Anders Brehing Breivik (aka Andrew Berwick), 2083: A European Declaration of Independence, manifesto dated July 22, 2011.
[58] James Scaminaci III, “Battle without Bullets: The Christian Right and Fourth Generation Warfare,” The Public Eye, Summer 2017, http://www.politicalresearch.org/2017/08/16/battle-without-bullets-the-christian-right-and-fourth-generation-warfare/.
[59] Bruce Wilson, “Trump Meets William S. Lind,” 4thGenWar, July 3, 2016, https://4thgenwar.wordpress.com/2016/07/03/trump-meets-man-who-inspired-2011-terror-attack-deadlier-than-orlando-shooting/.
[60] William S. Lind, “The Left’s Cognitive Dissonance,” TraditionalRIGHT, December 21, 2019, https://www.traditionalright.com/the-lefts-cognitive-dissonance/.
[61] William S. Lind, “His Majesty’s Birthday,” TraditionalRIGHT, February 7, 2017, https://www.traditionalright.com/the-view-from-olympus-his-majestys-birthday-3/.
[62] William S. Lind, “His Majesty’s Birthday,” TraditionalRIGHT, February 7, 2017, https://www.traditionalright.com/the-view-from-olympus-his-majestys-birthday-3/.
[63] William S. Lind, “The View From Olympus: Invasion,” TraditionalRIGHT, November 14, 2018, https://www.traditionalright.com/the-view-from-olympus-invasion/.
[64] William S. Lind, “The View From Olympus 29: Shooters and 4GW,” TraditionalRIGHT, April 8, 2014, https://www.traditionalright.com/the-view-from-olympus-29-shooters-and-4gw/.
[65] Andreas Önnerfors, “‘The Great Replacement’—Decoding the Christchurch Terrorist Manifesto,” Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right (UK), March 18, 2019, https://www.radicalrightanalysis.com/2019/03/18/the-great-replacement-decoding-the-christchurch-terrorist-manifesto/.
[66] Sasha Polakow-Suransky, Go Back to Where You Came From: The Backlash Against Immigration and the Fate of Western Democracy, New York: Nation Books, 2017, pp. 3 and 5; Matthew Connelly and Paul Kennedy, “Must It Be the Rest Against the West?” The Atlantic, December 1994, https://www.theatlantic.com/past/docs/politics/immigrat/kennf.htm.
[67] “Graphics: Europe’s asylum seekers,” BBC News, September 30, 2014, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-24636868; Jeanne Park, “Europe’s Migration Crisis,” Council on Foreign Relations, last updated September 23, 2015, https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/europes-migration-crisis.
[68] Cheradenine Zakalwe, “Jean Raspail, Author of Camp of the Saints: ‘Our Civilisation Is Disappearing,’” Islam Versus Europe, October 26, 2013, https://web.archive.org/web/20131211122103/https://islamversuseurope.blogspot.com/2013/10/jean-raspail-author-of-camp-of-saints.html.
[69] Tiberge, “Islands of Survival,” Gallia Watch, July 30, 2019, https://galliawatch.blogspot.com/2019/07/islands-of-survival.html.
[70] Virgil, “Decline and Fall: The Grim Message of The Camp of the Saints,” Breitbart News, November 24, 2014, https://archive.vn/mBkec.
[71] Carole Cadwalladr, “The great British Brexit robbery: how our democracy was hijacked,” The Guardian, May 7, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/may/07/the-great-british-brexit-robbery-hijacked-democracy; Carole Cadwalladr, “‘I created Steve Bannon’s psychological warfare tool’: meet the data war whistleblower,” The Guardian, March 17, 2018, https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/17/data-war-whistleblower-christopher-wylie-faceook-nix-bannon-trump.
[72] Jane Mayer, “The Reclusive Hedge-Fund Tycoon Behind the Trump Presidency: How Robert Mercer exploited America’s populist insurgency,” The New Yorker, March 27, 2017, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/03/27/the-reclusive-hedge-fund-tycoon-behind-the-trump-presidency; Elise Viebeck and Matea Gold, “Pro-Trump megadonor is part owner of Breitbart News empire, CEO reveals,” The Washington Post, February 24, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/pro-trump-megadonor-is-part-owner-of-breitbart-news-empire-ceo-reveals/2017/02/24/9f16eea4-fad8-11e6-9845-576c69081518_story.html; Carole Cadwalladr, “Robert Mercer: the big data billionaire waging war on mainstream media,” The Guardian, February 26, 2017, https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/feb/26/robert-mercer-breitbart-war-on-media-steve-bannon-donald-trump-nigel-farage; Matea Gold, “The Mercers and Stephen Bannon: How a populist power base was funded and built,” The Washington Post, March 17, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/mercer-bannon/.
[73] David Kaiser, “Donald Trump, Stephen Bannon and the Coming Crisis in American National Life,” Time, November 18, 2016, http://time.com/4575780/stephen-bannon-fourth-turning/; Hugh Urban, “The Theology of Stephen K. Bannon,” Religion & Politics, April 17, 2017, http://religionandpolitics.org/2017/04/17/the-theology-of-stephen-k-bannon/; Alexander Livington, “The World According to Bannon,” Jacobin Magazine, February 7, 2017, https://www.jacobinmag.com/2017/02/bannon-trump-muslim-travel-ban-breitbart-generation-zero/; Paul Blumenthal and JM Rieger, “Steve Bannon Believes The Apocalypse Is Coming And War Is Inevitable,” Huffington Post, February 18, 2017, https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/steve-bannon-apocalypse_us_5898f02ee4b040613138a951.
[74] Jalal Baig, “Steve Bannon’s war with Islam: Trump may not even understand his adviser’s apocalyptic vision,” Salon, February 5, 2017, http://www.salon.com/2017/02/05/steve-bannons-war-with-islam-trump-may-not-even-understand-his-advisers-apocalyptic-vision/; Scott Shane, “Stephen Bannon in 2014: We Are at War With Radical Islam,” The New York Times, February 1, 2017, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/02/01/us/stephen-bannon-war-with-radical-islam.html; Matea Gold, “Bannon film outline warned U.S. could turn into ‘Islamic States of America,’” The Washington Post, February 3, 2017, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/bannon-film-outline-warned-us-could-turn-into-islamic-states-of-america/2017/02/03/f73832f4-e8be-11e6-b82f-687d6e6a3e7c_story.html.
[75] Miranda Blue, “Jeff Sessions’ Close Relationship With Media ‘Bright Spot’ Breitbart,” Right Wing Watch, December 22, 2016, http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/jeff-sessions-close-relationship-with-media-bright-spot-breitbart/.
[76] Michael Edison Hayden, “Stephen Miller’s Affinity for White Nationalism Revealed in Leaked Emails,” Southern Poverty Law Center, November 12, 2019, https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2019/11/12/stephen-millers-affinity-white-nationalism-revealed-leaked-emails#aggregate; Michael Edison Hayden, “Miller Turned to Breitbart to Promote Political Agenda,” Southern Poverty Law Center, November 19, 2019, https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2019/11/19/miller-turned-breitbart-promote-political-agenda; Josh Harkinson, “The Dark History of the White House Aides Who Crafted Trump’s ‘Muslim Ban,’” Mother Jones, January 30, 2017, https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2017/01/stephen-bannon-miller-trump-refugee-ban-islamophobia-white-nationalist/.
[77] McKay Coppins, “Breitbart Staffers Believe Trump Has Given Money To Site For Favorable Coverage,” BuzzFeed News, August 9, 2015, https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/mckaycoppins/breitbart-staffers-believe-trump-has-given-money-to-site-for#.hcnRr143NL; David A. Fahrenthold and Frances Stead Sellers, “How Bannon flattered and coaxed Trump on policies key to the alt-right,” Washington Post, November 15, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/how-bannon-flattered-and-coaxed-trump-on-policies-key-to-the-alt-right/2016/11/15/53c66362-ab69-11e6-a31b-4b6397e625d0_story.html.
[78] Michael Edison Hayden, “Miller Pushed Racist ‘Camp of the Saints’ Beloved by Far Right,” Southern Poverty Law Center, November 12, 2019, https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2019/11/12/miller-pushed-racist-camp-saints-beloved-far-right.
[79] Paul Blumenthal and JM Rieger, “This Stunningly Racist French Novel Is How Steve Bannon Explains The World,” Huffington Post, March 4, 2017, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/steve-bannon-camp-of-the-saints-immigration_us_58b75206e4b0284854b3dc03.
[80] Stephen Piggott, “Is Breitbart.com Becoming the Media Arm of the ‘Alt-Right’?” Southern Poverty Law Center, April 28, 2016, https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2016/04/28/breitbartcom-becoming-media-arm-alt-right; Sarah Posner, “How Donald Trump’s campaign chief created an online haven for white nationalists,” Mother Jones, August 22, 2016, http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/08/stephen-bannon-donald-trump-alt-right-breitbart-news.
[81] Joseph Bernstein, “Here’s How Breitbart And Milo Smuggled Nazi and White Nationalist Ideas Into the Mainstream,” BuzzFeed, October 5, 2017, https://www.buzzfeed.com/josephbernstein/heres-how-breitbart-and-milo-smuggled-white-nationalism; Joseph Bernstein, “Steve Bannon Dropped Milo After White Nationalism Revelations. Will The Mercers Stand By Him?” BuzzFeed, October 23, 2017, https://www.buzzfeed.com/josephbernstein/steve-bannon-dropped-milo-after-white-nationalism; Spencer Sunshine, “Steve Bannon’s ‘Washed Out’ Antisemitism,” Political Research Associates, January 12, 2018, https://www.politicalresearch.org/2018/01/12/steve-bannons-washed-out-antisemitism/.
[82] Robert M. Faris, et al., Partisanship, Propaganda, and Disinformation: Online Media and the 2016 U.S. Presidential Election, Digital Access to Scholarship at Harvard, August 18, 2017, https://dash.harvard.edu/handle/1/33759251, p. 97.
[83] Yochai Benkler, Robert Faris, and Hal Roberts, Network Propaganda: Manipulation, Disinformation, and Radicalization in American Politics, New York: Oxford University Press, 2018, p. 132.
[84] Political Research Associates, “Where the White House Gets its Racist Immigration Policies,” March 1, 2018, https://www.politicalresearch.org/2018/03/01/where-the-white-house-gets-its-racist-immigration-policies/; Political Research Associates, “White House Ties to Anti-Immigrant and Anti-Muslim Leaders,” April 11, 2019, https://www.politicalresearch.org/2019/04/11/white-house-ties-to-anti-immigrant-and-anti-muslim-leaders.
[85] Nicholas Kulish and Mike McIntire, “In Her Own Words: The Woman Who Bankrolled the Anti-Immigration Movement,” The New York Times, August 14, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/14/us/cordelia-scaife-may-anti-immigration.html; Nicholas Kulish and Mike McIntire, “Why an Heiress Spent Her Fortune Trying to Keep Immigrants Out,” The New York Times, August 14, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/14/us/anti-immigration-cordelia-scaife-may.html; Heidi Beirich, “Pittsburgh Foundation Funded Hate Groups,” Hatewatch, Southern Poverty Law Center, July 14, 2009, http://www.splcenter.org/blog/2009/07/14/former-director-at-tanton-foundation-now-funneling-money-to-anti-immigrant-hate-groups/#more-3263.
[86] Anne Barnard and Alan Feur, “Outraged, and Outrageous,” The New York Times, October 10, 2010, http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/10/nyregion/10geller.html.
[87] Max Boot, “The GOP Is America’s Party of White Nationalism,” Foreign Policy, March 14, 2017, https://foreignpolicy.com/2017/03/14/the-gop-is-americas-party-of-white-nationalism/; Adam Gopnik, “The Second Coming of the French Far-Right Tradition,” The New Yorker, March 30, 2017, https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/franco-american.
[88] “False information about caravan animating militia activity at the border,” Information Disorder Lab Team, Shorenstein Center, October 26, 2018, https://shorensteincenter.org/false-information-caravan-animating-militia-activity-border/.
[89] Rod Dreher, “America’s Camp Of The Saints Problem,” The American Conservative, October 22, 2018, https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/america-camp-of-the-saints-problem-migrant-caravan/.
[90] Glenn Kessler, Salvador Rizzo, and Meg Kelly, “President Trump has made 12,019 false or misleading claims over 928 days,” The Washington Post, August 12, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2019/08/12/president-trump-has-made-false-or-misleading-claims-over-days/.
[91] Julia Carrie Wong, “Trump referred to immigrant ‘invasion’ in 2,000 Facebook ads, analysis reveals,” The Guardian, August 5, 2019, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/aug/05/trump-internet-facebook-ads-racism-immigrant-invasion.
[92] Lis Power, “Fox News’ ‘invasion’ rhetoric by the numbers,” Media Matters, August 6, 2019, https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-news-invasion-rhetoric-numbers; Courtney Hagle, “Fox News has called immigration an ‘invasion’ multiple times since El Paso,” Media Matters, August 15, 2019, https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/fox-news-has-called-immigration-invasion-multiple-times-el-paso; Cristina López G., “Fox News Talked More About Migrant ‘Invasion’ Just Before Election Than In Past 3 Years Total,” Huffington Post, December 9, 2018, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/fox-news-migrant-invasion_n_5c0abb34e4b035a7bf5af1b5.
[93] John Jackson, Jr., “Snowflakes are White,” Alt Right Origins, April 3, 2018, https://altrightorigins.com/2018/04/03/snowflakes-are-white/; John Kerr and Alazar Moges, “Tucker Carlson is using his Fox News show to mainstream white nationalism,” Media Matters, April 9, 2018, https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2018/04/09/Tucker-Carlson-is-using-his-Fox-News-show-to-mainstream-white-nationalism-/219887; Cristina López and Alex Kaplan, “White supremacists rally behind Tucker Carlson: ‘Heil Tucker,’” Media Matters, March 13, 2019, https://www.mediamatters.org/research/2019/03/13/White-supremacists-rally-behind-Tucker-Carlson-Heil-Tucker/223126.
[94] Courtney Hagle, “How Fox News pushed the white supremacist ‘great replacement’ theory,” Media Matters, August 5, 2019, https://www.mediamatters.org/tucker-carlson/fox-news-mainstreaming-white-supremacist-great-replacement-theory; Jeremy W. Peters, Michael M. Grynbaum, Keith Collins, Rich Harris, and Rumsey Taylor, “How the El Paso Killer Echoed the Incendiary Words of Conservative Media Stars,” The New York Times, August 11, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/11/business/media/el-paso-killer-conservative-media.html; Matt Gertz, “You don’t need to read the El Paso killer’s manifesto. Just turn on Fox News,” Media Matters, August 5, 2019, https://www.mediamatters.org/fox-news/you-dont-need-read-el-paso-killers-manifesto-just-turn-fox-news.
[95] Kathryn Joyce, “From the Archive: Missing: The ‘Right’ Babies,” The Nation, February 14, 2008, https://www.thenation.com/article/missing-right-babies/; Kathryn Joyce, “Review: Demographic Winter: The Decline of the Human Family,” originally published in The Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Spring 2008, http://kathrynjoyce.com/articles/review-demographic-winter-the-decline-of-the-human-family/.
[96] Reza Zia-Ebrahimi, “When the Elders of Zion relocated to Eurabia: conspiratorial racialization in antisemitism and Islamophobia,” Patterns of Prejudice, 2018, https://www.academia.edu/37061358/When_the_Elders_of_Zion_relocated_to_Eurabia_Conspiratorial_racialization_in_antisemitism_and_Islamophobia; Joe Mulhall, “Going Mainstream: The mainstreaming of anti-Muslim prejudice in Europe and North America,” Hope Not Hate (UK), February 1, 2017, https://www.hopenothate.org.uk/research/investigations/going-mainstream/.
[97] Paul Marshall, Roberta Green (Ahmanson), and Lela Gilbert, Islam at the Crossroads: Understanding Its Beliefs, History, and Conflicts, Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Book House, 2002; Mark R. Rushdoony, “What My Armenian Father Taught Me About Islam,” Chalcedon Ministry, January 1, 2002, https://chalcedon.edu/magazine/what-my-armenian-father-taught-me-about-islam. Rushdoony’s view is very close to Bat Ye’or’s, though he does not cite her.
[98] “Cosmopolitan Religious-Right Groups Travel to Europe to Fight Gay Marriage, Abortion,” Right Wing Watch, May 10, 2007, https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/cosmopolitan-religious-right-groups-travel-to-europe-to-fight-gay-marriage-abortion/; Peter Bringe, “The Natural Family: A Manifesto,” available at Good Reads, May 24, 2018, https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2402031154.
[99] Kathryn Joyce, “From the Archive: Missing: The ‘Right’ Babies,” The Nation, February 14, 2008, https://www.thenation.com/article/missing-right-babies/; Kathryn Joyce, “Review: Demographic Winter: The Decline of the Human Family,” originally published in The Harvard Divinity Bulletin, Spring 2008, http://kathrynjoyce.com/articles/review-demographic-winter-the-decline-of-the-human-family/.
[100] Robert P. Jones, The End of White Christian America, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2016.
[101] John Fea, Believe Me: The Evangelical Road to Donald Trump, Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2018, p. 40.
[102] Katherine Stewart, “Why Trump Reigns as King Cyrus,” The New York Times, December 31, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/31/opinion/trump-evangelicals-cyrus-king.html.
[103] As cited by Greg Sargent, “The walls around Trump are crumbling. Evangelicals may be his last resort,” The Washington Post, January 2, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/01/02/walls-around-trump-are-crumbling-evangelicals-may-be-his-last-resort/.
[104] Tara Isabella Burton, “Paula White: Jesus never broke immigration law,” Vox, July 11, 2018, https://www.vox.com/2018/7/11/17561950/trump-evangelical-ally-jesus-immigration-law; Adele M. Stan, “Religious Right: Jesus Would Totally Build that Wall,” Right Wing Watch, January 8, 2019, http://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/religious-right-jesus-would-totally-build-that-wall/.
[105] PRRI released a survey in October 2019 measuring four items they recalibrated as a single scale measuring support or opposition towards restrictive immigration policy. They did not provide statistical breakdowns for the four items by religion. However, 75 percent of White evangelical Protestant Republicans and 78 percent of Fox News-viewing Republicans believed “immigrants are invading our country and replacing our cultural and ethnic background.” Only 36 percent of all those surveyed believed that immigrants are invaders and cultural replacers. Those four items were strict limits on the number of legal immigrants entering the country, a temporary ban on Muslims entering the country, building Trump’s wall, and a law preventing refugees from entering the country. PRRI found that 89 percent of Republicans, 96 percent of Fox News-viewing Republicans, 93 percent of White evangelical Republicans, 85 percent of White evangelical Protestants, 68 percent of White Catholics, and 66 percent of White mainline Protestants, strongly favored or favored a restrictive immigration policy. See PRRI Staff, “Fractured Nation: Widening Partisan Polarization and Key Issues in 2020 Presidential Elections,” Public Religion Research Institute, October 17, 2019, https://www.prri.org/research/fractured-nation-widening-partisan-polarization-and-key-issues-in-2020-presidential-elections/, pp. 32 and 36-7 in pdf.
[106] Greg Sargent, “The walls around Trump are crumbling. Evangelicals may be his last resort,” The Washington Post, January 2, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/01/02/walls-around-trump-are-crumbling-evangelicals-may-be-his-last-resort/.
[107] Gregory A. Smith, “Most white evangelicals approve of Trump refugee policy, express concerns about extremism,” Pew Research Center, January 17, 2019, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2017/02/27/most-white-evangelicals-approve-of-trump-travel-prohibition-and-express-concerns-about-extremism/.
[108] Hannah Hartig, “GOP views of accepting refugees to US turn more negative as admissions plummet,” Pew Research Center, May 24, 2018, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/05/24/republicans-turn-more-negative-toward-refugees-as-number-admitted-to-u-s-plummets/.
[109] Daniel Cox, “Growing Divide on Immigration and America’s Moral Leadership,” Public Religion Research Institute, June 26, 2018, https://www.prri.org/research/growing-divide-on-immigration-and-americas-moral-leadership/; PRRI Staff, “Fractured Nation: Widening Partisan Polarization and Key Issues in 2020 Presidential Elections,” Public Religion Research Institute, October 17, 2019, https://www.prri.org/research/fractured-nation-widening-partisan-polarization-and-key-issues-in-2020-presidential-elections/.
[110] Email from PRRI to the author. The author kindly thanks PRRI for the breakdown by religion.
[111] The term “Boogaloo” comes from a widely panned 1984 movie, Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo. The idea of a Civil War Boogaloo was used first by military historians, gamers, and others in a humorous manner, though they were writing about a serious subject. Eventually, the term was taken up by firearms enthusiasts and White supremacists on two different 4chan boards: /k/ and /pol/, respectively. As the movement moved from online into real life, the term became more menacing as heavily armed men from a wide variety of movements and organizations took to the streets to protest against Democratic Party-led governments. Facebook pages provided its quick growth into a movement. See: Robert Evans, “6 Reasons Why A New Civil War Is Possible And Terrifying,” Cracked, November 1, 2016, https://www.cracked.com/personal-experiences-2403-6-reasons-why-new-civil-war-possible-terrifying.html; the comment by Ken Prescott in Kevin Benson and Jennifer Weber, “Full Spectrum Operations in the Homeland: A ‘Vision’ of the Future,” Small Wars Journal, July 25, 2012, https://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/full-spectrum-operations-in-the-homeland-a-%E2%80%9Cvision%E2%80%9D-of-the-future; Anti-Defamation League, “The Boogaloo: Extremists’ New Slang Term for A Coming Civil War,” November 26, 2019, https://www.adl.org/blog/the-boogaloo-extremists-new-slang-term-for-a-coming-civil-war. Robert Evans and Jason Wilson, “The Boogaloo Movement Is Not What You Think,” Bellingcat, May 27, 2020, https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2020/05/27/the-boogaloo-movement-is-not-what-you-think/; Tech Transparency Project, “Extremists Are Using Facebook to Organize for Civil War Amid Coronavirus,” Tech Transparency Project, April 22, 2020, https://www.techtransparencyproject.org/articles/extremists-are-using-facebook-to-organize-for-civil-war-amid-coronavirus.
[112] Tess Owen, “The ‘Boogaloo Bois’ Are Bringing Their AR-15s and Civil War Ideology to the Lockdown Protests,” Vice, May 8, 2020, https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/y3zmj5/the-boogaloo-bois-are-bringing-their-ar-15s-and-civil-war-ideology-to-the-lockdown-protests; Robert Evans and Jason Wilson, “The Boogaloo Movement Is Not What You Think,” Bellingcat, May 27, 2020, https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2020/05/27/the-boogaloo-movement-is-not-what-you-think/; Cassie Miller, “The ‘Boogaloo’ Started as a Racist Meme,” Southern Poverty Law Center, June 5, 2020, https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2020/06/05/boogaloo-started-racist-meme; Political Research Associates, Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, and Alexander Reid Ross, “Mapping Paramilitary and Far-Right Threats to Racial Justice,” data as of June 18, 2020, published June 19, 2020, https://www.politicalresearch.org/2020/06/19/mapping-paramilitary-and-far-right-threats-racial-justice.
[113] Lois Beckett, “Virginia Democrats won an election. Gun owners are talking civil war,” The Guardian, January 9, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/jan/09/virginia-gun-control-second-amendment-civil-war; Tess Owen, “This Conspiracy Theory Is Firing Up Pro-Gun Activists Right Before Their Huge Rally,” Vice, January 14, 2020, https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wxed8q/this-conspiracy-theory-is-firing-up-pro-gun-activists-right-before-their-huge-rally; David Neiwert, “As the far-right prepares for a ‘Boogaloo,’ Virginia governor declares emergency,” Daily Kos, January 16, 2020, https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2020/1/16/1911814/-As-the-far-right-prepares-for-a-Boogaloo-Virginia-governor-declares-emergency; Timothy Johnson, “As Virginia gun rally approaches, Alex Jones and his Infowars outlet hype prospect of violence,” Media Matters, June 15, 2020, https://www.mediamatters.org/alex-jones/virginia-gun-rally-approaches-alex-jones-and-his-infowars-outlet-hype-prospect-violence.
[114] Shane Harris and Devlin Barret, “FBI arrests 3 alleged members of white-supremacist group ‘the Base’ ahead of Virginia gun rally,” The Washington Post, January 16, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/fbi-arrests-alleged-members-of-white-supremacist-group-the-base/2020/01/16/ae8c01d4-386b-11ea-bf30-ad313e4ec754_story.html.
[115] Jane Lytvynenko, Craig Silverman, and Alex Boutilier, “White Nationalist Groups Banned By Facebook Are Still On The Platform,” BuzzFeed News, May 30, 2019, https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/janelytvynenko/facebook-white-nationalist-ban-evaded; Kristen Doerer, “‘I Have a Dream of a Boogaloo’: Beneath the Peaceful Veneer of Virginia’s Gun Rally,” Right Wing Watch, January 21, 2020, https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/i-have-a-dream-of-a-boogaloo-beneath-the-peaceful-veneer-of-virginias-gun-rally/; Jason Wilson, “The rightwing groups behind wave of protests against Covid-19 restrictions,” The Guardian, April 17, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/17/far-right-coronavirus-protests-restrictions; Cassie Miller, “Anti-Lockdown Rallies Are Providing an Opening for the Proud Boys and Other Far-Right Extremists,” Southern Poverty Law Center, April 27, 2020, https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2020/04/27/anti-lockdown-rallies-are-providing-opening-proud-boys-and-other-far-right-extremists.
[116] Alex Goldenberg and Joel Finkelstein, “CYBER SWARMING, MEMETIC WARFARE AND VIRAL INSURGENCY: How Domestic Militants Organize on Memes to Incite Violent Insurrection and Terror Against Government and Law Enforcement,” Network Contagion Research Institute, Rutgers University, February 7, 2020, https://ncri.io/reports/cyber-swarming-memetic-warfare-and-viral-insurgency-how-domestic-militants-organize-on-memes-to-incite-violent-insurrection-and-terror-against-government-and-law-enforcement/; Political Research Associates, Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, and Alexander Reid Ros, “Mapping Paramilitary and Far-Right Threats to Racial Justice,” data as of June 18, 2020, published June 19, 2020, https://www.politicalresearch.org/2020/06/19/mapping-paramilitary-and-far-right-threats-racial-justice.
[117] LeftCoast RightWatch, “#THREAD: Boogaloo boys are watching protests in Minneapolis right now from their secret chatrooms,” Twitter, May 27, 2020, https://twitter.com/LCRWnews/status/1265514655109259264; “This Week in Fascism #57: Boogaloo News Bears,” ItsGoingDown, May 6, 2020, https://itsgoingdown.org/this-week-in-fascism-57-boogaloo-news-bears/.
[118] Robert Evans and Jason Wilson, “The Boogaloo Movement Is Not What You Think,” Bellingcat, May 27, 2020, https://www.bellingcat.com/news/2020/05/27/the-boogaloo-movement-is-not-what-you-think/; LeftCoast RightWatch, “#THREAD: Boogaloo boys are watching protests in Minneapolis right now from their secret chatrooms,” Twitter, May 27, 2020, https://twitter.com/LCRWnews/status/1265514655109259264.
[119] Devin Burghart, “Thread: more evidence of the presence of the ‘Boogaloo Bois’—those itching to kick off a bloody Civil War II—in the growing number of far-right “ReOpen” protest groups,” Twitter, May 11, 2020, https://twitter.com/dburghart/status/1259933363034402817; Toluse Olorunnipa, Shawn Boburg, and Arelis R. Hernández, “Rallies against stay-at-home orders grow as Trump sides with protesters,” The Washington Post, April 17, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/rallies-against-stay-at-home-orders-grow-as-trump-sides-with-protesters/2020/04/17/1405ba54-7f4e-11ea-8013-1b6da0e4a2b7_story.html; Michael D. Shear and Sarah Mervosh, “Trump Fans Protest Against Governors Who Have Imposed Virus Restrictions,” The New York Times, April 17, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/17/us/politics/trump-coronavirus-governors.html; Robert Evans, “6 Reasons Why A New Civil War Is Possible And Terrifying,” Cracked, November 1, 2016, https://www.cracked.com/personal-experiences-2403-6-reasons-why-new-civil-war-possible-terrifying.html. Evans breaks an insurgency into three components: the guerrillas, the civilian auxiliary, and the underground. The GOP base would be in the auxiliary.
[120] Cassie Miller, “White Supremacists See Coronavirus as an Opportunity,” Southern Poverty Law Center, March 26, 2020, https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2020/03/26/white-supremacists-see-coronavirus-opportunity; Cassie Miller, “Anti-Lockdown Rallies Are Providing an Opening for the Proud Boys and Other Far-Right Extremists,” Southern Poverty Law Center, April 27, 2020, https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2020/04/27/anti-lockdown-rallies-are-providing-opening-proud-boys-and-other-far-right-extremists; “IntelBrief: The National Security Implications of Conspiracy Theories,” The Soufan Center, May 19, 2020, https://thesoufancenter.org/intelbrief-the-national-security-implications-of-conspiracy-theories/; “COVID-19 Disinformation Briefing No. 2: Far-right Mobilisation, Institute for Strategic Dialogue, April 9, 2020, https://www.isdglobal.org/isd-publications/covid-19-disinformation-briefing-no-2/; Joel Finkelstein et al., “COVID-19, CONSPIRACY AND CONTAGIOUS SEDITION: A Case Study on the Militia-Sphere,” National Contagion Research Institute, Rutgers University, June 1, 2020, https://ncri.io/reports/covid-19-conspiracy-and-contagious-sedition-a-case-study-on-the-militia-sphere/.
[121] Kristóf Szombati and Anna Szilágyi, “Enemy in the Making: The Language of “Anti-Sorosism” in the U.S. and Hungary,” The Public Eye, Winter/Spring 2020, https://www.politicalresearch.org/2020/07/09/enemy-making-language-anti….
[122] Devin Burghart, “Coronavirus and the Militia-Sphere,” Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights,” March 26, 2020, https://www.irehr.org/2020/03/26/coronavirus-militia-sphere/; “COVID-19 Disinformation Briefing No. 2: Far-right Mobilisation, Institute for Strategic Dialogue, April 9, 2020, https://www.isdglobal.org/isd-publications/covid-19-disinformation-briefing-no-2/.
[123] Timothy Williams, Adam Goldman and Neil MacFarquhar, “Virginia Capital on Edge as F.B.I. Arrests Suspected Neo-Nazis Before Gun Rally,” The New York Times, January 16, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/16/us/fbi-arrest-virginia-gun-rally.html.
[124] Cydney Hargis, “Fox Nation’s Tomi Lahren on proposed Virginia gun safety laws: ‘Stop coming for the Second Amendment’ or there will be a civil war in the U.S.,” Media Matters, January 17, 2020, https://www.mediamatters.org/tomi-lahren/fox-nations-tomi-lahren-proposed-virginia-gun-safety-laws-stop-coming-second-amendment.
[125] Timothy Williams, “Trump on Virginia Gun Dispute: 2nd Amendment ‘Under Very Serious Attack,’” The New York Times, January 18, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/18/us/virginia-guns-trump.html.
[126] Mary McCord, “Trump’s ‘LIBERATE MICHIGAN!’ tweets incite insurrection. That’s illegal,” The Washington Post, April 17, 2020, at https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/04/17/liberate-michigan-trump-constitution/; Thomas B. Edsall, “Trump Reaches Back Into His Old Bag of Populist Tricks,” The New York Times, April 22, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/22/opinion/coronavirus-trump.html.
[127] Jeff Stein and Robert Costa, “White House aides, outside groups launch effort to reopen economy, but Mnuchin says decision poses risks,” The Washington Post, April 13, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/04/13/trump-reopen-economy-conservative-groups-coronavirus/; Edwin Rios, “A DeVos-linked group helped promote the right-wing ‘Operation Gridlock’ tantrum in Michigan,” Mother Jones, April 17, 2020, https://www.motherjones.com/coronavirus-updates/2020/04/a-devos-linked-group-promoted-the-right-wing-operation-gridlock-tantrum-in-michigan/; Isaac Stanley-Becker and Tony Romm, “The anti-quarantine protests seem spontaneous. But behind the scenes, a powerful network is helping,” The Washington Post, April 22, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/inside-the-conservative-networks-backing-anti-quarantine-protests/2020/04/22/da75c81e-83fe-11ea-a3eb-e9fc93160703_story.html; Jason Wilson, “The rightwing groups behind wave of protests against Covid-19 restrictions,” The Guardian, April 17, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/apr/17/far-right-coronavirus-protests-restrictions; Jason Wilson and Robert Evans, “Revealed: major anti-lockdown group’s links to America’s far right,” The Guardian, May 8, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/may/08/lockdown-groups-far-right-links-coronavirus-protests-american-revolution.
[128] Maggie Haberman and Alexander Burns, “Trump’s Looting and ‘Shooting’ Remarks Escalate Crisis in Minneapolis,” The New York Times, May 29, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/05/29/us/politics/trump-looting-shooting.html; Spencer Neale, “‘No quarter for insurrectionists’: Tom Cotton calls for military to break up riots,” The Washington Examiner, June 1, 2020, https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/no-quarter-for-insurrectionists-tom-cotton-calls-for-military-to-break-up-riots; Tom Cotton, “Send In the Troops,” The New York Times, June 3, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/03/opinion/tom-cotton-protests-military.html.
[129] Phil McCausland, “Attorney General Barr blames ‘far-left extremist groups’ for violent protests,” NBC News, May 30, 2020, https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/justice-department/attorney-general-barr-blames-far-left-extremist-groups-violent-protests-n1219696; Katie Rogers, Jonathan Martin and Maggie Haberman, “As Trump Calls Protesters ‘Terrorists,’ Tear Gas Clears a Path for His Walk to a Church,” The New York Times, June 1, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/01/us/politics/trump-governors.html.
[130] Kayla Gogarty and John Whitehouse, “Facebook finally removed Trump campaign ads with inverted red triangle—an infamous Nazi symbol,” Media Matters, June 18, 2020, https://www.mediamatters.org/facebook/facebook-let-trump-campaign-run-ads-inverted-red-triangle-infamous-nazi-symbol; Isaac Stanley-Becker, “Facebook removes Trump ads with symbol once used by Nazis to designate political prisoners,” The Washington Post, June 18, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/06/18/trump-campaign-runs-ads-with-marking-once-used-by-nazis-designate-political-prisoners/; Courtney Hagle, “ Fox News hypes up baseless fears of violent ‘antifa’ protesters amid reports of white supremacist groups inciting violence,” Media Matters, June 9, 2020, https://www.mediamatters.org/black-lives-matter/fox-news-hypes-baseless-fears-violent-antifa-protesters-amid-reports-white; Curd Knüpfer, “Right-wing websites are demonizing ‘antifa.’ Here’s how they portray the threat,” The Washington Post, June 24, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/06/24/right-wing-websites-are-demonizing-antifa-heres-how-they-portray-threat/.
[131] Zarina Zabrisky, “Trump: Secret Nazi Codes,” Medium, August 6, 2019, https://medium.com/@ZarinaZabrisky/trump-secret-nazi-codes-83b086bc4ebf.
[132] Political Research Associates, Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, and Alexander Reid Ross, “Mapping Paramilitary and Far-Right Threats to Racial Justice,” data as of June 18, 2020, published June 19, 2020, https://www.politicalresearch.org/2020/06/19/mapping-paramilitary-and-far-right-threats-racial-justice.
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