The FBI’s announcement last week that it had arrested more than a dozen people in connection with terror plots in Michigan, including a scheme to kidnap Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer, provides perhaps the starkest evidence to date that President Trump has encouraged and abetted a surge of white nationalist terrorism in the United States. The president has done so by deliberately downplaying the threat from right-wing terrorists, including white nationalists; by refusing to credibly denounce them; and by repeatedly promoting violence against political opponents, immigrants, and the press. Beyond this, the placement of far-right and white nationalist values at the center of national policy — including the Muslim ban, the demonization of Latin American immigrants, and the targeting of civil rights protestors as insurrectionists — has created a permissive atmosphere for more extreme and violent manifestations of such beliefs. The Trump administration’s unwillingness to admit or effectively confront this movement at the federal level has been accompanied by a deliberate misinformation effort about the dangers posed by antifa and anarchists; most notably, President Trump and Attorney General Bill Barr have worked overtime to falsely portray such groups as an existential threat to the United States.
In an opinion piece published shortly after the indictments were announced, Governor Whitmer drew a direct line from the president’s rhetoric and the kidnapping plot:
When our leaders encourage domestic terrorists, they legitimize their actions. When they stoke and contribute to hate speech, they are complicit. And when a sitting president stands on a national stage refusing to condemn white supremacists and hate groups, as President Trump did when he told the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by” during the first presidential debate, he is complicit. Hate groups heard the president’s words not as a rebuke, but as a rallying cry. As a call to action.
Shining a spotlight on the complicity of President Trump, and other right-wing Republicans who echo his inflammatory language, is exactly the right approach for Whitmer and other Democrats to take. The urgency for doing so is all the greater now that the president seems to see inciting violence and chaos around the November election as his only route to retaining power. When right-wing violence occurs or plots to commit violence come to light, pointing out the clear links to the president and the GOP provides vital clarification for the public that these terrorists and vigilantes are hardly coming out of nowhere; they are being tacitly and even overtly encouraged by the rhetoric of right-wing politicians like the president.
The key here is that a strong majority of voters are already appalled and incensed by right-wing violence, and citizens should realize it is in their collective interest to punish those politicians who incite it or fail to draw a clear line against its perpetrators. And as I’ve said before, refusing to accept violence as a political tool, and delegitimizing instances of it, is now a strategic necessity for the Democratic Party. There is simply no democracy and no competing with the Republicans if the GOP is able to bring violence into the competition; we are at a dangerous point where the Republicans are beginning to explore if they might get away with it. At its most extreme, there cannot be free and fair elections when one party openly, or even tacitly, encourages armed gunman to intimidate or commit acts of violence against voters from the other party. That we are at some point along a sinister spectrum towards that point is alarming, but it also leaves the Democrats no choice but to make the GOP pay as deep a political price as they can by pointing out that party’s role in the rise of actual and prospective right-wing violence. In this case, making political hay out of right-wing violence fully aligns with doing the right thing for the sake of public safety and defense of our democracy.
But it’s definitely not enough for Democrats to just say the right things in this perilous time; they need to make sure they do the right things as well, as much as their power allows. If there is a rising threat of right-wing violence that may crest on or after the election, then Democrats in Congress must use their oversight powers to ensure that the FBI is doing its duty in disrupting plots like the one in Michigan. It’s also clearly time for governors to start dusting off the anti-militia statutes on state books, and acting more aggressively to deter and take apart armed vigilante groups that seek cover behind laughable misreadings of the Constitution. Above all else, we need to remember that these armed fanatics are operating out of weakness, not strength, and are trying to hide the unpopularity of their retrograde views behind the barrel of a gun wrapped in the American flag. Most Americans see them for what they are — cowards and losers who defile not only the ideals of patriotism and citizenship, but the basics of mutual respect and decency that bind any society together.