I don’t think we will see other instances like we saw on the 6th, where ~10,000 people gathered together in public like that. I’m assuming it’ll be harder for them to organize now.
But I’m sure small cells will pop up. How big was the terror cell in Michigan that planned to kidnap and execute the democratic governor? thats my concern, groups of 1-10 people blowing up buildings, shooting people, blowing up cars, kidnapping, etc. Thats going to be a big problem.
Sorta. you’re right it’s the group of 10 people who can conspire offline who wiill be able to act.
But even if there are 1000 such groups, they can’t make more than a pinprick attack on the nation as a whole. Hell, COVID has killed 300K & sickened 2M and the vast majority of the nation and economy is just plugging along. It ain’t normal, but it isn’t curled up in a corner whimpering either. Much less breathing it’s last.
We can absorb the deaths of hundreds of mayors and state legislators without necessarily altering governance or policy. We can lose 10 or15 state governors teh same way.
Provided we don’t lose our shit over it. We just hunker down, fight back, and don’t let the losers dictate the agenda.
Americans can be surprisingly cowardly in groups of millions faced with small threats. But if can defeat that we’re golden even against a worst case attack of the nutbags.
Consider me enlisted.
It won’t destroy the nation, but McVeigh and Nichols killed 100+ people with a two man operation.
White nationalist terrorists won’t destroy America. They’ll just increase people’s level of stress and misery in general, and cause a ton of suffering for smaller numbers of people.
I agree that a certain level of insurgency can be handled through existing policy and law enforcement arrangements. The left-wing terrorism of the 70s and the right-wing terrorism of the 90s were defeated without major changes to our government or our society. But these were very isolated incidents.
But hundreds of dead state officials and a dozen dead governors? That’s not a “Weather Underground” or Eric Rudolph type of terrorism - that’s a Shining Path or FARC level of insurgency. We should lose our shit if we find ourselves in the position that right-wing terrorists are able to orchestrate and sustain such an attack on our structures of government. The only comparable time in American history is the first emergency of the Ku Klux Klan after the Civil War and it took federal troops and the suspension of habeas corpus to put it down.
Mayors and state legislators may not feel the same way.
Hard to say. If I were a mayor or state legislator, and every few days I hear of mayors or legislators being assassinated, or of the government buildings being bombed, I’d have a hard time not losing a bit of shit over that.
If I heard that Kentucky’s state capitol building was bombed, killing a dozen legislators, me, as an Ohio legislator may be more than a bit nervous on my way to Columbus.
My point is not that we should tolerate this carnage. “Ho hum, another dead legislator. Hey Marge is that 5 or 6 today, I lost count.” Not that idea at all!
My point is that we, the forces of civilization and responsible government, should fight back as an organized government. Deploy our troops, be that DoD, national guard, state police, county sheriffs, FBI, etc., and defeat the foe in detail.
By “lose shit” I was referring to the public panicking, various politicians caving to the demands, and open anarchy from both the insurrectionists and counter-vigilante groups. That way lies capitulation or disintegration. Don’t do that.
Sorry I wrote my prior post so badly.
I certainly didn’t take your post as suggesting that we should tolerate widespread assassination of political leaders. But I also think the (thankfully far-fetched) level of insurgency you’re positing is well beyond the, “everyone just stay calm and let existing law enforcement handle it” stage. An insurgency capable of murdering hundreds of local and state elected officials would have to be large, organized, dedicated and supported by a substantial number of civilian sympathizers.
Our current laws and law enforcement agencies are simply not equipped to handle such a threat. The response would necessarily entail some combination of militarizing law enforcement, suppressing civil liberties in sympathizing communities, vastly expanding intelligence gathering on our citizens, etc. Because the alternative is to let a violent insurgency continue to murder and terrorize Americans. One thing you can see from the Shining Path and FARC examples is that failing to confront an insurgency quickly and overwhelmingly early on only feeds it, as those inclined toward the insurgency exult in it’s “wins” while those inclined to support the government despair that it cannot protect them.
It’s easy to say that if we sacrifice our freedoms or change our way of life, then the terrorist have already won. But if they can assassinate our political leaders with impunity, then the terrorist have ALSO already won.
Agree completely. A widespread insurgency such as you or I posited would be a nation-altering experience. And one that needs to crushed early as you say.
The concern I was working towards was the handwringing of some posters that losing a dozen people would be a government-felling level of violence. The typical ordinary American’s innocent decency can make us collectively be our own worst enemies. As I’ve said before
On 9/11 the bad guys killed roughly 3000 Americans and wrecked 1/2 billion dollars of capital goods. In response the American public inflicted an instant recession upon themselves and destroyed a trillion dollars worth of their own wealth. That’ll show them bad guys what we’re made of!
Don’t do that. Whether economically or politically. Show some of that “home of the brave” stuff and rise to the challenge, not shrink from it.
That is all.
Yes, I agree.
As an outsider, I would say that US democracy and institutions are easily strong and resilient enough to handle this level of insurrection and violence, or even ten times more.
The decisive fact is that the military, the FBI, the security services, the judiciary, and the police are NOT on the side of these people, despite a few rogue individuals. Neither is Congress, despite a few rogue Congressmen. Neither is any state government or institution. Neither is any large corporation or business interest.
The alt-right has no coherent organization, no capable leadership, no detailed plans, no significant financing, and no access to serious weapons. They are spread thinly throughout the country, among a population largely unsupportive of their violence, with no strong regional base to work from.
All of this means that they can never succeed beyond creating a few minor local disruptions. I know this may not look minor now, but in the larger scheme of things, this level of violence is minor and can’t achieve anything.
Your institutions and systems are strong and working. This incident is serving as wakeup call to deal with the problems that gave rise to the whole situation.
You will point out that nearly half of Americans voted for Trump. That’s deeply concerning, but it won’t translate into any kind of violent takeover of government, for the reasons I’ve given.
There are serious long-term problems that need to be dealt with, particularly the spread of false information and conspiracy theories through social media and mainstream media.
There are also serious economic and social problems that underlie the whole situation, and need to be addressed. The wealthiest country in the world has the worst health care system of any developed country, the worst social support network, the worst employment and environmental laws, and the greatest inequality.
But… violent takeover of the government is not going to happen.
Totally different in terms of size, organization, training, leadership, control of territory, and ideological coherence.
There’s huge difference between this:
…and the Capitol riot.
Not to say that there may not be isolated terrorist incidents from the alt-right in the US, but it’s totally different in both kind and scale from FARC and Shining Path.
But less of a difference between them and the Malheur traitors, or the traitors who occupied various state Capitol buildings.
Yes, I was specifically responding to the scenario from @LSLGuy where insurrectionists have killed hundreds of local and state officials. Obviously we are nowhere near that state of affairs currently.
You like terrorism? We got terrorism.
Fresh and homemade. Yum yum.
The riot/insurgency is old school theater to gain media attention.
A few powerful politicians interpret these events so they match the fantasies of a 75 million voter market.
A few more riots, a few more politicians, a few more media hours and we could lose our Democracy.
The guns are irrelevant.
For many, it would appear that what is next is arrest and questioning by the FBI, followed by crying and whining and blaming others while denying any personal responsibility.
“I’m the real victim here!”
“I was just obeying orders”
“Won’t someone think of my business?”
“Not my fault”
Harry S. Truman, Democrat: “The buck stops here!”
Donald J. Trump and his army of enablers, sycophants & ne’er-do-wells: “The buck stops over there…somewhere…”
“I don’t know the buck. I never saw the buck. Maybe someone used it to buy covfefe, but it wasn’t me.”
They have to in the sense that it’s a necessity to continue. However, from what I read about cults in my sociology book, they quite often don’t. It’s why most cults die out–they can’t survive the death of their leader. Many fall away disillusioned. There are splits into smaller, less stable groups, with infighting and such that ultimately ends the movement.
Granted, you can argue that Q is the actual leader, but Q isn’t a person, and performs fewer and fewer actions, devolving power further down the chain. And none of them seem to survive de-anonymization. That Q-Shaman guy, now that they know who he is, kinda lost everything.
I’m not saying there’s not a problem. But I don’t agree that, just because the movement needs to find a new leader inherently means they’ll find one. Even though someone who would be capable of having the qualities they want will eventually exist, there’s a time window.
I think the problem is less a combined cult, and more the underlying ideologies involved. It is the authoritarianism and bigotry that these groups exploited, this powerful compelling force that still exists, that I think is the real problem.
I actually expect the next Trump to basically create their own cult all over again–yes, likely pulling in a lot of the same people, but not really the same group.
What’s next for the insurrectionists? Pardons.