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Stephen Gottlieb: The Threat Of The Alt-Armed Wing

I spoke last week about Trump’s intentions. His intentions are particularly scary because of the growth of wrong-wing violence. Time Magazine published an excellent summary as The Terror Within, in its August 19 issue.  Vera Bergengruen and W.J. Hennigan first broke their story on Time’s website. They explained that white nationalists are responsible for a multiple of the deaths and injuries from any other causes of terrorism in the U.S. since 9/11, more than all other causes put together. But Congress and this Administration frustrated FBI efforts to assign more agents to stop mass killers from mowing us down. As a result it gets worse.

Violence has spread as copycat crimes. Potential killers are separated from others like Communists who used to work in cells. That makes them harder, though not impossible, to find. The FBI has a good record of stopping more Muslim terrorism in the U.S.  But, what I refuse to call the right-wing because there is nothing right about them, feasts on assault weapons newly made available courtesy of the wrong-wingers on the U.S. Supreme Court. And, as the authors of the Time article put it, we now have “a Commander in Chief whose rhetoric appears to mirror, validate and potentially inspire that of far-right extremists.” Nothing has been a better predictor of armed revolution and dictatorial takeover than the spread of weapons among the public.

The president elides the necessity of blaming killers by referring to good people on both sides and attacking Antifa, which stands for Anti-Fascist, as if there is an equality between those trying to take our democratic institutions down and those standing up to the Fascists and trying to stop them.

In a prior era, the House Committee on Un-American Activities would have challenged the president’s loyalty. But conservatives and their wrong-wing-nut allies insist on a correspondence between investigations of the left and right as if illegal activity on the alt-wrong means that there must be at least equal and opposite illegality on the left – no evidence required. The Court has barred removing American citizenship from American citizens. But that might be the best way to protect ourselves from a disloyal president before he has the opportunity to do serious damage.

A second problem traces back to how we handle armed might in this country. Trump invited many members of the military into his Administration and then fired them. They had the backbone to resist some of the nonsense being cooked up in the White House. But they are no longer in the military. How deep can Trump get into the loyal ranks of the military before putting people in charge willing to do his bidding. Dictators have followed that dangerous pattern to power in many countries. The NRA claims it’s prepared to protect the country against governmental abuse. But their definition of abuse is public servants trying to enforce the laws about grazing cattle on public land, not presidents trying to engineer a wrong-wing takeover.

The country switched to an all-volunteer military at the height of the war in Vietnam to calm some of the controversy over that war. But if the military installs a dictator, we will see the mistake after it is too late.

Trump must be removed from office before it is too late.

Steve Gottlieb’s latest book is Unfit for Democracy: The Roberts Court and The Breakdown of American Politics. He is the Jay and Ruth Caplan Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Albany Law School, served on the New York Civil Liberties Union board, on the New York Advisory Committee to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, and as a US Peace Corps Volunteer in Iran.

The views expressed by commentators are solely those of the authors. They do not necessarily reflect the views of this station or its management.

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