The following is excerpted from an interview with Huffington Post published on Saturday, January 16, 2021 (here). David Neiwert (bio here) is a freelance journalism specializing in far right extremism.
“The thing that I’ve been most assiduously tracking for the last 20 years is the … mainstreaming of the radical right within the mainstream conservative movement. We saw it during the Bush years, but it really started taking off after Obama was elected. What a lot of us were seeing during the whole tea party phenomenon was that movement had … become a major conduit for the transmission of radical right ideas. …
“During the Trump years, he just basically took the lid off Pandora’s box and all the demons came out. Right now, we’re hoping at least to try to get the lid back on, but we’re going to be dealing with all those demons that came flying out for many years afterwards. That’s kind of the big picture. …
“One of the significant institutional issues we have is … with right-wing media, and I’m thinking primarily of Fox News [which] plays this really powerful role … in the way that it normalizes and mainstreams a lot of these extremist beliefs and this extremist agenda …. [T]urning that faucet off is going to be critical. … I think [Fox News] really needs a come-to-Jesus moment to recognize that it’s inflicted tremendous harm on the country …. [Ed. note: This could actually happen, as Rupert Murdoch’s son James assumes control; see article here.]
“I think that a lot of what has enabled the radicalization [of conservative politics] is that we have built up an incredible tolerance for sedition and insurrectionist speech ― violent speech. The tolerance for speech where they talk about overthrowing the government, where they talk about assassinating public officials, where there’s just this open advocacy of eliminating liberals and getting rid of, you know, their neighbors. We’ve just sort of said, ‘oh, that’s just hot talk.’ We’ve just sort of let it slide. Now … people are realizing seditious speech brings about sedition … it’s long overdue. …
“The domestic terrorism that we saw during the Trump years was primarily extremely radicalized white nationalists acting alone … the majority was lone wolf action. What we have seen in the past year has been an increase in domestic terror arrests for bands of organized insurrectionists or paramilitary extremists. The plan on Gretchen Whitmer is particularly striking. If I had to guess, what we’re going to be seeing in the next four years is a combination of lone wolf action, as well as organized paramilitary bands engaging in domestic terrorism.
“One of the things [to worry about] is the really extreme level of threatening rhetoric being directed at news media right now. I think journalists are going to start being targeted. … That is definitely part of the rhetoric we’re hearing and seeing in these extremist groups … and last month … there was a lot of talk about ‘we need to start targeting the media.’ … I’ve never seen this level of visceral hatred ― for liberals generally, but for the media in particular ― that we’re seeing now.”
Comment: In the mid-20th century, Americans feared communist sedition. However, since the 1994 Oklahoma City bombing, the main threat to our domestic tranquility has come from the far right. In recent weeks, it came into clear focus that we must defend ourselves against domestic as well as foreign enemies. I agree with Neiwert that tolerance has gone too far. The Constitution doesn’t protect political violence. Critical to reducing the risk of domestic terrorism is eliminating, if possible, the danger posed by the armed rightwing militias that have proliferated over the last decade. A strong argument can be made that these groups are illegal; all 50 states have laws prohibiting paramilitary activity (see article here). But rather than leave it to the states, I hope the Biden administration take action of a national scope — affirmatively and proactively, not just reactively — to dismantle these groups. That, of course, isn’t enough. Threats and violence against public officials and government works must be aggressively investigated and prosecuted. And private companies have a critical role to play by not supporting or giving a platform for individuals and groups plotting or fomenting violent attacks against our democracy.