This is Democracy – Episode 125: Right-Wing Militias

[0:00:03 Speaker 1] This is democracy, a podcast that explores

[0:00:08 Speaker 0] the interracial inter generational and inter sectional unheard voices living in the world’s most

[0:00:13 Speaker 1] influential democracy. Yeah, Uh huh,

[0:00:21 Speaker 0] Yeah.

[0:00:24 Speaker 1] Mhm.

[0:00:25 Speaker 0] Yeah.

[0:00:26 Speaker 1] Welcome to our new episode of this is democracy. Today we have the opportunity to talk about an old issue that’s been made new again in our society. Uh, this is the topic of right wing extremism and right wing militias in American society. They’ve been with us since the beginning of our democracy, and they have risen and fallen in different periods and were quite obviously living through a period. Now when these right wing groups have spread a number and spread in their public presence within our society, we have with us one of the foremost scholars who’s studying the history of right wing activism and right wing militias in our society and also looking very closely at how that history matters for our world today. This is, of course, Augusta Del Amo. Augusta, Thank you for joining us today. Thank you so

[0:01:14 Speaker 0] much for having me Jeremy and Zach.

[0:01:17 Speaker 1] Augusta is a PhD candidate, finishing a startling and groundbreaking dissertation on the connections between right wing activists in the United States, South Africa and other societies during the 19 seventies and eighties. Um, she is also very active in writing about these issues and contemporary issues throughout our society. She’s written for The Washington Post. She’s appeared on CNN. She’s been the producer of two podcasts that have covered these issues a 15 minute history and an ongoing podcast called Right Rising. And she’s had various academic honors and positions that she’s occupied. The most important of which, I would like to say, is that she’s one of my PhD students. Oftentimes, it it feels like I’m her student, and that’s the way it should be. Uh, so So Augusta, we’re really happy to have you on before we turn to our discussion with Augusta. We have, of course, Zachary’s scene setting poem. Uh, Zachary. What is your poem entitled Today? Our own grinding her and I survived. All right, let’s hear about a run and how you survived our own riding her and I survived. The barber, spoke to him with glee of the murderers staring at them from across the border, spoke to him with glee of the grotesque caricature and the conspiracy. And now, now he has resigned his resistance. He will stay. Warsaw will still keep him to treasure the few moments of anonymity and the UN accented grunts in the barber chair before he is murdered in a courtyard. But no, we see him years later in a seaside restaurant in Tel Aviv, staring out at the Mediterranean with an old friend and know the streets did not take his last breath, but he saw them die in the fog of fog, less war. And it, too, is an aching feeling. Walking the red brick steps of the campus and a boiling August afternoon, the same streets the radio spoke of and the torchbearers marched on are now the same streets where you pick up a sandwich, you Jewish American in the sandwich shop one year later and you bear the soda, pop a paper cup back to the car like aceptar and ride with its south between the mountains to wake up in Chattanooga with the same cup and stare out over the hills from the parking garage roof. Oh, the resilience of time. That’s a very thoughtful poem. Zachary, What is your poem about? Well, my poem really takes this character I run, grinding her from a novel by Isaac Bashevis Singer and, uh, my experience visiting Charlottesville after the marches there in 2017. And, um, I it was really trying to point out the recurrence of right wing violence, but also how, in the end, it always it always loses, and it always fails to achieve the sort of hate field goals. I like that optimistic conclusion before we get to that and and decipher whether that’s an accurate conclusion or not.

[0:04:16 Speaker 0] Augusta. How do we

[0:04:17 Speaker 1] understand the rise of right wing movements in our society today and are their historical parallels?

[0:04:24 Speaker 0] Jeremy. I think that’s a great first question. And, Zach, I’m really glad that you started with this poem to start because one of the most difficult things, at least that I struggle with as a scholar, is how important it is to study right wing violence and right wing individuals who are committed to terror, attacks of violence to overthrowing governments, white supremacy, anti Semitism. But at times I think we lose the people that they’re really that they’re really talking about right this disproportionate focus at times, on groups like the proud Boys, the Google is, it’s important to understand them, but it’s even more important to remember what that violence makes people feel. So Zack, I want to say at the start that I’m really glad that we went this direction with your poem today. And Jeremy, your question is important. There have always been, as you said at the outset, right wing violent movements in this country. Starting from the very beginning, The wave that I focus on in the 19 eighties and 19 nineties has been highlighted by scholars who refer to this as the militia phase, in which organizations were deeply committed to overthrowing. The U. S. Government were committed to working outside the law to institute their ideas of what a new state could look like. In my case, I specifically focus on ones that were invested in preserving the white ruled state South Africa. But the premises of white supremacy in many cases undergird a lot of the movements that you’ve seen, and it becomes very difficult to separate out the different divisions, the different goals within these movements. And it’s critical to understand how they have originated in these different cases. In the case that I look at in the eighties and the case that we’re seeing now, I would argue that there were two factors driving both of these, the first being the perceived successes of black people women, minorities in this country, uh, in the subsequent response. So in the 19 eighties, you’re coming off the successes of the civil rights movement in the United States and global decolonization after World War Two, and I would argue, a major driver of the kind of violence we’ve seen now as a reaction to the election of Barack Obama in 2000 and eight. So you have that is one factor, and then the second is a view of traditional conservatism that needs to be changed. So in the case of the 19 eighties, the members of the pro apartheid movement, as I call them that I study saw themselves as being the true, the true holders of right wing ideals and that they administration under Ronald Reagan was not conservative enough was not committed enough to white supremacy. And I think you see a similar case of what’s going on in the Republican Party. Now we can talk about differences in the party’s reaction, but right wing militias see themselves as the true vanguards of right wing ideology, violence, the relationship, the proper relationship of the state, the proper place of women and minorities in this country. That those are the kind of two forces that they’re really responding to. And someone like Donald Trump that really caters to them and encourages their violence and ideology. That’s only increased the ability of these groups to network to form connections to hold rallies to infiltrate law enforcement. These are all things that are deeply concerning to scholars who work on this. And, you know, unfortunately, I don’t think I would be too too optimistic for you both today

[0:07:49 Speaker 1] so that that’s a fantastic foundation historically, for understanding where we are today. One of the more controversial topics is the one you closed on the connections between leaders elected leaders like a Donald Trump. Uh, and, uh, these movements. One could go back in time to look also at Confederate leaders and Dixiecrats the Strong Thurman’s and the George Wallace is but focusing on Donald Trump. To what extent and how do we know that Donald Trump’s time in the presidency, which is coming to an end? Thankfully, that his time in the presidency has contributed. And how is it contributed to the rise and spread of these groups?

[0:08:30 Speaker 0] Well, I think it’s the most important part. Is the part you first said, right? Like, how do we know that Donald Trump has contribute? Because it’s a fair argument right there because one of the really complicating factors is there are certain right wing violent groups that do not see themselves as aligned with someone like Donald Trump, right? They’re so anti state. They are so anti U. S government that they view Donald Trump probably rightly so, as someone that’s just catering to these ideas without actually being truly committed to the kind of violent overthrow that they want. So that is one camp. But then you also have a second camp, and you can see this in if you choose to spend your time on fortune or a chin, or even parts of YouTube and Twitter and Facebook. The way that they talk about Donald Trump as some kind of savior figure to them that he is going to be the one that’s leading that fight. It’s really enabled their ideology to go to a different level, than maybe something that we hadn’t seen before. I think one of the most disturbing, um, patterns that we can identify is when Donald Trump attacks a particular figure. I’m specifically thinking about Governor Whitmer in Michigan and the subsequent plot by right wing militia to kidnap her. And, um, I don’t really want to go too far down the line of the potential things that could have happened in that scenario. But you see a real correlation between individuals that Donald Trump attacks and a subsequent, you know, response from right wing militias. Also talking about these individuals talking about plot. There was the the incident when Donald Trump told the proud boys to stay ready. You saw on Proud Boys forums that they were excited about this, that they made T shirts that they branded this, that they sent it around on their twitch streams. They talk about Donald Trump that his influence in these groups should not be underestimated. And then if you even diverge a little bit further and start thinking about groups like Q and on, their ideology has really shifted to be very Donald Trump centric. And so his influence on these movements is undeniable, but it becomes very difficult, especially now that we’re moving out of the Trump presidency. It’s going to be a real shift for these groups that in many cases have welded themselves very tightly towards Trump and his, uh, position his policies the way that he looks at the world. Um, it’s going to be interesting to see how these groups shift and how they respond. And right now, the response seems to be he didn’t actually lose.

[0:11:02 Speaker 1] Mm hmm. And you you give a lot of examples there of the ways in which he triggers and inspires and legitimises these these groups. What about the legal and policy structure? Their actions that have been taken in the last four years by the executive, uh, and his supporters that have, actually, as policy matters, made it easier for these groups to thrive.

[0:11:26 Speaker 0] Uh, I think there’s two big ones that I would say first is the very explicit crackdown in the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI against labeling white supremacist violence right wing terror as the single greatest terror threat to this country. It is undisputed by terrorist experts. It’s undisputed by think tanks. It’s even undisputed by members of DHS and the FBI. The FBI director has come out and said This is the single greatest terror threat facing our country, that this is the issue right? But the Trump administration really tried over the past four years to crack down internally on those studies, prevent them from being published, prevent funding from being redirected away from things like thinking about Isis or Islamic terrorism, to really focusing on the true terrorist problem in this country, which is right wing violence. So that, I would say is the biggest policy implication is really trying to prevent law enforcement for taking a really hard look at these organizations, and from what we know, I mentioned the Whitmer plot earlier. Is the reason that was uncovered was because of FBI infiltration within these groups, and if that’s not considered a priority from the administration, it becomes very difficult for those kinds of operations to be successful. One of the original reasons that the militia wave in the 19 nineties really went away was because of significant law enforcement intervention to these groups, and I think that’s been one of the most alarming things from people who study this full time is if you have an administration not taking this threat seriously and actively preventing law enforcement from dealing with white supremacist violence, there’s no way that you know it’s going to be something that local law enforcement can be expected to handle. And that attitude has really turned into something that, especially with state and local law enforcement, they know who a lot of these people are but are not being educated about the seriousness of this issue. So I think that’s one category of the real I would say, uh, collaborationist effort. I wouldn’t say that they’re in conversation, but they’re The Trump administration’s efforts are undoubtedly helping in that respect. The second, I would say, is honestly many of the anti immigration policies of the Trump administration. I’m thinking, particularly of Stephen Miller and other people in that administration that has really provided legitimacy for these groups is this is our guy that’s really clamping down on the way that this country is changing to be less white, to be more liberal, that those two policies together have created something where, as you mentioned at the beginning, you know, how do they see their relationship with this person. I think those two things combined have really encouraged the kind of relationship that is very disturbing between the administration and these right wing groups.

[0:14:25 Speaker 1] Yeah. So,

[0:14:26 Speaker 0] uh, to think about like

[0:14:28 Speaker 1] how these groups are portrayed in the media. Um, like we often see, like on places like Fox News or sort of effort. As you said, to deflect from attention on right wing violence and move towards left wing violence.

[0:14:40 Speaker 0] Could you maybe talk about

[0:14:41 Speaker 1] the difference between the two? The structural differences between left wing terror and right wing terror?

[0:14:47 Speaker 0] That’s a great question. Second, I think that that has been. If you wanted to point to one of the single greatest frustrations for people who study right wing violence, it’s that right? It’s the somehow both side is an equivalency of right wing violence and left wing violence is being the same. There are undoubtedly acts of left wing violence, broadly speaking, right? You’ve you’ve seen videos are protesting where you know you have sort of proud boys clashing with antifa, right? We’ve all seen those videos on Twitter. We’ve seen them on Fox News, as you said, Zach. But what That violence actually looks like in practice when we talk about right wing extremism is fundamentally different in terms of the scale of the operations, the likelihood of violent terrorism. It’s not even close right If we think about Christchurch, if we think about you know, Dylann roof like if we think about the individuals who are committing actual acts of terror in this country, it is no question right wing terrorism, and I think a lot of this stems from right. It’s a sort of top down problem. If you have an administration saying that this is not a problem, it becomes very difficult to hold public discourse and hold organizations like Fox News accountable for the way that they portray that these individuals are acting. Um, you have the Trump administration and various members of the Republican Party tweeting about how conservatives are being attacked in the streets and again trying to promote these false equivalency narratives between right wing and left wing violence. But the structure of what right wing violence looks like it’s far more sophisticated. It is far more deadly than the left wing violence, which is from everything that I have seen very small scale, very isolated towards counter mobilization, meaning that if there is some sort of right wing attack, there seems to be a left wing response in some cases. But that’s very different than the acts of terror, the kidnapping plots that we have seen, that these right wing groups are very capable of,

[0:16:45 Speaker 1] uh, Augusta, who is drawn to these groups, and and is it different now from what you’ve seen historically, or is there is there a similar pattern?

[0:16:54 Speaker 0] It’s a It’s a tough question, one of the most difficult parts of studying these groups. I believe when I was on this is democracy In the past, Zach asked me, How many people are we talking about? And it’s the same answer, right? We don’t really know because these groups have a lot of incentive to disguise the way that they operate, disguise their members. They want to appear more powerful than they are. But I do think that there are a couple of things that we can say, Um and I’ll start with the things that we know are not true at first. I think there’s a stereotype that these are people that are poor white people who are, you know, they don’t know what’s going on. If only they’ve been informed. There, just backwards, there from the South, right, that that’s kind of the image that we have. First of all, white ring right wing white supremacist violence in this country is very widespread across geographic regions, right? There’s hotspots in Portland. There’s hotspots in Michigan, right? This is not a quote unquote Southern problem. It is a widespread movement. It does typically in terms of militia’s, um, if we’re talking about militias, there is, you know, a strong correlation with people who have served to have law enforcement experience. We do know that these groups really encourage their members to, um enter the military and law enforcement to get specialized training. So there are potential links there with disaffected members of the military or law enforcement that see themselves as the state has let them down in terms of online activity. Again, it’s a broader spectrum but is mostly geared. Younger groups, like in cells, are typically younger men. Proud boys are typically men between the ages of 20 and 40 that it is very male centric. It is geared towards younger men. I think, also one of the stereotypes is. These men are, you know, in their in their homes just on the computer, and that’s not true as well. But it’s also important to take into account what the female forms of right wing violence look like. Um, these are women that are focused on traditional roles. There’s a lot of discussion on on people who study right wing extremists and talk about things like trad wives. Human on is very dominated by women. Um, and that’s kind of steers across the board of younger and older. Um, but it is. It is very white. I think that that is one of the main one of the main determinants at this point that we can say in this country, right? Right wing extremism in other countries looks very different, but in the US it is very white. Um, it is still very male heavy in terms of militia’s um, but it’s not just confined to the South. This is a national problem. Um, and it’s people across socioeconomic classes. It’s not just quote unquote poor white people who don’t understand how the country works or feel repressed by economic policies. It’s a broad spectrum of people

[0:19:43 Speaker 1] and a number of scholars like Kathleen Below and others have have drawn a connection between these groups and those who have served in the military, particularly in Afghanistan and Iraq and Vietnam in the past. Is there is there such a connection?

[0:19:57 Speaker 0] Oh, yeah, I completely agree with Kathleen’s take on this. Bring the war home, which is her book is, is a really was a really important and, I think, uncomfortable book for a lot of people because, you know, the way that Kathleen talks about this is members of the U. S. Military who felt disaffected by what happened in Vietnam return. It became kind of the instigators of militia groups and one of the trends that you can see and this is something that the FBI has noted in the Department of Homeland Security has noted is that they are particularly concerned about collaboration between local law enforcement and white supremacist groups. Um, the military is a little bit of a different case because while there are increasing numbers of white nationalist activity, increasing incidents, increasing numbers of military members, um, that are engaging in this kind of activity are members of right wing extremist groups. The military’s response, I would say, has been very different than local law enforcement. I would not say the military’s response has been sufficient, but there is a more, um, intentional program of trying to root out this violence to try and prevent these people from joining versus local law enforcement. It becomes much more difficult to root out exactly who is collaborating what it looks like. And there’s been, you know, the legacy of that, I would argue, goes back to Jim Crow, the kind of collaboration between KKK and local law enforcement that that connection has always existed. And it becomes very difficult, particularly for the FBI when they’re working on domestic terrorism. There’s actually been reporting about that. They are uncomfortable and nervous when partnering with local law enforcement about the kinds of collaboration that you can see with right wing extremism.

[0:21:36 Speaker 1] Right and and it should be said that this has a long tradition, unfortunately, in American history of local law enforcement collaborating with local lynching mobs, uh, local paramilitary groups. Quite often the members who are the leaders of the local militias are themselves also in law enforcement in their local communities.

[0:21:57 Speaker 0] It’s

[0:21:58 Speaker 1] not to criticize police in general. But it is to say that’s been present in our history

[0:22:02 Speaker 0] and and not to, you know, go full historian on all of our listeners here. But everything has a history in this respect it particularly in terms of right wing militia violence. Like you, said Jeremy, this has been a long history of collaboration between police and the and violent right wing activity, especially going back to Jim Crow. I think one of the most disturbing aspects that we see now, um, is the online component, which becomes far more difficult when we talk about what does it mean to combat these groups? The online dimension, I think, is the most challenging and the most difficult in terms of what would actually rooting out these organizations look like in practice,

[0:22:43 Speaker 1] right? Right.

[0:22:43 Speaker 0] To what extent

[0:22:45 Speaker 1] Augusta does this picture you’ve painted for us in such an important detail. To what extent is it an international picture and one of the really pioneering parts of your researchers to look at these issues in an international frame and connections across borders? Are we living through an international moment of right wing extremism and what elements of this are are specific to the US Perhaps

[0:23:05 Speaker 0] I would say we are full stop. Listen, living in this period, Um, I think one of the most important aspects of how scholars are looking at right wing extremism today that as you said, my dissertation also takes this global view. But that has not always been the traditional lens. Right. Right wing activism is traditionally viewed very domestically, and a lot of scholars working on right wing extremism today recognized that the success of these groups, the way that they communicate with each other, is actually quite international and quite global again getting at some of the stereotypes that they’re backward, that there, you know, very inward looking. That’s true in some respects, but in how they are communicating with each other, the ways that they raise money, the ways that they spread their ideology is very global. And one of the things that I’m most excited about in terms of the way that we are finally thinking about these groups is it’s no longer just focused on what’s happening in the US and what’s happening in Europe again. Europe has been experiencing similar trends in growing right wing violence since you know 2016. But so I was really starting to finally globalize this and think about what’s happening in India. What’s happening in Africa, what’s happening in Latin America that there is right wing extremism growing. And what does it mean when right wing extremism is moving away from the kind of racial lens that if we’re talking about the US specifically us European and my case and what I study? South African right wing violence is inherently rooted in white supremacy. That is the way that they approach the issues that I work on. I would argue that that is the reason that we have seen so much violence. Um, is it’s white supremacist violence at its core. And the way once we start expanding, though, and talking about right wing extremism when we get to cases like India, when we talk about Brazil, it becomes more complicated and the kinds of local grievances and how they intersect with wider international visions of what a right wing world looks like. So it’s important to both recognize the local particularities of what’s going on. But you also see a real sharing of ideas. You see shared symbols, you see, shared tactics that that kind of collaboration is not new, but it feels really knew because of things like the Internet, the speed at which it happens. You know, Germany saw their first Q and on rallies this a couple of months ago. You’re seeing the way that Donald Trump is really popular in some parts of the world that you know that those kind of international links are very real. And I would argue it’s very important for all the listeners to think about right wing violence, not as just an American problem. It is an American problem. But it’s also a global problem in a real counter response to what is the perceived, more liberalizing world. A perceived, more globalizing world, a perceived, more equitable world that the forces that are not interested in those things that are committed to authoritarianism and violence. But they don’t go away. They find new ways to connect. They find new ways to push their influence

[0:26:10 Speaker 1] right. It’s almost as if the, uh, the trends toward globalism create an inspire an equally powerful counter reaction, which is which is what, what, what you’re describing across the globe with its own particular charities in different societies. Uh, we have a long history, obviously, Augusta, of of dealing with these kinds of movements internationally and domestically. What has worked and what should we do?

[0:26:35 Speaker 0] I think the first thing that I would say that we have to do and this makes me, I suppose, a little. You know, I’m flirting with saying that the First Amendment has some problems, but I think we need to really clamp down on the kinds of ways that we talk about these groups of what’s acceptable in public discourse. One of the things that I uncovered in my research was how there were significant divisions within the Republican Party over how they should respond to apartheid South Africa. But many members of the Republican Party were deeply abhorrent of what was going on in South Africa, and we’re not interested engaging in the pro apartheid rhetoric push by more right wing members and you saw really significant response from members of the Republican Party to curtail what they were going to say about South Africa. So I’m thinking about people like George Shultz, who wanted to work with the South Africans in order to increase regional security, but was not going to appear in Congress and talk about how apartheid actually wasn’t that bad, which was what people like Strom Thurmond and Jesse Helms did. So in this case, in our contemporary moment, you’re not seeing that same kind of response from Republicans across the board. You’re not seeing a disavowal of right wing violence. You’re seeing what Zach pointed out of. It’s just as much on the left, right, you’re seeing that both sides is, um you’re seeing that they’re really allowing these groups to, you know, they’re catering to them, having human on members of Congress, right? All of these things are connected and that some ideas do not deserve breathing room in public forums in our society. Um, and we need to do better. I think preventing those ideas from being discussed and we have to shut down and re create what are the parameters of acceptable discourse? What are the parameters of acceptable policies? And when you have a party that is not invested in doing that, it worries me to a degree that I don’t even know how you begin to put that back in the box, right, because this is a level of collaboration is, um, and, um shared rhetoric about certain things, enabling on other issues that, you know if you have a presidential then candidate now soon to be former president, saying, invoking the proud boys, telling them to stand by and stand ready, right. All of that has implications. And so we’re really relying here on the members of the Republican Party cutting that down. But what we’ve seen over the past few weeks is Fox News. If we want to take the example of what’s happened with soon to be former President Trump that he lost the election. And Fox News has said he has lost the election and you have seen right wing groups, right wing militias, right wing violent groups infuriated with Fox News for trying to say no, that’s not true. These are the acceptable Berries that there’s going to be a real reaction to this. So I think that that is, that is, what has to happen is we have to find ways to push these groups out of the mainstream. But they’re not going to go quietly. They’ve had too much time. They’ve had too much air space and they’re not going to want to go, so I think we have to stop giving them attention. I think we have to stop, particularly in terms of it’s gotten better. But I think it could be even better doing these sort of very flattering portfolios from journalists talking about, you know, the right or whatever. We have to call them what they are, which is right wing violent extremists, right? So I think naming them is important. I think calling it out is important, and I think re establishing acceptable barriers about where these groups are allowed to operate. They’re always going to exist, right? Right wing rhetoric, right? Far right ideology, those things. We can never fully get rid of them, I’m convinced, but we can prevent them from influencing civil discourse and prevent them from having the role in the weight that they do now.

[0:30:24 Speaker 1] It’s It’s such a great point you’ve made. And it’s something we’ve learned with the long history of anti Semitism, which is that you can’t put the genie back in the bottle as you said, Um, but you can have firm public policies and firm public discourse aimed at renouncing these organizations aimed at informing people about the horrible things they do, preventing any kind of glorification of their activities or any kind of apology for their activities. It’s It’s a combination of public renunciation from respected figures across all sorts of areas and law enforcement. Where appropriate, when laws are broken, people should not be able to get away with laws. And they shouldn’t be diminished in the level of their crimes because people don’t take these things seriously. I think I think your your point about serious public commitment and public attention and not glorification. It’s it’s really important. Augusta and your researchers is the foundation for that. It’s understanding these organizations for who they are that allows us to really renounce them rather than ignore them or glorify them, which is what’s happened quite often in the past.

[0:31:29 Speaker 0] Zachary

[0:31:30 Speaker 1] uh, you you as a as a politically aware young person. Watch all this and I know you talk about it with some of your friends. I know you have some friends who once in a while go to some of these websites. What do you think is most effective today, especially for your generation? That, in some ways is the generation as Augustus speaking, that’s going to have to set a public mark against these organizations, but also a generation that’s vulnerable, vulnerable to their websites and their propaganda. How do you think about this, Zachary? Well, I definitely think that’s a good point. I think once you get

[0:32:02 Speaker 0] down that rabbit

[0:32:04 Speaker 1] hole, it very quickly very quickly becomes something much bigger than just one website or or one opinion. So I think that one of the things we need to do is educate people about where the where we draw the line between acceptable civil discourse and unacceptable discourse. And we really need to educate people to about what our reliable sources and what are not reliable sources. I think our Internet education has really just been sort of like Go do it yourself, which I think at the moment is really failing my generation and Augusta, you’re not as optimistic as Zachary and I are about this. Why not?

[0:32:40 Speaker 0] I think there’s certain aspects that I am more optimistic about than others. I think in terms of violence and acts of terrorism, based on what we’ve seen from previous waves of right wing violence, particularly the 19 nineties wave, I am more optimistic about the capacity of federal local intervention to clamp down on these groups if given the proper resources in directive from the incoming Biden administration, which I would be surprised if they did not. I feel more optimistic about that. But exact pointed out, You know, I like the genie in the bottle analogy. I’m not sure how we re establish norms about what is acceptable and what are acceptable ideas because, like Zach said, this kind of look for it yourself, do it yourself, find it yourself mentality has really permeated right wing extremist thought across the board. You know, don’t listen to mainstream news. It’s full of lies, and any evidence that you’re given as proof that your beliefs are wrong just becomes reintegrated into your ideas about what? You know, whatever belief system that you have. So that’s when it becomes very difficult with things like you and on, um, things with these militia groups that you know, they talk a lot in terrorism studies about creating counter narratives, creating alternative narratives to help pull people out. The data is very mixed about if that works, so that’s what I This is what keeps me up at night is How do we How do we get people out of that? I don’t know. I don’t know how you move people out of these systems. I don’t know how you re create a set of norms in this society around truth, because there are such strong incentives for one political party to not do that right. The only reason they have continued to be successful, I would argue, particularly this past year, is because they have just fully pushed into lies pushed into, you know, the way the president talks about certain things, that that success that he’s found is not going to go away. He may leave, right? But other people may look at this and say, You know, he got away fine with just lying and invoking violence. I can do that right? I’m I’m nervous about what a post trump world looks like, and so I I don’t know how it’s going to go. I don’t think that they’re going to go sort of quietly into the night. I think the kind of violence that we’ve seen, this sort of visible protesting, I think it could kind of go either way if that continues or retreats. But the way that our relationship to information has changed, I think that that’s fundamental. I don’t know if we can. We can fix that. And so that’s what’s scary is for me. Um, and I think that’s where it really falls on. People like you. People like me. People like Zach to hold our communities accountable and say What you’re reading isn’t right and let’s talk about it and let’s work through this because all of us know somebody that even if right, we don’t all know people that are in right wing militias But we all know people who are sending us things on reddit that are like This is true and it’s like, No, it’s not right. It’s all of our responsibility to recreate norms about what our world should look like. Um, so it’s scary, and I’m hopeful about certain things, and I’m also very scared about others.

[0:35:53 Speaker 1] Yes, it’s a perfect note to close on. These are incredibly difficult issues and it is very, very hard to convince people who believe in conspiracy theories and white supremacist ideas for all kinds of reasons. It’s very hard to convince them otherwise. We like to think we can sit down at the dinner table with them and reason them out of these positions. But we can’t, uh it’s incumbent on on all of us to do a lot more, and that’s really what this podcast is about. It’s incumbent on us to create a public dialogue that really rewards people for being truthful, not always agreeing with the things we personally agree with. That being truthful and being accountable to basic ideas of civility that are at the foundation of any democracy, truth and civility and calling people out, even if we can’t convince them. Calling them out for misbehavior, for lies, for racism, for violence. And I have

[0:36:45 Speaker 0] to. I think that’s so important, right? It’s not. It’s not with the intention to convert them back to the way that we think it’s to re establish what people should be able to say. I think that’s such a great point that you made it’s not. It’s about saying This is our democracy, right? This is our world and we’re not going to allow you to just say these things unchallenged. I think that’s a great way to put it,

[0:37:07 Speaker 1] and it’s something you’ve taught me in your research, and you’ve shared so beautifully with our listeners today, our podcast embodies exactly what you just said. Uh, it’s not about trying to convert the world overnight, but it’s about trying to remind us all of what we believe in who we are, what our values are and what the crucial values are for democracy that we all need to defend and defend vocally, Uh, every single day. Augusta, thank you for your work. Doing that every day as a scholar, as a as a public intellectual. As a citizen, I think you’re a model for what? You what you describe. Thank you, Zachary, for your motivating, inspiring, insightful poem, as always and thank you most of all to our listeners who care deeply about these issues and who are who are the future of our democracy in so many ways. Thank you for joining us for this episode of This Is Democracy.

[0:38:07 Speaker 0] This podcast is produced by the Liberal Arts Development

[0:38:10 Speaker 1] Studio and the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin.

[0:38:14 Speaker 0] The music in this

[0:38:15 Speaker 1] episode was written and recorded by Harrison Lemke, and you can find his music at Harrison Lemke dot com.

[0:38:22 Speaker 0] Subscribe and stay tuned for a new episode every Thursday featuring new perspectives on democracy.