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Originally Posted by ScreaminAsian
armed groups of paramilitary white supremacists are the republican base
Quote:
Originally Posted by einbert
einbert you might appreciate this since we're discussed this before, about the parallels between the Gilded Era and then eventually the Progressive Era (~1880-1920) and our own times. I once documented a bunch of the similarities but I don't think I mentioned that the dawning of the Progressive Era saw the drastic rise and reemergence of the popularity of the Ku Klux Klan and its embrace by Southern Democrats to keep blacks away from the polls and out of civic life:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ku_Klu...5.E2.80.931944
I would sort of middle the point between "ignore these clowns" and "but wait, this is troubling" that right now, it seems like these paramilitary angrydudebros remain largely marginalized but that their emergence is almost uniformly a troubling sign. One of the things that might portend their success in the future is the increasing fusion between their talking points and ideas and the mainstream GOP. And then the eventual coordination with a mainstream political opponent to harass and intimidate political opponents. I mean Steve ****ing Bannon is an incredibly powerful person; while it may not portend much, I think we've moved outside the bounds of theoretical and into a genuine threat. OTOH most of these ACT protests yesterday were sparsely populated and had more counter protestors than protestors and you can hardly call these right wing paramilitary dudes as anything approaching the popularity of the second incarnation of the Klan in the 1920s.
Don't think this is saying anything controversial or that interesting, but I do think concern about these guys is warranted in the current climate. The Klan went from an empty shell and dispersed into masses of uncoordinated groups in the 1870s after the federal government cracked down on it to ~10% of the population and up to ~50% of some areas of the country by 1920. We're met with a common tale: a waning appetite to confront these groups and ignore them (the federal government essentially pulled out of the South by 1880, and northern elites and newspapers functionally stopped covering them) and their eventual aggrandizement and growth when left undisturbed. It didn't happen immediately or on its own, but happened when the appropriate political, social and economic climate emerged that white southerners felt threatened again and joined the backlash wholesale, and did much to violently repress blacks in the South -- often in coordination with the Democratic Party and to their benefit.
That's the lesson learned here, that revanchist right wing paramilitary groups who serve to be the violent political arm of a mainstream political party can be very 'effective' at their goals to entrench one party and deny the civic and political rights of racial minorities if left to their own devices.