On Saturday afternoon, armed with semi-automatic AR-15 rifles, the Proud Boys showed up to protest a holiday-themed, drag story-time event in Columbus, Ohio.
By Saturday night in North Carolina, right-wing militants had allegedly sabotaged electrical substations to stop a drag event already in progress at a small local theater.
An act of criminality that knocked out the power for over forty-thousand people in Moore County, plunging residents into darkness and danger on a dark winter night at the beginning of the holiday season.
Another name for attacking a municipal power grid for the purpose of prosecuting a political agenda is guerrilla warfare.
The LGBTQ community and all progressive and equality-minded Americans are under violent and criminal attack by so-called ‘White Nationalists’ and we need to call it what it is: fascism.
Florida had a drag-friendly show that had actual Nazis show up waving swastika flags and calling for the death of the people inside. The police responded to the scene but remained in their patrol cars, providing no pushback against the agitators.
When cops won’t chase off Nazis for targeting innocent civilians its time to take a stark look at where we are as a nation.
The ‘Free State of Florida’, as it’s now called by it’s budding authoritarian of a governor (the execrable Ron DeSantis), seems to have become an incubator of sorts for the burgeoning fascism movement in the United States.
Trump himself now resides there. On Saturday afternoon, Trump called for the dismantling of the Constitution and to be reinstated as POTUS - two years into his pushing of a lie about the 2020 election, a lie that went mainstream in GOP politics and on Fox News.
Trump’s abuse of our legal system has taken on nearly pornographic attributes, one feels dirty just watching him attempt to run out the clock.
In a week in which SCOTUS allowed that Trump’s tax returns could and should be provided to the House Ways and Means Committee.
This comes after a Trump-appointed judge dragged his feet on the matter for two and a half years, starting while Trump was still president.
The same conservative judge later conceded it was in fact lawful to allow congress to view six years of Trump’s tax returns.
Unfortunately there is only matter of weeks left in a Democratically controlled Congress.
Trump’s legal team is also now weighing whether or not to challenge at the SCOTUS level the federal appeals court decision last Thursday, striking down the pro-Trump Judge Aileen Cannon’s appointment of a federal master into the case of Trump taking classified documents and storing them at Mar-a-Lago.
The appointment of Raymond Dearie was only initially attempted as yet another roadblock meant to slow down the federal government’s investigation into Trump’s theft of classified documents and his lying about it to investigators.
It’s worth noting that the special master appointment seemed to backfire on Team Trump from the onset, pointing out the ridiculousness of his legal counsel and lack of any real defense.
Trump himself has basically admitted to the theft and signaled his intent in multiple Truth Social posts.
This is all to say, the clock is ticking and the walls may be closing in on Trump and he knows it.
Making Trump all the more dangerous, as his increasingly hostile rhetoric and collusion with avowed white supremacists and the virulently antisemitic Kanye West attests.
Kanye went on Alex Jones’s podcast on Thursday and spewed antisemitic hate speech and Nazi propaganda so foul, that Jones himself had to push back during the interview.
Hours later, Elon Musk banned Ye from Twitter, after the rapper posted an image of a swastika inside a Star of David.
We live in ugly times indeed; to have all this hate bubbling up and being exploited by the very party that calls themselves Christians is beyond the pale.
My heart breaks for families and children being exposed to such awful imagery at the start of the holiday season.
It makes it feel even more evil, if such a thing is even possible.
MAGA is like a disease of the spirit that is contagious.
Disaffected and resentful folks find others of their ilk and become purveyors of this propaganda, it somehow sucks them in.
The GOP itself has become a feeder system for the more extreme alt-right groups like Proud Boys and Oath Keepers.
White Nationalist talking points are parroted daily by Republican members of congress.
The anti-LGBTQ hatred and antisemitism that has now become an epidemic in American life is an example of this - we have to be aware of the fact that they are building an army.
If the same extremist rhetoric was being spewed by foreign actors bent on subverting democracy and terrorizing it’s citizens, we would have called up the National Guard by now.
Imagine a scenario where Trump, cornered and overcome by self-centered fear about his impending indictment, flees the country and directs his followers to fight on his behalf from his place of exile.
This is not entirely implausible, as crazy as it may sound on the surface. He has deep ties with both the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Putin, both likely to host an embattled former POTUS if the price was right.
Though in either case, it would be a strategic nightmare for the country that offered him asylum and in the end Trump would end up a geopolitical bargaining chip, likely handed over at some point, or meeting an untimely end, especially if he chooses Russia.
He is dumb enough to try it though, I promise you. Just look at the January 6th attacks and the coup d’etat he attempted to orchestrate; something that would have strained credulity had it been suggested by anyone as a possibility just a few years ago.
The point being: it is time to game out these scenarios and react swiftly to the democratic terrorism we know face.
This is not to say we are powerless in the current climate and there is not room for hope amid all the chaos.
We can all do our part to speak out against the injustice and intolerance directed at our fellow Americans based on race, religion or sexual identity.
In the past, allyship sometimes meant speaking out and retreating back to a place of privilege and relative safety.
None of us are safe in the current climate and that ain’t gonna cut it anymore. We need folks ready to walk through the fields of discord alongside their brothers and sisters, because when you glimpse and grasp at real truths you realize we are all one family.
Injustice and evil deeds perpetrated on your neighbor are injustices and evil deeds perpetrated on your own house as well.
We are all one family whether we realize it or not.
The gift we need to give each other this holiday season is truth, compassion and justice.
Many blessings will surely follow but the work comes now.
Thank you for another beautiful essay, Noel. You enlighten us and always call for an appeal to our better angels. Living in the Trump/post-Trump America has been deeply traumatizing to most sane Americans. The damage of continued hate, threats and violence is a form of terrorism we are being forced to endure.
Your writings, podcasts, and car rants keep me sane. Much love and gratitude.
Thanks again for your wisdom and call to action! I do feel a need to stand but I also have to admit, after some local conservative Christian tried to get the Chief of Police to arrest me for being a witch(while I was on the local council) I have a bit of fear of all of the Christians with guns around me. I live in a state that used to be blue but has become a NRA Maga infiltrated place. That being said, I do my yoga and spiritual work so that I can stand for what is right. Put me in your prayers cuz the "battle for the Soul of America" is on. May I have the same courage as you to speak up fearlessly.