The GOP and Right-Wing extremism

Some history I'd forgotten, thanks to Michelle Goldberg:

"A decade ago, Daryl Johnson, then a senior terrorism analyst at the Department of Homeland Security, wrote a report about the growing danger of right-wing extremism in America. Citing economic dislocation, the election of the first African-American president and fury about immigration, he concluded that 'the threat posed by lone wolves and small terrorist cells is more pronounced than in past years.'  When the report leaked, conservative political figures sputtered with outrage, indignant that their ideology was being linked to terrorism. The report warned, correctly, that right-wing radicals would try to recruit disgruntled military veterans, which conservatives saw as a slur on the troops. Homeland Security, cowed, withdrew the document. In May 2009, Johnson’s unit, the domestic terrorism team, was disbanded, and he left government the following year.

"Johnson was prescient, though only up to a point. He expected right-wing militancy to escalate throughout Barack Obama’s administration, but to subside if a Republican followed him. Ordinarily, the far-right turns to terrorism when it feels powerless; the Oklahoma City bombing happened during Bill Clinton’s presidency, and all assassinations of abortion providers in the United States have taken place during Democratic administrations. During Republican presidencies, paranoid right-wing demagogy tends to recede, and with it, right-wing violence. But that pattern doesn’t hold when the president himself is a paranoid right-wing demagogue. 'The fact that they’re still operating at a high level during a Republican administration goes against all the trending I’ve seen in 40 years,' Johnson told me. Donald Trump has kept the far right excited and agitated. 'He is basically the fuel that’s been poured onto a fire,' said Johnson." link

So we were warned that right-wing extremism was on the rise, with violence a likely outcome. Republicans/"conservatives" complained, the warnings were buried, and here we are. A mass murderer who spouts the same conspiracy theories the Republican "President" spouts. A GOP presidential campaign that already is signaling--openly--that it intends to rally Trump's base by inciting more racial division. And escalating hate crimes, but with law enforcement afraid to act: "Dave Gomez, a former F.B.I. supervisor who oversaw terrorism cases, told The Washington Post that the agency hasn’t been as aggressive as it might be against the racist right because of political concerns. 'There’s some reluctance among agents to bring forth an investigation that targets what the president perceives as his base,' he said."

Just as Trump was trying to keep a straight face while reading a speech condemning white nationalism written by others, "Cesar Sayoc Jr., the man who sent package bombs to Democrats and journalists he viewed as hostile to Trump, was sentenced to 20 years in prison. In a court filing, his defense lawyers describe how he was radicalized. 'He truly believed wild conspiracy theories he read on the internet, many of which vilified Democrats and spread rumors that Trump supporters were in danger because of them,' they wrote. 'He heard it from the president of the United States, a man with whom he felt he had a deep personal connection' He became a terrorist as a result of taking the president both seriously and literally."

This is the abyss into which the United States has sunk. And unseating Trump next year won't fix it. The real problem has been percolating up through the Republican Party since the 1960s, when they made the strategic choice to go after the votes of unreconstructed segregationists. That was the Original Sin of the modern GOP, and it will take a very long time to wash away the stain. Alas, it's mostly innocent bystanders paying the prince, some even with their lives.