After President Biden’s visit, the E.U. and the U.S released a statement reiterating the 70 year-old proposition that the two form “an anchor for democracy, peace, and security around the world,” further saying, “We reject authoritarianism in all its forms around the globe, resisting autocrats’ efforts to create an environment that protects their rule and serves their interests, while undermining liberal democracies.”
The vast majority of Americans never expected a need for this type of proclamation. Most who lived through or know the history of WWII were already there and felt these commitments in their bones.
What, it is fair—and maybe essential—to ask, do the people who rioted at the Capitol January 6th want. What are they and their cohorts here at home and around the globe (the anti-democracy movement is worldwide) protecting, and at what cost?
I found the following analysis of political violence from the academic council of the University of Chicago, the Chicago Project on Security and Threats (C-POST), to be revealing:
The Capitol mob was not your typical protest group in that they were substantially older, Whiter, and more male than I expected:
•93% White;
•86% male;
•and two-thirds over 34 years of age.
•They were also wealthier than typical socio-political protesters, with 45% being company officers or self-employed, versus 7% (the national average) unemployed.
And if like me you thought they were militant militia members, think again, for only 10% were affiliated with groups like the III Percenters or the Proud Boys.
C-POST was interested in “drivers,” the things that motivate crowds and movements. What they found was the overwhelming fear by riot participants and their sympathizers that they are being replaced by Black and Brown people. The University of Chicago calls it fear of “The Great Replacement.” Specifically, they fear that the rights of women and minorities (who are soon to be the majority), have “outpaced” the rights of White men.
This comports with the August 2017 “Unite the Right” Charlottesville chant, “You will not replace us,” itself a throwback to Kristallnacht, and the Nazi-inspired, “Jews will not replace us.” (Look no further than Poway to see that anti-Semitism is again on the rise; in the lexicon of White supremacy, Jews are not White.) Charlottesville was planned by White supremacists, and is sarcastically referred to in retrospect as “Unite the White.”
Fear of replacement has deep historical roots.
From Esquire Magazine, “A New Study Draws a Line from January 6 to Charlottesville, ” a story that notes, “It is a legitimate movement. And its fundamental engine is old-fashioned racial terror.” We’re cautioned that this is not an economic movement that will be quelled by recovery from the pandemic recession.
According to C-POST’s research, about four percent, or 10 million Americans, not only believe the election was stolen, but would resort to violence to overturn the results. More concerning still is the fact that one-third of the rioters were former military.
Our frightened countrymen have company. They favor strongmen like Russia’s Putin, whose goal—since his days as a KGB operative in East Germany— is the ruination of democracy. Of course Putin, like Xi in China and Orban in Hungary, is also demonstrably all about his own survival, which depends on state-controlled media, and the state’s violent response to all forms of civil disobedience, including peaceful protest.
The changing economy that no longer guarantees our children will be better off than we are is at the root of these problems. As manufacturing jobs shift away from the U.S., the long term, stable employment so many of us expected as a birthright, evaporated. When economic upheaval begins, human nature dictates that many among the economic losers will look for scapegoats.
For the Jews, this is not news. Scapegoating ran from Egypt in biblical times, through Rome, and ten through Europe with each economic downturn, culminating in fascism in the 1930s. Now, in addition to the American Jewish community, Asian-, Hispanic-, and African-Americans are feeling the anguish of violent discrimination.
Leave it to crafty politicians to leverage the politics of loss and grievance, blaming the weak and powerless for problems they couldn’t possibly have caused. That’s when in the contemporary example of this age-old phenomenon, perceived recipients of government largesse are targeted as the enemies who are taking resources properly belonging to the (White) majority.
Blaming the victims never loses its charm.
This explains Trumpism, and also explains the far-right that’s gaining power through these same tactics in Brazil, the Philippines, Poland, the UK, and Germany.
These are growing pains. We can’t stop the advance of history, and it is only a matter of time until Whites are a minority in this country. Demography may be destiny, but some older, wealthier White men are not going without a fight.
©Jon Sinton/PA LLC 2021