Patriotic Violence
Patriotic Violence
Today’s Thugs, Tomorrow’s Corrupt Paramilitary. Plus, a Book Draft!
What is the danger I am trying to describe in my book?
When I write about authoritarianism, I am not writing about political expression, ideologies, conspiracies, or elections. All those are the context for a narrower, more terrifying reality I have seen overseas and now find at home. That reality is political violence.
My book is a genealogy of populist political violence.
We aren’t really used to an experience that is routine in other societies: coup attempts, civil strife, ethnic or political militias carrying out sectarian violence. The death squads and vigilantes I have seen operating in Colombia, Venezuela, the Philippines, Cambodia, and parts of the Middle East are orchestrated political violence.
When I write about extremism in the United States, the international models are on my mind because they enable, excuse, and empower each other. Trumpism is pretending to be an all-American, ethno-nationalist populism, but it is enabled by its peers. American extremism is part of a wave, a global network of autocrats and profiteers.
What I have seen elsewhere is a terrifying reality where paramilitaries and militias and “patriotic” vigilantes serve power, do the dirty work police can’t, and get integrated into the security state. And the autocrats want violence, chaos and failure—as Anne Applebaum put it recently, a failed state is easier to govern. Their goal is impunity for leaders, and privilege for followers.
That’s where we’re headed. Today’s American militias will be incorporated, bit by bit, indirectly and under camouflage, into doing the dirty work of their strongman leader. First informally and by self-recruiting, then by serving the interests of wealthy sympathizers, and later, by co-optation and clandestine contact, these gunmen will be turned into agents of political power. They will aim their “patriotism” against their fellow Americans. Their threats against the rest of us, and their scrambling for patronage and privilege, will merge into a corrupt and self-protecting system.
That system may be informal vigilante justice, like in the Philippines. It may be the paragovernmental collectivo gangs I met in Venezuela, on the left, or the pro-police militias killing their way through the slums of Brazil. It may be the campaigns of assassination against leftists typical in Colombia, or the car-bomb terrorism of sectarian Lebanon.
But the “patriot” elements are putting themselves at the service of power, and holding guns as they do it. That only works toward one end. Power and violence sustain each other.
Even if they don’t know it, even if Trump is a clueless and narcissistic fool, it is happening. Even if it takes decades, this movement is a profound threat to a democratic compact.
You can either have the gun, or the democracy. Not both.