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antifa
Reflections on The New Anarchy and the Real Danger of MAGA Republicans
We cannot defeat the greatest threat to U.S. democracy and unity since the Civil War unless we name it. And so we must name it.
Apr 04, 2023
The cover story of the April issue of The Atlantic is a riveting essay by executive editor Adrienne LaFrance entitled "The New Anarchy: America faces a type of extremist violence it does not know how to stop."
A sidebar neatly sums up the basic argument of the piece: "We face a new phase of domestic terror, one characterized by radicalized individuals with shape-shifting ideologies willing to kill their political enemies." This thesis is reinforced by the graphic art associated with the piece: a magazine cover described in the inset as "a photo of an anonymous figure emerging from a cloud of smoke at a 2020 protest in Portland, Oregon"; and a two-page collage of ten similarly anonymous and masked individuals, all apparently males, with the bolded and capitalized title, "THE NEW ANARCHY," to lead the story itself.
Everything about the piece is dramatic, and rightly so. LaFrance makes a compelling case that American society confronts a new and dangerous form of disorder associated with loosely organized networks of extremists willingly pursuing a deadly cycle of provocation and counter-provocation, violence and retaliation. LaFrance describes an unfolding "breakdown of the social contract," and anticipates a new kind of civil war, much more fluid, fractious, disorganized, and difficult to both comprehend and navigate than the U.S. Civil War that looms in the background of much current discussion (and that also looms large in the mind, such as it is, of Marjorie Taylor Greene, who recently has called for a 21st century version of Red State secession).
In the years since Trumpism has reared its ugly head, The Atlantic has published a consistent stream of criticisms and warnings that have rightly received much attention, by a range of authors including Anne Applebaum, David Frum, Tom Nichols, George Packer, and Barton Gellman. In some ways The Atlantic's editorial direction has made it a highbrow, print complement to The Bulwark, the web platform, published by Never Trump Republicans formerly associated with The Weekly Standard, for whom opposition to Trumpism is the very raison d'etre. And the magazine's contribution to the defense of democracy has been immense.
The dark shadow of Trumpism casts a pall over LaFrance's essay. The violence of January 6, 2021—and of the August 2017 "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia—looms large in its background, and both episodes receive attention in the piece.
At the same time, LaFrance deliberately chooses not to frame the discussion around Trumpist attacks on democracy or the specific threat posed by right-wing extremist groups, which according to both the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI constitutes the greatest danger of violence in the United States today. While there are moments in the essay where this more specific threat from the right is registered, the overall rhetoric of the piece is "even-handed," refusing to underscore right-wing ideology or right-wing political forces. I appreciate why LaFrance pursues this tack, at the same time that I find it very troubling. In what follows, I will explain, and then critically evaluate, LaFrance's framing, concluding with some reflections on the necessity of naming MAGA Republicanism as the primary driver of political violence in the U.S. today.
LaFrance's article proceeds in stages. Part I, "On the Brink," centers on the outbreak of violence in Portland, Oregon on Labor Day weekend, 2020. Part II, "Salad-Bar Extremism," looks backward to a similar outbreak of violence in the U.S. at the turn of the 20th century, precipitated by the terroristic "propaganda by the deed" of left-wing anarchists, exemplified by the figure of Italian émigré anarchist Luigi Galleani. Part III, "Creeping Violence," centers on a more recent episode, the terrorism of the Italian Red Brigades from roughly 1969 to 1988. Part IV, "A Broken Social Contract," returns to Portland and its lessons. The essay concludes with Part V, "The Complicit State," which discusses what is distinctive about today's political violence, and what might be done to end or at least abate it.
The essay's persistent worry is a simple and important question: how can understanding outbreaks of violence help us to better contain them, thereby defending civil order from the threats posed by "the new anarchy" and by its principal protagonists—the new anarchists. And its overall argument is equally simple: the violent extremists that have episodically seized control of the streets of Portland are more similar to early 20th century anarchist bomb-throwers and later 20th century Red Brigade terrorists than they are to well-organized political groupings, and unless we can contain them the entire country is likely to become one gigantic Portland. Or, as LaFrance writes: "What happened in Portland, like what happened in Washington, D.C. on January 6, 2021, was a concentrated manifestation of the political violence that is all around us now."
As the reference to January 6 makes clear, the Trumpist assault on the U.S. Capitol truly worries LaFrance. At the same time, she does not identify this assault as part of a broader effort to overthrow a democratic election that was incited and orchestrated by Donald Trump, the sitting Republican President, with the support of large segments of the Republican party itself. She identifies it as an outbreak of violence—which it was—analogous to what happened in Portland.
It is Portland that is central to LaFrance's narrative.
And what happened in Portland, according to LaFrance, was that "extremists on the left and on the right, each side inhabiting its own reality . . . acted without restraint or, in many cases, humanity," attacking each other, throwing and shooting objects—including Molotov cocktails-- at each other, setting fires, and creating violent mayhem on the streets of the city. While I am certain that some reasonable people on the left would question aspects of this narrative of the violence, I largely accept it. For regardless of who started what and when—and LaFrance makes clear that the Proud Boys and their allies have long had a strategy centered on provocation, and have long treated Portland as a prime target—it seems clear that in Portland far-right groups were hankering for violence and far-left groups were easily provoked by their own commitment to "antifa" violence. And so the violence broke out and rapidly spread.
LaFrance's extended discussion of "the dynamic of action and reaction" in Portland is excellent. Drawing on a local reporter, she describes the unfolding confrontations that began in 2016 "as a form of cosplay, with right-wing extremists wearing everything from feathered hats to Pepe the frog costumes, and left-wing extremists dressed up in what's known as black bloc: all-black clothing and facial coverings." LaFrance's overall account brings to mind Simone Weil's classic "The Iliad, or The Poem of Force." Like Weil, LaFrance captures the ways that violence once unleashed is difficult to control, and always threatens to take on a dangerous life of its own.
I agree with LaFrance that this kind of networked yet fissiparous violence, rather than full-scale, politically organized civil war, poses the greatest threat to peace and security in the U.S. today. I also agree with her that in all too many instances, of which Portland is the best example, leftist "antifa" groups play crucial roles, playing into the hands of right-wing provocation, and simultaneously validating the right-wing MAGA narrative of unruly and violent radicals for large numbers of Americans disposed to believe this narrative. LaFrance is correct to take this seriously as a matter of analysis. In addition, the use of intimidation, property destruction, and violence by left-wing radicals acting in the name of "antifascism" or "antiracism" is both morally wrong and politically counterproductive in the U.S. today.
At the same time, LaFrance's both sides-ism goes much too far.
One reason is because however wrong and dangerous street violence might be, there are simply too many differences between the two sides who fought pitched battles on the streets of Portland to be ignored. While one side consisted of fascists and racists carrying Confederate flags, sporting a range of neo-Nazi insignia, and calling for the violent suppression or eradication of entire groups of people, the other side, however bedecked in leftist cosplay costumes and inclined toward violence, stood against fascism and racism and for some idea, however politically distorted, of equality. Furthermore, while, as LaFrance herself indicates, the right-wing extremists are well-organized and have national cache—as Homeland Security warnings attest—the left-wing extremists are not well organized, do not have a national presence, and simply do not constitute a movement in the same way that the rightists do. Another way of saying this is to say that it is simply impossible to imagine a left-wing version of either "Charlottesville" or "January 6."
And this relates to the second reason why LaFrance's both sides-ism goes too far: because it deliberately refuses to highlight the politics in play behind the violence.
It is important to remember how and why the protest and counter-protest escalated and turned violent in Portland, and how the means of violence caused chaos, destruction, and real harm. But it is also important to remember that the summer 2020 protests in Portland were initially precipitated by the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis that May, and were organized by local Black Lives Matter activists as a response to police violence. As the protests intensified and extended over almost fifteen weeks, many of their original organizers faded from the scene or were supplanted by more radical activists. And as the protests became interlaced with far-right counterprotests and antifa confrontational responses, and as the entire conflict was exacerbated by a militarized police response that included armed federal agents, what had begun as largely peaceful protests descended into violence. Nicholas Kristof explained this well in the New York Times: "In Portland's So-Called War Zone, It's the Troops That Provide the Menace."
During this time many Portland leaders of BLM worked hard, with mixed success, "to separate themselves from anarchists." They understood that a spiral of violence would only serve as a pretext for greater police brutality and that it would be seized on by opponents of both the BLM protests and the movement's very goals. Pastor E.D. Mondaine, the president of the Portland NAACP, spoke for many in a much-cited Washington Post guest column entitled "Portland's Protests Were Supposed To Be About Black Lives. Now They're White Spectacle":
The president and his allies want spectacle, be it a naked yogi or the next shocking display of force. They need to distract the country by engaging our movement in empty battles where they have the advantage. If we engage them now, we do so on their terms, where they have created the conditions for a war without rules, without accountability and without the protection of our Constitution. This makes me fearful for the safety of everyone demonstrating in Portland. That's why we need to remember: What is happening in Portland is the fuse of a great, racist backlash that the Trump administration is baiting us to light. We cannot fall for their deception. We cannot settle for spectacles that endanger us all. This is a moment for serious action — to once again take up the mantle of the civil rights era by summoning the same conviction and determination our forebears did. We welcome our white brothers and sisters in this struggle. In fact, we need them. But I must ask them to remain humbly attuned to the opportunity of this moment — and to reflect on whether any actions they take will truly help establish justice, or whether they are simply for show. I am not suggesting retreat. Instead, I am proposing that we take the cause of Black Lives Matter into those places where tear gas and rubber bullets and federal agents cannot find us, and where there is less risk of spectacle distracting from our true aims. In boardrooms, in schools, in city councils, in the halls of justice, in the smoky backrooms of a duplicitous government — that is where we will finally dismantle the gears of the brutal, racist machine that has been terrorizing black Americans and hollowing out the moral character of this nation since its inception.
The concerns he expressed were echoed in a piece by George Lakey, "Understanding Trump's game plan in Portland could be the key to preventing a coup in November." Lakey, a theorist and practitioner of non-violent direct action, argued that Trump's "game" is to stage a spectacle of violence that he can then claim to quiet, and that the "key to a winning strategy is to figure out what the opponent's strategy is and refuse to be manipulated — in Portland and in the other cities on Trump's target list."
Whether these warnings were sufficiently heeded, and the extent to which what happened in Portland might have played some role in the contests surrounding the November election that eventuated in January 6—these are questions for historians to answer.
But what cannot be doubted is that the protests, the eruption of street violence, and the violent state response to them were all elements of a much broader political situation, in which the already-impeached President Trump, weakened by Covid denialism amidst mass death, was inciting police and mob violence, demonizing the BLM movement and the millions who took to the streets in its support, and laying the foundations for his eventual claim that Democrats were election thieves.
If the U.S. is facing a new and dangerous "anarchy," then it is impossible to either understand or address it without fully coming to terms with the rhetorical and physical violence promoted by Trumpism as a political movement that has taken control of the Republican Party itself.
LaFrance knows this, and in places she even notes it. Toward the close of her Portland discussion in Part IV, she observes that "both sides behaved despicably. But only the right-wingers had the endorsement of the president and the mainstream Republican Party." This is a rather stunning observation—for Trump was the first president in the two hundred-plus years history of the U.S. to actively promote civil violence and police brutality, with the support of his party. But LaFrance chooses to downplay it, even in her powerful conclusion. She writes, in her closing paragraph:
"Ending political violence means facing down those who use the language of democracy to weaken democratic systems. It means rebuking the conspiracy theorist who uses the rhetoric of truth-seeking to obscure what's real; the billionaire who describes his privately owned social platform as a democratic town square; the seditionist who proclaims himself a patriot; the authoritarian who claims to love freedom."
It is obvious from everything known and indeed from some of what LaFrance herself says that in American politics today there is only one movement, one party, and one leadership that these words describe: MAGA Republicanism. And yet she refuses to name it. The clear implication of almost everything recounted in "The New Anarchy" is that ending the political violence now means primarily decisively defeating the Republican Party. And yet she refuses to say this.
To say this is not to promote simplistic partisanship, to deny the complexity of the challenges facing American society, or to deny the divisions, the failings, or even sometimes the wrongs of those who oppose Trumpism. But it is to state, clearly, that today one of the two major political parties has become a far-right party that includes fascists, that this party must be defeated in the name of democracy itself, and that this means, in effect, taking a side in the most important political conflict of our time.
LaFrance's piece begins with an epigram, from an 1863 letter by President Abraham Lincoln to Missouri abolitionist Charles D. Drake, published in the New York Times on October 26, 1863 as "PRESIDENT LINCOLN'S LETTER.; The Missouri Troubles--A Reply to the Delegation and Instructions to Gen. Schofield." Here is the quote:
"blood grows hot, and blood is spilled. Thought is forced from old channels into confusion. Deception breeds and thrives. Confidence dies, and universal suspicion reigns. Each man feels an impulse to kill his neighbor, lest he be killed by him. Revenge and retaliation follow. And all this, as before said, may be among honest men only. But this is not all. Every foul bird comes abroad, and every dirty reptile rises up. These add crime to confusion."
These words of Lincoln's nicely support LaPlace's core claim, that American society today is close to the precipice of social breakdown—in some ways almost like a Hobbesian state of nature—and that it is important to work against the suspicion and paranoia and hatred and violence.
But, unfortunately, LaFrance quotes Lincoln's words out of context. Lincoln's letter as a whole is a brilliant attempt to navigate the differences between Conservative and Radical Republicans in Missouri, in the context of a war to defend the Union whose outcome was profoundly unclear—and Lincoln believed that victory was both a moral and a political imperative.
Here are the relevant passages of Lincoln's letter, with LaFrance's epigram bolded:
"We are in civil war. In such cases there always is a main question; but in this case that question is a perplexing compound -- Union and Slavery. It thus becomes a question not of two sides merely, but of at least four sides . . .
It is easy to conceive that all these shades of opinion and even more, may be sincerely entertained by honest and truthful men. Yet, all being for the Union, by reason of these differences, each will prefer a different way of sustaining the Union. At once, sincerity is questioned, and motives are assailed. Actual war coming, blood grows hot, and blood is spilled. Thought is forced from old channels into confusion. Deception breeds and thrives. Confidence dies, and universal suspicion reigns. Each man feels an impulse to kill his neighbor, lest he be killed by him. Revenge and retaliation follow. And all this, as before said, may be among honest men only. But this is not all. Every foul bird comes abroad, and every dirty reptile rises up. These add crime to confusion.Strong measures deemed indispensable but harsh at best, such men make worse by mal-administration. Murders for old grudges, and murders for pelf proceed under any cloak that will best cover for the occasion."
Lincoln was deeply agonized by the evils of war and the ethical dilemmas associated with "dirty hands." But his Letter was not about the general dangers of anarchy. And it was not about how in violent conflict there is culpability everywhere. It was about how even among those Union supporting Republicans fighting together in a just cause, war threatens to accentuate differences of opinion and to generate acrimony, suspicion, and confusion, and that this can morally and politically weaken the struggle. Lincoln is responding to his radical Republican petitioners by explaining how the struggle against slavery and for Union is not simple, and requires "honest and truthful men" of good will to come together in spite of differences and to refuse to demonize each other.
Lincoln was rallying his supporters behind the flag, keeping together a coalition capable of defeating the self-declared "Confederate States of America" whose cornerstone, in the famous words of Confederate Vice President Alexander H. Stephens, was slavery.
The situation we face today is so very different in a great many ways, some having to do with the fact that Lincoln succeeded in defeating the Confederacy and abolishing slavery (even though, obviously, Reconstruction soon gave way to an awful new form of white supremacy). But today is in some ways more like Lincoln's time than any time since 1863. Joe Biden, like Abraham Lincoln, was elected and then inaugurated as President amid a serious national crisis in which his principal opponents refused to acknowledge his legitimacy and, in a different way of course, were willing to use almost any means necessary to undermine his power. The Republican Party today, like no other iteration of either party since the Democratic Party that seceded from the Union and formed the Confederacy, stands clearly against constitutional democracy and for cultural reaction.
Now, as then, it is possible, and necessary, to name the political enemy of democracy, and to work, through every means made available by a flawed and fragile but still democratic state, to defeat this enemy. The challenge is political, not military, though the proper enforcement of federal law—against voting rights infringement, breaches of national security, and sedition itself—is essential. But it is a real challenge that we can only meet if we can properly identify it.
LaFrance's essay identifies a real danger, and issues a poignant and powerful warning. The descent into violence can serve no good. It is essential for everyone who cares about defending democracy and the rule of law to understand this. But it is equally essential to name the political source of American democracy's greatest threat—the MAGA Republican Party—so that we can work resolutely, and effectively, to defeat it.
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