Thomas ZimmerMay 14, 2023
It’s really hard to overstate how acutely dangerous this is: All strands of the Right - leading Republicans, the media machine, the reactionary intellectual sphere, the conservative base - are openly and aggressively embracing rightwing vigilante violence.
Show threadThomas ZimmerMay 14, 2023

Not that more evidence was really needed, but the mask has fully slipped in the reactions to the killing of Jordan Neely.

Look at this, for instance, from a rightwing “thinker”: Very difficult to construct a plausible version of who “these people” are supposed to be that’s not brutally racist.

Show threadThomas ZimmerMay 14, 2023
This sends a clear message: It encourages white militants to use whatever force they please to “fight back” against anything and anyone associated with “the Left” by protecting and glorifying those who have engaged in vigilante violence – call it the Kyle Rittenhouse dogma.
Show threadThomas ZimmerMay 14, 2023
The Right is defined by a political and social culture of white grievance, ethno-religious nationalism, gun fundamentalism, toxic masculinity, and glorified militancy - it is bound to produce many iterations of Kyle Rittenhouse. Very hard to sustain democracy under such circumstances.
Show threadThomas ZimmerMay 14, 2023
It’s crucial to emphasize how this open embrace of vigilante violence functions in the broader context of the political conflict - it serves a specific purpose as part of the reactionary counter-mobilization against multiracial, pluralistic democracy.
Show threadThomas ZimmerMay 14, 2023
The Right’s political project goes well beyond Congress and state legislatures: It’s about restoring and entrenching traditional hierarchies of race, gender, religion, and wealth in the local community, in the public square, in the workplace, in the family.
Show threadThomas ZimmerMay 14, 2023
The Right is fully committed to this anti-democratic, anti-pluralistic vision – which they understand is a minoritarian project: They are acutely aware that they don’t have numerical majorities, and they have a comprehensive strategy to put this vision into practice.
Show threadThomas ZimmerMay 14, 2023
The voter suppression, the gerrymandering, the efforts to subvert elections up and down the country… Those are not disparate actions, but the manifestation of what is dogma on the Right: Only white conservatives are allowed to rule in America - opposition to this vision is illegitimate.
Show threadThomas ZimmerMay 14, 2023
The Right understands that such blatant undermining of democracy might lead to a mobilization of civil society. That’s why Republicans are criminalizing protests, by defining them as “riots,” and by legally sanctioning physical attacks on “rioters.”
Show threadThomas ZimmerMay 14, 2023
Beyond just functioning as a tool to upholding political power, white vigilante violence also serves as a way to enforce the underlying vision for a society in which some people - white men, in particular - have the absolute right to defend their place, status, and “comfort.”
Show threadThomas Zimmer
America is built on a social order that gives some people – white men, specifically – the power to use whatever form of violence they deem necessary to “defend” themselves against all threats from “others,” real and perceived. The Right wants to preserve that order.
May 14, 2023 at 2:55pmIvory for iOS
Show threadThomas ZimmerMay 14, 2023
This order is predicated on an extremely expansive idea of what constitutes a “threat”: Black people, for instance, are seen as inherently threatening; and there is not much of a line separating what makes white people “uncomfortable” from what is defined as an acute threat.
Show threadThomas ZimmerMay 14, 2023
According to the Right, conservative white Christians - by virtue of supposedly being the sole proponents of “real America” - shouldn’t ever have to deal with the kind of challenges and “discomfort” an egalitarian, multiracial, pluralistic society entails.
Show threadThomas ZimmerMay 14, 2023
In this view, it is the prerogative of conservative white Christians to dominate the public square, to have their own image reflected back at them at all times, to lash out against whoever and whatever challenges their dominant status or dares to make them “uncomfortable.”
Show threadThomas ZimmerMay 14, 2023
This is what the Right’s political project has always been built on, its organizing principle, enforced through the threat of vigilante violence: The premise that some groups are worthy of protection and deserve privilege - while others are dangerous and need to be kept in check.
Show threadZhi Zhu 🕸️May 14, 2023

@tzimmer_history

For the GOP,
it's rules for thee,
but not for me.

“Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition,
to wit:

There must be in-groups whom the law protects but does not bind,
alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."

~https://crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/liberals-against-progressives/#comment-729288

#GOP #Republicans #WhiteSupremacist #Vigilantism #Violence #Racism #Sexism #Bigotry

Show threadSeaTeaMay 14, 2023
@tzimmer_history Thank you for this thread. This nails the zeitgeist as well as anything I’ve read on the current state of affairs and it’s terrifying.
Show threadMalaclypseMay 14, 2023
@tzimmer_history It’s always the Wilhoit quote: https://crookedtimber.org/2018/03/21/liberals-against-progressives/#comment-729288
The travesty of liberalism — Crooked Timber

Show threadGalen WilliamsMay 14, 2023
@tzimmer_history meanwhile anyone in an out group is supposed to just stay uncomfortable and shut up in the face of their violence. This must be why they are so afraid of sharing power. They expect to be treated as badly as they have treated everyone else.
Show threadBadwolf303May 14, 2023
@tzimmer_history #slavepatrols evolved into #police.
Show threadGrandpa DonMay 15, 2023
@tzimmer_history we should create "safe zones" for them. Maybe some of that public land they graze vattle on. Fence it in, round them up, lock them in. All white. No sunblock.