There's no such thing as a right-wing "lone wolf"

Welcome to Doomsday Scenario, my regular column on national security, geopolitics, history, and—unfortunately—the fight for democracy in the Trump era. I hope if you’re coming to this online, you’ll consider subscribing right here. It’s easy—and free:

For the last four years, I’ve hosted a documentary podcast called “Long Shadow.” Each year, we choose a pressing topic in American public life and use history to explain the story of today, examining policy choices, politics, and past decisions to show how America got to now.

The show, which I do with a tremendous team at the journalism studio Long Lead, has grown to be the most-honored history podcast in the country — earning a Peabody nomination, an Edward R. Murrow Award, and four Signal Awards, among other recognitions. Last month the most recent season — about the policy choices that have driven the uniquely American problem of gun violence — received a Robert F. Kennedy Excellence in Journalism Award honoring social impact reporting (that’s the “good” RFK — RFK, Sr. — if you’re wondering).

You don’t have to take my word for it. As Jersey Shore Glen said on BlueSky this week, “This is my hands down favorite long form investigative journalism podcast. I’ll say as documentary film maker that they are on the audio versions of a Ken Burns doc.”

This week, I’m excited to release the trailer of our fourth season, which will premiere next week:

In this new season, entitled “Breaking the Internet,” we trace the rise and fall of the internet and social media, telling the story of how a tool that was supposed to bring us together and democratize information for all has instead driven us apart and led our world and our politics into a cesspool of hate, misogyny, and conspiracies. It might be our most ambitious and wide-ranging season yet, sweeping from Y2K and the Iraq War to Russia, Tahrir Square, and Myanmar, and on right up to Covid, January 6th, and DOGE. The first episode launches next week and weekly episodes will follow through mid-August. I hope you’ll join us this summer to listen, wherever you find your podcasts.

But that’s not actually why I’m writing today.

This week, I wanted to write about the second season of “Long Shadow,” where we examined the rise of the American far-right — a season that unfortunately this week feels all-too relevant following the assassination and shooting of Democratic lawmakers in Minnesota and violence and attempted violence around this weekend’s #NoKings protests.

The rise, unification, and globalization of the American white nationalist far-right is one of the most consequential political stories of our modern era — and it’s one that the media and our government is particularly failing to make clear to the public.

The heart of our “Long Shadow” season — which traced how the fascist racist fanfic Turner Diaries in the 1980s helped inspire Ruby Ridge, Waco, and the Oklahoma City bombing in the 1990s, and how the election of a black president in the 2000s helped turbocharge a violent global white nationalist movement — was the idea that the rise of the far-right has been more organized and united than almost anyone is willing to say.

The US government made some effort to dismantle the shadow network of white nationalist terror groups in the 1980s, but ever since Tim McVeigh blew up the Oklahoma City federal building, the US government and leaders have made a conscious choice to pretend that all this right-wing domestic terrorism is made up of “lone wolves” — as if all these terrorists just spawned independently believing the same thing and following the same tactics.

They’re not lone wolves. They’re foot soldiers.

This hate and extremism emerges from the fever swamp the right-wing media has built over the last generation — McVeigh was a huge fan of Bill Cooper, the extremist host who help inspire and mentor Alex Jones in the 1990s — and that fever swamp has been amplified and accelerated by the internet and social media.

There’s a whole loose confederation of white nationalist mass killers now, inspired by one another and building on the atrocities of each other. This week marks the 10th anniversary of the shootings at Mother Emanuel church in Charleston, S.C., which were a key moment in the development of this era’s white nationalist mythology.

We got an important warning this weekend about just how interconnected these “independent” acts of violence really are — one that you probably didn’t read about it.

Amid the Minnesota shootings, you probably missed that an armed masked man — an apparent Nazi — was arrested in Nashville at the #NoKings rally there after he clashed with the peaceful protesters and pulled a handgun. He had shouted at protesters, “Commie scum! No f***ing commie, commie scum in America, motherf***er.” Reporters who dug into his social media posts found that he’d celebrated the notorious 2011 killing in Norway that left 77 people dead, a mass murder that has become one of the rallying points for global white supremacists, as well as a racially motivated 2022 mass shooting at a Buffalo grocery store that also has become part of the white supremacist killing canon.

What stopped me in my tracks, though, was that he’d recently purchased a new Mossberg shotgun and decorated it along the lines of the gun the killer used in Christchurch, New Zealand, to murder 51 Muslims, adding white power slogans and the inscription “this machine kills commies.”

Here’s a photo of his shotgun from social media:

Thinking about that weapon and the Minnesota killings underscore to me how we’re watching American politics warp before our very eyes.

The January 6^th pardons — and a host of other abuses of the presidential pardons — have made clear a chilling message to Trump’s most extreme supporters: Violence in support of the regime will be not only tolerated but excused. Consider too the message sent by the right-wing’s warm embrace of Kyle Rittenhouse, who killed two men in Kenosha in August 2020 amid Black Lives Matter protests.

Earlier this year, we saw a wave of stories about the corrupting impact that rising political violence was having on the GOP itself. Multiple news stories highlighted how Republicans themselves were scared by potential attacks from Trump loyalists and caving to his policy and political demands to avoid being targeted. A quick summary: 

• A key driver of Sen. Thom Tillis’ flip-flop on being the vote that could have stopped Pete Hegseth from becoming defense secretary appears to be the wave of death threats he received. The hate and vitriol was so extreme that even Fox News covered it, quoting his senior advisor saying, “the volume of threats and harassment directed at members of Congress and their staff is the new normal.”
  

• Rep. Eric Swalwall explained what he was hearing from GOP colleagues behind-the-scenes: “I have a lot of friends who are Republicans. They are terrified of being the tallest poppy in the field, and it’s not as simple as being afraid of being primaried and losing their job. They know that that can happen. It’s more more personal. It’s their personal safety that they’re afraid of, and they have spouses and family members saying, ‘Do not do this, it’s not worth it, it will change our lives forever. We will have to hire around-the-clock security.’ Life can be very uncomfortable for your children.”
  

• Writing in Vanity Fair, Gabe Sherman reported, “In private, Republicans talk about their fear that Trump might incite his MAGA followers to commit political violence against them if they don’t rubber-stamp his actions. ‘They’re scared shitless about death threats and Gestapo-like stuff,’ a former member of Trump’s first administration tells me.”
  

• Sen. Lisa Murkowski told voters in Alaska she was outright afraid to stand up to Trump: “We are all afraid, okay? I am oftentimes very anxious myself about using my voice because retaliation is real.”

At the same time, we’ve seen actual violence target Democratic politicians, like the arson of the Pennsylvania governor’s mansion. This past weekend masked white nationalist “Patriot Front” and “Proud Boy” groups showed up to intimidate and instill fear at multiple #NoKings protests, and in Northern Virginia, someone purposefully drove an SUV through a protest crowd, a tactic that has become a favorite of the far-right ever since the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” riot.

And while the Trump administration was quick to throw federal charges at people who vandalized Teslas, they’ve been much quieter about the violence aimed at leaders like Governor Josh Shapiro and Speaker Melissa Hortman (not to mention the violence the administration is itself inflicting on Democratic lawmakers and elected officials, which will be the subject of another column shortly). In fact, in what must surely rank as one of the most vile social media posts by an elected official ever, Sen. Mike Lee actually sent joke-y, conspiracy-laden, and false tweets about the shooting — posts so disgusting that Minnesota Sen. Tina Smith actually confronted him about them in person at the US Capitol.

None of this is normal — and it will destroy American politics if it becomes normal. As Mark Leibovich said earlier this spring, “Just to point out what should be clear, governing is supposed to take place by politics, by persuasion, by debate. Authoritarianism is government by intimidation, by threat, by violence in some cases.”

Political violence is becoming commonplace. Despite what “both sides” media reporting may lead you to think, there’s only one party that’s stoking those flames. And it’s doing so deliberately. Trump, the GOP, MAGA, Pam Bondi’s Justice Department, and Kash Patel’s FBI want you to think that the bad actors on the right are just “lone wolves.”

Don’t believe them.

America has let the arsonists take over our government — witness WIRED’s reporting that the far-right “Appeal to Heaven” flag evidently flew over the Small Business Administration headquarters last week — but we must resist their efforts to ruin our politics and national civic discourse too.

GMG

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