In the early hours of the morning of Oct. 28, just before 2:30 a.m., a man entered the San Francisco residence of Paul and Nancy Pelosi. He was armed with a hammer and carrying zip ties. The man encountered Paul Pelosi and physically detained, questioned, and beat him, repeatedly yelling, “where’s Nancy!?” She was not home. Nancy Pelosi, the senior house representative and U.S. Speaker of the House, was in Washington D.C. where she spends much of her time when not in her home district. Luckily, Mr. Pelosi had managed to call 911, leading the San Francisco Police Department to perform a welfare check on the residence. When law enforcement arrived, they found Mr. Pelosi and the intruder, David DePape, struggling over control of the assailant’s hammer. DePape then gained the upper hand and struck Mr. Pelosi in the head before he could be tackled by the arresting officer. DePape was taken into custody, and Mr. Pelosi was taken to a local hospital to undergo brain surgery. DePape later informed the police that he planned to hold Nancy Pelosi hostage.
“I think we definitely are living in a time of potential political violence and danger,” says UFV’s assistant professor of history, Dr. Ian Rocksborough-Smith. “There’s no question about that. There is something animating the current moment, given the sort of extreme divisions that we can see both politically, but also just in terms of … the material conditions that people face.” The Pelosi attack is not an aberration, but a product of increasing levels of economic inequality, mistrust, disinformation, and discord. The uptick of extremist groups, right-wing nationalism, populist rhetoric, and the justification of violence are not simply a problem for other nations. DePape was born and raised right here in British Columbia.
Bombastic tirades that cross international lines are nothing new — the CBC podcast, The Flamethrowers, hosted by Justin Ling clearly conveys right-wing media’s extremist roots — but fringe opinions are becoming increasingly mainstream. Rep. Eric Swalwell (D) of California’s 15th district has been vocal about “The Tucker Carlson effect,” noting the direct pipeline from the ratings-dominant Fox News anchor’s broadcasts, to the skyrocketing number of threats made against himself and his family. Swalwell tweeted to his followers: “Tucker attacks me. His fans respond with threats to kill my family. And Tucker knows exactly what he’s doing.” Embedded in the post was a voicemail the congressman had received, the content of which I have not the heart to transcribe here.
Swalwell’s not alone. According to Politifact, “threats against members of Congress rose from 902 in 2016 to 9,625 in 2021.” This trend is also not isolated to elected officials — the legal system is also increasingly being targeted. The U.S. Marshals Service tracks threats against “the judiciary and other federal court officials” and a 2021 report showed that the number of threats that “resulted in investigations rose from 363 in 2017 to 1,343 in 2021.” These are troubling statistics, and reflect a population that is becoming increasingly radicalized.
Threats and harassment are not isolated to elected officials. Election workers — from state attorneys general who oversee elections, to poll workers and volunteers — are increasingly at-risk of violence and intimidation. In Georgia, one of the hotly contested battlegrounds of the 2020 election, Donald Trump called out election workers by name with unfounded claims of vote tampering. Wandrea “Shaye” Moss and her mother, Ruby Freeman, became instant subjects of conspiracy. The fact that the allegations were baseless and quickly disproven meant little to the mob that swarmed the duo with harassment and threats. Some learned of Freeman’s address and began showing up at her house. She had to relocate for two months on advice from the FBI due to threats to her safety. In a recorded deposition, Freeman testified, “There is nowhere I feel safe. Nowhere.”
On June 21, 2022 Moss delivered a chilling and heartbreaking testimony to the January 6th Committee. “It has turned my life upside down,” she said. “I no longer give out my business card. I don’t transfer calls. I don’t want anyone knowing my name. I don’t want to go anywhere with my mom because she might yell my name out over the grocery aisle or something. I don’t go to the grocery store at all. I haven’t been anywhere at all. I’ve gained about 60 pounds. I just don’t do nothing anymore.”
This ecosystem of intimidation has led to election officials resigning en masse. Out of Pennsylvania’s 67 electoral districts, nearly 50 top election officials have vacated their positions in the face of mounting intimidation. In Arizona, groups of armed and masked individuals have been showing up to ballot drop boxes, resulting in allegations of coercion as voters are regularly filmed and followed as they carry out their civic duty. None of these cases are unique or isolated.
Trump’s presidential career was an injection of bath salts into an already stressed system. Many were quick to point out that he exploited, rather than created, pre-existing cultural divisions, even within the Republican party. But his campaign victory and time in the Oval Office drew clear dividing-lines that quickly calcified into separate camps. Fueled by bravado, Diet Coke, and sheer audacity, Trump began sloughing off any ties to rational, status-quo governance. He fired or chased out chiefs of staff, secretaries of state, members of his press corps, and more. His administration began tapping into an ever-shallowing talent pool, the effect of which was an increasingly scummy staff of formerly undesirable applicants.
The Trump administration gradually came to reflect the man in office, rather than the Republican party which had initially helped to staff it. Professionals within the White House were purged and replaced with lackeys who indulged Trump’s most preposterous fabrications. He returned to his habit of lying about election integrity with claims of rigged ballots and widespread fraud in the run-up to the 2020 election. When his defeat was announced, he claimed victory. When the results were confirmed, he called foul. When the recounts verified the totals, he sued. When the cases were thrown out of court, he mobilized his base. On January 6, 2021, they stormed the Capitol and erected a gallows outside, chanting “hang Mike Pence,” the Vice President, who intended to certify the victory of Joe Biden.
In today’s polarized and politicized landscape, the January 6 Committee’s parade of testimonials made little-to-no difference in the minds of the public. Despite the fact that the majority of testimony delivered to the committee came from Republicans, many of whom had openly supported Trump, minds were not changed. According to FiveThirtyEight, an American website that analyzes opinion polls, on June 8, 2022, the day before the January 6th hearings began, Trump’s favorability rating had been 41.9 per cent. As of October 20, that number is 42 per cent. Hyper-partisanship is increasingly divorcing elected officials from consequences.
The Committee’s co-chair, Liz Chaney, is as conservative as they come. Her father served six terms in congress and was Vice-President from 2001 to 2009. Liz currently occupies his old seat. She’s a legacy. She was the third-ranking member of the Republican House of Representatives and voted for the president’s agenda 92.9 per cent of the time. Her swift and subsequent downfall within the Republican caucus began nearly two years ago when rioters stormed the Capitol Building.
First, she was ousted from party leadership for holding Trump to account for his instigation of the riots. Then she lost her state primary election to a candidate who denies the legitimacy of the last election. A refusal to bend to Trump’s will has severed her from a political party that has become increasingly untethered to reality. Her time in office will soon come to an end. The list of Republican House members who voted to impeach Trump was never long to begin with, but of the ten who did, most have either been voted out in favour of his loyalists, or have opted to bow out rather than suffer the tsunami of pushback from the Republican base.
All over the country, serious administrators and officials are being fired, primaried, or harried into exile. As in the Trump administration, they are being replaced with grifters, screwballs, and yes-men who create the very chaos and institutional instability that they have been falsely claiming for years, fostering a self-fulfilling prophecy that may further erode trust throughout the States. Comedian and long-time political commentator, Bill Maher asserts that regardless of the lunacy of Trump’s future election conspiracy claims, “they will be fully embraced by the stooges he’s installing right now.” What happens, he ponders, when two people show up on inauguration day in 2024, both supported by different factions of the population?
Surveys now show that U.S. predictions of — and calls for — a new civil war, are at levels unseen since the 1860s, and many claim that the country is in the midst of a cold civil war right now. Violence is increasingly being seen as an eventuality, if not an inevitability. Despite the social unease, historians, politicians, and journalists are at-odds with how much credence to give to this elevated tension and conversation surrounding violent conflict. A failure to look this problem in the eye and speak frankly about the cultural shift is worrying to some. “The reality is, there are violent extremists who want to overturn the current system,” says author and Professor of International Affairs, Barbara Walter in an interview with CNN. An expert in civil wars, Walter is troubled by the trends she’s been seeing in her country.
The problem with drawing parallels to America’s Civil War of the 1860s is that there is no Mason-Dixon line in a future conflict. Today, battle lines are drawn through states, cities, and dinner tables. The pluralism and freedom of movement that fed America’s melting-pot narrative has diversified the nation, making a modern incarnation of its Civil War past a virtual impossibility. Experts are therefore taking a hard look at right-wing militias and paramilitary groups, as they represent the greatest clear and present danger.
A 2021 brief from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) reports some disturbing trends. The number of active militias in the U.S. has been on the rise since the 1990s, but have become more active in recent years and are actively recruiting military personnel, current and former police officers, and veterans. These groups are increasingly being linked to a growing number of domestic terror plots and attacks, and CSIS found that “far-right terrorists — including militia extremists and white supremacists — pose the greatest domestic terror threat in the United States.” Conversely, Military and law enforcement are also increasingly targeted by terrorists, with threats coming from the far-right, but also the far-left. According to the same report, “anarchists, anti-fascists, violent environmentalists, and other violent far-left extremists conducted 23 per cent of terrorist attacks and plots in 2020 — an increase from the previous three years.”
Just how real are these threats? In early 2020, members of the Wolverine Watchmen: a paramilitary extremist group, conspired to abduct The governor of Michigan, Gretchen Whitmer and overthrow the state government. They were arrested before their plan could be carried out, with three members being convicted of multiple felony charges in October 2022. This June, 31 members of the Patriot Front — a white nationalist group — were arrested near an Idaho Pride rally. They had come from 10 different states, donned matching clothes and riot gear, and packed themselves into a U-Haul, attracting unwanted attention from a concerned citizen. Many will notice the similarities between the Patriot Front’s aesthetic, and that of Italy’s National Fascist Party. It’s also worth mentioning that Italy’s dalliance with fascism is also having a renaissance moment.
This past August, Romana Didulo — The self-appointed ‘Queen of Canada,’ successfully convinced some of her 60,000 online followers to join her in Peterborough, Ontario to undertake a “citizen’s arrest” of the local police force. It sounds farcical, and in many respects, it is — but Canada’s tinfoil-hat sovereign, who has convinced some devotees to stop paying their taxes and utility bills, has also called for the death of healthcare workers who provide vaccines to children. It’s important not to catastrophize — not paying your gas bill is not a slippery slope to murder, but it’s also important not to mock her adherents, as it can lead to ideological entrenchments. Ridicule is not an effective tool for rehabilitation, and nobody leaves a cult if you just call them “crazy” enough times.
Unfortunately, contempt and derision make up a large portion of our political discourse, which is driving polarization. Political polarization leads to increasing levels of dehumanization, where parties are no longer political opponents, but ideological “others” and existential threats. Dialogue breaks down. Vitriol spreads. Our fellow citizens become things, excusing a rise in bigotry, racism, anti-semitism, and jingoistic nationalism. Camps get divided into the “true people” and the rest — and much may be forgiven to ensure the safety, security, and prosperity of “the people.”
We see the rise of this today, from Kanye West’s slow implosion from MAGA ally to antisemitic leper. We see it in the attacks on the Asian community during the COVID-19 pandemic. We saw it in the language around vaccines, mandates, and the Freedom Convoy. More and more, those with opposing ideologies, values, and perspectives, regardless of their validity, become harmful and intolerable. While it is easy to point this out on the political right-wing, as many leaders lean into nationalistic demagoguery to stir their base, it is a bipartisan phenomenon.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau earned scorn from conservatives and moderate-liberals alike when his frustrations over anti-vax protestors seemed to boil over. “They are extremists who don’t believe in science, they’re often misogynists, also often racists,” said Trudeau, regarding the vocal and disruptive fringe element. “It’s a small group that muscles in, and we have to make a choice in terms of leaders, in terms of the country. Do we tolerate these people?” The sentiment may be understandable given the challenges the nation was facing at the time, but as the head of Canada’s government, it’s rife with problematic and concerning language, especially in a country that has made tolerance a cornerstone of its national identity.
Rhetoric of this sort is understandable, but it’s also damaging. When someone with power and influence amplifies division, people begin to lose sight of common ground. Trump widened the rift between the left and right wings of the political spectrum by spotlighting their inherent differences, but also through a narrative that painted the opposing sides as fundamentally adversarial. Many pushed back against Trump in-kind, fortifying the divide. Those on the extremes of the political and ideological spectrums became increasingly vocal and politically active, often crowding out moderate voices who are increasingly likely to self-censor. As the most extreme voices drown out everyone else, discourse becomes discord, and the population as a whole appears more tribal.
Fueling this radicalization is the social internet, which is perhaps the most effective tool in history for finding and exploiting our cultural fault lines. Long divorced from its quaint beginnings, algorithmically-driven content is now cherry-picked to get our views and entice our engagement. The phenomenon, dubbed “the attention economy,” treats human attention as a commodity, and its scarcity pits tech-giants against each other for the largest share. Its relative infancy and the rate at which technology changes means that it’s difficult to gauge social media’s long-term effects, but it’s been raising the eyebrows of some concerned citizens for years.
Dr. Rocksborough-Smith has concerns over social media’s influence on our discourse, remarking that “[it] has kind of stood in for good faith public discourse, and I think it’s actually bad faith public discourse, in a lot of cases.” Apprehension regarding the oversimplification, or “memefication” of public debate are shared by many. Earlier this year, Barack Obama spoke to the need for increased regulation, aware that “the sheer proliferation of content, and the splintering of information and audiences” has “made democracy more complicated.”
Big Tech companies rely on artificial intelligence to curate content based on our engagement — the posts we replay, share, or generally interact with more often are analyzed and similar material is delivered to keep our eyes on our screens. Increasingly, the content we get is chosen by a computer rather than who or what we chose to follow. TikTok seems to have mastered this model, but it’s worth noting that despite being developed by the Chinese company ByteDance, the international version of TikTok, is not welcome within its home borders. China’s version of TikTok, is much more regulated and content-moderated — a hint that China understands the societal impact of its product better than we currently do.
Social psychologists like Jonathan Haidt, and groups like the Center for Humane Technology are working to educate the public and shape the direction of technological progress to a more sustainable model of interaction. American academic and video game designer, Ian Bogost, takes a more hardline stance, gleefully encouraging the death of social media. He reminded readers that emotionally charged content became boosted once platforms realized how well it drove engagement. “Polarizing, offensive, or just plain fraudulent information was optimized for distribution,” writes Bogost, in a recent article for The Atlantic. “By the time the platforms realized and the public revolted, it was too late to turn off these feedback loops.”
Social media’s thirst for attention exposed a lot of people to conspiratorial content, especially before COVID-19 misinformation prompted platforms to tighten up their guidelines. According to a recent study, there is a direct correlation between a predilection to conspiratorial beliefs, and the justification of political violence. The study’s authors, Federico Vegetti and Levente Littvay, argue that political radicalization can be fueled in part by conspiratorial narratives that also work to “endorse violent political actions.” But why is there a through-line from conspiratorial thinking to political radicalism? As stated by the study:
“Conspiracy theories share the same characteristics that make religions good narratives. It has been shown that belief in conspiracies is not necessarily based on a logical evaluation of their content, but rather on their fit with a wider, more abstract worldview according to which some powerful individuals are in control of the major (and usually negative) events occurring in the world. In other words, conspiracy theories offer an interpretation of reality, and they identify a cause for people’s distress, usually an enemy. Moreover, very much like religion, conspiracy theories set the borders of a community of believers.”
This may explain why it is so discouraging to reason with someone who believes in the demonstrably untrue — like the shape of the planet. Maybe Poison had it right… maybe people just need something to believe in. Similarly, supporters of Trump’s Make America Great Again (MAGA) campaign and Britain’s “Brexit” movement spoke to restoring some amorphous past greatness that was difficult to articulate. Neither were ultimately hindered by a lack of specificity in their respective visions. Perhaps this is why the QAnon movement has paired so well with the Evangelical right in the United States. This strange marriage of convenience between America’s conservative Christian base and Trump was always enigmatic, as there are few who embody Christ’s teachings less than “The Donald.” Social media put politics, religion, and conspiracy theories into a blender, and served up the slurry to a ravenous audience that was hungrily devoured by people like David DePape.
The trouble with intermingling politics with faith is that matters of governance are given religious significance. For Christian Nationalists, America represents a covenant with God, and so a love for God and for country can be synonymous. Fights over public policy can become a fight over the soul of the nation. Elizabeth Neumann, a former Department of Homeland Security top official told Politico, “When you paint it in existential terms like that, a lot of people feel justified to carry out acts of violence in the name of their faith.”
Faith’s justification for violence takes many forms. Sometimes that conviction is religiously based, as in the rise of the Islamic State. In the case of Myanmar, where Rohinga Muslims have been targeted in a genocidal campaign, a UN report found that Facebook inflamed national tensions and facilitated the spreading of hate speech among the Bhuddhist majority. Political ideology however, can easily supplant a religious doctrines’ devotional fervor. The single-mindedness of communist takeovers in Russia beginning in 1917, and China in 1949 are dramatic examples of a secular political movement with all the piety of a theocracy. In that environment, political ideologies become strict dogmas where dissent is heretical. Strict state control designed to maintain its homogeneity is invoked to promote stability and quash opposition. As Mao Tse-tung stated, “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” This is the justification of the use of force to effect political change — that power begets power, so to protect the faithful, violence is required.
When Japan’s former Prime Minister, Shinzo Abe was shot and killed on July 8, 2022, it evoked a history of Japan’s fraught period of ultranationalist violence in the interim years between the World Wars. UFV’s Dr. Eiji Okawa discussed with The Cascade how bloodshed became a tool of political activism for frustrated and disenfranchised Japanese who railed against westernization, and sought a return to an idealized agrarian past. For insurgents, assassination and the resultant culture of fear provided the means to reestablish the emperor as the absolute head of state and forge a new bright new future which drew from a more traditional conception of Japan’s past. It didn’t work out as intended.
History provides a plethora of reasons to be pessimistic about the rising trend of political violence — but hope persists. Dr. Noah Schwartz, an assistant professor of Political Science at UFV notes that threats against the government have to contend with institutions, and countries like Canada and the United States “have very, very strong democratic institutions.” The resiliency of institutions, however, is not absolute, as they are extensions of the people who administer them. In order to safeguard our democracy, we must reinforce our pluralistic civil society.
“We agree on more than we disagree on,” said Shwartz, who reminded me that our political differences typically occupy a much narrower ideological divide than previous generations experienced. “Go out and talk to someone who disagrees with you. I think when you talk to people face to face and you give them the benefit of the doubt… I find that’s where the most meaningful engagement happens.”
We need a new way forward, and perhaps our future really can be found in the past. American civil-rights activist Pauli Murray famously wrote, “I intend to destroy segregation by positive and embracing methods. When my brothers try to draw a circle to exclude me, I shall draw a larger circle to include them. Where they speak out for the privileges of a puny group, I shall shout for the rights of all mankind.” I encourage us all to expand our circles.
The case of David DePape is a cautionary tale. In a period of increasing income inequality and cultural wedge issues, he found community and purpose in online conspiracies and was moved to action. In many ways, his path to radicalization is troubling because it is so relatable. Who among us doesn’t know someone who has fallen down some rabbit hole only to emerge a little wonkier on the other end? Too often we respond with fight or flight, calling them nuts, problematic, woke, or toxic, and driving them ever deeper into their foxholes, cornering them like a wounded animal. Are we surprised by what emerges? Should we be?
Long ago, when DeLoreans roamed the earth, Brad was born. In accordance with the times, he was raised in the wild every afternoon and weekend until dusk, never becoming so feral that he neglected to rewind his VHS rentals. His historical focus has assured him that civilization peaked with The Simpsons in the mid 90s. When not disappointing his parents, Brad spends his time with his dogs, regretting he didn’t learn typing in high school.
