Talking Points Memo has the latest from Bunker Boy:
Trump Suggests Without Evidence Elderly Man Who Was Shoved To Ground By Cops Could Be Antifa
“Buffalo protester shoved by Police could be an ANTIFA provocateur,” Trump tweeted.
Tagging One America News (OAN), a notoriously pro-Trump media channel, the President claimed Gugino “fell harder than was pushed.”
Mark Sumner has more on this.
Trump, Barr, FOX, et. al. are pushing hard to make Antifa the scapegoat for everything going wrong. They’re behind the protests, the rioting, the looting. They’re roaming the country looking to attack small towns.
The completely baseless fear that the Black Lives Matter protests are a front for an ill-defined but threatening left-wing incursion is convenient — a way to both delegitimize the protesters and provide a handy excuse for the outbursts of police violence caught on film during the demonstrations.
It’s worth noting, though, that many of these same people crying antifa have a recent and proven track record of supporting protestors — as long as they are mostly white and agitating for the freedom to get a haircut.
It’s an old Republican tradition: find a threat, magnify it all out of proportion, and use it to scare people into running to them for protection. Antifa — their biggest ‘boosters’ are the professional fear-mongers of the right. It’s a simple relationship to understand.
Fear makes people stupid.
Stupid people vote for Republicans.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
These days, they’re clutching at straws. They rode the Red Menace for decades, until Communism collapsed. (Now they’re best buds with the KGB Guy running Russia — or at least turn a blind eye to his shenanigans.)
They’ve tried to turn Socialism into a comparable threat, which is a little harder, because telling people they’ll be forced to have healthcare, or a secure retirement, or a decent standard of living takes a little more effort to turn into an existential threat — not that they don’t try, and not that some people don’t disbelieve them.
The 911 attacks had them all losing their shit over terrorists everywhere, and they’re still on a hair trigger about that. That doesn’t stop them from cozying up to a regime with multiple ties to terrorists when it suits their agenda.
The GOP has an entire roster of boogeymen: Tax-And-Spend Liberals. Big Government. The Deficit (except when Republicans are in charge). Iran. North Korea — except that Trump and Un are now best buds, so no problem. Gun-grabbers. Gays. Atheists. Muslims, Abortionists. Feminists. Crime. The Cities. The media — except for their own propaganda mills.
And of course, scary brown people.
Build walls. Unleash the Police. Send in the troops. Law and Order. Arm up — they're coming for you. (Except they’re not.)
The GOP is always looking for things with which to scare their base. Their need is especially great now, with the very real failures of the Trump regime coming home to roost. They need a distraction badly — but it has to be something that doesn’t blow back on them. It’s a little hard to play the race card at the moment with looting dying down and all those videos showing the police behaving badly — to everyone.
Actual existential threats are another matter. Pandemics. Rising inequality. Climate Change. Environmental collapse. Overpopulation. Threats that require concrete action are something up with which they will not put, because A) none of their policies actually work to deal with them, and B) they will not do anything that costs them money or risks their power if they can help it. In fact, they will turn a ‘threat’ into a cash cow and ride it for all its worth.
Given the largely sociopathic, authoritarian leadership of the Republican Party, the only threats they are interested in are ones that offer some way to make them richer, consolidate their grip on power at the expense of everyone else, and/or provide a scapegoat/excuse for their failures.
For their authoritarian followers, who wake up every morning fearing what the day will bring, a steady diet of fear meets their expectations, gives them reason to trust their leaders who promise to protect them, and allows them to indulge in anger against ‘deserving’ targets. MAGA!
It leads to absurdities like a Trump supporter ridiculing people wearing masks as “living in fear” — while walking around carrying a gun “because they need to protect themselves and others.”
The best demonstration of this is still to be found in “The Music Man”. Meredith Wilson, child of the heartland, knew how it works and how fear could be used to manipulate people. Unfortunately, we don’t have a Professor Harold Hill falling victim to the better angels of his nature, being reformed by Marian the Librarian, to save us at the end.
We have Trump. We have Barr. We have FOX and the GOP.
There’s always trouble in GOP River City…