My original take was that this was mostly spectacle, though you should definitely be worried about where this is heading. The early shit about police collaboration was extremely worrying, but the more that comes out about this, the more sus shit there is.
Comparing it to the Beer Hall Putsch is the best one I've heard. Hitler was LARPing as Mussolini's march on Rome. It was more heavily armed and better coordinated than the people storming the capitol, actually seizing buildings and getting politicians on board. But that wasn't the impact. They ran in the national election five years after the putsch and three years after the ban on their presence was lifted. They got 2.6% of the vote. As far as actual gains go it was a hopeless attempt that got 16 Nazis killed.
Those dead became martyrs, the first and most central martyrs for the party. It seems like the air force spook who was shot is getting a mixed reception as they try to disown the event while it's being actively persecuted, but she's a white veteran who died wrapped in a Trump flag as she was the first to try to get into the same room as Trump's enemies. That's a martyr candidate when the media loses interest in the event. The anniversary of those martyrs' death, 9/11 because reality is a big stupid floppy circle, became one of the most important holidays and one of the focal points for mass rallies and spontaneous violence. It was supercharged spectacle which showed that devotion to the party meant blood sacrifice and eventually it resulted in Kristallnacht.
Ayana Pressley just released a statement saying that the panic buttons inside her office were removed. Come next year this will be the date people gather outside and the level of infiltration inside is scarier than what the Putsch had. I'd expect the same kind of mass psychosis to happen at some point if the same kind of propagandisation and radical ownership of the coup attempt plays out. Maybe the FBI can/is willing to go after all the levels of power they're in but eh.
the police collaboration is absolutely the most disconcerting (but not surprising) thing. and if this escalates i would expect we'll most likely see similar collaboration with the military at least on the ground/in smaller groups.
The military are much weirder. The leadership for the most part doesn't really seem to give a shit about Trump. Also, while there are definitely some extremely reactionary elements within the military and its purpose is to do imperialism etc. I think your average soldier is going to be way less reactionary than your average cop. Not a scientific measure to look at, but during the primary season, Bernie Sanders was the candidate who got the most donations from Active Duty soldiers.
I also think to some extent, the weirdo conspiratorial elements of the Q Anon right makes it less compatible with being in the military. Are you really going to believe in FEMA death camps if you'd be the one guarding them?
Yeah they're certainly more complex and thats why I mentioned at least on the closer to individual level.
I went to one of those small town high schools that are pretty much soldier factories and many of the men from my hs ended up in the military and a lot of them developed in to far right/qanon type people. Some of the active people I've met were pretty hardcore in the "we're fighting for trump and country" kind of mindset too. They kind of think democrats hate the troops because they have to be the opposite of the GOP which takes soldier worship to the nth degree.
I see where you're coming from with the death camp thing but the unfortunate thing about Q followers is the whole thing can be very a la carte. There are a million competing ideas under the banner, it is very far from being monolithic. the thing that holds it together is that the believers have a tendency to be able to hold ideologically inconsistent ideas without suffering a lot of cognitive dissonance. One of the ways they guard against that is saying "thats a deepstate actor spreading bs to make us look bad! so since I know that fema death camps aren't a thing they most be a fake q follower" or something to that effect.
Generally I think you're probably right but I think with how much they pander to the military it's worth a bit of concern that it could develop into something similar to the cop collaboration in the coming years.
My original take was that this was mostly spectacle, though you should definitely be worried about where this is heading. The early shit about police collaboration was extremely worrying, but the more that comes out about this, the more sus shit there is.
Comparing it to the Beer Hall Putsch is the best one I've heard. Hitler was LARPing as Mussolini's march on Rome. It was more heavily armed and better coordinated than the people storming the capitol, actually seizing buildings and getting politicians on board. But that wasn't the impact. They ran in the national election five years after the putsch and three years after the ban on their presence was lifted. They got 2.6% of the vote. As far as actual gains go it was a hopeless attempt that got 16 Nazis killed.
Those dead became martyrs, the first and most central martyrs for the party. It seems like the air force spook who was shot is getting a mixed reception as they try to disown the event while it's being actively persecuted, but she's a white veteran who died wrapped in a Trump flag as she was the first to try to get into the same room as Trump's enemies. That's a martyr candidate when the media loses interest in the event. The anniversary of those martyrs' death, 9/11 because reality is a big stupid floppy circle, became one of the most important holidays and one of the focal points for mass rallies and spontaneous violence. It was supercharged spectacle which showed that devotion to the party meant blood sacrifice and eventually it resulted in Kristallnacht.
Ayana Pressley just released a statement saying that the panic buttons inside her office were removed. Come next year this will be the date people gather outside and the level of infiltration inside is scarier than what the Putsch had. I'd expect the same kind of mass psychosis to happen at some point if the same kind of propagandisation and radical ownership of the coup attempt plays out. Maybe the FBI can/is willing to go after all the levels of power they're in but eh.
the police collaboration is absolutely the most disconcerting (but not surprising) thing. and if this escalates i would expect we'll most likely see similar collaboration with the military at least on the ground/in smaller groups.
The military are much weirder. The leadership for the most part doesn't really seem to give a shit about Trump. Also, while there are definitely some extremely reactionary elements within the military and its purpose is to do imperialism etc. I think your average soldier is going to be way less reactionary than your average cop. Not a scientific measure to look at, but during the primary season, Bernie Sanders was the candidate who got the most donations from Active Duty soldiers.
I also think to some extent, the weirdo conspiratorial elements of the Q Anon right makes it less compatible with being in the military. Are you really going to believe in FEMA death camps if you'd be the one guarding them?
Yeah they're certainly more complex and thats why I mentioned at least on the closer to individual level.
I went to one of those small town high schools that are pretty much soldier factories and many of the men from my hs ended up in the military and a lot of them developed in to far right/qanon type people. Some of the active people I've met were pretty hardcore in the "we're fighting for trump and country" kind of mindset too. They kind of think democrats hate the troops because they have to be the opposite of the GOP which takes soldier worship to the nth degree.
I see where you're coming from with the death camp thing but the unfortunate thing about Q followers is the whole thing can be very a la carte. There are a million competing ideas under the banner, it is very far from being monolithic. the thing that holds it together is that the believers have a tendency to be able to hold ideologically inconsistent ideas without suffering a lot of cognitive dissonance. One of the ways they guard against that is saying "thats a deepstate actor spreading bs to make us look bad! so since I know that fema death camps aren't a thing they most be a fake q follower" or something to that effect.
Generally I think you're probably right but I think with how much they pander to the military it's worth a bit of concern that it could develop into something similar to the cop collaboration in the coming years.