Right-wing extremism expert talks about potential fallout from presidential election
David Neiwert has been a foremost expert on white supremacy, right-wing extremism for decades.
(David Neiwert)
Sectarianism and antiabortion violence are likely possibilities after this election, though it will manifest itself differently with either candidate winning the Oval Office.
That’s according to David Neiwert, a renowned expert on right-wing extremism. We spoke over the weekend about the complications arising from the political realities we now face with our presidential election. He anticipates a year’s worth of domestic terrorism incidents and perhaps even a few takeovers of state legislatures.
“Almost all of them have their own individual sets of motivations,” Neiwert said. “So some of them are all worked up about immigration. Others are all worked up about abortion. What others get worked up on depends on what fuels their fire.”
Neiwert said that he expects voter intimidation in the form of sheriffs going around asking for ID to vote. If Harris wins, though, he expects Trump’s supporters to claim that the election was rigged and stolen.
My readers and I must acknowledge that the lack of a Democratic Primary will exacerbate this. Had there been a primary contest, and voters had selected the nominee in a transparent and open process, doubts about the democratic process would have been quelled. This isn’t merely complaining. Both Democrats and Republicans have to do a great deal to restore faith in the political process, and part of that will be reforming things so that voters choose both the president and vice president. We should be leaning toward more democratic tendencies, not away from them.
Journalists must be more skeptical of leaders who want more conventions like the ones Democrats held in August. They have ulterior motives in pushing for that because it means they could get the nomination without doing it through the vote. I’ll return to the point of right-wing extremism, but that digression was meant to connect the decisions Democrats make in possibly worsening the situation.
Should Harris win, Neiwert expects MAGA supporters to attack voter centers to prevent them from counting.
The situation is different from that of Trump winning. Suppose he follows through with his promise of deporting mass numbers of Mexican immigrants, that will likely trigger a massive backlash among liberals. There will be rallies against his decisions, which might bring right-wing extremism in the form of mass shootings or assaults from militiamen.
Misogyny plays a strong theme within alt-right movements. Countless feminist journalists and documentarians have infiltrated boards like 8chan, 4chan, and others in the dark internet to see the threads that bind those communities together. I’ve seen several experts say that misogyny serves as the gateway to intolerance for all the other groups. There’s also predictably a strain of antiabortion extremism. Much like in the 1980s and 1990s, when there was the belief in “justifiable homicide,” or the belief that it was morally permissible to kill an abortion provider to stop them from performing the procedure. Now, groups present it differently.
“It's essentially the same ideology, only wrapped up in a more sort of churchly package, but it's still fundamentally underlying,” Neiwert said. “The ideology is just the same where it's supposed to be a Christian nation, everybody's supposed to submit to Christian rule, and the Christian rule can be enforced by violence.”