YES! MAG – RUPTURE.CAPITAL

This is the way democracy ends: with a whimper.

The day after President Biden’s fiery Jan. 12 speech in favor of eliminating or reforming the filibuster to pass voting rights legislation, Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema let it be known that they were a big “no” vote on that.

Without their votes, the John R. Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act and the Freedom to Vote Act are dead in the water, because no Republican is going to support expanding the franchise. On Jan. 19, Sen. Chuck Schumer forced a vote on amending the filibuster, but it was purely performative. No reasonable observer expected any other outcome.

And that means the Democrats’ already uphill fight toward the November midterm elections just got a lot steeper.

To be honest, this ignoble outcome has been growing in likelihood since Biden took office one year ago. There was a concerted early push by Democrats to get laws passed to counteract the dozens of new state laws that are placing new restrictions on voting rights.

But Biden was missing from the fight. His priority was his Build Back Better agenda, which, no surprise, was also left to die after Manchin and Sinema refused to support it. (But they waited until after the bipartisan infrastructure bill was passed—with most climate change provisions stripped out of it—to say so, despite a previous agreement with progressives to bundle the two together.)

The key aspect that makes democracies work is the peaceful transfer of power from one party to another.

So here we are, in January 2022, staring down the next 10 months until the midterm election, during which time we can expect state-level Republicans to redouble their efforts to hinder voting rights. Meanwhile, newly drawn electoral maps will be put in place (with predictable lawsuits to come against those that are too gerrymandered to the benefit of Republicans and White voters), and Democrats will once again be looking for reasons to convince voters to support them.

There is a chance that the Republican plan to secure an electoral victory before the voting even starts will fail—that a groundswell of voters in numbers too big to manipulate will prevail. But that’s the bare minimum that’s needed if we dare to maintain hope that Congress will eventually enact legislation that protects or strengthens voting rights. And it will have to continue to happen every two years until the composition of Congress better reflects a nation that is trying to keep its democracy going.

But the odds are even greater that the GOP will take over one or both chambers of Congress, or, barring that, that the Democrats will barely hold on, continuing the body’s deadlock for another two years.

And that’s where the real risks to democracy lie: in the gradual whittling away at our democratic republic’s ability to govern, giving even fewer reasons for a burned-out nation to muster the energy to care about its future.

Our two political parties can now best be described not just as moderate-liberal versus conservative, but as pro-democracy (with a few holdouts) versus authoritarian. That’s not a state that can persist in a healthy democracy, because authoritarianism is absolute: Its only end points are complete power or complete destruction (or one followed by the other). Any democratic party whose primary goal is to keep the other party out of power is always going to be one election away from obliteration and risks becoming reactionary. That’s precisely what’s happened to the Republicans under Trump, with sitting members of Congress by turns denying and excusing the Jan. 6 insurrection.

The Republican Party is no longer conservative; by rejecting the legitimacy of elections unless they win, the party undercuts the rickety legs holding us all up. And the Trumpist party base has increasingly come to believe that violence is an acceptable tool to achieve political power.

The key aspect that makes democracies work is the peaceful transfer of power from one party to another. The loser in a fair and free election respects the results and comes back to try again in the next cycle. That’s what gives elections legitimacy, and it’s what allows successful democracies to persist.

We saw how well that went on Jan. 6, 2021. But more than trying to obtain and keep power in the hands of the more liberal of the two major parties, our collective objective must include the preservation of a system of government that maintains its legitimacy for both Liberals and Conservatives.

We need a conservative party in the United States, because that’s the only way conservative voters will feel they can participate in civic life and have their voices heard. The so-called “constitutional wing” of the Republican Party—the Liz Cheneys, Mitt Romneys, Adam Kinzingers, and others no longer in public office—need to present a real alternative to the authoritarianism their peers have embraced. They may say they are doing just that within the confines of the GOP. But they’re confusing their access to the party machinery and fundraising with actual power to shape outcomes.

A lot of publicity surrounded the recent release of the book How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them by historian Barbara F. Walter. Much of the buzz was about the prospect of the United States dissolving into a violent civil conflict.

Which could happen. But a key takeaway from the book was how countries that are on the precipice manage to avoid conflict. On MSNBC’s The Mehdi Hasan Show, Walter said countries that have experienced one civil war are more likely to experience another, but that there is also a way out of that cycle of violence.

“When you look at all countries over many, many decades, what you find out is that the ones that escape the conflict trap all do the same thing,” Walter said. “They institute significant political reforms, and they strengthen their democracy.”

Precisely that happened in South Africa starting in 1990, when then-president F.W. de Klerk reversed the policies of the previous apartheid presidents and committed to creating a multiracial democracy. South African elites, especially businesses being hit by punitive sanctions, joined with the African National Congress to get behind the program, and what could have been yet another outbreak of violence in a country with a bloody history was avoided.

Not all breakups are necessarily violent, either. The best modern example is the “Velvet Revolution” in Czechoslovakia in 1989, and the country’s subsequent breakup in 1992. In that latter instance, the key factor was a nationalistic movement in the smaller, poorer Slovak part of the country, and the willingness of the Czech political class to just let them go, reasoning they’d be better off without them. (They were, at least initially, as 1990s Slovakia was led by a barely reformed autocrat, and the Czech Republic became one of the more liberal-leaning nations of the former Eastern Bloc. The situation in Eastern Europe is more complicated now.)

With a militant Right itching for violent confrontation and a second civil war in the U.S., it’s even more imperative that an alternative be presented. That means the Left can’t also embrace violence, but instead must double down on pushing pro-democratic reforms in every venue possible, embrace direct nonviolent action, and, if worse comes to worst (a second Trump administration, or the election of another more competent fascist), mobilize for a general strike. These tactics may not forestall a schism of some sort, but they might prevent a much bloodier outcome, ranging from rampant terrorism to a violent dissolution of the union.

The United States hasn’t fallen off that cliff yet, but we’re teetering on the edge. Businesses that once said they wouldn’t back politicians who supported the Jan. 6 insurrection are back to writing checks for them. Despite some Republicans initially condemning Trump’s attempted coup, nearly all elected Republicans have fully committed to his Big Lie and insist Biden’s election was fraudulent. And the fuel for the fire, the politics of White grievance that Trump has nurtured for six long years, has coalesced into a political movement led by Trump and his top cheerleader, Fox’s Tucker Carlson, that continues to grow in strength.

The rest of us non-politicians can still vote. But, as before, we’re going to have to do so in overwhelming numbers to compensate for increased suppression and hope the next Congress will have both the numbers and the political will to enact meaningful reforms. It’s not a lot to count on, but it’s what we have left.

The terror inflicted on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 laid bare America’s problem with violent extremism.

The FBI and other law enforcement agencies have begun to piece together the events of that day, while attempting to thwart any impending attacks. Scores of people have been arrested and charged over the attack—the vast majority being men.

In the wake of these events, stories were attributing the violence and destruction to “White male rage” “violent male rage” and “angry White men.”

But what about the women?

To distill the violent insurrection into a tale of angry male rage is to overlook the threat that women in the mob posed to congressional officials, law enforcement, and U.S. democracy that day.

Long History of Women’s Involvement

Several women have been identified as alleged participants in the events of Jan. 6. Among those women are a former school occupational therapist, an employee of a county sheriff’s office, a real estate broker and a former mayoral candidate.

At least one woman is being investigated for her role in organizing the attack with fellow members of the Oath Keepers, a far-right militia movement. And Ashli Babbitt, a female veteran, was fatally shot by police while trying to breach the Senate floor.

The women who took part in the siege of the Capitol are part of a long history of women’s participation in extremist violence, both in the United States and abroad.

Women have buoyed American far-right organizations and causes for centuries. In her recent book on women at the forefront of contemporary White nationalism, author Seyward Darby writes that women are not “incidental to White nationalism, they are a sustaining feature.”

Since the late 1800s, women have supported and enabled the terrorist White supremacist organization the Ku Klux Klan, while hundreds of thousands joined its female affiliate, Women of the Ku Klux Klan, and its predecessors.

Women helped establish the Klan’s culture, bolstered its recruitment efforts and manufactured its propaganda. Despite its hyper-masculine ideology, which identifies White men as the primary arbiters of political power, women have also held leadership positions within the modern-day Klan.

More recently, women have joined the far-right Proud Boys movement, which has openly recruited female foot soldiers. In December, a growing rift between male and female Proud Boys was reported. After experiencing intense sexist backlash from men in the organization, women led by MMA fighter Tara LaRosa began their own group, the Proud Girls USA.

To leave one extremist organization to form another suggests a deep commitment to the far-right cause.

Discounting Is Dangerous

A 2005 study noted a disconnect between the rise in women within American right-wing terrorist organizations and the attention it received from law enforcement.

Despite a marked increase in women’s engagement in acts of terror against the state and racial minorities, security officials have largely failed to publicize, search, and interrogate women operatives in these organizations, even after they become known to law enforcement.

American far-right women might also have drawn inspiration and tactical knowledge from women engaged in extremist violence abroad.

Evidence from the global war on terror points to the potential dangers of ignoring the growth of violent extremism among women. In Iraq, for example, female terrorists carried out large numbers of deadly suicide attacks against American assets during the U.S. occupation.

The rest of the world has since been forced to grapple with the reality of violent women after female terrorists staged lethal attacks in Nigeria, Somalia, Tunisia, the Philippines, Indonesia, and France.

Recent terror attacks in American cities such as San Bernardino, California, and Las Vegas that featured women among the perpetrators confirm violent women have already inflicted damage on U.S. soil.

Gender Bias Can Be Deadly

In fact, my research suggests that attacks by female terrorists are often more destructive than those executed by their male counterparts.

In an analysis of more than 2,500 global suicide attacks, I show disparities in the severity of male and female attacks are greatest where gender stereotypes suggest that women are neither violent nor political. Such tropes can blind security officials and civilians to the threat posed by women terrorists, causing them to overlook the potential for female complicity.

Female terrorists, including in Iraq, Israel, and Nigeria, have been able to deflect suspicion because they were women. My research shows that gender bias can become deadly when it stops effective counterterrorism policies, such as surveillance, searches, and interrogations, from being implemented.

Also, because ordinary citizens played an unusual role in exposing the identities of the Capitol attackers, gender biases among civilians are also relevant. Failure to accept women’s complicity in the Capitol siege and the broader movement may prevent the identification of female offenders and impedes efforts to punish and deter future attacks.

American women have been key pillars of support for violent right-wing extremists for centuries. They have been right-wing extremists themselves—racist skinheads, neo-Nazis and Klanswomen. Women are also Oath Keepers, Three Percenters and Proud Boys. They were Capitol rioters.

To construct an accurate account of the Capitol attack, it’s necessary to ask “Where are the women?” And the answer is, “Right there.”

This article was originally published by The Conversation. It has been published here with permission.

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All disruptive social movements are met with stern warnings from people who think they know better. The current movement to “Defund the Police” is no exception.

Thus an editor of the Detroit Free Press professes sympathy for the protesters’ aims but says their “awful slogan” is “alienating” to the public, including to “White people who feel more reassured than threatened” by the police. Other pundits insist that “activists who are demanding radical change” are paving the way for Trump’s reelection: “Defund the Police” is “music to Trump’s ears” because it baits the Democrats into endorsing this presumably unpopular demand.

These critics share an assumption about how change happens: Movements must win over the majority of the public; once they do so, that sentiment soon finds its way into policy changes.

Electoral campaigns require a majority of voters. Non-electoral strategies do not.

This argument has several problems. One is that government so frequently disobeys the will of the majority. Statistical analyses that compare public preferences and policy find that the opinions of non-wealthy people “have little or no independent influence on policy.” Having the support of the majority is no guarantee of change, to say the least.

Also problematic is the assumption that radical demands or actions scare away the public. The empirical evidence is mixed, but the 54% support for the recent burning of the Minneapolis police precinct should make us skeptical of conventional wisdom.

But the biggest problem with the We-Must-Persuade-the-Majority argument is that most progressive victories in U.S. history did not enjoy majority support when they were won. In case after case, a radical minority disrupted the functioning of businesses and state institutions, which sought to restore stability by granting concessions and ordering politicians to do the same.

Their Own Emancipation Proclamations

Before the Civil War, Abraham Lincoln had criticized slavery but opposed immediate abolition. In 1837 he wrote that “slavery is founded on injustice and bad policy, but that the promulgation of abolition doctrines tends to increase rather than abate its evils.” Even 16 months into the war, Lincoln still stressed that “my paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union,” and that “if I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it.” By all indications, most Northern Whites shared Lincoln’s position.

In contrast, the formerly enslaved Frederick Douglass criticized “those who profess to favor freedom and yet deprecate agitation,” saying that they “want crops without plowing up the ground,” and “the ocean without the awful roar of its many waters.” Douglass celebrated John Brown’s 1859 raid on the Harpers Ferry arsenal, which forced slavery into the center of debate: “Until this blow was struck, the prospect for freedom was dim, shadowy, and uncertain.”

Enslaved workers themselves played a decisive role. By fleeing the plantations, burning property, fighting for the Union, and numerous other acts of resistance, they weakened the Confederacy and impelled Union leaders to embrace the pragmatic logic of emancipation as a way of undermining their enemies. This “general strike” of enslaved people was a key theme in W.E.B. Du Bois’ classic 1935 book Black Reconstruction in America, and that thesis has been confirmed and expanded by more recent historians. In Vincent Harding’s words, it was “courageous Black men and women and children” who “created and signed their own emancipation proclamations, and seized the time.”

Thus it was a militant minority—enslaved Black people in the South, aided by abolitionists such as Douglass and Brown in the North—who transformed the war to “save the Union” into an antislavery revolution.

The Moderates Get Alienated

The Black freedom struggles a century later were likewise the work of a minority. Most of the public either favored segregation outright or criticized segregation and the disruptive tactics of civil rights activists. Even many established Black leaders criticized the disruptive approach, favoring a purely legal strategy instead.

In a 1961 Gallup poll, 61% of respondents disapproved of the Freedom Riders who rode integrated buses into the South. A similar percentage condemned the sit-ins at lunch counters. Three years later, 74% said, in an echo of Lincoln, that “mass demonstrations by Negroes are more likely to hurt the Negro’s cause for racial equality.”

Such attitudes inspired Martin Luther King Jr.’s 1963 “Letter from a Birmingham Jail,” which brilliantly skewered “the white moderate, who is more devoted to ‘order’ than to justice.” King later dismissed warnings about alienating “white middle-class support” by saying, “I don’t think that a person who is truly committed is ever alienated completely by tactics.” Ultimately, “I don’t think in a social revolution you can always retain support of the moderates.”

Like the enslaved people who sabotaged the Confederate war effort, Black activists of the 1960s faced opposition or ambivalence from the majority. They succeeded because they imposed massive and sustained economic costs on the Southern elite, through boycotts, sit-ins, and other means. Thus it was the White business owners in places such as Birmingham who capitulated first, and who directed the rest of the White power structure—police, mayors, legislators, and so on—to allow desegregation.

The Wise Men Get Shaken

Another major progressive victory of that era, the U.S. withdrawal from Vietnam, came about for similar reasons. Public opinion and Congress were peripheral to the war’s end. Far more important was the unabating Vietnamese resistance, most notably the January 1968 Tet Offensive against the U.S. occupation and client regime in South Vietnam.

Tet catalyzed two decisive shifts. One was among U.S. business leaders, who concluded that the war was a drag on their profits. Lyndon Johnson’s March 1968 decision to de-escalate the war came five days after he met with his “Wise Men,” a group of top business leaders and former government officials. Insider accounts report that Johnson was “deeply shaken” by the meeting and left with “no doubt that a large majority” of the Wise Men “felt the present policy was at a dead end.”

Tet also accelerated the rebellion among U.S. soldiers. The people needed to fight the war increasingly disobeyed, deserted, declined to enlist or reenlist, and even killed the commanding officers who sent them on death missions. By 1971 military leaders warned of “a personnel crisis that borders on disaster,” and actually demanded that Nixon speed up the withdrawal. My co-authors and I tell this story in more detail in a new book, Levers of Power: How the 1% Rules and What the 99% Can Do About It.

Public opinion often shifts toward the radicals after the fact. In 1966, 59% thought the Vietnam War was “morally justified.” A decade later, 70% said the war was “fundamentally wrong and immoral.” In the years in between, radicals such as MLK had condemned U.S. intervention in Vietnam as “one of the most unjust wars that has ever been fought in the history of the world.” As usual, the radicals endured a barrage of vitriol from respected commentators, and King and many others paid for their radicalism with their lives.

The lesson of these past victories is that successful change depends not on majority opinion, but on the ability of the key participants in a system to disrupt that system: enslaved Black people in the Confederacy, Black consumers in Birmingham, the Vietnamese people and U.S. soldiers in Vietnam (or workers in a workplace, tenants in a building, and so on).

This is a major advantage of non-electoral forms of activism. Electoral campaigns require a majority of voters. Non-electoral strategies do not.

It’s not that the opinions of the majority are irrelevant. Certainly it’s good to have more people sympathizing with you. Most of the radicals in the above movements realized that. They understood the importance of organizing, building relationships, and doing educational work among the public. They thought carefully about tactics.

But they also recognized, as King did, that “you can’t always retain support of the moderates.”

The post History Shows That Sustained, Disruptive Protests Work appeared first on Yes! Magazine.

When the novel coronavirus roared into the U.S., mental health took a back seat to physical health. The number one priority was making sure hospitals wouldn’t be overwhelmed and that as many lives as possible could be saved. Schools closed, remote work became the norm, restaurants shuttered and getting together with friends was no longer possible. The news cycle spun with story after story highlighting the ever-increasing number of cases and deaths, while unemployment soared to levels not seen since the Great Depression.

Any one of these shifts could be expected to cause an increase in mental health issues. Put together, they created a perfect storm for a crisis. Experts speculated as much, and polls showed that many people seemed to intuitively grasp the mental toll of the pandemic. However, data on mental health metrics was scant; we didn’t know the magnitude of any changes in mental health issues, nor did we understand which groups of people were suffering more than others.

So I decided to collect data on mental health during the pandemic and compare it to data from before all of this happened. The differences were huge.

Based on an article by Jean Twenge for The Conversation: “New study shows staggering effect of coronavirus pandemic on America’s mental health.”

The post The Mental Toll on Us All appeared first on Yes! Magazine.

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