Episode 20: This election, how much do Trump and right-wing militias threaten democracy?

With gun sales up, violence in the streets, and an overwhelming majority of the nation thinking that we're heading down the wrong track, it's no secret that America is in a troubled place right now.

That isn't helped by Donald Trump, who in the last few weeks has stated that he will not accept the results of the upcoming election if he loses, and has encouraged supporters to "observe" polling places. He also refused to denounce white supremacists on live television -- groups that a recent FBI report that called an "immediate extremist threat.”

This week, we spoke to data scientist and activist Emily Gorcenski about the threat of far-right groups -- many of whom have been carrying the torch and growing since Charlottesville in August 2017. We also talk with journalist Peter Galuszka about if and how Trump could attempt a coup.

Episode Transcript

Nathan Moore: This is Bold Dominion, an explainer for state politics in a changing Virginia. I’m Nathan Moore.

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I always get a little worried when there’s a shortage of bullets at gun shops. Not because I’m a big gun person myself. But it worries me because of what it says about our country. Newsweek just ran a story that asks why there’s an ammo shortage in America. The answer: people are buying a hell of a lot of ammunition, and suppliers are struggling to keep up with demand.

Why so many bullets? I mean, we know that 2020 is a crap year, right? There are two, three, maybe four major national crises happening at once, depending on how you slice it. And tensions are high.

Once in a while, the national story is also the Virginia story. And this is one of those weeks. Our nation seems to be careening toward some kind of tipping point. It’s unclear what’s going to happen after this year’s election, and that’s scary as hell. Evidently, some people are hoarding bullets, I guess as a sort of insurance policy in case of social collapse.

When I started this podcast, I really didn’t expect to say things like “insurance policy in case of social collapse.” And yet, here we are. At every turn, Donald Trump has fanned the flames of division, anxiety, and civil unrest. And in recent weeks, he has announced his plans to stage a coup if he doesn’t win the election.

I am not overstating things when I use the word “coup.” I have studied regimes in Latin America and elsewhere in the global south. This has happened in lots of places. A country holds a free election and a clear majority votes in the opposition party. The strongman refuses to concede, refuses to peacefully transfer power to the other party. He makes up claims about non-existent voter fraud. He calls for far-right paramilitary supporters to intimidate or do violence against the opposition. He enlists puppet judges to rule in his favor. He tries to get the military brass on his side.

That… is a coup. Does any of it sound plausible? Could it happen here? How would the military leadership based here in Virginia respond?

Peter Galuszka: Basically, top generals and admirals and whatever at the Pentagon have let it be known very clearly that they do not want to put the military in any kind of position of control or forcing things after a contested election. There have been plenty of people in the military saying Trump is dangerous. And this is entirely possible. This hasn't really been dealt with before. It's uncharted waters.

NM: That’s Peter Galuszka, a journalist based in the Richmond area and a regular on Bold Dominion. He’s right -- the United States has a much, much longer tradition of democracy than other countries, and our military are professionals. But could Trump try anyway? We’ll hear more from Peter later in the show.

First, we delve into the bit about far-right paramilitary supporters. At the first -- and now infamous -- presidential debate, Donald Trump refused to denounce white supremacy. Instead, he told groups like the Proud Boys to quote: “stand back and stand by.” On the same day, the FBI released an intelligence report that warned of an “immediate extremist threat” from far-right militia groups.

Our first conversation this week is with Emily Gorcenski. She’s a data scientist and activist, and was involved in the anti-racist counterprotests to the 2017 Unite the Right rally here in Charlottesville. Emily has used her data science skills to help identify and track members of white supremacist organizations. She created the website “Fist Vigil” to track their court trials and convictions. I spoke with her about the growing threat of white supremacy, and what Trump’s refusal to denounce these groups might mean for the months ahead.

Emily Gorcenski: Well, I think what it means is that it is a tacit permission to continue the elevating or raising sort of the tenor of the violence in America. This is permission to go out and intimidate communities. It's permission to go out in the street and front white supremacy and encourage terror. And this is, in some sense, a very deliberate, sort of attempt to raise the threshold of acceptability. And with the natural impact that when that threshold gets raised, the likelihood of violence and terror also gets raised.

NM: We have elections coming right up, of course. What could Election Day and election week look like with these groups involved?

EG: Worst-case scenario is that we're going to see election chaos, where things like people being purged from the voter rolls is going to happen and this is going to commingle with this sort of unofficial election security threat that is taking place. There's also lots of opportunities for confrontations outside the polling places, threats of violence, displays just outside of the legal boundaries of like heavily armed militias and things like that. You know, it's impossible to predict an act of terrorism. And I wouldn't expect something like that to be at a polling place. But I do expect that there will be--that we will see violent encounters.

NM: And what groups are we talking about here? Both that you've tracked, and that could be a real threat to democratic elections.

EG: So we see that there's a lot of these sort of militia groups floating around, there's the sort of nascent Boogaloo movement, as well as--

NM: Explain what Boogaloo means, if you don't mind, I don't know if everyone gets what that is.

EG: Back in the 80s, there was a sequel to the sort of hip-hop movie Breaking, and it was Breaking 2: Electric Boogaloo. And this sort of silly term has long been in sort of the internet lingo to refer to something that is like a subsequent event, a second coming type of thing. And for a few years, it has been referred to, in extremism circles, to refer to a second Civil War, so Civil War 2: Electric Boogaloo.

Within the past year or so this really started to catch on because these groups, these far-right and white supremacist groups like to use some coded language to refer to these things. And so there's a number of terms that refer to what they believe to be a coming civil or race war. So some people--like if you follow militia groups, you'll find that they refer to the zombie apocalypse. And that is a code word for a civil war, but also referred to "SHTF." So when Stuff Hits The Fan, and then also the Boogaloo, which has become this sort of code-word for the second Civil War in America.

NM: So these groups are actually advocating for the second Civil War. Groups like, what, the Proud Boys is the one that got mentioned at the debate, but others do.

EM: Some of them are. Some of them are advocating and actively seeking out to create a second Civil War. Some of them merely believe that it is an inevitability due to the widening rift in society--or what is perceived to be a widening rift in society. This concept is not new. This is sort of fundamental to the prepper mentality. But what's happening is that this is stepping out into the mainstream. And we're seeing these groups showing up at protests, we're seeing these groups showing up at election events, at campaign rallies and things like that. And they always say that they're there to keep the peace. But really, what they're there to do is to project their vision of what America looks like, and their vision of America is an America that is ruled by force by white men.

NM: I mean, their vision is just simply that authoritarian, boldfaced?

EG: In some cases, its authoritarian, in some cases, it is a reinforcement or a ratcheting up of the status quo, which is that we live in a society that is on paper egalitarian, but in practice is not. And the sort of undercurrent that a lot of these groups oppose is the idea that progressive society is eroding the power structures that white male people have in this country. So this is fundamental to everything from the extremely white nationalist myths about white genocide, to some of the things like activism against affirmative action, or some of the battles that are happening in the courts right now around gay rights and trans rights, the religious equality, all of these things. It's an effort by people who inherit or who exist in a position of power and privilege to retain that or to prevent that power and privilege from being threatened by other people who are simply trying to assert their legal given rights.

Ultimately, there's, you know, degrees of fascism, and all of these tend to be some degree of fascism to some extent. And, you know, the Proud Boys are an explicitly fascist group. They won't say it, but if you look at their messaging and when you look at their actions, there's no way to, to come to any other conclusion. By comparison, some of these sort of, quote unquote, "anti-government militias," if you look at their mission statement or their values, it's hard to say that they're authoritarian because they purport to be anti-government. But when the anti-government people are on the side of the police beating up the black protesters, there's a sort of a rift that starts to form between their stated values and the values that they act upon.

And this is a classical pattern that we see in, in proto-authoritarian states, sort of when militias are paramilitaries stop worrying about tyranny of the state and start calling the behaviors of the people tyranny, that is, generally speaking, a sign that--not just that you're on the way or that you're heading downhill, but that you've already, you know, stepped over the ledge and you haven't realized that you're falling in.

NM: You're a data scientist who follows these organizations. How have you tracked these far-right groups?

EG: I think that one thing that you learn being a data scientist is you have to pay exquisite attention to detail. And you have to understand how probability works. And so for me, when I'm tracking these groups, I'm looking at patterns, I'm looking for patterns in what they're posting, what they're doing, who they're meeting with, interacting with. And from there, I can start to assemble a picture. If you see somebody posting something, or you know, somebody acting in a certain way, like, you probably don't know their name.

And it's not like I have some facial recognition software that I can, you know, throw against a massive federal law enforcement database. But there's little clues as to you know, what they're wearing, or what their tattoos are, or how they wear their facial hair, things like that. And when you pay attention to these things, who they're meeting with, who they're hanging out with, where they show up, you can start to understand a little bit more about these movements, start to track how these groups intersect and play off of each other and even share membership, you have to be able to see the things that are sort of not in-focus, both figuratively and literally.

NM: What have been results of this kind of work?

EG: We've exposed--well, I should say, I've exposed a number of white supremacists. Some of them were in the military, who have since been removed from the military. Some of whom were community members or civil servants, teachers, things like that. Anti-fascists generally have exposed dozens, if not hundreds of far-right actors who are partaking in these internet forums and advocating violence and terrorism and using racist language and talking about the ways that they demean the people of color in their lives and Jewish people and queer people, and so on and so forth. And so, you know, I think that this has had a significant impact on our ability to actively come together as communities to form coalitions against hate.

That's really the strongest thing about it, right? This is, you know, we're not here to ruin anyone's life. We're not here to send them up after somebody, we're here to empower communities to understand: "Hey, that woman at the farmers market, she's recruiting teenagers for a white nationalist terrorist organization." Now, you know, now go do something about it. And that "do something about it" has historically meant things like petitions to get them removed from the farmers market, or fired from their jobs, or, or whatever, right. We set rules for what behaviors we think we should happen in society. And some of those rules are encoded by law. And some of those rules are encoded in unwritten social contracts. And it's up to us to enforce those social contracts. Because if you don't enforce them, they become worthless. And that's how you get Nazis.

NM: I know you were involved in some way with the anti-racist organizing efforts around Charlottesville in August 2017. Take me through what you did there, and how that relates to your work.

EG: So I did a lot of work with a lot of folks that were trying to engage with the media fairly actively, in the summer of 2017. So one thing that we had seen in protests was that we didn't really understand the message of the counter protesters. We put together a group of people. So there was a bunch of us in the community that came together and said: "you know, let's change this. Let's be active about this." So we did a lot of work. And we reached out to journalists and really tried to tell the story from our perspective before the event happened. And what that did was that gave those reporters contacts and sources on the ground. Gave them context for what was happening. And it allowed us to shape the response that was seen in the media. So this is something that I don't think many people have done in the protest movements before.

And to this day, Charlottesville is still used as a warning sign against the Republican party and against Donald Trump. I think that part of that was our legacy. So that's where I got the idea of doing first visual. And also just trying to capture this, like, I wanted to get away from the flash-in-the-pan type of media environment and make something enduring so that people could really look into these cases and learn for themselves what was happening.

NM: How much of a threat is the combination of the Trump regime itself, and these right-wing paramilitary groups? How much of a threat are they to having an American democracy continue?

EG: When you allow armed people to intimidate communities, you suppress the voice of that community. And when you suppress the voice of the community, you do not have a fully functioning democracy. And so that's in the abstract sense. In the concrete sense, I'm not sure which is going to be the worst situation for violence, whether Trump loses or whether Trump wins. Because there are a lot of people that are on edge.

And the fact that we haven't seen a situation devolve into open shootouts yet is a slight wonder, when we've seen what happened in Charlottesville. We saw what happened in Kenosha. We've seen what happened in Portland. And it's a matter of time. And it's a matter of when, not if, and the election could be a turning point. The FBI is preparing for it. Every single person I know in the counter-extremism game is extremely worried about what happens. And there is no consensus on which would be worse: a win or loss.

NM: What is the long-term goal of your work? I mean, I'm just imagining, you know, we expose all the white supremacists in society, the influencers and actors in society who have some say. Say: "You know what, that's not acceptable. You know, go find another job or whatever." What comes next? How do we make America work and come back from the precipice?

EG: I think we need to eradicate white supremacy. And we need to start by stemming the tide that's happening right now. We've seen white supremacist violence increasing year over year for the past several years. Hate crimes, since 2016, have been on the rise. Aside from the Pulse shooting in 2016, white supremacists have been responsible for the largest terror attacks in the United States over the past several years. So first, we're just trying to stop the bleeding, then we're trying to eradicate the conditions that lead to white supremacy.

And in order to eradicate the conditions that lead to white supremacy, we need to be able to talk earnestly about things like race and gender, sexuality and religion. We need to understand our history, we need to come face to face with it, and to make conscious efforts to learn from that, and to not repeat it. And this is not about trying to project guilt onto men or onto white people or to whomever. This is about understanding that we have been an imperfect society. And we will be an imperfect society. But we have to actively make ourselves into a more perfect society.

You know, there's a lot of flaws in the American system, the American way of--American culture, American government. But to me, that's one of the things that has always resonated is that we wanted to create a system. You know, we wanted to create a more perfect union. Not a perfect, but one that can continually evolve. I think we've stopped evolving. And, you know, we have the power, the resources, to set the tone of what kind of world we want to see. And we need to go out and do that.

NM: Emily Gorcenski is a data scientist, activist, and creator of the website “First Vigil,” which tracks the trial information of alleged white supremacists. We’re going to take a short break, but stay with us. In a moment, we’re back with journalist Peter Galuszka to discuss the possibility of Donald Trump refusing to concede power -- and what that could mean for Virginia and the nation.

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You’re listening to Bold Dominion, a state politics explainer for a changing Virginia. Visit us online at BoldDominion.org. Have a friend who’s trying to figure out Virginia state politics? Tell them about this show. And then subscribe in Spotify, Apple Podcasts, and wherever fine podcasts are served up.

Bold Dominion is a member of the Virginia Audio Collective, online at Virginia Audio dot org. Check out all the podcasts from the collective, including Democracy in Danger. All over the world, liberal democracy is getting turned upside-down. And here in the United States in 2020, we're no exception. Can we save democracy -- and make it work better? Join hosts Will Hitchcock and Siva Vaidhyanathan as they talk to leading scholars, writers and thinkers about the most pressing challenges facing government of, by and for the people. That’s Democracy in Danger, available at VirginiaAudio.org.

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Right now, Joe Biden holds the largest polling leads that we’ve seen in the 21st century. What happens if he wins the vote but Trump refuses to concede? We just talked about our uncertainty about what could happen in the streets. There are also a lot of unknowns about what happens in Washington if Trump forces a constitutional crisis.

In the second half of the show, we’re delving into that question with Richmond-based journalist Peter Galuszka.

PG: Well, it's very, very uncharted territory, because it's never really quite happened. It's very uncertain what the President means and how seriously he can be taken, because he often says things then pretends it didn't happen. There was kind of a wake-up call about this. And it happened in May and June of this year, when there were protests in Washington. And Trump asked, you know, for National Guard help from across the country. And, you know, it seemed to be kind of a political stunt. And what was really strange about that, was that, I think 11 National Guards--I think they're all Republican-governed states, because the governors in the states actually are the commanders-in-chief of their National Guards. So 11 came in. Virginia, by the way, Ralph Northam, the Democratic governor, said "no way." But it was all very strange, because you have these National Guardspeople participating or standing by federal police officers who in several cases were really dispersing protesters, who were peaceful.

NM: And this includes that sort of infamous scene where they dispersed a bunch of protesters in downtown DC so that Trump could have a photo-op in front of a church, right?

PG: Right, at Lafayette Park. And that was really kind of strange. And also National Guard helicopters actually did something that is very strange. They would fly, hover, maybe 45 feet over a crowd, so that the downdraft, the wash from the rotors would create like a tropical storm-like wind, which is really something you can imagine happening in a third world coup. What Trump is doing is really crossing lines, as far as the governor's duties by Constitution, and his own political needs. That's the danger.

NM: You know, Peter, as we talk, it seems frighteningly easy to imagine a scenario in which Trump refuses to leave office even after an election that doesn't go his way, calls up the National Guard exclusively from red states to enforce him getting to stay in office. I mean, how is the description of that scenario different from a coup or a low-level civil war?

PG: Well, that's the whole point. And that's where you get into strange territory. Because basically, top generals and admirals and whatever at the Pentagon have let it be known very clearly, they do not want to put the military in any kind of position of control or forcing things after a contested election. They've been very, very clear about that. And certainly, there have been plenty of people in the military, in the intelligence community, and other places that have been very strong in saying Trump is dangerous. And this is entirely possible. So you know, it just depends. I just don't--as I say, this hasn't really been dealt with before. It's uncharted waters.

NM: I mean, look, Trump could still win the Electoral College. There is the chance of that. But at this point of this recording, polls are not looking very good for that to happen. But you say that, you know, a transition of power would have to happen according to the Constitution. But I mean, in every other Constitutional norm or rule is being violated along the way, the last four years. What's to stop a Trump regime from just saying, "Yeah, not really"?

PG: Yeah. Well, that's a great question. And, you know, just about any other president would, you know, say: "Okay, we've got to abide by what the Constitution says. We took an oath to pack the Constitution." Trump doesn't seem in his really chaotic way of managing things of being willing to do that. And of course, with the COVID-19 pandemic, it just makes things even harder, because you know, you have, you know, early voting, a lot of mail voting--Trump has tried to make mail in voting, obviously, a topic for fraud, which there hasn't been much evidence of that. And he goes on and on about that.

And so I don't know, I mean, it's too late to stuff the election now, I believe. I mean, I've already voted. I voted in person. And I know other people voted by mail. But I mean, I just don't know. I mean, as I say, this is a frightening transition. It's going to be a very strange month or several months.

NM: On Election Day--you mentioned earlier that Trump has talked about sending election "observers" to people polling places around the country, sort of trying to get right wing groups and sheriffs who are friendly to Trump to go show up and observe or intimidate or whatever happens to happen on Election Day at those polls. What's the meaning of this in places like Virginia?

PG: I'm not sure. Because I mean, basically, as far as poll observers in the polling places themselves, there are strict rules about how many can be there at one time. I mean, I know that oftentimes--I voted in a Methodist Church, sort of in the country. And when I go into vote, there are often, you know, partisan people. They're trying to give me their pamphlets. And that's legal within limits. But once you go into the polling place, you're not supposed to be hassled like that.

And another thing that Trump has suggested that he might do is calling local sheriffs and local police officers to beef up whatever. The thing is, he doesn't control local sheriff's departments. He doesn't control local police departments. That's not his job. So I don't know what kind of authority he can bring to bear on that. legally.

NM: Yeah, I think that's the key part is legally, right? I mean, look, for four years, Trump has done everything out of sort of an authoritarian's playbook. You know, the same sort of stuff that authoritarians around the world, whether it's Duterte or Putin would do in their respective countries.

There was one other piece that I found interesting--what you're talking about with if there's a contested election, you know, there's contestations in either Pennsylvania or Wisconsin or Florida. Take me through what the process will look like.

PG: Well, from what I've read it that is that the electors have to follow the popular votes. I believe the Supreme Court has given clear instructions that the electors have to go with the popular vote. But then again, I mean, there's scenarios where, you know, you have a state legislature, somehow, maybe Republican-led or something somehow putting a monkey wrench in this. So it's very unclear and you know, just given, you know, Trump's attitudes about, you know, getting rid of the Coronavirus that he's contracted. I mean, he's just making no sense at all. Those are good questions. And it's really not clear what would happen.

NM: Peter, you mentioned earlier, and we've talked about it over the years that we've known each other about your time spent working in Russia, back in the 1990s. You were there during a coup. Take me through what that experience was like.

PG: Yeah, I was bureau chief for Business Week, for several years in the 80s. And then again in the 90s. And in October 1993, October 3-4, the Soviet Union had already fallen apart. And Boris Yeltsin was the President of the Russian Federation. And he was having a big constitutional problem with the Duma, this legislature that was popularly elected. And things got out of hand very quickly. There had been protests for weeks. Yeltsin wanted to dissolve the parliament and move on to have quicker reforms on what he thought should happen. And this legally elected parliament was dragging its feet.

Well, one day I was driving home from the country with my family and everything had fallen apart. The police were just not there. They were fighting with people. I mean, really strange-looking, skinhead young men were having automatic weapons carried around. And pretty soon it erupted into--we see the protests was hijacked by radicals. Sorry, we call them the Red-Browns, because they were both radical communists and radical fascists at the same time. And so that's what happened.

And it was just like two days of intense fighting. 187 people died, were killed in the official count. Unofficially, they put the figure at more than two thousand. And it was just wild. I mean, a lot of the action help happened down the street from my apartment and my news bureau. And I was standing next to a tank, a late model battle tank, and several of them as they started shelling, the parliament building. And the only thing that really saved Yeltsin was that the army decided to back him. And they ended up crushing, you know, the protesters.

And anyway, it was a very, very bizarre and frightening time, because here's a country that has control of a lot of nuclear weapons, and you don't even know who's going to be president or who's in charge anymore. And I hope that doesn't happen here. You don't want to go through that.

NM: No, no, I think we all who are listening to this podcast, I think, take for granted sometimes that the rule of law is a thing. That we live in a constitutional republic and that up till now, people who are elected to office follow certain rules and norms. But you start having these conversations and realize that it is a piece of paper and people with power can do...what they're going to do with power.

One of the things that--so I've read about coups, predominantly in Latin America and other parts of the global south. And it seems--I mean, first of all, these things typically happen quickly, right? A coup was either successful or it's fought back within days, maybe two weeks max. It's also very important who the military sides with, but they don't necessarily side with the side that they ideologically agree with the most so much as the side they think is going to win. What happened in Russia?

PG: Well, I think there's something, you know, that even though the Soviet--or Russia, rather--military forces has a reputation for being nasty. You can also say they're pros. They're like our military, for the most part. They're professionals and they don't want to get involved in politics. And they just want to, you know, follow their duties and do what they need to do to protect the country.

So I think the military made a very conscious decision, saying it's best for our country, if I guess Yeltsin prevails, and we have to do this. You're right, though, that the timeframe for these things, unless it goes into a protracted Civil War, is generally not very long.

NM: So, you know, the reason I keep bringing this back to Virginia as well, is the role of a military and the sort of institutional force and weapons and power that exists with it. You know, so much of that is based here in Virginia. The people that live in work here in Virginia are the ones who would have a role to play one way or another in stopping or not stopping--

PG: Well, you're absolutely right. But I think one of the things--you have to understand, I think, and I'm not a military law expert. But from what I understand is that the officers and troops of the military take an oath to defend the Constitution. They do not take an oath to defend an individual president. And they do have the right, I think, to disobey orders that they consider completely unconstitutional. So you know, it depends on how they viewed it.

What's really critical is how the leadership at the Pentagon, you know, reacts to any kind of possible coup or election, pandering, whatever. That's key. And they've indicated that they don't want to do it. So that's probably a plus.

NM: What does that mean, though? If the whole thing is contested, and everybody who believes Fox News for their information, you know, believes it's one thing and the rest of the country believes the actual reality...where's that leave the Pentagon?

PG: First off, the military has been very worried about Trump since he's been in office. Look how many defense chiefs he's had. And look at--the book by Bolton, I read that. And look at General Mattis of the Marines. I mean, he's very, very upfront about his worries about Trump. But you see, my point is that if you have people like that, who are professional and powerful and entrenched--they're not going to necessarily go along with what Trump's tells them to do if it's clearly wrong. And so I think that is the potential saving grace.

NM: Peter, well, how do we close this conversation?

PG: I don't know.

NM: There's an election November 3, but of course, early voting is happening now all month of October. Let's say after this election, through fits and starts and difficult shenanigans along the way, Trump eventually does, one way or another, step down from the office of President. Where does that leave the country? Where does that leave the state of Virginia with such deep schisms between two parts of the electorate?

PG: Well, I'm not 100% sure. Because most of the Republicans i know, they don't really favor Trump, but they won't really go after him. You know what I'm saying? And so I think there's a fair number of people who really want him going off into the wind, you know, just sort of put him in the rearview mirror. And so I don't know, I don't know how much--I think if there's a resolution of this, you know, Trump has done a number of things that are going to have to be fixed. But I don't see it as that onerous a job. I think will work out, I think Virginia will be fine. I do hope so.

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NM: Peter Galuszka is a journalist in the Richmond area. Thanks to him and activist Emily Gorcenski for joining us this week.

My name’s Nathan Moore, and I’m the host of Bold Dominion. Huge thanks as always to our producer Aaryan Balu. Find this show online at BoldDominion.org. Go ahead and subscribe… it’s just a click away.

Keep social distancing, y’all, and I’ll talk with you in two weeks!