Kitabı oku: «The Radical Right During Crisis», sayfa 9
Anti-government Ideology in the Times of COVID-19
Jaclyn Fox
By mid-April 2020, protests against government-imposed lockdowns began springing up across the United States. At their centre was a pronounced distrust of the government and push-back against perceived intrusion of personal freedoms. However, as these anti-government protesters spoke out against federal and state level interventions, they simultaneously elevated the actions of the individual at the centre—President Donald Trump. Here, I explore the peculiar intersection between anti-government ideology and support for President Trump over the course of the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, I map the changing responses of the Oath Keepers1 to government intervention against their consistent narrative of deep-state actors utilizing COVID-19 to undermine Trump.2
Initial stages of the COVID-19 crisis: Anti-government for increased intervention?
Although classified as an anti-government group,3 the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis paradoxically saw Oath Keepers calling for increased government intervention at the state and federal levels.4 Indeed, Oath Keeper leadership supported shelter-in-place efforts as well as a complete shut-down of commercial air traffic (domestic and international), mass transportation, the closing of schools, and the suspending of public events.5 Further, they viewed lack of intervention as detrimental to US citizens, chastising Trump for not taking such actions as pre-emptively suspending air travel.
Not only did the Oath Keepers implore their members to self-quarantine, but they also called upon state governors to make these regulations official—declaring pandemics and requesting assistance from both state and national sources, including the US military.6 This latter step is particularly interesting for a group suspicious of federal government intervention. However, Oath Keeper leaders noted that participation by the military would allow Trump to be guided in pandemic decision-making by military personnel as opposed to “career bureaucrats”7—global elites viewed with deep suspicion by the Oath Keepers—perhaps explaining their military support.
The government’s lack of response early on was cast as a malicious project of concealment by those in power. Specifically, Oath Keepers argued that it was part of a deep-state plot to undermine Trump. Although Trump was the actor publicly downplaying COVID-19, the Oath Keepers did not place the blame on him personally. Rather, they suggested Trump was ignoring the severity of the crisis due to the “terrible advice” he was receiving from deep state8 forces including the CDC and other globalists.
Early statements from the Oath Keepers’ leadership on their official website and Twitter feeds suggested that COVID-19 was a dangerous virus whose severity was beyond that which was being shared with the general public.9 Leaders supported medical professionals10 in their assessment of the crisis and called for government intervention11 at the state and federal level. Furthermore, they cited Trump’s inaction as proof of a deep state conspiracy in which the globalist elites were misleading Trump into downplaying the severity of the virus.
Mid-way through: the reality of COVID-19 sets in
By the end of March/beginning of April 2020, Oath Keepers spokespersons shifted from a call for increasing intervention to blasting the overreach of government officials. They viewed the globalist elites as opportunists, using the crisis to encroach upon the Second Amendment12 right to bear arms13 and First Amendment14 freedom of assembly.15 Although spokespersons had called for a ban on large assemblies16 in previous articles, the act of prolonged government intervention appeared to spark intense backlash.
Additionally, Oath Keepers leaders were suspicious of elites’ economic aims: suggesting required vaccinations and the disparagement of hydroxychloroquine17 for treating COVID-1918 were ways in which the globalists could make money in the treatment of COVID-19.
Oath Keeper spokespersons noted a seeming prioritization of “globalist” aims over national freedoms in intervention efforts, pointing to an early hesitation to close international air traffic but a speedy move towards domestic lock-down.
At the onset of COVID-19, the perceived conspiracy revolved around deep-state officials downplaying the virus, encouraging Trump not to take direct action. Over time, however, the conspiracy evolved into profound overreach, accusing globalists of using the virus as a means to strip individuals of their liberty. Interestingly, Trump was not blamed directly for this overreach; rather, Oath Keeper officials queried why Trump was allowing the globalists to continue to surround him especially when his own base was against it.
Overall, Oath Keeper leadership’s understanding of the COVID-19 crisis morphed from a purposeful inaction by elites to their capitalization on the crisis by taking away personal liberties, gun rights, painting Trump in a negative light, and benefitting economically.
Past the peak: where do we go from here?
By mid-April 2020 public messaging by the Oath Keepers became a call for followers to fight back against perceived government intrusion. Although spokespersons were not arguing that the virus did not exist, they repeated Trump’s statement about the cure being worse than the virus, viewing the situation as the deep state making inroads in taking over individual liberty.
They praised local government officials who disagreed19 with federal and state mandates regarding social distancing, advertised for lockdown protests, and spoke out against social media figures20 censoring lockdown protest events.
Moreover, they disparaged local actors who implemented lockdown orders as puppets for globalist elites.
While this is in line with anti-government ideology overall, it is curiously pro-Trump. That is, when Trump did not act strongly enough in the face of COVID-19, this was perceived not as his inadequacy but rather as a complot by deep-state actors feeding him bad information about the virus’s banality. Similarly, when Trump supported increased government regulation (maligned by Oath Keepers) this was again not due to Trump’s mal intent but rather yet another deep-state plot to strip individuals of personal freedoms.
Although Trump is not blamed per se there are calls for him to intercede on behalf of citizens by removing the “deep-state elites” and changing the regulations he “let happen”—a passive framing as opposed to was actively seen as creating.
In the face of changing “facts”, the narrative remains consistent
In sum, throughout ideological contradictions and changing perception of events on the ground, the consistent thread within Oath Keepers messaging is that Trump’s positive actions– i.e., those consistent with the ideology of Oath Keepers—are a result of his personal attitudes and behaviours, while his negative actions are the consequence of deep-state plots to undermine him. Overall, Trump is praised as being the only US president not to take advantage of a crisis to centralize power21 but rather to de-regulate and de-centralize as response. While the future of COVID-19 remains uncertain, an Oath Keeper re-tweet from the end of April 2020 summarizes one individual’s views:
Jaclyn Fox is a Doctoral Fellow at CARR and doctoral candidate in international relations at American University, Washington, D.C.
1 “Oath Keepers,” Southern Poverty Law Center, https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/extremist-files/group/oath-keepers.
2 At the time of publication, the Oath Keepers website was de-platformed by its server provider. The group states that they intend to re-build the website, however, the articles referenced below are not currently hosted online. Citations and URLs were accurate at time of initial writing (May 2020).
3 “Oath Keepers”.
4 Stewart Rhodes, “Oath Keepers Emergency Open Letter to the State Governors on Fighting the Coronavirus,” Oath Keepers, March 11, 2020, https://oathkeepers.org/2020/03/oath-keepers-open-letter-to-the-state-governors-on-fighting-the-coronavirus/.
5 Rhodes.
6 Rhodes.
7 Rhodes.
8 Stewart Rhodes, “Oath Keepers Coronavirus Warning and Advice on How to Protect Yourself,” Oath Keepers, March 5, 2020, https://oathkeepers.org/2020/03/oath-keepers-coronavirus-warning-and-advice-on-how-to-protect-yourself/.
9 Stewart Rhodes, “Coronavirus Is AIRBORNE! You Are Not Being Told the Full Truth,” Oath Keepers, March 12, 2020, https://oathkeepers.org/2020/03/coronavirus-is-airborne-you-are-not-being-told-the-full-truth/.
10 Nancy Oakley, “Doctor’s Blunt Speech About COVID-19 Hits Home,” Oath Keepers, March 23, 2020, https://oathkeepers.org/2020/03/doctors-blunt-speech-about-covid-19-hits-home/.
11 Rhodes, “Oath Keepers Emergency Open Letter to the State Governors on Fighting the Coronavirus.”
12 Nancy Oakley, “Gun Control End Game—Bloomberg Groups Launch Campaign to Close Gun Stores,” Oath Keepers, April 6, 2020, https://oathkeepers.org/2020/04/gun-control-end-game-bloomberg-groups-launch-campaign-to-close-gun-stores/.
13 Nancy Oakley, “Too Bad You Couldn’t Get a Gun to Protect Yourself,” Oath Keepers, March 24, 2020, https://oathkeepers.org/2020/03/too-bad-you-couldnt-get-a-gun-to-protect-yourself/.
14 Nancy Oakley, “Facebook Shuts Down ‘Open New Jersey’ Protest Page for ‘Promoting Crime,’” Oath Keepers, April 20, 2020, https://oathkeepers.org/2020/04/facebook-shuts-down-open-new-jersey-protest-page-for-promoting-crime/.
15 Nancy Oakley, “Mark Zuckerberg: Lockdown Protests Are ‘Misinformation,’ Facebook Will Ban Organizers,” Oath Keepers, April 20, 2020, https://oathkeepers.org/2020/04/mark-zuckerberg-lockdown-protests-are-misinformation-facebook-will-ban-organizers/.
16 Rhodes, “Oath Keepers Emergency Open Letter to the State Governors on Fighting the Coronavirus.”
17 Nancy Oakley, “Dr. Graves Slams Dr. Fauci & Attack on Liberty Amid COVID19,” Oath Keepers, April 23, 2020, https://oathkeepers.org/2020/04/dr-graves-slams-dr-fauci-attack-on-liberty-amid-covid19/.
18 Nancy Oakley, “Detroit Rep Says Hydroxychloroquine, Trump Helped Save Her Life,” Oath Keepers, April 8, 2020, https://oathkeepers.org/2020/04/detroit-rep-says-hydroxychloroquine-trump-helped-save-her-life/.
19 Nancy Oakley, “Sheriff: I Won’t Assist in Destruction of Businesses or People’s Constitutional Rights,” Oath Keepers, April 20, 2020, https://oathkeepers.org/2020/04/sheriff-i-wont-assist-in-destruction-of-businesses-or-peoples-constitutional-rights/.
20 Oakley, “Mark Zuckerberg.”
21 Nancy Oakley, “Trump Rewrites the Book on Emergencies,” Oath Keepers, April 21, 2020, https://oathkeepers.org/2020/04/trump-rewrites-the-book-on-emergencies/.
The Radical Right is Weaponizing COVID-19 Online
Bethan Johnson
Within the first five months of 2020, COVID-19 spread across every populated continent and infected more than two million people, and estimates predict the infections and deaths of millions more. More than just a tragic outbreak of an infectious disease, COVID-19 has proven to be something of a social and political Rorschach Test.
Before movement restrictions came into effect, in multiple cities in the UK, for example, several Britons were arrested on suspicion of racially aggravated assault, beating and attacking members of the East Asian community, these representing just the horrible tip of an iceberg that includes unreported crimes and other forms of race-based discrimination against members of the East Asian diaspora in the UK.1
Beyond even these responses are those of the extreme radical right. On the one hand, reports have emerged from the US about the foiled attempt to literally weaponise COVID-19 by a neo-Nazi group.2 On the other is the rhetorical weaponising of COVID-19 online. From mainstream websites including YouTube and Twitter, to more specialist platforms such as Gab and Wire, extreme content has been flooding in about COVID-19, using it as a topical mechanism for reiterating racist and anti-state narratives essential to extremist ideologies. We can know that this is happening by simply believing what known members of the extreme right-wing are saying about their take on COVID-19, statements about ‘how we use this story’,3 or admissions that ‘it does look like the kind of event that’ll benefit people like ourselves’.4
Much of the content, for example, blames the outbreak on Chinese food standards and practices.5 This line of thinking is then expanded to more general commentary on the perceived brutality of Chinese food practices as compared to those in western or “white” countries, an argument still further broadened to present the nature of western standards and values as antithetical to “foreign” ones.6
Those, meanwhile, unwilling to draw links between COVID-19 and its origins in China or Chinese culture are accused of pushing a “PC” (political correctness) or an anti-white agenda, with one YouTube channel stating: ‘Just as the globalist left is indifferent to the suffering of white children in order to keep their diversity nightmare alive, so are they indifferent to the consequences for global health of not telling the truth about non-white cultures. It’s typical leftist madness, but this time it’s deadly leftist madness’.7
Given travel’s role in COVID-19’s global transmission, commentators also extrapolate that homogenous nation-states with hard borders would prevent crises such as this (or those in the future, they also warn), or otherwise link/blame migrants and non-white communities, multiculturalism, or current thinking on borders and diversity with the virus.8 The triggering of closed borders, meanwhile, is described as a positive for society, as well as a victory of nationalists. ‘We have to frankly be shameless as in using the coronavirus as a reason to advocate against mass immigration’, far-right YouTuber Millennial Woes explained in an AMA (Ask Me Anything).9
These strands combine to create a harmful meta-narrative for the extreme right, feeding into all the parts of human nature that seek to explain that which we do not understand or cannot control.10 The content gives audiences people and policies to blame—in the form of non-white people and pro-immigration politicians—and actions to take, i.e., to embrace extremist ideas and join an extreme right-wing group that will fight to end the globalised multicultural order.
The narrative is proving troublingly popular. Beyond positive responses to extremists’ content on COVID-19, a basic analysis of the number of views of videos about COVID-19 often have as many if not more views (often in the thousands or tens of thousands) than videos posted on other topics previously, or those posted around the same time that are not about COVID-19.
The issue of the rapid consumption of extremist content speaks to the other serious threat this pandemic poses to the fabric of our society. Isolation and social distancing not only grant those already radicalised more time to connect with one another, to plan and prepare propaganda or future attacks, they also allow new people to be indoctrinated as they consume easy to access extremist content online, with COVID-19 content as their gateway.
While not all those who encounter COVID-19-related extremist pieces will take the next step along the path of radicalisation, some will. Given all that we do not know about COVID-19 and all that we fear, people’s concerns leave them vulnerable to internalising racists’ messages about the inferiority of non-white cultures and the threat of multiculturalism to western lives. Experientially, radicalisation online appears to be most true with young people, whose knowledge of the internet, desire for answers, and continuing journey of self-discovery combine to leave them most amenable to radical content, a reality that extremist groups cater to online.
Meanwhile, by closing schools and essentially halting community interactions, we necessarily have had to cut off a critical element in combating the spread and acceptance of racist messages: a robust, real-life counter-narrative to racist rhetoric. Isolated at home, people are not so able to have stereotypical narratives or caricatures exposed as divorced from reality, to see the richness we gain from living in a diverse society. In these unsettling weeks ahead, there are things to be done to prevent radicalisation during our time of social distancing. Social media platforms need to monitor content not only for false medical information, but for radical racist content.
But we too, as individuals, need to be critical consumers and disseminators of news. We should think about how we pass our time in isolation, particularly if there are young people in our homes, to prevent ourselves from being caught up in hate-filled narratives and sucked into the rabbit-hole of extremist content online. With concerns about a global pandemic, adding to it worries about racism and radicalisation may feel too much to bear. However, this is something we have to consider and be vigilant against, as we are also at a critical moment in the long-term psychological health of our nation.
Dr Bethan Johnson is a Doctoral Fellow at CARR and a researcher in history at the University of Cambridge.
1 “Coronavirus: Teens Arrested Over ‘Racially Aggravated’ Attack,” BBC News, March 6, 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-london-51771355; “Coronavirus: Arrests After ‘Racist Attack’ in Southampton,” BBC News, March 21, 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-hampshire-51988868.
2 Hunter Walker and Jana Winter, “Federal Law Enforcement Document Reveals White Supremacists Discussed Using Coronavirus as a Bioweapon,” Yahoo! News, March 21, 2020, https://news.yahoo.com/federal-law-enforcement-document-reveals-white-supremacists-discussed-using-coronavirus-as-a-bioweapon-212031308.html.
3 Millennial Woes, “AMA Clip: Pandemic, Self-Isolation, Globalisation,” YouTube video, 12:14, posted March 18, March 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDcvS7aOe90.
4 Morgoth’s Review, “A Virus for the Viral Age (With Keith Woods),” YouTube video, 14:39, posted March 14, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7MOuAf4wlw.
5 Way of the World, “The Deadly Virus of Globalism,” YouTube video, 10:17, posted February 2, 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RfEsPAkr0Sc; Morgoth’s Review, “A Virus For The Viral Age (With Keith Woods),” YouTube video; “Video no longer available,” YouTube video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22MuxIOUXWY&feature=emb_logo.
6 Way of the World, “The Deadly Virus of Globalism,” YouTube video; “Video no longer available,” YouTube video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22MuxIOUXWY&feature=emb_logo.
7 Way of the World, “The Deadly Virus of Globalism,” YouTube video.
8 Way of the World, “The Deadly Virus of Globalism,” YouTube video; Account now suspended, tweet from @NationalistTV.
9 Millennial Woes, “AMA Clip: Pandemic, Self-Isolation, Globalisation”.
10 “Video no longer available,” YouTube video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=22MuxIOUXWY&feature=emb_logo; “Video no longer available,” YouTube video, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y96pzlQJPEs&feature=emb_logo; @AmyMek, tweets now no longer available; Richard B. Spencer, “Radix Live: Bernie’s Bust,” Periscope, https://www.pscp.tv/w/1LyxBNRjBQzxN.
