We need to be ready for the political violence that is coming.

Umbrella man using a hammer to start a riot.

The riot in Minneapolis on July 27, 2020 after the murder of George Floyd was a street protest before it was a riot.  Crowds gathered on South Lake Street in front of the Third Precinct milling around and carrying signs protesting Floyd’s killing.  Then a white man in black pants, a black hoodie, wearing a gas mask and carrying an umbrella, walked along the front windows of an AutoZone store purposefully breaking the store’s windows with a hammer he had concealed in the backpack he wore.  Another white man with heavily tattooed arms wearing a backpack and a white t-shirt and black pants and a white helmet followed the first man.  He was carrying a Molotov cocktail, which he was lighting with a Bic-style lighter.

The man, who became known online as “umbrella Man” after the video went viral, spray painted “free shit for everyone zone” on the plywood doors of the store before setting out to break its windows. Police, who studied video taken at the time of the man’s attack on the AutoZone store, later identified him as a white supremacist, member of the Hells Angels motorcycle gang and “known associate” of the Aryan Cowboys, a white supremacist prison gang based in Minnesota and Kentucky.

In the background of a viral video taken of the “umbrella Man” that day, crowds of protesters can be seen milling around the street in front of what the videographer says is the Third Precinct.  Several protesters are seen approaching the man breaking the store windows and can be heard trying to dissuade him from doing more violence, telling him, “the cops will come for you for doing that crap.  That’s garbage.”  When a crowd begins to gather, he flees around the side of the store.

The store is shown in flames a few hours later after dark.  A police search warrant affidavit filed the next day stated that the “sole aim” of the “umbrella man” had been to “incite violence.”  A police arson investigator wrote, “Until the actions of the person your affiant has been calling ‘Umbrella Man,’ the protests had been relatively peaceful. The actions of this person created an atmosphere of hostility and tension.” 

A fire set at the AutoZone store not long after its windows had been broken was the first of 30 incidents of arson that took place that night.  The riot that followed ended up costing more than $500 million, left two people dead and was touched off by one man armed with a hammer and another with a lighter who came prepared to turn a protest into a riot.

More than $30 million in damage was done to the United States Capitol on January 6 and five people died that day.  A mob of people incited by Donald Trump at his speech on the Ellipse turned violent after several police barricades were pushed down by a crowd of men who came prepared to do battle in combat gear, wearing helmets, bulletproof vests and carrying cans of “bear spray” and other weapons.  Some of those arrested for assaulting police officers and violently breaking into the Capitol building were members of antisemitic white supremacist groups like the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, and the Three Percenters.

The assault on the Capitol has been called a riot.  Actually, it was political violence that was planned ahead of time.  Just as the “umbrella man” was outfitted in all black and wore a gas mask and carried a backpack to conceal his weapon, many of the “protesters” at the Capitol were outfitted in camouflage pants and jackets and wore military-style helmets and elbow and knee pads and so-called “tactical” gloves with armored knuckles.

People have been asking me what form political violence will take if and when Donald Trump loses the next presidential election.  It’s already happened, and radical right-wing white supremacist groups are preparing for new violence as we speak.  They already have the guns, and now reports around the country say that gun stores are running out of ammunition.  There have been numerous reports that violent right-wing groups are recruiting members from police ranks and the active duty and retired military.

They’re going to call what they are planning “protests,” and when they devolve into riots, they’ll say that antifa provoked the violence.  They’ve already made that excuse about the assault on the Capitol despite voluminous evidence, both video and testimonial, that the provocateurs were members of right-wing gangs who arrived prepared for combat and used rehearsed military tactics in the assault on the Capitol.    

They’re going to incite political violence and blame it on “outsiders” and “left wing agitators.”  They raised more than a million dollars to support the assault on the Capitol on January 6.  They used right-wing money to pay for online ads and robocalls advertising the “Stop the Steal” rallies held on January 5 and 6.  They raised money to pay for buses to transport people to Washington.  Donald Trump’s own campaign paid hotel bills for “Stop the Steal” organizers and for so-called “war rooms” at the Willard and Trump International hotels. 

It took weeks to raise the money and prepare the ground for January 6.  They have months to prepare for whatever they have planned following elections they don’t win in the midterms, and they’ve got almost three years to prepare for November 2024.  If you don’t think they have established phony political PACs and are already raising money, you’re dreaming.

A riot is a mass event involving human beings over which no one has control.  But what is going on right now by violent right-wing groups and the elected political figures who support them is very controlled.  Everything will be well-organized right up until the moment it isn’t.  That’s what political violence is.  It’s planned chaos.  If you watch the video footage of the assault on the Capitol, you can see it with your own eyes.  It’s a big mass of people moving in every direction.  But here and there, you can see well organized, targeted movement that took planning and practice. 

They’ll plan it so it doesn’t look like it was planned or that anyone is in charge.  But someone was in charge of what happened on January 6, and someone will be in charge of the political violence that’s coming.  People died on January 6, and people will die when the next political violence breaks out, all because we will hold elections and democracy means somebody has to win and somebody has to lose. 

What’s coming are elections in the absence of democracy.  The political violence that follows will bring the death of politics as we have known it. 

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