My post today is long but it’s also a critically important and timely topic. There are plenty of resource links based on a very fine article from SALON.com that leads us up to the 2022 midterm elections.
(Note: Edited and formatted to fit the blog. Complete article
at the SALON link above):
“Far-right activists have
a brilliant new strategy: Don't vote!”
Pictured above left to right: Ali Alexander, Nick Fuentes, and Alex
Jones fearsome threesome who all are 2020 deniers & Trump sycophants bigly…
Ali Alexander (in the picture above) is the “Stop the Steal” protest organizer who helped engineer the January 6 Capitol insurrection recently declared during a livestream appearance that he probably won't vote in this year's midterm elections.
Right Wing Watch first reported that Alexander said: “Republicans had failed to adequately court his or his supporters' vote” and that conservatives might be better served by strategically losing rather than winning that cannot be sustained.”
Strange as this may seem, he's not alone. With this
declaration, Alexander joins a handful of far-right activists.
That includes white nationalist leader Nick Fuentes (also pictured above) along with failed FL congressional candidate Laura Loomer, both who are discouraging their fans and followers from voting as a rebuke to the GOP.
The trend began in August with Loomer, a
self-declared proud Islamophobe and white nationalist who, after losing the Republican
primary in the FL 11th congressional district, delivered a bizarre speech.
In part she refused to concede saying: “Because I'm a winner”). The following day, she urged her supporters not to vote for the Republican who defeated her, six-term GOP incumbent Rep. Daniel Webster, in the upcoming November general election.
In her post, on the
right-wing social media site GETTR, Loomer
wrote: “I encourage all of my supporters and all of my voters to NOT
support Daniel Webster and the establishment RNC and Big Tech voter fraud
machine that is propping his feeble body up and depriving my constituents of
the representation they deserve and need. I weep not for myself, but for our
country and the constituents of Florida's 11th District who do not have a
Congressional Representative as a result of voter fraud, illegal Big Tech
election interference, and RNC corruption. The Republican Party is broken beyond
repair.
(Note: The
election was close but the result was clear: Webster got 51.1% of the vote to
Loomer's 44.2% thus he won by roughly 6,000 votes.)
In the weeks since
her loss, Loomer doubled down on these messages, saying: “The GOP disgusts me
these days, I have no faith in the party anymore.”
She still refuses to blindly
support treasonous RINOS, and in the GETTR post last Sunday, she again wrote: “I
will never support people who are working to undermine our country and the
integrity of our elections by giving them my vote. In fact, I will actively
campaign AGAINST the demented, sickly RINO Dan Webster who the GOP
establishment rigged my election in favor of. You don't reward cowardice and
corruption in your own party with your vote.”
Since losing her Florida primary, Loomer also said she won't vote for any Republican who isn't fighting
for the release of the J-6 political prisoners. Then still in another post
she said that she would refuse to vote for any Republican who fails to support
“mass deportations, who isn't fighting for the release of the J-6 political
prisoners, and who lacks a viable plan to combat voter fraud.”
Loomer also recently aired numerous complaints about the
party, charging that GOP officials had blacklisted her campaign, orchestrated
Trump's failure to endorse her
candidacy.
Loomer also accused Gov. Ron DeSantis' of plagiarizing her work
because she had taken illegals to Nancy Pelosi's house years before DeSantis did
with his Martha’s Vineyard stunt flying them from TX to FL to MD.
Now add in Nick Fuentes,
the head of the far-right America First or “Groyper movement” vowed that
if DeSantis wins the Republican presidential nomination in 2024 instead of
Trump, Fuentes won't vote for him and would work to spoil the election for
Republicans, saying: “I support Trump or nothing at all. I'm either voting
for Trump in '24 or I'm not voting. That's gotta be the message: We want Trump,
we want Trump in the primary, we want Trump in the general, and we are not
going to vote for anyone else. They need to understand that.”
He then suggested
that the far right would only need a small concerted minority of Trump
supporters to say: “We will sit out the election, we will spoil it for Republicans
if we get DeSantis.” Because in my opinion, that's the only way we're going to
salvage Trumpism — by sitting out.”
Fuentes said he was “sitting out the midterms” as well because he is “unimpressed and disappointed at what I've seen from the party.”
The only exception, he said, should be voters in Arizona, where the slate of far-right candidates — from gubernatorial nominee Kari Lake to U.S. Senate nominee Blake Masters to incumbents such as Rep. Paul Gosar, and state Sen. Wendy Rogers — is sufficiently radical to garner his approval, “But anywhere else? Just forget about it. No chance.”
He
then continued in that same vein on Telegram complaining that the campaign war chest DeSantis has
amassed demonstrates a nefarious conspiracy saying: “Once again, the
establishment working together on both sides to dethrone Trump. Honestly I hope
the Democrats maintain their House majority and gain control of the Senate even
if that might harm me personally, because the GOP has done nothing to earn the
support of the people since backstabbing Trump in 2020.”
Now enters Ali Alexander, the bombastic self-described
political strategist who is widely credited with orchestrating the protest
movement leading up to January 6 riot and attack on the Capitol.
In a recent livestream on
the new app Callin, which he entitled “My
fears of a 2022 win” he said: “I'm increasingly of the belief that I
personally will not be voting this midterm election. I'm doing a lot of
soul-searching on that, and that's a decision I have come to myself, but it's
increasingly a decision that some of my friends and colleagues have told me
[they share].”
Like Fuentes,
Alexander urged voters in Arizona, and perhaps PA where far-right Christian nationalist Doug Mastriano is
the GOP gubernatorial nominee, to still turn out. He continued: “The reason
I can't is my vote hasn't been earned … on a personal level. On a move [sic]
level, our vote's really not been courted as a demographic.”
He when predicted that
Republicans would likely lose the Senate saying: “We're shrinking our
presumptive majority in the House already. It's counterintuitive, but a
short-term win can mean a long-term loss. We need to take both chambers [of
Congress] or none since a narrow victory in the House would presumably elevate
Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA) — who has become a despised figure on the far right
— to the speaker's chair and number two in line for the presidency.”
Alexander then claimed
many other people in his friend group that are public figures were starting to
say the same thing. He then proclaimed on social media that he and Loomer
had warned: “The GOP and even parts of MAGA Inc sold out patriots and
gave Democrats a chance of keeping BOTH chambers of Congress. In an ideal
world, I'm saying, Vote Republican, vote straight down the ticket. A lot of
my friends are not feeling that; I'm not feeling that. A loss is going to
sting. As people know in other disciplines sometimes a loss and mitigating and
preparing for that loss is better than a win that cannot be sustained.”
This notion of “strategically losing” was something few
wanted to talk about out loud, and Alexander acknowledged that it sounded “too
similar to sabotage” but he also called
on listeners to “share this podcast with some of our allies who are still
platformed, such as far-right media figures Jack Posobiec or Mike Cernovich, in case they too
wanted to join the don't-vote groundswell.”
On GETTR, Alexander promoted the livestream with a post proclaiming
that he and Loomer had warned people that “GOP and even parts of MAGA Inc sold out patriots and gave Democrats a chance of keeping BOTH chambers of
Congress.” He then added a hashtag he's apparently trying to get trending, “#GOPrevolt.”
Twitter users responded to
the news of Alexander's announcement with variations on “That's the spirit” and
“Spread the word.”
Other progressive commentators have pointed out that
Republicans' insistence that the 2020 election was stolen likely depressed turnout in the January 2021 U.S. Senate
runoff elections in Georgia — perhaps leading to Senate wins by Democrats
Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff — and that these continuing claims could have
the same effect going forward.
Progressive podcast
host David Pakman said in July, after Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) mused
that conservatives still angry about Trump's 2020 loss might not turn out this
year, adding: “You will never hear me say on this show stuff to try to trick
Republicans into not voting. But I'm certainly not going to tell Republicans
not to do it themselves.”
On the other hand, notes Political Research Associates research analyst Ben Lorber, who said: “There's a complicated irony at work when it comes to these far-right activists threatening to withhold their support, and their influence has already spread far and wide within Republican politics, and they themselves may not matter anymore.”
Lorber also recalled, that
Fuentes boasted that his America First movement would begin endorsing
and running its own candidates.
He said that would be
in order to deepen their impact on the mainstream GOP adding: “That by and
large hasn't happened, and instead Fuentes and his movement have been
increasingly sidelined in the larger universe of conservatism. Faced with
this disappointment, Fuentes is doubling down on the insurrectionary, anti-establishment
energy that drove events like the Million MAGA March in December 2020. Now the
white nationalist politics Fuentes has long championed have moved mainstream while
the Republican Party has little patience for the Groyper leader himself.”
My 2 cents: I have inserted this key part below from this article
as a reminder of that which many already know and that should be a major
concern for anyone who wants preserve our democracy is this well-known fact: Across
America, many Republicans who still question the legitimacy of the 2020 presidential
election are on the ballot for the 2022 midterms. To date, at least 195 GOP
Senate, House, governor, attorney general, or secretary of state nominees have
echoed Trump’s “Big Lie” and false claims that the election was stolen (data from
the top notch media site: FiveThirtyEight and their tracking). Yet multiple reviews in state
after state and court after court have all shown that the 2020 election was fair
and the results accurate, including over 60 court cases, numerous recounts,
audits, and audits or even the recounts. Multiple officials from both political
parties, including Trump’s own former AG William Barr, have said they saw no
evidence of widespread fraud.
Still Trump peddles the lie mostly for his own personal political and monetary benefit – a proven fact.
The above article plus that which we know and have seen and still see today
underscores the fact that our democracy is truly under attack and not from
outside sources, but from within our national ranks and mostly from the GOP’s
side as graphically pointed out in the SALON article above.
I close with this set of references regarding free speech vs. hateful,
harmful, and speech that translates into violent acts (January 6 great recent
historical example) with this synopsis:
HATE SPEECH PRECEDENCE: Some limits on “free speech”
expression were contemplated by the framers and have been read into the
Constitution by the Supreme Court.
For example, in 1942, Justice Frank Murphy summarized case law which basically
applies today: “There are certain well-defined and limited classes of
speech, the prevention and punishment of which have never been thought to raise
a Constitutional problem. These include the lewd and obscene, the profane, the
libelous and the insulting or 'fighting' words – those which by their very
utterances inflict injury or tend to incite an immediate breach of the peace.”
Traditionally, however, if the speech did not fall within one of the above exceptions, it was protected speech.
For example:
(1) In 1969, the
Supreme Court protected a Ku Klux Klan member’s racist and hate-filled speech
and created the “imminent danger” test to permit hate speech.
(2) The court ruled
in Brandenburg v. Ohio that: “The constitutional guarantees of free speech and free press do not
permit a state to forbid or proscribe advocacy of the use of force, or of law
violation except where such advocacy is directed to inciting imminent lawless
action and is likely to incite or produce such action.”
This test has been modified very little from its inception in 1969 and the formulation is still good law in the United States.
Only speech that poses an imminent danger
of unlawful action, where the speaker has the intention to incite such action
and there is the likelihood that this will be the consequence of his or her
speech, may be restricted and punished by that law. Now today so much hate
speech does in many regards cross and erase the common sense and legal sense of
the concept of “free speech.”
The impact of Brandenburg is that the court held that
the government cannot punish inflammatory speech unless that speech is: “Directed
to inciting or producing imminent lawless action and is
likely to incite or produce such action.”
Specifically, the Court
struck down Ohio's criminal syndicalism statute, because that statute broadly
prohibited the mere advocacy of violence.
In the process, Whitney v. California (1927) was
explicitly overruled, and doubt was cast on Schenck v. United States (1919), Abrams v. United States (1919), Gitlow v. New York (1925), and Dennis v. United States (1951).
So, how will the hate
across rightwing and a badly divided country impact 2022? That truly is the
$64,000 question isn’t it?
All-in-all, I still have
great hope and faith in the voters – that is the well-educated and well-informed
ones and hopefully in a growing majority. But, one never knows until the last
vote is counted and this time around, hopefully our vote will indeed count.
So, as always stay tuned and hopeful. Also, I’m sorry this post is so long, but I thought it timely and needed for review to help anyway I can to reinforce preserving our democracy which is wobbling far too much these days.
“We the People” can and must turn out
to vote the vote radicals down and out. I hope you will and also please pass the
information around, too. This effort will take all hands on deck as they say.
Thanks for stopping by.
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