Eco-Roundup: Violent Ideas
Every month, I assemble a round-up of stories I’m following and issues I’m covering, with palate cleansers at the end. Please consider a paid subscription so I can keep up my independent reporting.
I’ve been thinking a lot the last few weeks about the arguments since Charlie Kirk’s assassination about who is more “violent,” the left or the right? In fact, I found myself in one of those debates recently — a nice lil preview of the holiday season spirit.
To get it out of the way: research from the Center for Strategic and International Studies shows that for the last 30 years, in the U.S., people with right-wing political beliefs have been behind far more acts of political violence that people with leftist beliefs. In the past year, that seemed to shift — there was a huge dropoff in right-wing attacks. Some have speculated that it’s because the interests of the far right are now well represented in the White House. At the same time there have been several high-profile acts of violence committed by people with leftist political views.
It’s interesting data. But it doesn’t explain why the right wing in particular so badly wants to have this debate. “Left” and “right” are categories that encompass millions and millions of people who disagree among themselves on 10,000 topics, not least of all whether and when it's okay to use violence — why would it be meaningful to determine which side is broadly more violent than the other?
I suspect it's because this very public debate is laying the groundwork for the Trump administration to justify monitoring and surveilling people on the basis of their political views. As I mentioned in my last post, in September Trump dropped National Security Presidential Memorandum 7, or NSPM-7, announcing a strategy “to investigate and disrupt networks, entities, and organizations that foment political violence,” and indicating that political ideology will help decide who gets investigated.
At the end of October, I listened to this Senate hearing called "Politically Violent Attacks: A Threat to Our Constitutional Order." I’m just going to paste a big excerpt from the intro here, by Missouri Senator Eric Schmitt, because I think it helps illustrate how the thinking goes. Schmitt is laying out an argument that certain ideas logically lead to to violence.
The violence stalking our streets today is a feature not a bug. There is an evil but consistent logic to it. It’s the natural and logical result of the ideology itself.
…
If you truly believe that Charlie Kirk is an existential threat to your safety and you’ve bought into the nonsense that words are violence, then silencing him by any means could seem necessary.
If you believe that mass migration is an inalienable right, then opening the floodgates to uncontrolled immigration, tearing down the border, and attacking those who defend it might look like justice to you.
If you believe that America was conceived in murder and built on stolen land, then you feel no moral obligation to respect and obey its laws.
If you truly believe that the police are the armed enforcers of racist oppression who indiscriminately murder innocent people in the street, then you might consider attacking an officer as a act of brave resistance
When Charlie Kirk was murdered, one of his bullets was engraved with the message, ‘Hey fascist, catch.’
But who taught him that Charlie Kirk was a fascist? Who convinced him that Charlie’s hate made his murder a righteous act? Who told him over and over again that people who believe what Charlie Kirk believes are threats to our democracy? He didn’t invent that worldview; he learned it, as did each and every one of the arsonists, assassins, and militants who came before him.
Perhaps the people in power who said these things didn’t really believe them, but clearly some of the people who listened to them did. And now they are taking those ideas to their final logical conclusions.
Enough. We are faced with only two paths: either we confront his political violence and end it or it will end us.
What he’s saying — and others have said this too, White House Deputy Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, for example — is that certain ideas are dangerous, that in fact they’re an existential threat, and they must be uprooted.
We know by now which ideas are being targeted. NSPM-7 lists anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, anti-Christianity, “extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality” as ideas that animate violence. Taking into account the senator’s remarks, and a separate White House order designating antifa a terrorist group — we can add to the list anti-fascism. The people most likely to hold some of these views are already disproportionately criminalized: Indigenous people, migrants, trans people, Black people.
The people who I’ve had these debates with — about whether the left or the right is more violent — say that they believe in freedom of expression as a peak American value. But if the ideas listed above are officially equated with violence, then we’re already in a place where we have to watch what we say and where we say it.
P.S. Zohran Mamdani’s meeting with Trump week before last seemed to pour a little cold water on all this. Trump didn’t mind if Mamdani called him a fascist — so maybe it wasn’t such a dangerous word, after all. Maybe this whole thing was just a bad joke from ol’ Uncle Trump.
What that exchange really reveals, I think, is that when it comes down to it, a lot of these guys, Trump especially, don’t really believe all the things they say about who is dangerous and who is a criminal, but they’ll monitor the things we say and do and shove some of us into detention facilities anyway.
Other stories I’m following:
For Wired, Ali Winston dug into the prosecution of Casey Goonan on terrorism charges for using an incendiary device to burn up a police SUV. The journalist argued that this case provides a window into Trump’s “War on the Left.” I thought the analysis here from retired FBI agent Mike German was really interesting and builds off of what I talked about in the intro. He argued that Trump’s “NSPM-7 is the natural culmination of ‘radicalization theory’ as the basis for the American approach to counterterrorism.” Radicalization Theory is the idea that terrorism is precipitated by a set of stages that starts with an idea and ends with political violence. As Winston summarized, “The theory centers on excising ‘bad ideas’ from the broader political body and neutralizing the voices of dissident figures who may inspire and possibly radicalize others.” German said that the theory was discredited when he worked on domestic terrorism in the 90s and was resurrected after 9/11. Now we’re seeing it on steroids. I picked up his book, Disrupt, Discredit and Divide: How the New FBI Damages Democracy to learn more about it, and it’s worth a read.
“They have no de-escalation techniques. They’re operating as though they are mercenaries.”
Eamon Whelan at Mother Jones has a wild story out about Minneapolis mall mercenaries. His reporting is another example of what happens when veterans of the War on Terror apply military strategies to nonviolent protest movements. In April 2021, police shot and killed a Black man named Winston Smith in the parking garage of the Seven Points mall, in the heart of Minneapolis’s Uptown neighborhood. Not long afterward, a drunk driver drove into a group of people protesting the killing, and killed a woman named Deona Knajdek. Activists then established a peace garden in a nearby vacant lot. Eventually the mall got sick of the occupiers, and hired a security company called Conflict Resolution Group to deal with them. Owner Nathan Seabrook wrote up a plan titled “Operation Peaceful Garden,” modeled after a mission he participated in in Libya. The tactics his company then used are super reminiscent of what folks saw at Standing Rock. Seabrook’s Conflict Resolution Group “allegedly intimidated, threatened, and surveilled protesters,” developed intelligence briefs on activists, compared them to jihadists, and collaborated with the Minneapolis police department.
Katie Surma at Inside Climate News has an investigation up about how the Chinese government is retaliating against environmental journalists in African countries. She describes how reporters have been censored, surveilled, threatened, and flown on all-expenses-paid propaganda trips to China, as the Chinese government works closely with repressive local governments that detain or disappear people.
I found this passage powerful, where Surma set the environmental stakes. Tawanda Majoni, an investigative journalist “was raised in rural Zimbabwe, near a region of steep, mist-shrouded cliffs known as Boterekwa. ‘It was so awe-inspiring,’ Majoni said. ‘I grew up with visions of that escarpment. I even had dreams set there.’ Then, one day, it was gone. Chinese mining companies had moved in, he said, and an entire mountain disappeared, water sources turned toxic and hundreds of homes cracked from incessant blasting."
“I think the overall prospect it raises is a chilling effect on overall dissent and protest.”
The Narwhal’s Zak Vescera and Matt Simmons have an interesting piece about how TC Energy, the company that used to own the Keystone XL pipeline, lobbied for changes in law so that Canada’s spy agency, the Canadian Security Intelligence Service or CSIS, could share information they collect with corporations. That legislation, C-70 ultimately passed this year, and information is now flowing more freely from spies to large companies. TC Energy also suggested that CSIS set up a group called the Canadian Security Alliance, which would consist of representatives from major corporations and law enforcement exchanging information about security threats. So far the Canadian Security Alliance is still just a concept. But the worry with all of this is that corporations and law enforcement will collaborate to undermine Indigenous-led movements that seek to stop environmentally harmful fossil fuel or mining infrastructure.
Palate Cleansers
I cover topics that are heavy and distressing to take in, so I'm ending these posts with things that make me feel grounded: food, nature, community.
Something Delicious: Dinner at the Bar
For most of November, I had the pleasure of traveling around the Pacific Northwest. It was a strange little writing retreat that I hadn’t really planned to take, and I was by myself for long stretches. Midway through, I took a day trip to Orcas Island, part of the San Juan Islands, and ended up eating behind the bar of a restaurant called Houlme. I struck up a conversation with a retired ferry boat captain and the bartender and left feeling a little less alone in the world. The restaurant has an interesting story, and a lot of the food is fancy, but the best thing I ate was a slice of pizza my new friend gave me to-go, to eat on the ferry home.
Garden Updates: Out for Lunch
No garden this month. Instead, I was saturated by October orange in the Columbia River Gorge and enticed by ghost mountains hovering above the Salish Sea. I walked through woods where the horizontal trees on the ground were as alive as the vertical ones. And I met a seal, some porpoises — I think minke whales?? One day, a flock of little birds flew ahead of me, from tree to tree, as I hiked above green islands. Another day, I felt the uncertainty of shadows in a dim fir forest.
Community Updates: Close to Home
New York Dignity Not Detention is holding an online and in-person space this Thursday at 6:30 PM ET for writing letters to people in ICE detention. Registration is here.
Also, though SNAP is now funded, I guess, a lot of people are still in need of extra support. For New Yorkers, this directory of resources and aid is a good way to identify places in your neighborhood that could use your support.
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