Consider This from NPR - The Michigan Kidnapping Plot And What's Fueling Right-Wing Extremism

Episode Date: October 9, 2020

The FBI announced Thursday that it had thwarted a plan by far-right militia members to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, and charged six men in relation to the plot.The plot began as talk on social media sites, with a group of men gathering on Facebook to share anti-government reaction to Whitmer's coronavirus restrictions and shutdowns. Experts say the pandemic, protests, and the words of the president have combined to fuel a rise in right-wing extremism. Cynthia Miller-Idriss, a professor at American University who tracks right-wing extremism, spoke to NPR about how right-wing recruiters are taking advantage of President Trump's hesitancy to condemn white supremacy and militia groups.And while these men have been referred to as members of a "militia," that term has also resurfaced a debate about whether groups like this should actually be referred to as domestic terrorist groups, says Kathleen Belew, an assistant professor of history at the University of Chicago who studies paramilitary and white power groups.In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment that will help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

When she put her hand on a Bible and took her oath of office 22 months ago, Gretchen Whitmer, the governor of Michigan, says she knew the job would be hard. But I'll be honest, I never could have imagined anything like this. By this, she meant this announcement from state and federal authorities yesterday. To announce state and federal charges against 13 members of two militia groups who are preparing to kidnap and possibly kill me. Let me repeat that. A sitting American governor found herself at the center of a kidnapping plot. Authorities say it began as talk on social media sites, a group of radical far-right

guys coming together over Facebook to share anti-government feelings. But it quickly became more concrete, and the FBI had a confidential informant passing back info about how it was unfolding. The criminal complaint describes secret meetings, talk of murdering, quote, tyrants, or quote, taking a sitting governor. Then prosecutors say the suspects cased the governor's vacation home, bought a taser, bought night vision goggles, and they even tested a bomb. So the authorities stepped in. So let me say this loud and clear. Hatred, bigotry, and violence have no place in the great state of Michigan. If you break the law or conspire to commit heinous acts of violence against anyone,

we will find you, we will hold you accountable, and we will bring you to justice. Consider this, the pandemic, protests, and the words of the president combined to fuel a rise in right-wing extremism. From NPR, I'm Adi Kornish. It's Friday, October 9th. This message comes from NPR sponsor The Right Stuff on Disney+. From executive producer Leonardo DiCaprio and Appian Way comes the dramatic story of America's first astronauts and the race to be first in space.

Original series now streaming on Disney+. Support for this NPR podcast and the following message come from BetterHelp, online counseling by licensed professional counselors specializing in isolation, depression, stress, and anxiety. Visit betterhelp.com slash consider to learn more and get 10% off your first month. I'm Rodney Carmichael. I'm Sydney Madden. And on our new podcast, Louder Than a Riot,

we trace the collision of rhyme and punishment in America. We were hunted by police. We were literally physically hunted. You'd be standing on the corner, drug squad pull up, everybody around. New from NPR Music. Listen to Louder Than a Riot. It's Consider This from NPR. In April, thousands of protesters packed the streets of Lansing, Michigan, near the state Capitol building.

And, Governor, you have overstepped. We can take care of ourselves. Thank you. We want to work. It was just a few weeks after Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer had signed a stay-at-home order shutting down workplaces, stores, churches, bars, gyms, all across the state. What brings me out here is our governor has just gone way too far. She's stepped, way overstepped her boundaries. It's just, the American people and the people of Michigan are standing up and we're letting them know what's going on. There were protests like these in states across the country,

push back against the shutdowns that sought to stem the spread of coronavirus. But in Michigan, some protesters went beyond causing traffic jams or holding up signs. Here's the thing. Michigan is an open carry state, and it's one of just a handful of states where you can walk into the statehouse armed with a gun. And that's exactly what some protesters started doing. Some members of the Michigan state legislature are wearing bulletproof vests today. After the Capitol building was overrun by protesters, some of whom were armed with semi-automatic weapons. One day, a handful of these protesters made their way onto the balcony overlooking the state Senate

with legislators working below. Some state lawmakers said it made them feel afraid and threatened. We have legislators who are showing up to work wearing bulletproof vests. That is disenfranchising thousands of people in our state if their legislator doesn't feel safe enough to go to work and to do what their job is.

Now we know some of the people who attended those demonstrations back in April and May are allegedly connected to the plot to kidnap Governor Whitmer. Let me be really clear. Two of the men who were arrested two nights ago, these are the same men who were in the Senate gallery that I preside over. I saw these men with my own eyes, with long guns, and they were there to intimidate lawmakers

and disrupt the lawmaking process. This is Michigan's Lieutenant Governor Garland Gilchrist, a Democrat, speaking to NPR. This was an incredible threat, and I think they've been encouraged by Republicans up and down. And no one in Michigan, no one in the country should accept this. And that is why I'm thankful that law enforcement did their investigatory work and they took action to make sure that this was thwarted. Experts say 2020 is shaping up to be an unusually big year for right-wing extremism. There's a lot of factors

at play. The pandemic, the uncertain economy, the shutdowns, and Democrats argue the president's divisive rhetoric and hesitation to condemn white supremacy in militia groups. Today, I spoke with Cynthia Miller Idris about all of that. She's a professor at American University who tracks right-wing extremism. She says right now, there's just this perfect meeting of these factors, and right-wing recruiters are taking advantage of that. You know, increasing anxiety, lack of control over one's life, isolation, and lack of belonging to other people makes people a little bit vulnerable to calls to act heroically or engage with meaning and purpose

in some way. Obviously, the vast majority of people do not join militias who experience those conditions, but we are seeing increasing participation in conspiracy theories, increasing mobilization around militias and across the whole spectrum. There's another thing people are bringing up. Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said that these groups are taking advantage of all the upheaval going on right now. She mentions the pandemic, but also the racial justice protests. Does this ring true to you? Absolutely. I think of it as three waves of the militia mobilization. It started with Richmond, the protests in January around the Second Amendment protests, where you had, I think, 22,000 people come out.

And then the shelter in place orders and the protests at capitals, state capitals, and then co-opting, I should say, the peaceful protests around the Black Lives Matter and racial injustice. But co-opting in what way? What are they saying? So we had militia and vigilante groups showing up who are saying they're, you know, protecting the police or law enforcement, they're trying to protect the status quo. And then you have groups showing up who want to spark a race war or want to create further chaos or harm protesters. So you can't think of it as one unified group, but as clusters of small groups that sometimes are at odds with each other.

The final factor that we've been hearing a lot about is the president himself using racist language on Twitter and in person. He's also repeatedly been rebuked for not saying enough to condemn white supremacist actions. Does his rhetoric figure into the growth of these groups? Is there actually evidence of that so far? There's evidence, generally speaking, in the research that the incendiary words of elected officials leads to greater violence against vulnerable populations. And so we know that to be true in the research.

And what we have seen in the U.S. is that there is a perception on the part of far right and extremist groups that they have been legitimized. So, you know, even if it's not intentional, that's the way it's received. And I think people have to understand the impact of the failure to condemn and of words like stand back, stand by, even if then it's later walked back or said that wasn't the intent, they were immediately celebrated online and far right channels as a call to action. That's Cynthia Miller-Idris.

She studies extremism. Her new book is called Hate in the Homeland, the New Global Far Right. One more thing, let's talk about that term, militia. It came up again and again in yesterday's press conferences with Governor Whitmer and the authorities. But in a tweet today, the governor said, quote, they're not militias, they're domestic terrorists endangering and intimidating their fellow Americans. Words matter. Kathleen Ballou is an assistant professor of history at the University of Chicago

who studies paramilitary and white power groups. I spoke to her today about those words. Let me just begin by clarifying that the militias that I'm going to be talking about are also terrorists a lot of the time, and they are illegal all of the time. All 50 states have laws prohibiting paramilitary militias of the kind that we see in stories like this one. But I think that the distinction here is about what kind of white supremacist or right-wing anti-government terrorism is at play in a given context. And what that context can tell us about what this movement is and what it is trying to accomplish. Give us a little more detail about the elements that are at play then. Sure. So there are kind of two kinds of militia that people are talking about in the public discourse today. One has to do with the idea of the well-regulated militia enumerated in the Second Amendment.

It's really important for people to remember that that militia does not exist as a private effort anymore. Those militias were mandated and controlled by the state, and they were all incorporated into National Guard units in the early 20th century. So there's not a through line from the Second Amendment militia to the private militias we're talking about now, even though those groups sometimes claim that there is. Now, the militias that we're talking about, like the ones in this story about the attempted kidnapping of Governor Whitmer, are part of a social movement that has been active in our nation for several decades. And it's part of a longer history of a thing called the white power movement, which brought together Klansmen,

neo-Nazis, skinheads, and others in the 1980s, and then moved into some parts of the burgeoning militia movement in the early 1990s. But another thing I'd like to help clear up for people is that not all militias are part of the white supremacist movement. And what we have in the Michigan case, according to the attorney general, are people who are both militia affiliated and part of what law enforcement would term white supremacist extremism. Now, those activists constitute the largest domestic terror threat to the United States and are experiencing a momentous upsurge right now. So we have to connect this story in Michigan to other places where this violence is

occurring. So that's what happens for the experts. But for all the rest of us, we kind of hear one thing, right, coming out of microphones. And it's interesting thinking back to what you said earlier about the Second Amendment, because does using the term essentially lend that kind of patriotic lens to extremist groups when we throw around the word militia? You know, I don't know quite where that pushback is coming from. And strikingly, I've been studying this phenomenon since 2005. And only in the last two weeks have I ever heard this kind of a pushback against the use of the term. And it seems to be coming on the one hand from people in National Guard units who don't want to be lumped

into this, understandably. But also it seems to be coming from the left by way of saying that the word militia imbues some kind of neutral and order-keeping and legitimate face onto these groups. I just don't think that's the case. All militias, as I said, are illegal. Many of them are also involved in anti-American, anti-democratic terrorist violence. And even when they're not, they often rub shoulders with groups that are. So when I use that word militia, it's not to imbue any kind of positive connotation. It's simply to describe the type of activism that we need to confront. But let's not be confused about any of this. All of this is a deep threat to American democracy and poses fundamental danger both to our electoral process and to our citizens. And I think

all of it deserves our careful attention and specific language over the months to come. That's Kathleen Ballou, history professor at the University of Chicago. She's the author of the book, Bring the War Home. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Audie Cornish.