Confederate "Heritage" Month 2021, April 8: Real-time violent neo-Confederacy

The neo-Confederate/Lost Cause ideology is sadly a significant part of the radicalization of the Republican Party that led to the murderous lynch mob directly incited by Trump on January 6 to block Congress from certifying the results of the Presidential election. Even if Trump supporters weren't embracing major elements of the neo-Confederate/Lost Cause white supremacist ideology, the January 6 attack on the US Capitol by a murderous lynch mob directly incited by Donald Trump's speech beforehand, emphasizes the continuing relevance of the history of the Civil War, the events leading up to it, and the efforts during Reconstruction to cope with the aftermaths.

Dave Neiwert reports in Unlike the Guy Before, Biden is taking far-right terrorism seriously, and it’s making a difference (Daily Kos 04/06/2021). the Biden-Harris Administration is proceeding to treat the crimes involved as what they are:

Quietly and with little fanfare, the Biden administration has been taking all the right steps early in its tenure in confronting the threat of right-wing extremist violence and its spread—a mandate handed to Biden by the insurrectionists who attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. Rather than take a high-profile approach that might backfire, Biden’s Justice Department and FBI, and to a lesser extent its Department of Homeland Security, has wisely taken a low-key route that emphasizes competence and effectiveness, as a New York Times piece explored this weekend.

But make no mistake, it is taking the problem seriously. Indictments from the insurrection now number more than 300, prosecutors are establishing evidence of a clear chain of conspiracy leading to the attack focusing on Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, and arrests for criminal behavior by far-right extremists unrelated to the attack are occurring as well. It’s a welcome change from the malign neglect of the matter paid by Donald Trump and his administration.

As we have argued consistently since the insurrection, an effective approach to right-wing domestic terrorism necessarily will eschew the trappings of the post-9/11 “war on terror”—that is, instead of creating new laws and giving law enforcement unneeded new powers, the phenomenon can most effectively be attacked by smartly deploying law enforcement to enforce the many laws already on the books. [my emphasis]

One of the biggest mistakes the Obama-Biden Administration made was to cave in to Republican criticism that was directed against the federal government taking seriously actual threats from violent far-right groups.

See, for instance, the testimony of Daryl Johnson before a Senate Subcommittee, Hate Crimes and the Threat of Domestic Extremism 09/19/2012. See also Spencer Ackerman's report on Johnson, DHS Crushed This Analyst for Warning About Far-Right Terror Wired 08.07.2012 and Johnson's own op-ed, I warned of right-wing violence in 2009. Republicans objected. I was right. Washington Post 087/21/2017.

As Neiwert's current report notes, "A mid-March intelligence assessment commissioned by Biden concluded that far-right extremists—particularly those animated by racial and ethnic grievances—pose the most lethal domestic-terrorism threat to Americans for the foreseeable future. Meanwhile, militia-like organizations pose an ongoing threat primarily to government and law-enforcement personnel." (my emphasis)

This is one of many ironies of the current far right in the US with its neo-Confederate type of seditious mentality.

Of course, this makes the sympathies and overlap between the violent radical right and police departments more complicated and more dangerous. Too many law-enforcement agencies are not only "blind in the right eye" when it come to such extremists. Some of them actively sympathize with and support such groups.