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Today's author, TomDispatch regular Michael Gould-Wartofsky, has seen what he calls "far-right carnage" in an all too up close and personal fashion. In 2017, he attended the counter-demonstration in Charlottesville, Virginia, that was a response to the Unite the Right rally -- you know, the one filled with neo-Nazis displaying swastikas, chanting "Jews will not replace us," and demonstrating against the possible removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee and the renaming of a local park; you know, the double rally about which President Donald Trump said there were "very fine people on both sides"; you know, the counter-rally into which neo-Nazi James Alex Fields, Jr., drove his car, killing protester Heather Heyer, injuring dozens more, and almost hitting Gould-Wartofsky.
Nearly six years later, as we head for July 4th, we find ourselves in a country ever more horrifically over-armed -- Americans bought nearly 60 million guns in the pandemic years 2020-2022 -- in which mass shootings are almost daily events. We also find ourselves in a country that seems ever more extreme at a moment when "patriotism" is being redefined by Donald Trump, Ron DeSantis, and significant parts of the rest of the former Republican Party in deeply disturbing ways as they veer in a direction that can only be called potentially autocratic. Worse yet, when it comes to the statistics on right-wing versus left-wing violence in this country, the disparities are little short of stunning. Bluntly put, almost every deadly domestic terror attack in recent years has been the work of the far right.
And yet, as Gould-Wartofsky makes painfully clear today, a version of state terror has been focused on the left -- on protesters, environmental and otherwise, who are neither armed nor violent. And that is, in its own fashion, a horror story of the first order. Tom
American Inquisition
Field Notes from the Frontlines of the Government's War on the Left
"There must be some kind of way out of here..."
As night fell over the South River Forest, the music festival was in full swing. Young and old swayed to the sounds of Suede Cassidy. Families gathered around the grill. Little ones frolicked in an inflatable bouncy house bedecked with a banner that read: "Stop Cop City."
While the band played on, a strike force of Georgia state troopers assembled in the shadows. They were there to clear the way for the creation of the Atlanta Public Safety Training Center, better known as "Cop City," a $90-million training ground for the future of urban warfare. It would destroy more than half of that urban forest. For years, the project had faced mounting local opposition and this festival was, in essence, a coming-out party for the movement to defend a priceless bit of urban green space from the bulldozer's blade.
Now, accompanied by the dull hum of drones and the buzz of helicopters overhead, officers of the "peace" descended from all directions, their fingers on the triggers of their semi-automatics. The orders came down with the force of live rounds: "Get on the ground! Now!"
"I was playing 'All Along the Watchtower,' funnily enough," remembers Suede Cassidy frontman Jeremiah Percival. "Around halfway through our set, they started arresting people" pointing AR-15s" traumatizing kids for nothing. It was very stormtrooper-esque. It's a good reminder to know how fascism is in this country and how it's very much alive."
"It was after dark," recalls Stop Cop City activist Priscilla Grim. "I was walking to see the concert. And I noticed that there was a drone tracking me. And the next thing I knew, men started chasing me, and I fell. They had me turn over on my stomach. And there was the red light of the gunsight to the right of my head. It was" frightening!"
Priscilla and 22 other protesters nabbed that night would go on to be charged with "domestic terrorism" -- conduct allegedly "intended to intimidate the civilian population" or to "alter, change, or coerce the policy of the government of this state" -- under a Georgia statute originally meant to deter would-be killers in the wake of the Charleston A.M.E. massacre. "I was completely shocked when I heard that I was being charged with domestic terrorism," Priscilla told me. "For wearing black! In a forest! It's absurd. It's illegitimate. It's an abuse" And as a survivor of 9/11, I am insulted that the state of Georgia thinks that they can do this."
The Makings of an American Inquisition
Today, no fewer than 42 such cases are being prosecuted by Georgia's attorney general. All 42 defendants stand accused of damaging property, not people. The only injuries that occurred were by police and correctional officers on the bodies of the accused. Some were then held for a month or more before being formally charged with a crime.
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