With Trump Gone, Biden Admin Stares Down Lingering Prospect Of MAGA Insurgency
This is a somber read [after a beautiful day] The author believes the violent Trumpsters really are not going away.
With Trump Gone, Biden Admin Stares Down Lingering Prospect Of MAGA Insurgency
https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/with-trump-gone-biden-admin-stares-down-lingering-prospect-of-maga-insurgency
By Josh Kovensky
January 20, 2021 5:40 p.m.
During his inaugural address, President Biden alluded to a mammoth, intractable task now facing the country: confronting a nascent, violent, far-right insurgency that coalesced behind Trump and the belief that he was the rightful winner of the 2020 election.
As disorganized and somewhat ridiculous as it is, the movement has put on full display its willingness to be violent in the service of interrupting democratic processes during the Jan. 6 insurrection.
The problem only becomes more vexing with the fact that it’s intertwined with a major national figure — now-former president Trump — and one of the country’s two major political parties.
For the Biden administration, it presents a devilish problem: What happens when the never-ending grievance machine of the right gets so disjointed from reality that its adherents both believe themselves subject to an illegitimate government, and when one of the two major political parties benefits from that misconception? How do you counter a violent extremist movement that has its tentacles around one half of the U.S.’s party system?
Standard attempts at countering violent extremism focus on finding a messenger who is credible within the group and focusing on accountability for those who have committed crimes while talking people who are persuadable — and not too far gone — off of the ledge.
“Who is going to talk to them? The one person that would, the [former] president, won’t. He’s going to stoke the anger from the sidelines,” Colin P. Clarke, a senior research fellow at the Soufan Group, told TPM. “How do you assuage grievances that don’t exist?”....................
TOPSHOT - Supporters of US President Donald Trump protest inside the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, in Washington, DC. - Demonstrators breeched security and entered the Capitol as Congress debated the a 2020 presiden... MORE
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