Timely ‘How Civil Wars Start’

Review by Bill Doughty––

Here's a fascinating revelation: “Blacktivist” on Facebook was “one of more than 470 accounts linked to a Kremlin effort to infiltrate the Black Lives Matter movement.” The Russians' goal was to foment hate and division along racial, religious, and ethnic lines. [Just some of ways to create division, especially via social media.*]

Vladimir Putin and his Russian operatives were not just interested in helping elect their chosen candidate in the presidential election of 2016; they were also actively promoting general discord and division in America and Europe.

But they are not the only actors on the world stage using social media platforms to create and accelerate discord, as Barbara F. Walter reveals in “How Civil Wars Start: And How to Stop Them” (Crown, Random House; 2022). She presents a world history of civil wars with a special focus on recent history –– that is thorough, comprehensive, and well-written. It's scholarly without being narcoleptic.

We learn about “anocracy” (neither full democracy nor full autocracy),“factionalism” (countries split along political parties based on ethnic or other identity factors instead of ideology), “superfactions” (groups that share identity factors as well as a different religion, class and geographic location), and “accelerationism” (“the apocalyptic belief that modern society is irredeemable and that its end must be hastened so that a new order can be brought into being.”).

According to Walter, “Two variables –– anocracy and factionalism –– predicted better than anything else where civil wars were likely to break out.” Studies show that superfactions are twelve times more likely to start a civil war. Superfactions use a lot of symbols, phrases, flags, and other paraphernalia to appeal to national pride and their leader. Walter notes, “One of the greatest fault lines that tend to emerge among super factions: the urban-rural divide.”

Accelerationism is a core part of modern American extremism, according to Walter. We see it expressed by some "end times" Christian nationalist extremists, white supremacists, and other right wing militia especially in the tragedies of the Waco and Ruby Ridge sieges in the early 1990s. We also see it in Michigan militiaman Timothy McVeigh’s bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995.

A scary thought: What if Vladimir Putin’s main motive in his war on Ukraine is based on accelerationism –– a desire to bring on armageddon? Who will stop him?

Putin orders, condones, and excuses genocide from a distance.

As Putin's war atrocities in Ukraine continue to come to light, the West condemns and documents his war crimes and charges of genocide. Walter introduces us to the “Ten Stages of Genocide,” according to Gregory Stanton of GenocideWatch.com.

Another revelation in Walter’s book is the sheer number of civil wars in history and throughout the world, including in Russia just over one hundred years ago. She presents a history of civil wars –– battles often over Left and Right ideology –– in Mexico in 1910, China in 1921, Greece in the 1940s, Yugoslavia in the 1990s, and Burundi in 1993. Civil wars have been fought in recent times in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan, Ukraine, Sudan, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Myanmar, Lebanon, and Sri Lanka.

She notes, “Immigration is often the flashpoint for conflict. Migrants come into a country and compete with poorer, more rural populations –– sons of the soil –– fueling resentment and pushing these groups toward violence. It is especially alarming, then, that the world is entering an unprecedented period of human migration, in large part due to climate change. As sea levels rise, droughts increase, and weather patterns change, more and more people will be forced to relocate to more hospitable terrain. By 2050, the World Bank predicts, over 140 million “climate migrants” will likely flee Southeast Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America. Experts have also warned that climate change is likely to lead to scarcity of resources, which could also fuel conflict.”

DoD spells out similar security implications, including competition for resources and the potential for civil unrest in its updated October 2021 “Department of Defense Climate Risk Analysis.” It's worth reminding ourselves of these realities as we approach Earth Day, April 22, 2022.

Another key point by Walter: “In the 21st century the most dangerous factions are once-dominant groups facing decline.” People who feel left out of the political process and who feel they’ve been “downgraded” in a trajectory away from power can be rich or poor, black or white, Christian or Muslim, Walter says.

Using the Catholic-Protestant “Troubles” in Northern Ireland as a case study, Walter shows that when a government violently cracks down on protests, it creates a loss of hope and more violence. In the face of peaceful protests, leaders should choose reform over belligerence, tolerance over violence.

Long periods of protests, along with anger over elections, make a country ripe for civil war, she says. “Elections are potentially destabilizing events in highly factionalized autocracies –– especially when a downgraded group loses.”

“The government should obviously take a zero tolerance stance on hate, and punish domestic terrorism, but it would weaken support for extremism by addressing the legitimate grievances that many citizens have.” She notes, “Civilian deaths at the hands of the government can tip conflicts into all-out war.”

As citizens in Putin’s Russia experience hardships due to international sanctions and significant military casualties, one wonders if there will be more protests and, if so, how the Kremlin will crack down on the protesters. For now, using propaganda especially on TV and in social media, Putin seems to be keeping his country largely in the dark about the realities of his war.

Walter calls social media a “pandora’s box” used by authoritarians such as Russia’s Putin, Philippines’s Duterte, India’s Modi, Turkey’s Erdogan, Brazil’s Bolsonaro, Venezuela’s Maduro, and Hungary’s Orban to influence their own citizens and citizens of other countries.

“Now any country, any group, and any individual can use the internet to destabilize an adversary. Rivals of the United States are deeply invested in stoking civil conflict., through support for a preferred group or by inciting both sides. Vladimir Putin, an ex-KGB officer, has long understood the power of disinformation. Others have caught on. The Empirical Studies of Conflict Project –– together with a team of scholars at Princeton –– found that Russia, together with China, Iran, and Saudi Arabia, used clandestine social media campaigns fifty-three times between 2013 and 2018 to try to influence the internal politics of another country. Most of the campaigns examined by the Princeton team (65 percent) aimed to denigrate a public figure, usually a politician, in order to get his or her opponent elected. (Between 2012 and 2017, for example, seven of the ten most-read online pieces about Angela Merkel were fabricated, according to BuzzFeed.) The United States was the main target of these attacks but not the only one. Great Britain, Germany, Australia, and others were also targeted. Almost all the attacks were aimed at democracies.”

Even France is experiencing an erosion of its democracy –– due in part to the use of social media to rile up yellow vest protestors to become violent, and in the rise of pro-Putin French National Front Party politician Marine Pen, who is challenging Emmanuel Macron for the presidency. “The party has spread its message –– exploiting and inflaming racial tension –– with the most sophisticated social media operation of any major political party in France.”

Social media achieves success in fomenting divisions by using behavioral algorithms. Walter puts Facebook and YouTube, in particular, under the microscope. It’s been shown that these platforms are incentivized to provide false, inflammatory, angry, and outrageous content because that gets more likes, clicks, and investment of time. The Pew Research Center reveals that “posts exhibiting ‘indignant disagreement’ received nearly twice as many likes and shares as other types of content.”

“Worse, the behavioral algorithms began creating self-reinforcing, increasingly outlandish information silos that led users down dangerous paths: toward conspiracy theories, half-truths, and extremists seeking radical change. These recommendation engines, as they are called, ensured that users were channeled toward more narrow and more extreme information. If a user “liked” a post on a police officer helping a kitten, say, Facebook would funnel additional posts to the user on police benevolent associations, then pro-police stories, then increasingly more fanatical material. Walter Quattrociocchi, a computer scientist at Sapienza Università di Roma, analyzed fifty-four million comments over four years in different Facebook groups. He found that the longer a discussion continued, the more extreme the comments became. One study found that YouTube viewers who consume the kind of ‘mild’ right-wing content created by provocative talk show host Joe Rogan, whose audience in 2020 was 286 million, are often pulled into much more radical alt-right content. The study concluded that YouTube is a ‘radicalization pipeline.’

“It’s this business model of engagement that makes social media so terrifying to those of us who study civil wars.”

Fortunately, after insurrectionists rioted on the Capitol of January 6, 2021, the military updated its review of extremism in its ranks. In December 2021 Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin released his Report on Countering Extremist Activity Within the Department of Defense, which addressed, in part, not only increased education and training, but also greater screening and investigation of “electronic platforms,” including social media resources.

“The overwhelming majority of the men and women of the Department of Defense serve this country with honor and integrity," Austin said. "They respect the oath they took to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. We are grateful for that dedication.” He added, “We owe the men and women of the Department of Defense an environment free of extremist activities, and we owe our country a military that reflects the founding values of our democracy.”

Walter notes that military leaders, especially former SECDEF Mark Esper and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley, were among the institutional or human guardrails that prevented a coup attempt immediately before and after the 2020 presidential election. Both apologized for taking part in former President Trump's march to a photo-op at St. John's Church, where he posed holding a Bible.

Then-President Trump directs AG Barr, SECDEF Esper, and CJCS Milley to march to St. John's Church. (Shealah Craighead)

After failing to overturn results in state election offices and courts (including the Supreme Court) but before turning to his supporters and directing them toward the Capitol, Donald Trump attempted to influence the military (and then delayed responding to the insurrection).

“Trump catered to America’s generals throughout his time in office, but rather than validate his bids for more power, they distanced themselves from his agenda at key moments. In 2020, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper refused to use active-duty troops to control black Lives Matter demonstrators (he was later fired). And on January 3, 2021, the ten living former defense secretaries, including James Mattis, Mark Esper, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld, issued a statement in The Washington Post making clear that they would defend the Constitution, not the president. They concurred with a statement made months earlier by General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff: ‘There’s no role for the U.S. military in determining the outcome of a U.S. election.’”

New reports are coming to light about Trump's attempts to use the Insurrection Act to deploy the military along the border and on American streets in the months leading up to the 2020 election but DoD guardrails held. According to news reports this week, Congress is looking for ways to strengthen the Insurrection Act so it cannot be easily abused by a commander in chief.

Walker says extremism has grown to a pre-insurgency level probably since Ruby Ridge, Waco, and Oklahoma City. She briefly examines groups such as the Proud Boys, Three Percenters, and Oath Keepers, but she notes how unwise it would be if militia again tried to overturn the government.

Barbara F. Walter

“It was not crazy for Confederates to think they could take on the American military in 1860,” Walter writes. “It is crazy for militias to think that today.”

Nevertheless, we can expect militia groups and other disaffected Americans to continue to be targets of Putin’s campaign of disinformation, misinformation, and division, particularly via the internet.

Walter offers hope, advice, and a stirring patriotic conclusion in this very timely and now essential book.

[*Russia has used social media to divide Americans along lines of race, religion, politics, energy and environmental issues. The U.S. Senate has presented extensive information on Russian interference in the U.S. elections, including via heavily redacted reports. In 2018 the House of Representatives revealed how Russia also creates division among conservatives and liberals in the United States through social media in views about energy and environmentalism.]

Putin’s Big Mistake – ‘Weak Strongman’

Review by Bill Doughty––

“Weak Strongman: The Limits of Power in Putin’s Russia” by Timothy Frye (Princeton University Press, 2021) opens with the exit of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, Feb. 21, 2014. The corrupt puppet of Vladimir Putin fled to Russia after being ousted by free and fair elections in Ukraine in which pro-European politicians were subsequently elected.

In Response, Putin invaded Ukraine and occupied Crimea and eastern areas of the country.

It was a big mistake.

Hoping to have more influence and control over his neighbor in 2014, Putin instead strengthened Ukrainian nationalism, European influence, and NATO unity (just has he has –– ten-fold –– since his all-out unprovoked war on the people of Ukraine in 2022).

“The annexation of Crimea brought a four-year surge in support for the Kremlin in Russia, but also removed the largest and most pro-Russian voting bloc –– the roughly 1.5 million Russians in Crimea –– from Ukrainian politics. In past elections, parties openly sympathetic to Moscow regularly received around 40 percent of the vote, but advocating for close relations with Russia is a tougher sell with the Ukrainian electorate after the annexation of Crimea. The landslide victory of the thirty-eight-year-old Volodymyr Zelensky, a Russian speaker from Eastern Ukraine, in the presidential elections in Ukraine in April 2019 suggests that the polarization between eastern and western Ukraine that served Russia so well is less important today than prior to 2014. Moreover, Ukraine’s largest trading partner by far is the European Union ($40 billion per year) rather than Russia ($11 billion), and China is soon to replace Russia as its second-biggest trading partner.

“Moscow’s policies toward Ukraine have bolstered NATO. By the end of 2020, NATO members are expected to have increased spending on defense by $100 billion. NATO has moved roughly four thousand advanced troops to the Baltic states and a smaller number to Poland as a token force to deter Russia. Given the centripetal forces at work in Europe today, weakening of the European Union, and election of a NATO skeptic as US president [Trump], one would have expected NATO to be in grave danger, but it has held up better than anticipated. And that is largely due to Russia’s moves in Crimea, eastern Ukraine, and elsewhere.”

Strong sanctions in the wake of Putin’s war in 2022 are hurting the country, especially leaders and oligarchs. Sanctions also slowed the Russian economy after Putin’s revanchist annexation of Crimea in 2014, according to Frye.

Oligarchs like Oleg Deripaska and Viktor Vekselberg reportedly lost billions after the US government sanctioned them in April 2018 for “malign activity around the globe.”

Frye says Putin is, in effect, a candle with a low-burning wick. (Which may explain why he invaded Ukraine again in 2022.)

“Reelected for another six-year term in 2018, Putin has struggled to find a new narrative to lead Russia. With enthusiasm for the Crimean annexation fading and the economy stagnating, his popularity has faltered.”

Speaking of mistakes or consequences of war…

Frye notes, “The best available evidence indicates that Russian-backed rebels in eastern Ukraine shot down a Malaysian commercial airliner by mistake in July 2014, killing almost 300 passengers and crew.” Will a mistake –– or an intentional act made to look like a mistake –– against NATO ignite a larger war in Europe?

It was no mistake this week when Ukraine hit Russia’s Black Sea flagship, the cruiser Moskva, pictured above, with at least one Neptune anti-ship missile, according to U.S. analysts, sinking the ship and moving the Russian fleet away from Ukraine’s coast. At first Russia lied and said the ship was not attacked but had suffered a fire of unknown origin.

Using data and statistics, Frye illuminates that “autocracies have long struggled to elicit honest information from subordinates and monitor implementation of policies.

Frye is a self-described “information warrior” associated with the Levada Center. He is immersed in Russian culture, economics, and statistics.

“Russia has been fertile ground for studying authoritarian rule. Public opinion polls have been far more credible than in other autocracies, and Russia provides more detailed administrative data, including election results, economic information, and social indicators, than do many other authoritarian governments…

“Although less so than in the Soviet period, views of Russia in the West are still highly politicized. Some on the nationalist Right depict Russia as a defender of the traditional family, white race, and Christian faith, but as Anne Applebaum notes, Russian reality if far from these American dreams. Abortion rates in Russia are twice as high as in the United States, few Russians attend church regularly or read the Bible, and a third of Russian families are headed by single mothers with children. And Russia regularly accepts more immigrants than just about any country but the United States.”

Pro-Ukraine protest (Pixabay)

Citing statistics from carefully conducted polls and surveys within Russia, Frye makes some surprising conclusions: At one point prior to Putin’s annexation of Crimea and resultant sanctions, 85 percent of Russians wanted closer ties with the West.

People in Russia would prefer a good home economy than status as a top-five great power. They say they are in favor of freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. 

And, while historically Russians admire, rather than fear, the brutal imposition of order, Putin’s popularity has been waning in recent years.

“Putin fatigue appears to be setting in; in summer 2020, his presidential approval ratings sagged to their lowest levels since he took office,” Frye notes. The public rewards politicians during a good economy and punishes them in economic downturns.

Perhaps most interesting is this finding: “Despite the broad popularity of the annexation of Crimea, a majority of Russians in 2015 were willing to tell pollsters that they opposed sending Russian troops to Ukraine, and 80 percent of Russians were willing to express opposition to incorporating Ukraine into Russia. The public uses public opinion polls to rail against corruption, inequality, and Russia’s notoriously bad roads as well.”

Although national pride swelled after Crimea was annexed, “the public greatly appreciated that the annexation occurred with little cost in Russian lives.” We continue to see public nationalistic support for Putin now because of Kremlin propaganda and disinformation. But how will the Russian people react when they eventually learn about the cost to their country in blood and treasure?

From his foundation of statistics and data, Frye analyzes the type of autocracy in Russia –– personalist [aka “strongman”] as opposed to party (as in Communist China) or military (as in Thailand).

Frye notes, “The Putin team will cling to power for the same reason that all personalist autocrats do: the fear of what comes next.” He notes, 80 percent of personal autocracies who lost power ended up in jail or exile, or dead…”

The cult-of-personality style of populist authoritarianism seen in Kim’s North Korea, Orban’s Hungary, and Putin’s Russia seems to attract fundamentalist followers who want a return to traditional “values,” “law and order,” less freedom in the media, and more xenophobic nationalism, willing to tell lies to stay in power or achieve political aims.

“Rather than treating Russia’s most recent autocratic turn as rooted in Putin’s KGB past or a return to Russia’s thousand years of dictatorship, we can trace it to a more familiar and recent pattern of modern autocratic rule. As long-standing democracies become increasingly dysfunctional and less attractive as a model, an outsider comes to power in a highly unequal middle-income country. Facing a disorganized opposition, the ruler rides an economic boom to popularity, which he then uses to dismantle courts and legislatures, intimidate the free press, and discredit political opponents as foreign agents. With some nuances for local context, this story would be familiar to observers of Turkey, Venezuela, and Hungary, to name just a few.”

Frye quotes Russian political scientist Vladimir Gel’man, who described Putin’s first half of time in office as “vegetarian” autocracy, fueled by a good economy due to energy resources which helped him avoid the heavy-handed repression, coercion, and criminal violence we now see. Now he is a carnivorous, even cannibalistic, autocrat, considering what he’s doing to Ukraine and Russia itself.

Frye notes, “In 2008, the Bush administration led efforts to bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO. The stakes were high given Ukraine’s size, complicated history with Moscow, and strategic significance.” Russia ferociously voiced its opposition, and Germany and France criticized the United States position.

“After much internal debate, NATO pledged that Ukraine and Georgia ‘will become NATO members,’ but did not offer a Membership Action Plan with any details or start date.,” Frye writes. “The open-ended commitment was the worst of all worlds.” In 2014 and again in 2022, Putin filled the vacuum with missiles, bombs, and bullets.

Putin’s pretext for annexation of Crimea (and recent invasion) –– feeling threatened by the United States and NATO –– is belied by the facts and statistics Frye presents, in part quoting Professor Stephen Sestanovich: “The number of US troops in Europe in 2014 was one-sixth as large as in 1990, the number aircraft in Europe was down 75 percent, and the United States had removed all of its tank divisions from the continent.”

CJCS Gen. Mark Milley testifies April 7, 2022. (Lisa Ferdinando)

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Gen. Mark Milley testified again recently to the House Armed Services Committee, He said the world is getting more unstable, "and the potential for significant international conflict between great powers is increasing, not decreasing.”

Milley called Russia's invasion of Ukraine "the greatest threat to peace and security of Europe and perhaps the world in my 42 years of service in uniform."

He said Putin's unnecessary war threatens not only European peace and stability, but global peace and stability, noting the war could be protracted over months or even years.

Milley brought up memories of World War II.

"The islands of the Pacific and the beaches of Normandy bore witness to the incredible tragedy that befalls humanity when nations seek power through military aggression across sovereign borders," Milley said. "Despite the horrific assault on the institutions of freedom, it is heartening to see the world rally and say 'never again' to the specter of war in Europe.”

Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany made fatal errors in the 1930s and 40s, ending in the creation of two thriving democracies dedicated to a more peaceful world. Putin’s miscalculations and war crimes have strengthened NATO, united most Americans and Europeans, hardened the resolve of brave Ukrainians, and wreaked havoc on his own country. Big mistake.

‘The Cruelty Is the Point’

                                                                                                                                                (Shealah Craighead)

Review by Bill Doughty–– 

Such is human nature. 

When privileged people in power mock victims of hate, it serves as an adhesive to their group, according to Adam Serwer. Smiles at lynchings. "Lock her up" chants and belittling of others at rallies. 

“Taking joy in that suffering is more human than most would like to admit. Somewhere on the wide spectrum between adolescent teasing and the smiling white men in the lynching photographs are the Trump supporters whose community is built by rejoicing in the anguish of those they see as unlike them, who have found in their shared cruelty an answer to the loneliness and atomization of modern life.”

Serwer is author of “The Cruelty Is the Point: The Past, Present and Future of Trump’s America” (OneWorld, Random House; 2021), a compilation of essays that fit together surprisingly well as parts of a coherent whole.

Serwer contends, “A strange kind of historical amnesia has obscured the American lineage of this white nationalist ideology.”

In fact, that amnesia is sometimes blatant and purposeful, as exemplified in the cynical banning or burning of books, a growing trend with historic roots.

And in examining historic roots, we see how the Supreme Court of the United States verified policies of white supremacy, including the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1852, the banning of immigrants from Asia and the Middle East in 1917, and various rulings about the rights of women, indigenous people, and African Americans in the first century-plus of our history.

Serwer says, “The justices had unwittingly acknowledged a consistent truth about racism, which is that peace is whatever those in power say."

Two things can be true: Our country began with a foundation promising liberty, justice, and equality for all, yet it was created by founders who were all white, all male, and in some cases owners of enslaved people. Deal with it. A failure to acknowledge that paradox –– or, conversely, a failure to celebrate our progress –– is like standing in quicksand.

We can choose to get stuck in arguments for or against teaching Critical Race Theory, or we can move forward, free to study the reality of our history –– bad, good, and (though in fits and starts) getting better.

The name “Grant” in American history brings to mind the remarkable general and president who led the nation after the failed, impeached presidency of Andrew Johnson, Ulysses S. Grant. But there’s another Grant, largely forgotten by the public, who may have had a more profound impact on world history. His name was Madison Grant, a scientist, eugenicist, and writer who is considered simultaneously a great environmentalist and horrible racist. [See related post of January 14, 2022, a review of Isabel Wilkerson’s excellent “Caste: The Origins of our Discontents.”]

Adolf Hitler

Madison Grant wrote “The Passing of a Great Race” in 1916. His book argued for laws against race-mixing, for segregation, and even for mandatory sterilizations. Adolf Hitler said he considered it his bible, and used parts of Grant’s thesis in his Mein Kampf. Grant’s thinking greatly influenced Nazi Germany’s policies in the 1930s and into the Second World War., when purity of the “volk” was paramount, by any means necessary. Serwer writes:

“The danger of Grantism, and its implications for both America and the world, is very real. External forces have rarely been the gravest threat to the social order and political foundations of the United States. Rather, the source of greatest danger has been those who would chose white purity over a diverse democracy. When Americans abandon their commitment to pluralism, the world notices, and catastrophe follows.”

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin, who ironically calls Ukrainians “nazis” and tries to exterminate them is starting to act like Hitler. Cruelty is his point.

But, like Hitler, Putin is underestimating his enemy. The Ukrainians –– backed by the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union, and other allies and partners –– are valiantly fighting and winning battles against the Russian military as Putin consolidates his offensive in eastern Ukraine.

Putin thought NATO and the West were fractured and weak (after he, himself, created divisions through social media and interference in elections).

Hitler thought the same about the United States eight decades ago –– that we were weak and divided, South and North.

American's move through Fountainebleau on their way to Paris, France, on their way to liberate Europe from the Nazis. (LOC)

Hitler misperceived white supremacy in America, as expressed by Madison Grant and right wing fundamentalists, as a desire to live under a fascist government; he and the Nazis “failed to appreciate the significance of that ideological tension.”

“They saw allegiance to the American creed as a weakness. But U.S. soldiers [sailors and marines] of all backgrounds and faiths fought to defend it and demanded that their country live up to it. Their valor helped defeat first the Nazis and then the American laws that the Nazis had so admired. What the Nazis saw as a weakness turned out to be a strength, and it destroyed them.”

Serwer sees the rise of Trumpism as the reinvigoration of Grantism.

There is an overlapping in the Big Lies of the Confederacy’s Lost Cause, Madison Grant’s and Adolf Hitler’s white superiority, and Donald Trump’s coup attempt, personified in the violence of January 6, 2021. “Racism is at the core of Trumpism,” Serwer writes. “Under Trumpism, no defense of the ‘volk’ is a betrayal, even if it undermines the republic, and no attack on the ‘volk’s’ hegemony can be legitimate, even if it is a defense of democracy.”

Serwer points out the connections between Trumpism and support for the Confederacy, including his “very fine people on both sides” comment about the tragedy in Charlottesville in 2017 and his steadfast support for Confederate namesake monuments and military bases. By contrast, in the wake of violence against black people, Mitch Landrieu, Mayor of New Orleans, ordered the removal of Confederate monuments from the city.

In 1990 nearly half of Louisiana voted for a Klansman, David Duke, for governor. After the vote Trump discussed Duke on CNN’s The Larry King Show. “It’s anger. I mean, that’s an anger vote.” In 2016 after getting Duke’s endorsement, Trump said, “Well, just so you understand, I don’t know anything about David Duke. Okay?”

Like Trump, Duke’s support was based on fear, anger, and a desire for more police on the streets. But two things can be true: we can reduce crime and improve policing.

Army veteran Eugene Goodman defends Capitol.

Serwer warns about police “who think they are soldiers at war.” And the sad fact is that an estimated 14 percent of the Capitol rioters were either military veterans or current/former law enforcement personnel.

Yet, the J6 insurrectionists assaulted Capitol Police officers with various weapons, including metal flag poles with Trump flags, American flags, and Blue Lives Matter flags.

Ironically, Trump supporters who attacked police officers on J6 confronted many true patriots, such as Iraqi War veteran Eugene Goodman. Goodman “led a crowd away from an unprotected wing of the Senate and in doing so may have prevented lawmakers from being lynched.” Serwer writes, "One rioter [Air Force veteran Ashli Babbitt] was shot when she tried to breach a hallway 'just yards' away from federal law makers. Several dozen Capitol Police officers were injured by the mob, which reportedly included a number of off-duty police and former military."

Sadly, some Capitol defenders were suspended after siding with the rioters, and several dozen were under investigation for their action or inaction. The vast majority, though, upheld their oath and tried to defend the Capitol and rule of law.

Brian Sicknick

After the attack, Trump delayed lowering the White House flag in honor of Brian Sicknick for several days. Sicknick was killed by some of the rioters who had followed the president's direction and marched on the Capitol.

“Trump’s reluctance to honor a police officer who fell in the line of duty –– one who was also an outspoken supporter of his –– may seem strange. But in repelling the rioters’ assault on democracy, the Capitol Police who resisted the mob had breached their contract with the Trump supporters drawn to Blue Lives Matter…” 

“The Capitol Police officers who did their duty became traitors, because they placed the oaths they swore to the Constitution over the corrupt bargain that Trump had offered them, and over their responsibility to maintain America’s traditional racial harmony.”

Some Trump supporters redesigned the POW/MIA flag to incorporate jailed J6 insurrectionists and an image of the Capitol. Not surprisingly, Trump said he would pardon rioters if he's reelected in 2024.

Serwer said some of Trump’s pardons as he left office were acts of impunity and against accountability.

“When Trump pardoned service members who committed war crimes or police officers in prison for abusing their authority, he was reiterating the message that certain people are exempt from the protection of the law, while others are immune to its restrictions. Trump was also rewarding a constituency he expected to reward him in return. From his rhetoric, it was clear that in exchange for his unwavering support, Trump expected the police and military to aid him in punishing his political foes.”

That observation ties to other strong “law and order” authoritarian leaders, including in U.S. history. Serwer brings up President Richard Nixon, who cracked down on “anarchy” protests,  and Governor George Wallace, who in 1967 called for a literal police state. Wallace told the Fraternal Order of Police convention that the police should run the country for two years to restore order.

The crowd at the lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith in Marion, Indiana, Aug. 7, 1930. (PD)

I find it hard to process images of righteousness in the faces of white supremacists at lynchings of black people a century ago –– or in the faces of German supporters of Hitler’s Third Reich –– or in the faces of Russian citizens supporting Putin’s war Ukraine –– or in the faces of Trump supporters who still believe his misinformation, disinformation, and Big Lie of a stolen election. Unfortunately, as Serwer point out, there’s a common link.

Hope and optimism, however, remains. And progress continues.

Recognizing and confronting exclusionary racism in our history is possible. We can be both aware of the past and, with the proper perspective, have hope in the future. That’s especially true as we see the nation’s first African/Asian American vice president, Kamala Harris, announce the nation's first female African American Supreme Court associate, Ketanji Brown Jackson, on the Senate floor last week. 

President Joe Biden and Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson celebrate the moment she is confirmed by the Senate, Apr. 7, 2022. (WH)

Both Harris and Jackson were selected by President Joe Biden, who Serwer notes is an unlikely hero to such progress, given his record as a U.S. senator.

President Ulysses S. Grant (Brady)

Serwer also mentions the redeemed leaders of President Ulysses S. Grant, who married into a slave-owning family and who inherited a slave from his father-in-law, would “smash the first Ku Klux Klan and become the first American president to champion the full citizenship of black men, and President Lyndon B. Johnson, the former Southern segregationist, who went on to sign the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act in the mid-1960s.

Celebrating achievement and progress is the best antidote to hateful mocking, anger, and cynicism.

By the way, “The Cruelty Is the Point” opens with “A Note to Readers” that I find inspiring and thoughtful:

“Throughout this book, I use lowercase when referring to racial terms such as ‘black’ or ‘white.’ This is against the prevailing trend in letters, but I do it because I fear that capitalization reinforces the notion that race is a biological reality rather than a social reality. Racism and bigotry are very real, but race itself is a biological fiction.”

 Well said.

‘Where Law Ends’ / Seeds of Ukraine Invasion

Review by Bill Doughty––

There’s a scene in “Where Law Ends: Inside the Mueller Investigation” by Andrew Weissmann (Random House, 2020) in which Vietnam Veteran Robert Mueller leads his Special Counsel team in a celebration of the Marine Corps Birthday, something Mueller had done since his days as director of the FBI. Semper Fi.

“On November 10, [2018], Mueller held his last U.S. Marine Corps Birthday celebration –– an annual event he had commemorated at the Bureau and now in the Special Counsel’s Office. The whole office attended, cake was served, and –– as tradition would have it –– the first piece was handed from Mueller to Ben Cohen (our security officer), symbolizing the passing of the torch from the oldest to the youngest marine. The tradition was lovely, and we all knew it would be our last with the office and Mueller.”

The birthday commemoration occurred during the fraught days of Special Counsel team interviews with a key figure in events that would lead to the first impeachment of Donald Trump.

Paul Manafort, Trump’s campaign manager, was accused of coordinating a meeting at the Trump Tower in June 2016 between Russian operatives, including Natalia Veselnitskaya and other Russians, and members of the Trump campaign, including Donald Trump Jr. and Jared Kushner. 

Manafort coordinated also with Russian intelligence officer Constantin Kilimnik, providing internal polling information to a foreign entity; Manafort pleaded guilty in federal court to obstruction of justice and conspiracy. He comes across in “Where the Law Ends” as a simultaneously pathetic loser, smooth Svengali, and evil liar.

Weissmann outlines how Manafort worked with Ukrainian oligarchs and Russian officials in an attempt to divide Ukraine after the Ukrainian people voted Russia’s puppet Viktor Yanukovych out of office. We see the seeds of Putin’s invasion plans –– planted years ago and fertilized during the Trump administration.

“Russia had sought for years to control Ukraine, as Putin needed that territory to transmit oil and gas to Europe. But Ukraine needed Russia even more, as it obtained basically all of its energy from that nation. Russia had enjoyed de facto control of Ukraine when Yanukovych was president, funneling him millions of dollars in bribes to curry his favor. But after Yanukovych’s overthrow, Russia no longer had such a willing puppet under its control. Thus, Russia had turned to brute force: its infamous invasion of Crimea, a region of eastern Ukraine, in 2014 –– the one that had outraged most Western democracies, but which candidate Trump oddly had regarded as no big deal.

“The proposal for Russia to take over the eastern half of Ukraine was the Crimea invasion on steroids. Russia would annex the country, reinstall its favorite figurehead, and thus control the economic heart of the country. Notably, Manafort and Kilimnik’s proposal explained that, for such a move to succeed, it would need the consent of the United States. It called on Trump to give Russia an approving ‘wink’ –– the word the proposal used –– and, furthermore, to appoint Manafort to negotiate the logistics with Russia on America’s behalf. In a separate email, Kilimnik endorsed Manafort for this role; Manafort would be able to deal with Russia at the ‘very top level,’ Kilimnik explained…

“The facts we’d established, even amid Manafort’s attempts to muddy them were staggering. On August 2, if not earlier, Russia had clearly revealed to Manafort –– and, by extension, to the Trump campaign –– what it wanted out of the United States: ‘a wink,’ a nod of approval from a President Donald Trump, as it took over Ukraine’s richest region.

“It was a tremendous thing for Russia to ask for. It would seem to require significant audacity –– or else, leverage –– for another nation to even put such a request to a presidential candidate. This made what we didn’t know, and still don’t know to this day, feel monumentally disconcerting: namely, why would Trump ever agree to this? Why would Trump ever agree to this Russian proposal if the candidate were not getting something in return? Both Manafort and Trump were too transactional to give away something for nothing.”

Trump, Manafort and Ivanka Trump (Shealah Craighead)

Weissmann’s book was written prior to Trump’s pardons of people involved in coordination with Russia to help him get elected: Michael Flynn, George Papadopoulos, Alex van der Zwann, Roger Stone, and Paul Manafort (along with dozens of other pardons).

Regarding Manafort, Weissmann says Judge Jackson’s expression of disapproval of Manafort’s crimes were incisive and “managed to articulate a central and dismaying truth about our entire experience at the Special Counsel’s Office.”

“She spoke of Manafort’s numerous lies, and his multiple obstructions of our investigation –– both through his own willful deceit and by coaching witnesses to lie for his protection. He’d done the latter, Judge Jackson noted, while he was under indictment and out on bail. Finally, she explained that Manafort had even lied to the government about telling the truth: claiming that he would finally cooperate with our investigation only to obfuscate and impede it further. ‘It is hard to overstate the number of lies and the amount of fraud and the extraordinary amount of money involved,’ she said. Manafort had not lived an exemplary life. Here was a chastening recognition that his conduct was serious and flagrant, and repeated over years.”

Working with the Russians and on behalf of the Trump campaign, it seems Manafort had sowed the political terrain for an invasion of Ukraine.

The title of Weissmann’s book comes from a John Locke quote, “Where law ends, tyranny begins.”Weissman outlines how Mueller's team faithfully and methodically defended the Constitution (from enemies, both foreign and domestic).

He introduces us not only to key actors in the limelight such as Manafort, Jared Kushner, Donald Trump Jr., and Bill Barr, but also to various members of the Mueller team who worked behind the scenes, sometimes at odds over how to present to the courts the corruption they encountered.

Trump and Barr (Shealah Craighead)

Weissmann begins and ends his narrative with discussion of former Attorney General William Barr, starting with the author’s profound disappointment in how Barr presented a distorted summary of the Mueller Report to the public. Near the end of the book Weissmann lists specifics, point by point, of how Barr misled, obfuscated, and showed a “disregard to the facts and attempted erasure” of the Mueller Report’s findings, even though the report clearly shows coordination between the Trump campaign and Russia.”

Barr had emasculated the special counsel, which he alluded he would do in an AG audition memo he wrote as a private citizen.

“Barr’s gambit –– enabled by [Rod] Rosenstein and his staff –– gave the president a green light to resume conducting himself beyond legal confines,” Weissmann contends.

“And it worked. Three months later [after release of the Mueller Report], on the day after Mueller testified about our report in Congress, the president held up hundreds of millions of dollars in funding to aid Ukraine in its war against Russia –– funding that had been authorized by Congress and previously signed off on by the president himself. Why? Because he wanted the Ukrainian government to open an investigation into his political opponent Joe Biden and his son…

“Still, it is a different investigation that Trump sought from Ukraine that I find even more disturbing. The president leaned on the Ukrainian government to investigate Ukraine’s purported interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. These allegations are rooted in Russian disinformation. The unanimous conclusion of our Intelligence Community and Trump’s own experts, like Dr. Fiona Hill, is that Russia interfered with the election; our indictments laid out clear and extensive proof, replete with Russian emails detailing the efforts. We had the facts. Why would Trump raise the boogeyman of Ukraine election interference other than to distract from what Russia had done (and would continue to do)?

“Did Ukraine help Trump in the 2016 election? Of course not. And nothing about Trump’s Ukraine allegations diminished the proof against Russia.”

Historians will value this book a hundred years from now for its first-person findings, eventually leading to the first impeachment (of two) of former President Donald Trump, who solicited a foreign entity (Ukraine) for help in an election campaign. And he would solicit foreign help again and again.

Weissmann’s book is all-the-more relevant after Trump’s recent request, once again, for a foreign entity’s help against his political foe in an interview at the end of March with Real America’s Voice at Mar-a-Lago. Reminiscent of his “Russia, if you’re listening” request in 2016 for dirt on political opponent Hillary Clinton, Trump again asked President Putin of Russia for scandalous information on political opponent President Joe Biden and his son.

Trump, who previously and recently called Putin a savvy genius, lamented not being able to coerce Ukraine for information. And the former president offered this shocking comment about China: “And I won’t even talk about China because they haven’t gone into Taiwan yet.”

At the end of March, two hundred U.S. Marines were deployed to Lithuania on the eastern edge of the NATO alliance. The deployment includes a command-and-control unit for Marine Air Control Group 28 out of Cherry Point, North Carolina.

NATO Mine Countermeasures Group 1 ships sail in formation in Geiranger Fjord, Norway, March 9, 2022, during Exercise Cold Response. NATO

Following Exercise Cold Response training in Norway, ten Marine F-18 Hornet fighter jets from Beaufort, South Carolina, were repositioned to Eastern Europe, according to the Pentagon, which has 14,000 troops stationed in Europe. The U.S. Navy and U.S. Coast Guard have helped or trained with Ukraine, especially since 1997.

Meanwhile, for more than a month valiant Ukrainian military members and civilians are defending their country and are now beating back the Russians, who are committing war crimes against their neighbor.

NATO, reunited and stronger, is supporting the courageous Ukranians. Semper Fi.

In an interview at Mar-a-Lago in March, during Putin's invasion of Ukraine, Trump asks Putin for dirt on Bidens.