This attack has been on-going for some time, it's not a new thing, but it has really come to the fore during the on-going demonstrations over police brutality and murders of unarmed black people. That's because rather than addressing the injustices, the racism, the militarization of police, the white supremacy at the root of this, the right wing prefers to simply set about crushing the protests by means of increasing and in other cases outright creating criminal penalties with the idea of raising the risks and costs of protesting above what people can bear.
It's known as "rule by law," a relatively new idea to stand in contrast to the "rule of law," the abstract concept that all are equal in the eyes of the law - which of course isn't the reality, but we are talking about a concept. The point is, rule by law means those in power weaponize the law as a means to maintain that power - and that is exactly what is happening.
Again, this summer brought a new level of intensity. but it has been happening.
Just since 2015 - in the wake of protests set off by the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson - states have introduced at least 154 bills or executive orders to restrict peaceful protest. A number of them are not directly connected to the Black Lives Matter protests, in fact some, including three just this spring, are about protecting fossil fuel facilities. They want no more Dakota Access Pipeline water protectors.
But no matter the target, all such measures are threatening the same rights. So far, nearly 60 if not more of that 154 have become law, many of them since nationwide protests broke out over the murder - and honestly I don't know what else you could call it - the murder of George Floyd. As of June, more than two dozen such bills were pending. I don't know what's happened with all of them, but I know at least two have passed.
Here's one: After Floyd's murder, protesters in Tennessee started an around-the-clock protest on capitol grounds in Nashville. After two months of this, the GOPpers controlling the legislature and the governorship decided they'd had enough. Unable to buy off the protesters with mealy-mouthed promises to address “racial reconciliation” and unable to crush them with rounds of misdemeanor arrests and seizure of their equipment, they decided to make protesting on capital grounds a felony, punishable with six years in prison and loss of voting rights.
A number of places aren't even bothering to pass new laws, they are just re-purposing old ones. Prosecutors in states ranging from New York to Utah are using decades-old gang laws to go after protesters, treating protests as if they were actions by criminal gangs. In Utah, adding a "gang enhancement" to a charge carries a sentence of five years to life. And yes, a woman in Utah was charged just that way in August, although the enhancement was later dropped even as the underlying charge was not.
And there are more such "rule by law" measures coming. Recently, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis proposed a bill that would, among a number of other things, make it a felony to obstruct traffic while also allowing motorists to injure or kill protesters if they claim to be "fleeing a mob." It would make it a felony for anyone gathered in a group of seven or more people "to cause damage to property or injury to other persons" - that is, if you are in a group of seven or more and anyone in that group damages property or injures someone, you can be charged with a felony. It attaches Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act, or RICO, liability to "anyone who organizes or funds a violent or disorderly assembly" - treating protests as organized crime - and bars state grants to municipalities that reduce police budgets.
A few days later, Texas Gov. Greg Abattoir laid out legislative proposals to raise penalties and create new crimes that would require jail time for offenses committed at protests. This as Texas state cops are spending hundreds of hours to track down people suspected of misdemeanors during anti-brutality protests.
And, of course, don't think the feds are slouches in this regard.
In June, Attorney General William Barr said the Department of Injustice and the Joint Terrorism Task Forces would look at protests, “identify people in the crowd, pull them out and prosecute them.”
This past month, Sens. Rancid Paul and Tex Ooze called for the DOJ to pursue RICO charges against protesters and Black Lives Matter - and acting Department of Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf said that the department is looking into doing just that.
A couple of weeks ago, Barr told US attorneys to seek federal charges against protesters, including considering charging them with sedition, that is, with plotting to overthrow the government. The charge, which is in effect a step or two down from treason, carries a penalty of 20 years in prison. Shortly thereafter, deputy attorney general Jeffrey Rosen seconded the idea.
And of course the was the designation of New York, Portland, and Seattle as "anarchist jurisdictions" with an associated loss of federal funds, a designation created out of whole cloth by the White House on the grounds that, when you come right down to it, those cities have not harsh enough on protests, not doing enough to crush them out of existence - which to the right wing is the only acceptable goal.
A key to this, not sufficiently appreciated, is that it's not enough to punish dissent sufficiently to repress it. It has to be if you will the right sort of dissent. You want to keep your opponents off the streets, but you don't want to hinder your supporters, even if they do get let's call it a little rambunctious from time to time - that is, you want them free to act so long as they are of benefit to you. Succeed in suppressing left-wing dissent sufficiently, then gangs like the Proud Boys and Boogaloos are no longer useful, after which, they likely would - much to their shock, I would expect - become targets.
The point here is that for this to work, you need at least for now to redefine right-wing violence as "self-defense." Because the right wing cannot be violent, cannot be seen as violent, the better to use them as a tool.
Consider Kyle Rittenhouse, who shot and killed two protesters in Kenosha. To the media voices of the right, with backing from the Whitest House, he's not an out-of-state - you know, an "outside agitator" - heavily-armed vigilante with visions of Rambo, he's a hero acting in self-defense.
The end of August, a group of right-wing thugs staged a pro-Tweetie-pie truck rally, with a number of them driving though central Portland in an obvious attempt at terrorizing. There is video of some of them shooting unarmed people with paint balls and pepper spray from back of pick-up trucks and driving through crowds. At a press conference, Tweetie-pie called it a "peaceful protest" and described paint as a "defensive mechanism."
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