BY KEITH M. JUDGE
First and foremost, I and all of Optimist Press would like to extend our heartfelt condolences to survivors of the incident in Waukesha, Wisconsin, and to the families and friends of those who lost loved ones amidst the devastation. What should have been a wholesome celebration on Sunday afternoon was disrupted by senseless calamity when a red suburban vehicle driving down Main Street at an estimated 40 miles per hour plowed through celebrants during an annual parade for the stringing of lights in this quaint Milwaukee suburb. We now know the driver, 39 year old Darrell Brooks, was bailed out of prison five days prior to the incident and already faces “two open criminal cases in Milwaukee County. In one case, filed Nov. 5, he is charged with resisting or obstructing an officer, reckless homicide, disorderly conduct, bail jumping and battery.” On Monday, Police Chief Daniel Thompson reported "the suspect prior to the incident was involved in a domestic disturbance” and he confirmed that “there is no evidence this was a terrorist incident.” What’s no less revolting than the wanton brutality in Waukesha on November 21, 2021 is the reaction it provoked from authoritarians and fascists across the nation, who wasted no time capitalizing on the drama to do what they’ve been doing since the COVID pandemic began: political profiteering off of human tragedy.
The incident occurred at 4:40PM. By 5:40PM, a landslide of invective deflected blame onto “democrats,” “antifa,” “leftists,” “black nationalists” and “BLM activists” while promoting the opinion that Darrel Brooks is a “terrorist” rather than a common criminal who attempted to run over his girlfriend one week prior to the events of November 21, 2021.
Scores of authoritarian accounts have claimed that Darrel posted references to the Black Lives Matter movement on his Facebook page, and numerous violent racists with criminal backgrounds simper at the feet of Donald Trump & Co. Trouble is, Robert Silverman points out, all this hubbub about Darrel’s purported affinity for the Black Lives Matter movement, including the imputation that he was executing revenge for the Kyle Rittenhouse verdict, was fabricated by fasci-lite propagandists like Andy Ngo and Tim Poole. It should also go without saying that unreformed criminal elements should never be confused for members of a viable political institution, unless you mistake the Aryan Brotherhood and Crips for political parties. It’s unclear if this commentary originated from genuine Americans or sock puppet accounts operated by low-income propagandists warehoused in Russia and China, who have been paid to corrupt our national discourse and destabilize the United States for several years (see here, here and here). Sarah Burris in RawStory reports, it’s estimated that over half of pro-Rittenhouse tweets on November 19th and 20th originated from overseas. 1)
An event such as the Waukesha tragedy offers ample material to sow division.
Confusion is compounded by U.S. media platforms that seek to indict democrats, progressives and leftists for the opportunism fascists so eagerly embrace and demonstrate en force. Bradford Betz with Fox News targeted comedian and social media director for the Democratic Party in DuPage, Illinois Mary Lemanski for her thoughtless attempts at wry humor. Paul Joseph Watson with Summit News, an apparent offshoot of Infowars, wrote an entire article about a tone deaf “dad” who “builds stuff” with 5k followers on Twitter, indicting him as a “left-wing social justice activist” for his support of the current administration. Each of these stories has been repeated ad nauseaum by the diaspora of hate fostered by social media moguls online.
A cursory glance yields multiple hits for “self defense” and “Waukesha” on platforms like Twitter. The majority of these are insensitive non sequitors bemoaning a perceived lack of justice in the state of Wisconsin in the aftermath of the Rittenhouse verdict. In contrast, the veritable avalanche of hate-mongering from afar or within the Republican Party serves to incite political violence and compound the harm already perpetrated on the streets of Waukesha. The majority of this commentary is incoherent, petty and indicative of the cognitive dissonance and hyperbole that infects most authoritarian personalities. It doesn’t matter what these faceless trolls write, or if what they write is given the appearance of facticity. In the aftermath of the Waukesha tragedy, author Jared Sexton Yates noted the following.
If you spend more than a second trying to rationalize the incoherence of Right Wing ideas you’re wasting your time. It’s not about principles. It’s about power and whatever it takes in the moment to get more power. Issues and ideas are just weapons. That’s all.
In the aftermath of the Rittenhouse trial, perhaps moreso than in the recent past, American fascism shall twist every kernel of news into an indictment of their political opposition, and no matter how facile or dumb their arguments may seem, the vulnerable and insecure will fall prey to their manipulations because hate and fear are switches that bypass the neural clusters in our brains that are capable of logic, reason and reflection. Fascists like Tucker Carlson, who is busy producing “piece[s] of fascist propaganda that wouldn’t be out of place in 1930s Berlin” such as a FOX exclusive documentary that lionizes Kyle Rittenhouse, are doing this to drum up resentment and anger in preparation for acts of political mass violence that eclipse the heartbreaking events that transpired in Waukesha, Wisconsin this year.
Jane Lytvynenko with Buzzfeed disagrees with the FBI. The editor’s response follows.
This analysis doesn't make sense to me. It's getting picked up everywhere. This is a tiny sample of the overall conversation, numbers are totally unclear, and doesn't look at anti-Rittenhouse tweets for similar trends. Also... state trolls don't put their location in their bioDivide & conquer: A sample of 32,315 pro-Rittenhouse hashtag tweets, Nov 19-20, showed 29,609 with disabled geolocation. Of those, 17,701 were listed as “foreign”, but a deep scrub revealed most of those were in Russia, China, and the EU. @Tara_Writer @TAPSTRIMEDIA #RittenhouseFrank Figliuzzi @FrankFigliuzzi1