May 27th 2020

By Bill Berkowitz and Gale Bataille

Relatively small, and in some cases intimidating, anti-stay at home and anti-mask demonstrations have been staged across the country as states, counties, cities and towns begin the arduous re-opening process while the coronavirus pandemic still threatens lives. President Trump, a coterie of right-wing funders, longtime conservative organizations, coronavirus deniers, and white nationalist groups, are supporting the demonstrations; with much of the organizing developing on Facebook sites. 

America has experienced what has broadly been labeled The Culture Wars for the past four decades. Battles have been fought over abortion rights, prayer-in- the-schools, same-sex marriage, religious freedom, and a host of other issues. These days, one of the strangest culture war battles is being staged right before our eyes as protesters flock together to protest essential public health measures.

In addition to scores of unaffiliated and angry people, the backbone of many of these protests are armed white nationalists. When anti-social-distancing armed protesters appeared at a number of state capitals recently, many of the pro-Trump protesters represented white nationalist and militia groups.  

Trump’s tweet calls to liberate Michigan, Minnesota and Virginia and his ongoing refusal to support his own administration’s public health advice are almost certainly aimed at mobilizing his base for the upcoming election by reframing this crisis through the lens of class war.  Disenfranchised whites must rise up against big government and the “deep state” to regain economic prosperity.  Michelle Goldberg, in a May 18th NY Times opinion piece dismantles this “class warfare” false narrative. 

“Researchers at the University of Chicago have been tracking the impact of coronavirus on a representative sample of American households,” Goldberg wrote. “They’ve found that when it comes to judging policies on the coronavirus, ‘politics is the overwhelming force dividing Americans,’ and that ‘how households have been economically impacted by the Covid crisis so far’ plays only a minimal role. Donald Trump and his allies have polarized the response to the coronavirus, turning defiance of public health directives into a mark of right-wing identity.” 

Though the majority of the protesters are Trump supporters, angry at the toll of the coronavirus on their lives and livelihood, white nationalists (sometimes armed) have formed the backbone of many of these early protests.  

According to research and reporting by the Institute for Research & Education on Human Rights (IREHR), several hundred new far-right groups, including “Liberate”, “ReOpen”, “Against Excessive Quarantine”, “Operation Gridlock”, “Lockdown”, and others, have been formed to protest COVID-19 stay-at-home orders. As of May 11, IREHR has found “the Facebook presence of such COVID-19 insurrectionists presently consists of some 562 groups and more than 2 million members.”

IREHR’s Chuck Tanner recently reported that The Proud Boys, a major actor in the protests, is “a self-described ‘Western chauvinist’ organization that couples libertarian economics to a reactionary and racist brand of national identity,” have been “have been a steady presence in the COVID-19 insurrection.” 

In early May, ABC’s Clayton Sandell reported that Bradley Bunn, “A Colorado man [was] arrested after federal agents allegedly discovered pipe bombs in his home had also been helping organize an armed protest demanding the state lift its coronavirus restrictions.” 

In another almost unimaginable development, according to ABC News, the FBI’s New York office sent out an alert in late March warning “local police agencies that extremists want their followers to try to use spray bottles to spread bodily fluids to cops on the street. The extremists are also directing followers to spread the disease to Jews by going ‘any place they may be congregated, to include markets, political offices, businesses and places of worship.’"

The FBI alert warned that "members of extremist groups are encouraging one another to spread the virus, if contracted, through bodily fluids and personal interactions." Thus far, there have not been any reports of right-wing extremist consciously spreading coronavirus. 

An FBI statement said: "FBI field offices routinely share information with their local law enforcement partners to assist in protecting the communities they serve. These products are intended to be informative in nature, and as such, they contain appropriate caveats to describe the confidence in the sourcing of information and the likelihood of the assessment. Additionally, when written at a local level, these products will note that the perspective offered may be limited to the field office’s area of responsibility."

Michael Masters, the head of Secure Communities Network, an umbrella group that coordinates security for Jewish organizations and synagogues around the country, told ABC News that "From pushing the idea that Jews created the coronavirus virus to sell vaccines to encouraging infected followers to try to spread the illness to the Jewish community and law enforcement, as the coronavirus has spread, we have observed how white-supremacists, neo-Nazis and others have used this to drive their own conspiracy theories, spread disinformation and incite violence on their online platforms.”

Most of the armed protesters that recently took over the balcony of the Michigan State legislature’s assembly room wore the paraphernalia of white nationalist and militia groups. The response to this armed and largely white protest stands in stark contrast to an incident in 1967 when a group of armed black men – identified as members of the Black Panther Party -- rolled into Sacramento, California’s capital, armed with .357 Magnums, 12-gauge shotguns and .45-caliber pistols, and announced, “The time has come for black people to arm themselves.” At the time, California was an open carry state. Ironically, the National Rifle Association supported gun control measures, and the demonstration led to the passage of the Mulford Act, a state bill prohibiting the open carry of loaded firearms, along with an addendum prohibiting loaded firearms in the state Capitol.

Last week facing a second potentially armed protest and online death threats were made against Governor Gretchen Whitmer, Michigan was forced to close down its capitol building.. According to Newsweek, “The threats were made by protesters who planned to attend a ‘Judgement Day’ protest at the capitol. Dozens of posts in private invitation-only Facebook groups called for Whitmer to be hanged, lynched, shot, beaten or beheaded. One suggested crowdfunding sources to hire a hitman to kill her.”

A member of one group called “People of Michigan vs. Governor Gretchen Whitmer,” posted, “We need a good old fashioned lynch mob to storm the Capitol, drag her tyrannical ass out onto the street and string her up as our forefathers would have.” Detroit’s Metro Times reported that four leading anti-Whitmer groups on Facebook had a total following of 400,000 Facebook members.  

In addition to demonstrations and online death threats against Governor Whitmer, bomb-making white supremacists appear to still be concocting plans to blow up synagogues and, recently the FBI issued a warning that white nationalists might be planning to infect Jewish and black communities with the coronavirus.

In late April, NBC News reported that “A family-run network of pro-gun groups is behind five of the largest Facebook groups dedicated to protesting the shelter-in-place restrictions, according to an NBC News analysis of Facebook groups and website registration information. The groups were set up by four brothers — Chris, Ben, Aaron and Matthew Dorr — and have amassed more than 200,000 members collectively, including in states where they don't reside, according to an NBC News analysis based on public records searches and Facebook group registrations.”

"We haven't had any bloodshed yet, but the populous [sic] is counting to three, and yesterday was day two," wrote Dave Meisenheimer in a 385,000-member Facebook group called Michiganders Against Excessive Quarantine. "Next comes the watering the tree of liberty with the blood of tyrants," he concluded.

Interestingly, as The American Prospect’s Gabrielle Gurley recently reported “In 1999, when hundreds of Detroit residents—parents, educators, and activists—went to Lansing, all unarmed, to protest the state takeover of the city’s public schools, they were required to go through metal detectors. This spring, Michigan’s white reopeners walked right in.”