The MAGA GOP through the lens of terrorist lifecycle analysis
TAT readers, my best for everyone’s “hump day.”
Okay, okay, I know that the title is a bit daunting, and the topic is about as deep as the ocean, even for me who has had a career in CT/ Counterterrorism. I will include plenty of scholarly references but will concurrently put this dangerous topic, into perspective in as plain language as possible, including as always, links rather than a longer article for substantive background. It is beyond critical that we see all threats to our nation, clearly and without the lens of what most people consider, “politics.” That is what today’s TAT is about; the threat of a right-wing extremist Republican Party, masquerading as an anti-democracy, political party.
In this particular election year, not one issue on our November ballot, is more important than seeing today’s analysis, clearly.
As noted, I will not try and bog everyone down in the incredibly complex topic of terrorism, radicalization, extremism and violent extremism however, we will need to understand at least, a few basic points. Based on my career in CT, I have dealt with this bizarre maze of definitions often and frustratingly. This is especially true because many domestic terror groups, with or without State Department designations, are dangerously connected to foreign terror organizations. Many elements of the MAGA movement have these foreign connections as well, especially in regard to Russian far-right ideology and sometimes training and combat experience.
Bizarre as it sounds, the US government, like many of our allies, still struggle to explicitly define terrorism. There are plenty of exceptions depending on a variety of factors and which agency or entity operating against terrorism. In the US Code quote from the Legal Information Institute at Cornell’s Law School shows some of the legal ambiguity in the US Code.
"terrorism The word terrorism does not have a commonly agreed or legally adopted unique definition because defining its scope is politically complex, and its selective use is often the subject of controversy in and outside legal domestic and international arenas. The United States Congress tends to make distinctions between domestic terrorism and international terrorism. These distinctions are usually based on where the act occurs. For example, 18 U.S. Code § 2331 defines “international terrorism” as activities that: A) involve violent acts or acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State, or that would be a criminal violation if committed within the jurisdiction of the United States or of any State; (B) appear to be intended— (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and (C) occur primarily outside the territorial jurisdiction of the United States, or transcend national boundaries in terms of the means by which they are accomplished, the persons they appear intended to intimidate or coerce, or the locale in which their perpetrators operate or seek asylum…” That same part of the US Code separately defines “domestic terrorism” as activities that: (A) involve acts dangerous to human life that are a violation of the criminal laws of the United States or of any State; (B) appear to be intended — (i) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population; (ii) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or (iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, or kidnapping; and (C) occur primarily within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States…” - Definitions of terrorism in the US Code - Cornell Law School
Extremism vs. violent extremism and radicalization
Again, depending on which organization or set of laws applicable, there are varying definitions. For simplicity’s sake, I will use the most basic, not because readers aren’t intelligent, but because in these cases, simpler definitions are easily as accurate than most of the “legalese.”
Starting with radicalization; It is the process or processes by which a person develops and internalizes beliefs that far exceed social and legal norms. My recurring mention of “narrative” in my writing is deeply connected to properly understanding the processes and their potential for reducing, recidivism. Remember this point as you read about violent extremism.
Extremism: Once radical beliefs are internalized and held rigidly in a person, they are considered to be extremist. Nothing complicated about this.
Violent extremism is what constitutes the primary threat to our democracy. Instead of writing it all out, see the FBI generated graphic below:
Finally, I will add here a couple of my own personal insights into these definitions:
From radicalization to violent extremism, is a spectrum with radicalization, the least threat in its initial stages. Extremism is much like an infection that lies beneath the skin eating away at healthy tissue until it is either treated or breaks out into the open. The most dangerous place on the spectrum is violent extremism. Violent extremism, to continue the infection analogy, is sepsis and without dramatic and immediate intervention, can kill or do irreparable harm.
Once septic, or an individual that is willing to go into the public and not only demonstrate for extremist views and then act on them with violence, is a threshold that is difficult to cure…ever. The MAGA movement is both a. and b. January 6th participants, I generally consider septic. This is where the true threat to our nation lies and if we believe that these citizens and, in some cases, their foreign influencers are going to go quietly into the night, we are wrong, dead wrong.
Now that we have the simplest possible explanation of the basics, let’s take a look at the issue of ideology in today’s GOP.
Now that we’ve established what violent extremism is, there is zero doubt that so long as Trump and MAGA controls the GOP, they are not only extremist, but have a very large violent extremist wing. Extremism by default is underpinned with rigid ideology, communicated by narratives and sub-narratives. I won’t go into all of that now but will add a link to my interview by the Lincoln Project in 2022 where I explain all of this in detail.
GOP ideology is much the same as the wave of far-right extremist ideology that has supported fascist governments around the world, in the Trump era. Its pillars are Theocracy (in Christian nations, it is WCN or White Christian Nationalism), Oligarchy and subservience to this ideology. Some of the nations wielding this fascist ideology are, Russia, India, Brazil under Bolsonaro, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, etc. Putin, Trump’s mentor in wielding this ideology dangerously shares almost exactly the key elements of today’s GOP ideology.
Since the GOP has refused to write a platform since they anointed Trump king in 2016, I always use the Texas GOP 2022, Midterm platform which is very much the same as what the party uses now. I have done plenty of analysis on this platform, including a long, detailed comparison of Greg Abbott’s, Dan Patrick’s, Ken Paxton’s and the TX GOP’s work to the principled conservatism of one of my favorite American presidents, Dwight D. Eisenhower’s 1956 GOP platform. Spoiler alert… the MAGA GOP is extremist, not conservative, at all.
We now know from the legal definition perspectives and comparison of their MAGA ideology to principled conservatism, that today’s GOP is without a doubt, extremist and violent extremist. I will also add that much of the fake patriotism that they claim makes them “patriots” is also, unconstitutional. Please see the above essay for the explanations.
Now, to the crux of the matter regarding terrorist lifecycles. To be clear, violent extremism is terrorism.
Terrorist groups, organizations, movements etc. are known within the CT community to have “lifecycles.” In other words, there are defining factors for how they are born, mature and either fold or go mainstream. There is a mountain of scholarship regarding terrorism lifecycles and like much scholarship, not always in line with each other. Experience though does help to sort for what matters.
My opinions today are based on both experience and some of the scholarship. I will include a couple of links to this work here. If you must read or scan but one, I recommend the one from CTC, the Countering Terrorism Center at West Point. Through the years, I have had a handful of friends and colleagues grace their premises and have great appreciation for their work. The CTC work is also shorter and more digestible.
How do the factors determining terrorist groups’ longevity differ from those affecting their success? - ScienceDirect
THE LIFE CYCLE OF TERRORIST ORGANISATIONS 11047408.pdf (core.ac.uk)
CTCSentinel-Vol3Iss2-art6.pdf (westpoint.edu)
Professionally speaking, I am not yet sure where we are with the MAGA GOP in regard to whether they are now in a phase of attrition where infighting destroys the movement or whether they have achieved enough political accomplishments to deny them sustainable grassroots energy and funding. The funding, by most accounts is still there in the form of massive fundraising to the masses that falsely claims, “conservative values” and also by massive dark money funding from oligarchs, using the party leadership to undo our constitution and enable our adversaries, such as Putin.
A perfect example of enabling Putin, is Speaker Mike Johnson and the spineless GOP congressmen in the House of Representatives denying funding to Ukraine for their survival against a genocidal Putin. Putin, now Xi’s junior partner receives backing from China, Iran and a long list of similar leaders, including much of BRICS and the BRICS expansion. All of these are also partially supporting Iran’s support of Hamas in their war against Israel. Iran in particular has provided logistics, training, weapons etc., in volume.
Yes, Iran was designated a state sponsor of terrorism by the US State Department, all the way back in 1984. The far-right ideology, especially of terrorist called Putin and the terrorist regime in Iran, complicate all analysis on where we are in the lifecycle of the GOP’s extremism. One of the primary factors in the final phase of a terrorist lifecycle is enough financial support to sustain the movement. As with the Russian funding of Trump and other GOP candidates through the NRA and other tactics in 2016, there is great concern that the current lifecycle, could be artificially sustained by outside actors for their own purposes, none of which are anything but treacherous for the US and western democracy.
Another primary factor is popular, grassroots support. This is in my opinion, one of the most dangerous aspects of this analysis. There is no denying that the support exists. Against an army of pollsters in 2020, I predicted even more votes for Trump and extremist GOP candidates based on NIA/ Narrative Identity Analysis. Yes, in 2020 Trump received millions more votes than he had in 2016. This segues nicely into another extremely dangerous threat that is relevant to looking at lifecycle analysis. For over forty years, the US National Security community has been on a losing streak when it comes to ethical influence.
I write regularly on the topic of the natsec community’s failures because not only are we still failing, but we are also spending a fortune on it. The US continues to pay the same alleged experts that have failed us so dangerously for decades and they refuse to even talk to dissenting, expert opinions. I do not fault their commitment, but their thinking is stuck in 1980 and there is zero desire to shed their failing thinking. They falsely believe that AI will solve everything and have zero input that supports this.
The primary reason that I raise the issue of influence, is that the ideology infecting today’s GOP is part of adversarial, malign influence. In other words, folks like Putin, unethical American oligarchs and unethical marketers, have turned the GOP into malleable sheep. In lay terms this is called “brainwashing” and far too complex for today’s already too long essay. Again, I provide background below:
Without factoring "brainwashing" into the equation for 2024, we're doomed to another far-right, extremist administration, no matter what pollsters say. (truthaboutthreats.com)
Combat ineffective, the rusted, broken hulk of US Influence Operations (truthaboutthreats.com)
On the battlefield of influence, the US is unarmed (truthaboutthreats.com)
The US National Security Community has left us a critical vulnerability in US national security. (truthaboutthreats.com)
The US National Security community is incapable of managing mis/ disinformation threats (truthaboutthreats.com)
We can't protect ourselves from mis/ disinformation, until we understand influence (truthaboutthreats.com)
Finally, I will take a look at a graphic from the CTC work on terrorism lifecycles, in order to briefly explain why am so concerned not just for our national security, but our democratic republic.
In reviewing this short list of indicators from CTC terrorism experts regarding what we should see towards the end of a cycle, there is little substantiable progress. This particular chart is about Islamist violent extremism but that makes no difference. Ideologically inspired terrorism can be evaluated by these factors regardless of motivating ideology.
Since we abide to the rule of law, MAGA violent extremists while they have been arrested, have not been killed. January 6th armed and unarmed insurgents, are but a tiny number of potential/ likely violent extremists. Our First Amendment Rights preclude any type of repression against the groups if they are not committing a crime. As we see daily, MAGA has not forgone violence and intimidation. In fact, in many states, especially the so-called red states, this has increased. Tragically, my home state of Texas is the poster child for such.
January 6th was supported, coordinated by and organized as a coup, by multiple merged violent extremist groups. Again, I will use Texas as the example, MAGA has achieved many of their goals such as Jim Crow 2.0 voting laws, radical and racially divided gerrymandering, freedom to acquire pretty much any weapon one desires, regardless of their worthiness, overwhelming theocratic (WCN/ White Christian Nationalism) influence in government, etc. This though has only whetted the appetite of the fake patriots in Austin. This is little different across the county in all GOP efforts.
The one bright spot is that attrition between former MAGA and the ever-more-extremist MAGA elements has raised its ugly head in state politics. My congressman, Tony Gonzalez is a prime example. Although he likes to play the baby-faced “moderate” on TV, his actions betray a much more extremist bent. He is now vulnerable post primaries from a ridiculously far-right extremist challenger. This type of attrition is common in the final phases of a lifecycle. Sadly, it is only one factor though, among many.
Young MAGA republicans of the next generation have shown little diminishing interest in bucking family tradition although their views tend to be less extreme than older Republicans. This is one of the reasons that Gov. Greg Abbott is hellbent on school vouchers. Private schools will have far more latitude for indoctrination, than do our constitutionally guaranteed right to public schools. Finally, there are also the hints of more types of violence either tolerated or poorly policed.
In closing, I would say that the nation, is now at acute risk from violent extremists called Republicans. This is not to condemn all Republicans but those who are principled, have zero say within the party framework. Violent Extremists in power, either “primary” or intimidate in other fashions, their more moderate representatives into submission and silence. There is no outcry for pulling the party back from the brink. There is still a near 70% believe in the party that the 2020 election was stolen and ultimately, malign influencers are running amok disseminating their aberrant, un-American and unconstitutional ideology because DHS and the FBI in particular, refuse to address domestic malign influence. They simply don’t know how and are unwilling to learn.
I do not draw these conclusions as political fodder. I do it because that it is a requirement of my oath of service, “to protect and defend the constitution, from all enemies, foreign and domestic.” Even more compelling, is that it is family tradition to do the same. I will fail neither obligation. I hope that you will read, understand and join those of us supporting our true national values. It is what all patriotic Americans do, regardless of their politics.
My best to all,
Paul