JONESBORO, Ga.—I boarded the Gone With the Wind Tour bus outside the train depot built in 1867 to replace the depot burned during the Civil War. The building now houses the Road to Tara Museum. It has displays of “Gone With the Wind” movie memorabilia including dolls of Mammy, played in the film by Hattie McDaniel, and the pantalettes and green hat worn by Vivien Leigh, who played Scarlett O’Hara.
Rick, the bus driver, switched on the audio track, written and narrated by a local historian, Peter Bonner. We listened to the familiar story of the noble South and its “Lost Cause.” We heard about the courage of the Confederate soldiers in Jonesboro who fought gallantly on Aug. 31 and Sept. 1, 1864, in a failed effort to block the Union Army from entering Atlanta. We were told of the gentility and charm of the Southern belles. We learned that the war was fought not to protect the institution of slavery but the sanctity of states’ rights. Finally, we were assured that the faithful slaves, the “mammies,” “aunties” and “uncles,” loved their white owners, were loved in return and did not welcome emancipation.
That this myth persists and perhaps has grown as the country polarizes, often along racial lines, means that whole segments of the American population can no longer communicate. Once myth replaces history there is no way to have a rational discussion rooted in verifiable fact. Myth allows people to deny who they are and the crimes they committed and continue to commit. It is only by confronting the past that we can end the perpetuation of these crimes in other forms.
When loyalty to the tribe is more important that truth, fact or justice—a tribalism on display in the hearings for Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh—an open society is extinguished. Reparations for African-Americans are not only just, they are the only way we as a nation, as with Germany’s reparations to the Jews, can build a shared history based on truth, atone for the crimes of the nation and reverse the legacies of white supremacy. The Southern cause, as Ulysses S. Grant wrote in his laconic memoirs, was “one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse.”
David Blight in “Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory” documents that in the decades after the war whites in the South and the North furiously rewrote the history of the conflict. “As long as we have a politics of race in America, we will have a politics of Civil War memory,” Blight notes. The root cause of the war, the need to emancipate 4 million people held in slavery, was erased, he said, and replaced with the “denigration of black dignity and the attempted erasure of emancipation from the national narrative of what the war was about.” As W.E.B. Du Bois lamented in his book “Black Reconstruction,” which looked at the brief postwar period, from 1865 to 1877, when African-Americans were given some political space in the South to resurrect their lives, “little effort [was] made to preserve the records of Negro effort and speeches, action, work and wages, homes and families. Nearly all of this has gone down beneath a mass of ridicule and caricature, deliberate omission and misstatement.”
The Civil War, as portrayed in novels and films such as “Gone With the Wind,” histories such as “The Civil War” by Shelby Foote and television programs such as Ken Burns’ documentary series on the conflict, is usually reduced to stories about the heroic self-sacrifice and courage exhibited by the soldiers from the North and the South who fought as brother against brother. The gruesome suffering, widespread looting and rape and senseless slaughter are romanticized. (For every three soldiers who died on a battlefield, five more died of disease, and, overall, 620,000 Americans, 2 percent of the country’s population, perished in the war.) Meanwhile, the far more important struggle, the struggle of black people to rise from bondage to be free, is effectively eclipsed in these narratives of white self-pity and self-exaltation.
“Gone With the Wind,” the 1936 novel by Margaret Mitchell, has sold over 30 million copies worldwide and, according to one survey, is the second favorite book among Americans, after the Bible. The 1939 film version of the book is the highest-grossing movie ever, in inflation-adjusted dollars. The book and film are unapologetic celebrations of historical myth, historical erasure and white supremacy.
The Lost Cause romance and veneration of Confederate military leaders have a powerful hold on white imaginations, especially among those for whom economic and political marginalization is becoming more pronounced. The myth of the Confederacy resembles the retreat into a fictional past I saw in Yugoslavia during the Bosnian War, an ethnic conflict that lasted from 1992 to 1995. That retreat gave Yugoslavs—whether Serb, Muslim or Croat—who had been cast aside by economic collapse and a failed political system manufactured identities that were rooted in a mythologized past of glory, moral superiority and nobility. It allowed them to worship their own supposedly unique and innate virtues. These fantasies of an idealized past were accompanied by the demonization of opposing ethnicities, a demonization used by demagogues to fuel the hatred and violence that led to a savage war.
“He was a man that gave up his country to fight for his state, which 150 years ago was more important than country,” White House chief of staff and former Marine Corps Gen. John Kelly said last year of the Confederate military commander, Robert E. Lee, a slave owner. “It was always loyalty to state first back in those days. Now it’s different today.” Kelly blamed the Civil War on “the lack of an ability to compromise,” adding that “men and women of good faith on both sides made their stand where their conscience had them make their stand.”
During my bus ride in Georgia, a woman on the audio guide impersonated Scarlett O’Hara as music from the 1939 movie played in the background: “Now y’all sit back and enjoy this journey back into a time of cavaliers, ladies fair, and cotton fields—called the Old South.”
The theme of the tour could be summed up as “ ‘Gone With the Wind’ accurately portrays life in the South during and after the Civil War.” Over and over, incidents and characters in the novel and film were related to actual events and people. Nowhere was this more pernicious than in the portrayals of black men and women who were enslaved.
“I learned that a black servant 144 years ago so loved her ‘masters’ that she requested to be buried in their family plot. … And when I learned that her masters willingly allowed such a burial request, I had to conclude that there must have been a greater bond, perhaps a loving bond of slave for master, and master for slave,” Bonner writes in his thin book “Lost in Yesterday,” which is sold in the Road to Tara Museum. “The unique and often misunderstood relationship has been presented throughout fiction and the entertainment media, in my opinion, in a multitude of unfair portrayals.”
Bonner goes on to argue that the slaves in the book and the film—Mammy, Pork, Prissy and Big Sam—all supporters of the Confederacy and loyal to the O’Hara family, represent a true picture of many, maybe most, blacks in the antebellum South. He cites the small headstone at the feet of Philip and Eleanor Fitzgerald in the local cemetery that reads “Grace, Negro servant of the Fitzgeralds” and insists “that Grace was honored as a family member.”
That Grace was given no last name on the stone and was buried, like a pet, at the feet of those who owned her seems to escape Bonner. Did Grace have a family? A mother? A father? Brothers? Sisters? Grandparents? Aunts? Uncles? Cousins? A husband? Children of her own? Or had they been sold by her beloved owners?
We stopped outside the 1839 Stately Oaks plantation house, which originally sat on 404 acres before being moved into the city. It is now part of the Margaret Mitchell Memorial Park. The mansion hosts white re-enactors in period costumes, including Confederate uniforms, the equivalent of re-enactors dressed in SS uniforms giving cheery tours of Auschwitz.
In squalid, overcrowded shacks outside Stately Oaks, children were born, lived and died enslaved. They spent a lifetime engaged in hard labor, misery and poverty. They watched in agony as mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers were sold off, never to be seen again. They lived in constant fear and humiliation. They were beaten, chained, whipped, castrated and sometimes shot or hanged. The male slave masters routinely raped black girls and women, sometimes in front of their families, and often sold their mixed-race children.
“Like the patriarchs of old,” Mary Chesnut, a white South Carolinian, confided in her diary in March 1861, “our men live all in one house with their wives and concubines; and the mulattoes one sees in every family partly resemble the white children. Any lady is ready to tell you who is the father of all the mulatto children in everybody’s household but her own. Those, she seems to think, drop from the clouds.”
The Southern tradition, as James Baldwin pointed out, “is not a tradition at all.” It is “a legend which contains an accusation. And that accusation, stated far more simply than it should be, is that the North, in winning the war, left the South only one means of asserting its identity and that means was the Negro.”
The ability to disregard the horror of slavery, to physically erase its reality, and to build in its place a white fantasy of goodness, courage and virtue speaks to the deep sickness within American society. Most Confederate monuments were erected under the leadership of the Daughters of the Confederacy from 1890 to 1920, a time when the terror of lynching by the Ku Klux Klan was at its peak. These statues were designed to romanticize white supremacy and divide blacks into good and bad “negros.” There are no statues to Reconstruction governors and senators or black political leaders, not to mention the leaders of slave revolts such as Nat Turner or Denmark Vesey. The few Confederate generals, such as James Longstreet, who supported black rights after the war are not memorialized, nor are the 186,000 black soldiers—134,111 conscripted from slave states—who served in the Union Army. The historian James Loewen calls the South “a landscape of denial.”
“Public monuments,” the historian Eric Foner writes, “are built by those with sufficient power to determine which parts of history are worth commemorating and what vision of history ought to be conveyed.”
One of the most outrageous public celebrations of white supremacy is Stone Mountain outside of Atlanta. Carved in the gray stone are massive figures of Confederate President Jefferson Davis and the generals Robert E. Lee and Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson. The Confederate leaders, all mounted on horses, hold their hats over their hearts. The carving covers more than 1.5 acres of rock face and rises 400 feet. It is the largest bas-relief in the world. It is also the most visited site in Georgia.
William Faulkner published “Absalom, Absalom,” his searing condemnation of slavery and the Old South the same year Mitchell published “Gone With the Wind.” The hate-filled slave owner and Confederate veteran Thomas Sutpen in Faulkner’s novel, unlike the characters in “Gone With the Wind,” is “demonic evil.” Sutpen, who engages in miscegenation, buys his slaves “with the same care and shrewdness with which he chose the other livestock—the horses and mules and cattle.” Faulkner understood “the past is never dead. It’s not even past,” that it is subject to constant revision by those seeking to justify and hide their crimes. He warned that the lies we tell ourselves about ourselves lead to moral squalor and self-destruction.
The tour bus stopped at Patrick Cleburne Memorial Cemetery, which holds the remains of some 1,000 Confederate soldiers who died in the Battle of Jonesboro. Most are unidentified. The walkway is laid out in the shape of a Confederate flag. A Confederate flag flies at the entrance.
“In 1872, the state of Georgia pays Stephen Cars, a local cabinetmaker, to rebury the Southern soldiers’ remains and place them in the Patrick Cleburne Memorial Cemetery here,” the audio recording said. “Mr. Cars did not bury over a thousand soldiers by himself. Mr. Cars had a slave named Tom who left with a Yankee captain after the Battle of Jonesboro. When the war was over, Tom returned to Mr. Cars’ house asking for his job back. It was in 1872 that Tom and Mr. Stephen Cars reburied the Confederate soldiers in this cemetery. I told this story to the state of Georgia building authority years ago, they oversee the cemetery, and they remarked that Tom was very similar to the O’Hara slave Big Sam.”
The bus paused in front of a 10-room green house built in 1880 that once belonged to the president of Middle Georgia College.
“Under Reconstruction, five Southerners were not allowed to meet together without a federal marshal present,” Bonner said on the audio guide. “In ‘Gone With the Wind,’ meetings were held in secret. In Jonesboro, there were those secret meetings that dealt with the issues the town had to deal with, including the violence in shantytown. Shantytown was a real location in Jonesboro and many other cities that had a large population of former slaves who are without a job or a home. When this house was being restored in 1995, it was found to have a secret room in the attic, believed to have been used for those secret meetings. There was also a ladder in the wall leading to the cellar. In the cellar, people believed they had found a tunnel. However, upon further research, they found out it was not a tunnel but a bomb shelter where the city fathers planned to store the county records if and when they got back to war” (meaning if and when they resumed the fight against the Union).
It is a safe bet that this house was also a meeting place for the heavily armed goons of the Ku Klux Klan, who rode four abreast at night through the Jonesboro streets to terrorize the blacks in “shantytown.” Over 4,000 people were lynched between the end of the Civil War and World War II in the United States. Georgia had the second highest number of lynchings, with 589. Only Mississippi, with 654 murders, had more.
Lynching was a popular public spectacle in Georgia that could last for hours and included sadistic torture and mutilation. Children were let out of school and workers were given the day off to witness the events. When Sam Hose, who had thrown his ax at a white man and killed him after the man pulled a gun on him, was lynched on April 23, 1899, near Newman, Ga., 1,000 people attended. Many arrived on a special excursion train from Atlanta. Hose was stripped and chained to a tree. His executioners stacked kerosene-soaked logs around him. They cut off Hose’s ears, fingers and genitals. They flayed his face. Members of the crowd thrust knives into him. The logs were lit.
“The only sounds that came from the victim’s lips, even as his blood sizzled in the fire, were ‘Oh, my God! Oh, Jesus,’ ” writes Leon Litwack in “Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow.” “Before Hose’s body had even cooled, his heart and liver were removed and cut into several pieces and his bones were crushed into small particles. The crowd fought over these souvenirs, and the ‘more fortunate possessors’ made some handsome profits on the sales. (Small pieces of bone went for 25 cents, a piece of liver ‘crisply cooked’ sold for 10 cents.) Shortly after the lynching, one of the participants reportedly left for the state capital, hoping to deliver to the governor of Georgia a slice of Sam Hose’s heart.”
On the trunk of a tree near the lynching, a placard read: “We Must Protect Our Southern Women.”
In May of 1918, Mary Turner, eight months pregnant, publicly denounced the lynching of her husband, Hazel “Hayes” Turner, who had been murdered the day before. She threatened to take those who lynched him to court. A mob of several hundred in Valdosta, Ga., hunted her down. They tied the pregnant woman’s ankles together and hung her upside down from a tree. They doused her clothes with gasoline and set her on fire. Someone used a hog-butchering knife to rip open her womb. Her baby fell the ground and cried briefly. A member of the mob crushed the infant’s head under the heel of his boot. Hundreds of rounds were shot into her body. The Associated Press reported that Mary Turner had made “unwise remarks” about the lynching of her husband “and the people, in their indignation, took exceptions to her remarks, as well as her attitude.”
In commenting in 1894 on lynchings, the crusading editor and activist Ida B. Wells said, “[O]ur American Christians are too busy saving the souls of white Christians from burning in hell-fire to save the lives of black ones from present burning in fires kindled by white Christians.”
James Baldwin, in the second half of the 20th century, repeatedly warned white Americans that their relentless refusal to honestly confront their past, and themselves, would lead to grotesque distortions of the sort that decades later we see embodied in Donald Trump. There is a severe cost, he wrote, for a life lived as a lie.
“People pay for what they do, and, still more, for what they have allowed themselves to become,” Baldwin wrote. “And they pay for it very simply by the lives they lead. The crucial thing, here, is that the sum of these individual abdications menaces life all over the world. For, in the generality, as social and moral and political and sexual entities, white Americans are probably the sickest and certainly the most dangerous people, of any color, to be found in the world today.”
The first recorded lynching in Georgia took place near Jonesboro in 1880. We have only the name of the victim, Milly Thompson. No one knows if Thompson was male or female. There is no record of Thompson committing a crime. But I suspect that, as in the cases of most lynching victims, the crime Thompson committed was the crime of freedom. If you were black, in this land of gallant cavaliers and Southern belles, and you objected to being human chattel and to enforced deference and submission to whites, they killed you.
Wiles, who said in August that he needed $100 million to launch a global media platform and claimed just this month that Hillary Clinton looks good because she’s drinking a lot of blood, now says that Trump supporters who “know how to fight” will hunt down Democratic lawmakers and kill them if their Savior is impeached.
Rick Wiles:ChristoTaliban psycho
“If they take him out, there is going to be violence in America,”he said. “There are people in this country — veterans, cowboys, mountain men, guys that know how to fight — and they’re going to make a decision that the people that did this to Donald Trump are not going to get away with this and they’re going to hunt them down.”
“I’m serious,” he said. “If these people in Washington think that they are going to get away with it, it’s not going to happen. The Trump supporters are going to hunt them down. It’s going to happen and this country is going to be plunged into darkness and they brought it upon themselves because they won’t back off.”
“They are going to go on a rampage and you’re not going to be able to put it back in the bottle,” Wiles said.
ChristoTaliban psycho Pastor of Hate Rick Wiles
ChristoTalibans: Killing people for 2,000 years in order to force people to believe that “Thou Shall Not Kill”
This is a link to this psychopath ChristoTaliban Rick Wiles website, TruNews.
Pastor Robert Jeffress has dismissed House Speaker Nancy Pelosi for asking the nation to be “prayerful” about an impeachment inquiry into President Donald Trump, which he says has angered “thousands” of evangelicals and “will cause a civil war-like fracture in this nation from which this country will never heal.”
THE UNITED STATES IS NOT A CHRISTIAN NATION, IT IS A NATION THAT HAS BEEN TAKEN HOSTAGE BY CHRISTOTALIBANS LIKE RICK WILES, FRANKLIN GRAHAM, ROBERT JEFFRESS AND JIM BAKKER, ALL PSYCHOPATHIC, SICK AND TWISTED CHRISTIAN IN NAME ONLY, SHITSTAINS ON THE UNDERWEAR OF HUMANITY
“Look, I don’t pretend to speak for all evangelicals but this week I have been traveling the country and I’ve literally spoken to thousands and thousands of evangelical Christians. I have never seen them more angry over any issue than this attempt to illegitimately remove this president from office, overturn the 2016 election and negate the votes of millions of evangelicals in the process,” Jeffress said.
“And they know that the only impeachable offense President Trump has committed was beating Hillary Clinton in 2016. That’s the unpardonable sin for which the Democrats will never forgive him. And I do want to make this prediction this morning: If the Democrats are successful in removing the president from office, I’m afraid it will cause a civil war-like fracture in this nation from which this country will never heal,” he said.
Pro-Trump pastor Robert Jeffress defends tweet invoking Civil War
Southern Baptist pastor Robert Jeffress defended controversial comments retweeted by President Trump linking impeachment proceedings in Congress to the prospect of civil war but clarified that he was not talking about a literal shooting war.
Hashtags like #CivilWar2 and #CivilWarSignup trended on Twitter after Trump repeated Jeffress’ warning that if Democrats are successful in removing him from office, it will cause a “Civil War-like” fracture from which the nation will never heal.
Jeffress, pastor of First Baptist Church in Dallas and a leading evangelical apologist for President Trump, made the comment during a Sunday morning interview on Fox & Friends, after accusing House Democrats and Speaker Nancy Pelosi of using impeachment as a tool to get rid of the president because they know they can’t beat him at the ballot box in 2020.
“I do want to make this prediction this morning: If the Democrats are successful in removing the president from office, I’m afraid it will cause a Civil War-like fracture in this nation from which this country will never heal,” said Jeffress, a frequent Fox News contributor.
Trump shared the message on Twitter, inserting a parenthetical “which they will never be” response to the “if the Democrats are successful” clause, prompting both ridicule and serious concern.
“I was not predicting and certainly not advocating an actual civil war, but what I am saying is this,” Jeffress said on the Todd Starnes Show on Fox Radio. “If President Trump, for whom 63 million Americans voted, if he becomes the first president in history to actually be removed from office, I believe that’s going to create a long-lasting wound in this country, just like the Civil War did.”
“I mean the Civil War was over 160 years ago, but we can argue that we are still feeling the effects of that today,” Jeffress said. “And I believe the same will be true if the left succeeds in removing this duly elected president of the United States.”
Asked on CBN News how he would respond to those who find his comment offensive, Jeffress said: “I would just ask them to read the comment, and if they come away with that conclusion — that I am advocating, or the president is, a civil war — it means they either can’t read or they are too stupid to understand what we’re saying. Nobody is calling for or advocating for a civil war.”
Part of the criticism leveled at Trump involves speculation about whether he was just careless or if the words were intended as a dog-whistle to the far right.
Oath Keepers, a patriot group classified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an antigovernment extremist movement, called the Civil War reference “the money quote” from the president’s Twitter thread.
“This is the truth,” tweeted Stewart Rhodes, founder and director of the group organized on the heels of the election of President Barack Obama in 2009. “This is where we are. We ARE on the verge of a HOT civil war. Like in 1859. That’s where we are. And the Right has ZERO trust or respect for anything the left is doing. We see THEM as illegitimate too.”
A link to the ChristoTaliban Fascist Robert Jeffress website Pathway to Victory
I think what is going on in Washington has something to do with [my call to prayer]. It has bothered me and it has been a burden on my heart because this president is being attacked more than any president in modern history; attacked by the press more than Abraham Lincoln.
So he is the president of the United States. You had two years of investigation that came up with nothing. Now the media and his opponents in Washington are doing everything they can to destroy him. What we need to remember is that he is the president. That doesn’t mean that he is a perfect person. He is flawed like all of us. He has made plenty of mistakes but he is the leader of this nation. We have got huge problems in front of us.
If the president was brought down for whatever reason, it could lead to a civil war. There are millions of people out there that voted for President Trump that are behind him that are angry and they are mad. We are just living in a very dangerous territory, and we need God’s help.
ChristoTaliban Psychopath Franklin Graham in his interview with The Christian Post
Televangelist Jim Bakker sat down today with Ramiro Peña, a Texas-based pastor and a member of Donald Trump’s Hispanic advisory board, to discuss Peña’s recent meeting with Trump and other religious leaders in the White House.
While criticizing calls to impeach Trump, Bakker said that such a move would lead to war: “If it happens, there will be a civil war in the United States of America. The Christians will finally come out of the shadows because we are going to be shut up permanently if we’re not careful.”
Bakker pointed to attacks on Trump as proof that “the Apocalypse has already began” and “the spirit of Antichrist” is growing in America.
“They want to kill our president, President Trump, with words,” he said. “They want to assassinate his person.”
The look that will be on this ChristoTaliban Fascist, Jim Bakker’s face, when the FBI and Homeland Security comes and arrest him, psychopaths Rick Wiles, Franklin Graham, Robert Jeffress and other psychotic Trumpanzee Evangelical scumbags who promote the violent overthrow of our government and the brutal slaughter of innocent US Citizens all to protect their Traitor in Chief Trump.
Critical words about Trump, according to Bakker, are the fulfillment of biblical prophecy about the First Horseman of the Apocalypse.
He pointed to the cancellation of a Tim Allen sitcom as further proof that conservatives are under attack.
Bakker claimed that “the devil is trying to cut out the voice of the church” and that “they’re eliminating anyone that is pro-Trump from every broadcast; soon, very soon, the only conservatives will be on Christian television and then we’re the next target—write it down!”
“They hate Trump,” he said. “What is this? This is not a normal spirit. This is not a normal hate. This is that spirit of the First Horse of the Apocalypse, which is riding now. It’s the spirit of hatred that’s taking over America and life and death is in the power of the tongue.”
Anyone familiar with the Christian religion should be aware that world domination is one of its ultimate goals. Any Christian who argues otherwise is either violating the Ninth Commandment (lying) or they never opened their mythological holy book. Jesus did command his disciples to “go make disciples of all the nations,” and if they reject Jesus, he will return and send them to everlasting Hell. If they are already dead, he’ll resurrect them and send them to Hell. World domination is a Christian thing the clergy hardly ever preaches.
America’s bastardized Christians, the vaunted “religious right, conservative Christians, and evangelical dominionists” have dreamt of the day they hold dominion over all aspects of Americans’ lives. They are the “Christian Reconstructionist” (Dominionist) movement and they have made slow but steady progress since George W. Bush’s administration.
They are a relentless bunch who have worked tirelessly to undermine anything they believe is contrary to their distorted “unbiblical” worldview; such as spending thirty-plus years attempting to abolish abortion rights. They are a patient group that has caused a great deal of damage by incrementally undermining equal and civil rights in America with Republican assistance. They have been successful despite they have always been in the minority.
Now, although their numbers are dwindling, they see a veritable evangelical “god-king” in Donald Trump and they are terrified at the growing calls for his removal from the place he has no right visiting, much less occupying. No doubt even superstitious evangelicals have seen the reporting that a Trump impeachment is gaining support and nothing to dismiss out of hand.
Add to the evangelicals’ concern that their “messiah” in the Oval Office faces the prospect of being impeached, now they are worried he will be forced to resign to save the GOP from further humiliation. The thought of losing their god-king, and the free rein he provides the religious right to advance the Dominionists’ cause is not just disconcerting, it is a reason to send “an ominous warning;” impeach Trump and prepare for a violent civil war led by conservative Christians.
With all the “impeachment” talk, there is renewed interest in a warning a month or so ago from scandal-ridden televangelist Jim Bakker. Bakker echoed the sentiment of many in the alt-right movement, and the white evangelical right, that America desperately needs a second civil war to get America on the “religious right” track.
According to Bakker, conservative Christians are concerned they will be permanently “shut up” without their “god-king,” and will “come out of the shadows” to start a civil war if Trump is impeached, or “forced” to resign. Last year Bakker warned his evangelical followers that the government would soon start “mowing down Christians for praying.” Evangelical clergy have been prepping their adherents for a final confrontation for ages, and people like Bakker see Trump’s removal as the catalyst for a violent confrontation.
The bible-clutching televangelist was speaking on his moneymaking “The Jim Bakker Show” when the topic of a Trump impeachment in the daily news came up for discussion. Bakker didn’t do much “discussing,” he just boldly declared:
“I predict if it [impeachment] happens there will be a Civil War in the US. The Christians will finally come out of the shadows, because we’re going to be shut up permanently if we’re not careful. God says that faith without works is death, we have to do things.”
Bakker’s prediction was reiterated by one of Trump’s advisors, Roger Stone, who just last week warned that if Congress dares impeach the corrupt con man, there will be a violent, armed response from Trump’s devoted base. Stone said:
“You will have a spasm of violence in this country, an insurrection like you’ve never seen. The people will not stand for impeachment. A politician that votes for it will endanger their own life. I’m not advocating violence, but I’m predicting it.”
According to MediaMatters, another one of Trump’s advisors, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones said “he was told by Donald Trump that he ‘really liked’ [Roger] Stone’s comment.” Jones claims to have repeated communications with Trump on “certain topics” and boasts regularly about his influence over the corrupt narcissist. No doubt Jones is being truthful because some of the things Trump repeats could only have come from a lunatic conspiracy theorist like Jones.
There is no question that the white evangelical right are staunch supporters of the corrupt racist Trump. He garnered 81 percent of the evangelical white vote; more than any other Republican presidential candidate since poll watchers have been keeping track. It is frightening, but a fair percentage of that 81 percent will react violently if their god-king is removed, no matter the process or circumstances. Those religious maniacs, and they are maniacs, believe that biblical god sent Trump to be his mouthpiece and that he was sent as a 21st Century “messiah.”
This evangelical promise of a civil war joins a growing series of second civil war predictions by “far-right media figures” who want nothing less than a bloodbath. It is not entirely clear who the conservative Christians are going to wage war on, or if they believe their god will intervene Old Testament style and snuff out everyone but the faithful. That is, of course, what the Christian bible says, but even if someone believes the mythos they cannot possibly believe that biblical god will support another American civil war if Trump is removed.
Admittedly, it is comical to think that any sane human being ever takes “predictions” and “warnings” from the likes of a televangelist seriously, but the raging animus among the religious right for anyone failing to conform to their worldview is at a fevered pitch. Add to that long-simmering rage, the thought that a legislative body might have the audacity to remove the white evangelicals’ “voice of god,” and the idea of armed violence from the religious right is as real as it is distressing.
Christians are, as alleged “followers of Christ,” supposed to seek peace and love their fellow man, but the white evangelicals are not Christians by any stretch of the imagination. Those bastardized Christians are armed, fanatical and have been indoctrinated to believe they are in an existential fight for survival. Now that they see an opportunity to seize control of the nation with their “god-king” in the White House, it is likely they will go “Old Testament” biblical on the country if their messiah is impeached.
“Jessica Hahn accused televangelist Jim Bakker of rape. Bakker denied the allegations. May 28, 1987. (Photo by Mary McLoughlin/New York Post Archives /(c) NYP Holdings, Inc. via Getty Images)”
So, ChristoTalibans Rick Wiles, Jim Bakker, Franklin Graham, Robert Jeffress and the rest of you psychopath Trumpsters calling for a Civil War and blood in the streets if Traitor Trump is removed from office
A WARNING
If you bitch assed ChristoTaliban punks and your psychotic Trumpanzees THINK we are going to lay down and not fight back against you psychopaths? Then you are more delusional than we thought you psychos all are.
Do you punks really think that we are? Do you twisted troglodyte theists think that the people of the United States are going to lay down for you punks? Do you all think our military are going to lay down for you punks?
I got news for you bitches.
Let me clue you twisted turds in.
You all think we liberals and Democrats do not believe in the 2nd Amendment or owning guns. You all believe we are a bunch of pussies huh? Well, again? I got news for you bitches.
Now, we abide by the laws of the land and the Constitution. And many of us? Were members of the military. And while the psycho Oathkeepers think they are keeping their oaths? No, they are not. They are in fact?
TRAITORS TO THIS COUNTRY ALONG WITH YOU ALL.
But it is of Antifa? Who do keep our oaths and will keep them to defend this country, against ALL ENEMIES, INCLUDING YOU PSYCHOTIC CHRISTOTALIBANS AND TWISTED TRUMPANZEE TURDS.
We will put you punks down like the rabid, hateful, twisted troglodyte you are should you finally drop your micronuts and pop off and try to start your Civil War. But you twisted troglodytes been threatening this? Since a real President, Barack Obama was in the White House, cause you racists and bigots and scumbag shitstains on the underwear of humanity could not stand a black man elected by the people, sitting in your “White House”.
And you punks should remember your history. Now I know? Most of you twatwaffles dropped out of second grade homeschooling cause you all either fucked your teachers and knocked them up, or got fucked by your teachers and they knocked you up, so you all could keep your family tradition of generational inbreeding going. But let me remind you.
YOU PUNKS? LOST THE FIRST CIVIL WAR. AND YOU PUNKS? LOST WORLD WAR I AND WORLD WAR II AND IT WAS BECAUSE OF US ANTIFASCISTS WHO PUT YOU ALL DOWN LIKE THE RABID DOGS YOU ARE AND YOU PUNKS LOST. AND THIS TIME? WE MIGHT NOT BE OH SO MERCIFUL LIKE WE WERE THE LAST THREE TIMES AND DO ALL WE CAN? TO WIPE YOU COCKROACHES OFF THE FACE OF THE EARTH ONCE AND FOR ALL, SO YOU TWATWAFFLES CAN NO LONGER BRING YOUR VILE HATE, YOUR VILE BIGOTRY AND YOUR PSYCHOTIC CHRISTOTALIBAN BULLSHIT UPON THE REST OF US CIVILIZED HUMAN BEINGS ANY LONGER.
IT IS YOU CAN’T UNDERSTAND NORMAL THINKING TRODLOGYES WHO ARE THE VILE EVIL OF THIS COUNTRY, YOU ARE THE TERRORISTS, THE FASCISTS, THE PUNK SCUMBAG SHITSTAINS ON THE UNDERWEAR OF HUMANITY.
SO HEY, YOU ALL WANT TO START YOUR CIVIL WAR? HAVE FUCKING AT IT. BUT BEFORE YOU DO? HERE IS A LIST YOU SHOULD TAKE CARE OF.
1. WRITE OUT YOUR WILLS. 2. PAY OFF YOUR LIFE INSURANCE 3. KISS GOODBYE TO YOUR INBRED LOVED ONES. 4. BRING A BODY BAG FOR YOU, CAUSE WHEN WE ARE DONE WITH YOU FASCIST, TREASONOUS PUNKS? WE WILL BE SENDING YOU ALL BACK TO YOUR WELL USED OUTHOUSE CONDOS, TO YOUR INBRED LOVED ONES, GIFT WRAPPED IN THOSE BODY BAGS, WITH YOUR FUCKING HEADS BLOWN OFF SO YOU GET BURIED IN A CLOSED CASKET FUNERAL.
LOOK AT THESE GENERATIONAL INBRED, FARM ANIMAL FUCKING, LOW LIFE PIECES OF SHIT WHITE SUPREMACISTS. PROVING HOW MUCH A BUNCH OF ASSHOLES THEY ARE. AND WHAT IS REAL FUNNY? THESE COCKSUCKERS FOR TRUMP? WOULD HAVE BEEN SENT TO THEIR HERO HITLER’S GAS CHAMBERS AND OVENS, CAUSE IF THEY HAD READ THAT SCUMBAGS NUREMBURG CODES? THEY WOULD REALIZE? THEY DO NOT EVEN COME CLOSE TO HIS IDEA OF HIS ARYIAN NATION.
Donald Trump Shares Pastor’s Warning of Civil War if Impeached
President Donald Trump shared a warning from Pastor Robert Jeffress on Fox News of a new “civil war-like fracture” if Democrats removed him from office. Pastor Robert Jeffress said:
Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats can’t put down the Impeachment match. They know they couldn’t beat him in 2016 against Hillary Clinton, and they’re increasingly aware of the fact that they won’t win against him in 2020, and Impeachment is the only tool they have to get rid of Donald J. Trump – And the Democrats don’t care if they burn down and destroy this nation in the process. I have never seen the Evangelical Christians more angry over any issue than this attempt to illegitimately remove this President from office, overturn the 2016 Election, and negate the votes of millions of Evangelicals in the process. They know the only Impeachable offense that President Trump has committed was beating Hillary Clinton in 2016. That’s the unpardonable sin for which the Democrats will never forgive him. If the Democrats are successful in removing the President from office (which they will never be), it will cause a Civil War like fracture in this Nation from which our Country will never heal.
Jeffress’ warning sparked trends on Twitter on Monday, with the hashtag #CivilWar2 and #CivilWarSignup as some news outlets falsely accused the president himself of predicting a new civil war. Others on Twitter accused Trump of trying to incite a new civil war:
“Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats can’t put down the Impeachment match. They know they couldn’t beat him in 2016 against Hillary Clinton, and they’re increasingly aware of the fact that they won’t win against him in 2020, and Impeachment is the only tool they have to get….— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 30, 2019
….rid of Donald J. Trump – And the Democrats don’t care if they burn down and destroy this nation in the process. I have never seen the Evangelical Christians more angry over any issue than this attempt to illegitimately remove this President from office, overturn the 2016….— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 30, 2019
….Election, and negate the votes of millions of Evangelicals in the process. They know the only Impeachable offense that President Trump has committed was beating Hillary Clinton in 2016. That’s the unpardonable sin for which the Democrats will never forgive him…..— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 30, 2019
….If the Democrats are successful in removing the President from office (which they will never be), it will cause a Civil War like fracture in this Nation from which our Country will never heal.” Pastor Robert Jeffress, @FoxNews— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) September 30, 2019
So here we have a website, full of psychotic Treasonous Trumpsters, calling for the mass murder of their fellow US citizens in defense of this scumbag piece of shit Donald J Trump. Here are some highlights from the comment section of this story, along with the psychopaths name who posted the comment and their link to their Disqus profile:
I agree! From what I am hearing that is exactly what will happen…of which I would gladly participate to protect this nation from the enemy within (the Democrat Party). They are the most vile, evil bunch I have ever seen. Our Lord would not approve of their agenda…..they only care about their pockets being filled with tax payer money! For the sake of our grandchildren and great-grandchildren we need to weed out the bad seeds of government and get back to the Constitutional freedom and rights we have been blessed with from the start of this nation. We are a nation “UNDER GOD” which the Dems would rather not have. Well, I would rather not have THEM lead us! So grateful for this President and his stand for our religious freedom and encouraging walking in our faith. TRUMP/PENCE 2020!!!
Well Buttercup you better listen hard and long to the Civil War rehtoric because Demonrats keep it up and soon there will be no more of them on the planet. We Americans are SICK of these Comie Rats destroying our country
This wouldn’t be pretty folks. Those who haven’t been there have no idea. But I pass this on to congress. Having fake hearings and even impeachment doesn’t cover your butt. All of you who are screaming “bad president” had best rethink this thing. Once it starts it can’t be stopped. And I predict when it starts it will start with the sleazeballs in Washington DC. Even most of the military, active and retired, are against this sleaze. So if you think the military will be there to protect you are seriously mistaken.
The problem arises due to the fact that the democrats don’t listen to what the people are saying they just do whatever it is they want to do. Unfortunately for them it has already been stated by several military special forces veterans including a retired navy seal that if the democrats try to remove our president by any illegal or unconstitutional means there will be a retaliation and they will hunt them down and eliminate their threat. Now the dems due to their ignorance will be facing an armed populace of about 100,000,000 Americans in a fight they won’t win and it would serve them right because we all know what happens when you sell your soul to the devil. The dems are all demons anyway you can see it in their eyes and the only reason they want trump out of office is because they don’t want the 8 plus years of corruption to be exposed. They know they are all going to swing whether it be by trump or by we the people. God bless us all and God bless America
And I for one agree. While I sure do not like the idea of a war since I have children, but with Democrats around I am not sure what type of life they will have if people like Pelosi, Schiff, Schumer, Nadler, Occasional-Cortex, Omar, Tlaib, Pressley, Jayapal, Hirono, ANY Clinton, Biden, Obama and ANY and ALL Democrats and their constituents are in charge. F Democrats. I just want to know how will we know who sides with whom? I do know, any Antifa member wearing a mask should get the first shots.
MOST TRUMPSTERS CANNOT EVEN SPELL, LET ALONE READ. AND THE ONLY GOOD NAZI? IS A FUCKING DEAD ONE.
Rick Wiles: There Will Be “Violence in America” If Donald Trump Is Impeached
ChristoTaliban like Pastors Rick Wiles, Franklin Graham and Robert Jeffress? Should be arrested and prosecuted for High Treason for advocating a Civil War and the violent overthrow of the government.
On his “TruNews” broadcast Wednesday, conspiracy theorist and anti-SemiteRick Wiles warned that Donald Trump‘s impeachment would be met with violence.
Wiles, who said in August that he needed $100 million to launch a global media platform and claimed just this month that Hillary Clinton looks good because she’s drinking a lot of blood, now says that Trump supporters who “know how to fight” will hunt down Democratic lawmakers and kill them if their Savior is impeached.
“If they take him out, there is going to be violence in America,”he said. “There are people in this country — veterans, cowboys, mountain men, guys that know how to fight — and they’re going to make a decision that the people that did this to Donald Trump are not going to get away with this and they’re going to hunt them down.”
Apparently those people will do anything to defend a racist misogynist who rains hell on immigrants, sabotages health care for Americans, and allows refugees to die. All because of Jesus.
“I’m serious,” he said. “If these people in Washington think that they are going to get away with it, it’s not going to happen. The Trump supporters are going to hunt them down. It’s going to happen and this country is going to be plunged into darkness and they brought it upon themselves because they won’t back off.”
So if the investigation of Trump’s illegal actions leads to any kind of punishment, then law-and-order Trump supporters will responds with… acts of violence? It’s not exactly a sign of sanity when your response to an investigation is to violently rebel. And yet Wiles says it’s Democrats who have “waged war” on Trump voters, so naturally, those voters have to respond with weapons.
“They are going to go on a rampage and you’re not going to be able to put it back in the bottle,” Wiles said.
“Once the blood starts flowing, it’s nearly impossible to stop,” added co-host Edward Szall.
Perhaps these guys need to be investigated, not the members of Congress asking questions to understand what Trump did behind closed doors.
Franklin Graham Threatens America With Civil War If Trump Is Impeached
Graham told The Christian Post: I think what is going on in Washington has something to do with [my call to prayer]. It has bothered me and it has been a burden on my heart because this president is being attacked more than any president in modern history; attacked by the press more than Abraham Lincoln.
….
So he is the president of the United States. You had two years of investigation that came up with nothing. Now the media and his opponents in Washington are doing everything they can to destroy him. What we need to remember is that he is the president. That doesn’t mean that he is a perfect person. He is flawed like all of us. He has made plenty of mistakes but he is the leader of this nation. We have got huge problems in front of us.
….
If the president was brought down for whatever reason, it could lead to a civil war. There are millions of people out there that voted for President Trump that are behind him that are angry and they are mad. We are just living in a very dangerous territory, and we need God’s help.
Franklin Graham denies endorsing Donald Trump, but he pulled out of the far-right’s favorite threats. In hiding behind the Bible mob style Graham warned that if anything happens to Trump the country gets it.
This is the same threat that Trump supporters have been throwing out there for years, and nothing ever happens. Trump supporters, just like their president, appear to be all talk and no action. The threats aren’t going to work. The nation is ready to call Graham’s bluff and get rid of Trump.
Anyone familiar with the Christian religion should be aware that world domination is one of its ultimate goals. Any Christian who argues otherwise is either violating the Ninth Commandment (lying) or they never opened their mythological holy book. Jesus did command his disciples to “go make disciples of all the nations,” and if they reject Jesus, he will return and send them to everlasting Hell. If they are already dead, he’ll resurrect them and send them to Hell. World domination is a Christian thing the clergy hardly ever preaches.
America’s bastardized Christians, the vaunted “religious right, conservative Christians, and evangelical dominionists” have dreamt of the day they hold dominion over all aspects of Americans’ lives. They are the “Christian Reconstructionist” (Dominionist) movement and they have made slow but steady progress since George W. Bush’s administration.
They are a relentless bunch who have worked tirelessly to undermine anything they believe is contrary to their distorted “unbiblical” worldview; such as spending thirty-plus years attempting to abolish abortion rights. They are a patient group that has caused a great deal of damage by incrementally undermining equal and civil rights in America with Republican assistance. They have been successful despite they have always been in the minority.
“The Civil Rights of none shall be abridged on account of religious belief or worship, nor shall any national religion be established, nor shall the full and equal rights of conscience be in any manner, or on any pretext, infringed.” Founding Father and President James Madison when he delivered the Bill of Rights to Congress
Now, although their numbers are dwindling, they see a veritable evangelical “god-king” in Donald Trump and they are terrified at the growing calls for his removal from the place he has no right visiting, much less occupying. No doubt even superstitious evangelicals have seen the reporting that a Trump impeachment is gaining support and nothing to dismiss out of hand.
Add to the evangelicals’ concern that their “messiah” in the Oval Office faces the prospect of being impeached, now they are worried he will be forced to resign to save the GOP from further humiliation. The thought of losing their god-king, and the free rein he provides the religious right to advance the Dominionists’ cause is not just disconcerting, it is a reason to send “an ominous warning;” impeach Trump and prepare for a violent civil war led by conservative Christians.
With all the “impeachment” talk, there is renewed interest in a warning a month or so ago from scandal-ridden televangelist Jim Bakker. Bakker echoed the sentiment of many in the alt-right movement, and the white evangelical right, that America desperately needs a second civil war to get America on the “religious right” track.
“Christianity neither is, nor ever was, part of the common law.” Thomas Jefferson. “Religion and government will both exist in greater purity the less they are mixed together.” James Madison. “The government of the United States is not in any sense founded on the Christian religion.” John Adams.
According to Bakker, conservative Christians are concerned they will be permanently “shut up” without their “god-king,” and will “come out of the shadows” to start a civil war if Trump is impeached, or “forced” to resign. Last year Bakker warned his evangelical followers that the government would soon start “mowing down Christians for praying.” Evangelical clergy have been prepping their adherents for a final confrontation for ages, and people like Bakker see Trump’s removal as the catalyst for a violent confrontation.
The bible-clutching televangelist was speaking on his moneymaking “The Jim Bakker Show” when the topic of a Trump impeachment in the daily news came up for discussion. Bakker didn’t do much “discussing,” he just boldly declared:
“I predict if it [impeachment] happens there will be a Civil War in the US. The Christians will finally come out of the shadows, because we’re going to be shut up permanently if we’re not careful. God says that faith without works is death, we have to do things.”
Bakker’s prediction was reiterated by one of Trump’s advisors, Roger Stone, who just last week warned that if Congress dares impeach the corrupt con man, there will be a violent, armed response from Trump’s devoted base. Stone said:
“You will have a spasm of violence in this country, an insurrection like you’ve never seen. The people will not stand for impeachment. A politician that votes for it will endanger their own life. I’m not advocating violence, but I’m predicting it.”
According to MediaMatters, another one of Trump’s advisors, conspiracy theorist Alex Jones said “he was told by Donald Trump that he ‘really liked’ [Roger] Stone’s comment.” Jones claims to have repeated communications with Trump on “certain topics” and boasts regularly about his influence over the corrupt narcissist. No doubt Jones is being truthful because some of the things Trump repeats could only have come from a lunatic conspiracy theorist like Jones.
There is no question that the white evangelical right are staunch supporters of the corrupt racist Trump. He garnered 81 percent of the evangelical white vote; more than any other Republican presidential candidate since poll watchers have been keeping track. It is frightening, but a fair percentage of that 81 percent will react violently if their god-king is removed, no matter the process or circumstances. Those religious maniacs, and they are maniacs, believe that biblical god sent Trump to be his mouthpiece and that he was sent as a 21st Century “messiah.”
This evangelical promise of a civil war joins a growing series of second civil war predictions by “far-right media figures” who want nothing less than a bloodbath. It is not entirely clear who the conservative Christians are going to wage war on, or if they believe their god will intervene Old Testament style and snuff out everyone but the faithful. That is, of course, what the Christian bible says, but even if someone believes the mythos they cannot possibly believe that biblical god will support another American civil war if Trump is removed.
Admittedly, it is comical to think that any sane human being ever takes “predictions” and “warnings” from the likes of a televangelist seriously, but the raging animus among the religious right for anyone failing to conform to their worldview is at a fevered pitch. Add to that long-simmering rage, the thought that a legislative body might have the audacity to remove the white evangelicals’ “voice of god,” and the idea of armed violence from the religious right is as real as it is distressing.
Christians are, as alleged “followers of Christ,” supposed to seek peace and love their fellow man, but the white evangelicals are not Christians by any stretch of the imagination. Those bastardized Christians are armed, fanatical and have been indoctrinated to believe they are in an existential fight for survival. Now that they see an opportunity to seize control of the nation with their “god-king” in the White House, it is likely they will go “Old Testament” biblical on the country if their messiah is impeached.
Trump’s ‘Civil War’ Quote Tweet Is Actually Grounds for Impeachment, Says Harvard Law Professor
resident Donald Trump’s recent tweet quoting a longtime evangelical pastor who warned of a “Civil War” if Democrats seriously pursue removing him from office could actually be grounds for impeachment, one Harvard Law professor said.
“If the Democrats are successful in removing the President from office (which they will never be), it will cause a Civil War like fracture in this Nation from which our Country will never heal,” Trump tweeted on Sunday night.
The tweet was a quote from Robert Jeffress, a Southern Baptist pastor who gave the comment during an appearance on Fox & Friends Weekend. Trump added his own parenthetical aside to Jeffress’ quote, in which the president asserted that Congress won’t be successful in their impeachment efforts.
The president’s tweet was immediately met with backlash, and Harvard Law professor John Coates argued that the social media post itself is an “independent basis” for lawmakers to remove him from the White House.
“This tweet is itself an independent basis for impeachment – a sitting president threatening civil war if Congress exercises its constitutionally authorized power,” Coates wrote on Twitter on Monday.
The House of Representatives officially launched an impeachment inquiry last week amid reports that Trump tried to pressure Ukraine to investigate former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter.
The communication between Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was first revealed in a whistleblower complaint to the inspector general of the intelligence community. The complaint detailed concerns that Trump was “using the power of his office to solicit interference from a foreign country in the 2020 U.S. election.”
This tweet is itself an independent basis for impeachment – a sitting president threatening civil war if Congress exercises its constitutionally authorized power. https://t.co/JL9XzClGXf— John Coatesâš½ï¸ (@jciv) September 30, 2019
The whistleblower also implicated Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani and Attorney General William Barr in the Ukraine debacle. Giuliani was described as a “central figure” in the situation.
Since House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced the inquiry, it’s been reported by several news outlets that at least 218 lawmakers in the House (the exact number of votes needed to impeach Trump in the chamber) support moving forward with impeachment. At least 217 Democrats and independent Representative Justin Amash have favored the inquiry.
Democrats say they intend to move quickly on impeachment, but so far have only opened an inquiry into the matter. The House will decide after the investigation whether to actually impeach the president. If the chamber votes for impeachment, the Republican-controlled Senate would then decide whether to remove Trump from office or exonerate him.
Historian Kevin Kruse slammed Trump for suggesting in his “Civil War” tweet that only Democrats are responsible for impeachment. Kruse, a Princeton University professor, noted that in order to successfully remove the president there needs to be a significant amount of Republicans backing impeachment.
“Trump can only be removed through impeachment if two-thirds of the Senate votes to remove him. To do that, 20 Republicans would need to join the 45 Democrats and 2 Independents,” Kruse wrote. “Removal would be bipartisan. Framing it as some kind of civil war isn’t just dangerous. It’s dumb.”
Armed Militias Are Taking Trump’s Civil War Tweets Seriously
Over the weekend, the president sent a tweet that seemed to warn of civil war if he were to be impeached and removed from office:
….If the Democrats are successful in removing the President from office (which they will never be), it will cause a Civil War like fracture in this Nation from which our Country will never heal.” Pastor Robert Jeffress, @FoxNews
Although the president was quoting Pastor Robert Jeffress’s comments on Fox News, he was adopting them as his own.
It might seem tempting to dismiss this language as of a piece with President Trump’s typical Twitter rhetoric. But it is worth paying particular attention to this tweet—because among the people who read it were militia groups enthusiastic about exactly what Trump portended. And while no violence has yet resulted from the president’s tweet, it would be foolish to underestimate the power of Trump’s comments to call rogue militias to action, particularly if there is an impeachment and he continues to use this rhetoric to fan the flames. In the days after his civil war tweet, he went on to use similarly incendiary language, referring to impeachment proceedings as a “COUP.”
Consider the Oath Keepers group, a far-right armed militia. Calling on its 24,000 Twitter followers to read the president’s whole tweet thread, the Oath Keepers account posted:
Here’s the money quote from that thread. This is the truth. This is where we are. We ARE on the verge of a HOT civil war. Like in 1859. That’s where we are. And the Right has ZERO trust or respect for anything the left is doing. We see THEM as illegitimate too.@StewartRhodesOKhttps://t.co/DjB8TY0vCo
Before this tweet, the Oath Keepers account tweeted that, under the U.S. Constitution, “the militia (that’s us) can be called forth ‘to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions.’ … “All he has to do is call us up. We WILL answer the call.” Other Oath Keeper tweets also hint at violence: One states that “their favorite rifle is the AR 15.”
According to the Oath Keepers’s webpage, the organization is “a non-partisan association of current and formerly serving military, police, and first responders, who pledge to fulfill the oath all military and police take to ‘defend the Constitution against all enemies, foreign and domestic,’” while declaring that they “will not obey unconstitutional orders.” The Anti-Defamation League, by contrast, describes the group as “an anti-government right-wing fringe organization” whose members have appeared “as self-appointed armed guards” at various places around the country, in defiance of what they deem to be unconstitutional government action. Last month, the group sought “security volunteers” from their membership and “other capable patriots” to escort Trump supporters attending a New Mexico rally “to protect them from potential leftist violence.” And last year, the Oath Keepers announced its “Spartan Training Group program,” with the goal of “form[ing] training groups in as many states as possible” to create “a pool of trained, organized volunteers who will be able to serve as the local militia under the command of a patriotic governor loyal to the Constitution, or if called upon by President Trump to serve the nation” (emphasis in original).
How do you circumcise a Trump supporter? Kick his sister in her jaw.
The Oath Keepers are far from the only militia group that vocally supports deploying potential force in aid of the president. In November 2018, after Trump pledged to send up to 15,000 U.S. troops to the border to deal with the approaching caravan of Central American migrants, the militia group known as “The Minuteman Project” published an “URGENT CALL FOR TEXAS BORDER OBSERVATION DUTY” to cover the 2,000-mile border from San Diego to Brownsville, Texas. According to U.S. Army documents obtained by Newsweek at the time, the military expressed its concern internally about the presence of unauthorized militias along the border, warning that protests occurring at points of entry historically had been peaceful, “unless extreme right or left groups attend.” The Minuteman Project’s co-founder, Jim Gilchrist, cautioned potential volunteers that their adversaries were “US-based PROPAGANDA organizations like the American Civil Liberties Union, the Southern Poverty Law Center, People without Borders” and many more groups like them. He further warned members to “use extreme caution when confronted by mainstream media” because “they are not your friends.”
Earlier this year, after Trump’s reelection campaign repeatedly ran ads quoting Trump’s references to an “invasion” on the southern border, another group—the United Constitutional Patriots—set up camp at the New Mexico/Mexico border. Without any legal authorization, this group assumed the duty of U.S. Customs and Border Protection to stop and detain migrants, all while heavily armed and dressed in military fatigues. In March and April 2019, a spokesperson for the group, Jim Benvie, regularly posted livestream videos on Facebook showing militia members chasing and capturing migrants while armed with assault rifles, and detaining them until they could be turned over to U.S. officials. In other posts, the United Constitutional Patriots described themselves as combatants in a “war” raging along the border due to migrants’ “invasion” of the country and actively sought to recruit people with military or law enforcement experience to join them. One such recruit, upon observing migrants while on “patrol” at the border, reportedly grabbed his AR-15 and asked his fellow militia member, “Why are we just apprehending them and not lining them up and shooting them?” In April, after the group’s “national commander” was arrested on unrelated charges and the Union Pacific Railroad ordered the group off of its property, significant media attention exposed the militia’s activities and it reconstituted itself as the Guardian Patriots, decamped to private land with the owners’ consent, and closed its public Facebook account.
Both of these armed militias took action at least in part in response to Trump’s rhetoric about the need to secure the southern border. Now that the president has invoked the idea of civil war, there is a risk that armed groups will take heed of this language too, whenever the president suggests that it is time.
Federal criminal law prohibits “rebellion or insurrection against the authority of the United States or the laws thereof,” including incitement or assistance to such rebellion or insurrection. It also prohibits conspiring to overthrow the U.S. government, levy war against it or oppose its authority by force. Based on the organization’s declared mission, there’s little doubt that the Oath Keepers would view any impeachment action by congress as “unconstitutional” and therefore not to be obeyed. Although the group’s current tweets come close to calling for rebellion or insurrection should that happen, there’s been no indication that the U.S. Department of Justice is investigating. Are the militias drawing up plans for possible civil war, for example? Are they training? Are they stockpiling weapons? These are things that law enforcement should be investigating, whether under federal law or state law.
Although it is widely believed that the Second Amendment protects the right to form private militias, it does no such thing. The Supreme Court made this clear in its 2008 decision in District of Columbia v. Heller, explicitly reaffirming its own 1886 holding that “the Second Amendment … does not prevent the prohibition of private paramilitary organizations.” Indeed, they are prohibited by state constitutional provisions or statutes in all 50 states.
The constitutions of 48 states include provisions that require the military to be at all times subordinate to the civil authority. That means that private, unregulated and unauthorized militias—operating wholly outside of the civilian governmental authority and public accountability—are prohibited by state law. There is good reason for this. As prominent historian and scholar A.E. Dick Howard wrote in 1974 in “Commentaries on the Constitution of Virginia,” the Virginia constitution’s ban on private militias “ensures the right of all citizens … to live free from the fear of an alien soldiery commanded by men who are not responsible to law and the political process.”
Notably, Virginia was the first state to adopt its own constitution, known then as a Declaration of Rights, in June 1776. According to the operative language in Virginia’s constitution, illustrative of the language used in 47 other state constitutions, “[I]n all cases the military should be under strict subordination to, and governed by, the civil power.” Last year, in a successful lawsuit against the private militias that usurped legitimate law enforcement authority during the 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, a state judge ruled that, based on this “strict subordination” clause in Virginia’s constitution, “[t]here appears to be no place or authority for private armies or militia apart from the civil authorities and not subject to and regulated by the federal, state, or local authorities.” The case resulted in court orders prohibiting the defendant militias from returning to Charlottesville as part of coordinated, armed groups during rallies, protests, demonstrations and marches.
Other state law criminal provisions also prohibit various types of militia activity. Twenty-eight states prohibit groups of people from associating together as a military unit or parading or drilling together in public with firearms. (It was one of these statutes that the U.S. Supreme Court upheld in 1886 against a Second Amendment challenge in Presser v. Illinois.) Similarly, 25 states prohibit assembling together to teach, demonstrate, train or practice with firearms, explosives or “techniques” capable of causing injury or death, knowing and intending to further a civil disorder. And another state criminal statute, found in some variation in 12 states (and in the U.S. Code), prohibits the false assumption of the duties of a law enforcement or peace officer or the unauthorized wearing of military uniforms or close imitations thereof. The United Constitutional Patriots’s spokesperson, Jim Benvie, is currently charged in federal court with violations of the federal statute based on his false assumption of the duties of the U.S. Customs and Border Patrol. And this summer, the Virginia attorney general issued an opinion that heavily armed militias, dressed in fatigues and other military accessories, acting in a coordinated fashion and patrolling a line of citizens waiting to engage with their elected legislators before a special session on gun safety legislation, violate Virginia’s prohibition on the false assumption of law enforcement functions.
The Oath Keepers and other militia organizations are in violation of some of these laws right now. Their existence as private paramilitary units in states with “strict subordination” clauses is prohibited, as it is in states with statutes that prohibit associating together as a military unit or company. Training, instructing or practicing in paramilitary techniques for use in a “civil war” or other uprising is also currently banned in many states. And to the extent the armed militias are showing up in public places asserting authority they don’t have, they are violating state and federal laws criminalizing the false assumption of law enforcement duties.
Some observers may say that the tweets of both the president and the Oath Keepers are simply hyperbole. But the militia movement has shown that it will take action based on the president’s statements. His “civil war” comments were phrased conditionally—dependent on “the Democrats” attempting to remove him from office. State officials and law enforcement, however, do not have to wait for that condition to be fulfilled—or for the president to post new tweets that militias may interpret as calling them to arms—to tackle the potential threat posed by militias. Governors may issue cease and desist orders based on their state constitutions, law enforcement may initiate investigations based on federal and state criminal statutes, and the public may report instances of current law-breaking by militia members. Authorities would not sit idly by while foreign forces prepare for potential violence against other Americans, and they should not sit idly by while rogue private armies do the same.
A MESSAGE TO THESE CHRISTOTALIBANS, THESE RACIST TREASONOUS TRAITORS TRUMPSTERS AND TRAITOR TRUMP
SO PUNK ASSED CHRISTOTALIBAN SCUMBAG SHITSTAINS LIKE PASTORS ROBERT JEFFRESS, FRANKLIN GRAHAM, RICK WILES, JIM BAKKER, AND MANY OTHERS, ALONG WITH THE TYRANT, TREASONOUS TRUMP AND HIS TRUMPANZEES THINK? WE ARE ALL GOING TO LAY DOWN AND ALLOW THEM TO BRING BLOOD TO OUR STREETS AND TO START A CIVIL WAR AND MURDER THEIR FELLOW CITIZENS IN DEFENSE OF THAT PERVERTED PEDOPHILE, DISGUSTING DEGENRATE RAPIST AND SEX ASSAULTER, PROVEN PATHOLOGICAL LIAR, BIGOT, RACIST, AND OVER ALL SCUMBAG DONALD J TRUMP HUH? AND NOT STAND UP TO THESE FASCIST CUNTS? I GOT NEWS FOR THEM.
LISTEN THE FUCK UP YOU SNOWFLAKE MENTAL MIDGET MORON TRUMPSTERS AND CHRISTOTALIBAN THREATENING BLOOD IN OUR STREETS AND A CIVIL WAR.
FUCKING BRING IT ON. THIS TIME? WE OF ANTIFA? WHO KICKED YOUR MENTAL MIDGET MORON, GENERATIONAL INBRED, WHITE SUPREMACIST PUNKS IN THE FIRST CIVIL WAR. WE KICKED YOUR NAZI FUCKING ASSES IN BOTH WWI AND WWII. AND GUESS WHAT YOU FUCKING SHITSTAINS ON THE UNDERWEAR OF HUMANITY?
YOU START YOUR CIVIL WAR? AND WE OF ANTIFA? ARE THIS TIME? NOT GOING TO SHOW ANY OF YOU CAN’T UNDERSTAND NORMAL THINKING TROGLODYTES ANY MERCY LIKE WE DID IN THE FIRST CIVIL WAR, OR WWI OR WWII.
YOU WANT TO BRUTALLY MURDER OUR FAMILIES? OUR CHILDREN? OUR GRANDCHILDREN? OVER TRAITOR TRUMP? THEN BRING IT THE FUCK ON. CAUSE WE WILL NOT LAY DOWN AND ALLOW YOU PUNK FASCIST SHITSTAINS ON THE UNDERWEAR OF HUMANITY TO COLD BLOODEDLY MURDER US AND OUR LOVED ONES WITHOUT? KICKING YOUR MONKEY FUCKING ASSES AND PUTTING YOU MOTHERFUCKERS IN YOUR GRAVES.
SO BRING IT THE FUCK ON YOU CHRISTOFASCIST TALIBANS, BRING IT ON YOU PUNK ASSED BITCH SNOWFLAKES TRUMPANZEES.
CAUSE IT WILL TAKE US GREAT PLEASURE TO FINISH THE LOBOTOMIES YOU ALL GOT UNDER TRUMP BY? PUTTING A FUCKING BULLET IN YOUR USELESS HEADS.
Atheist Militants Rising 
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