Here Come the Brownshirts: LionsGuard Militia the Latest Indication of Outright Fascism in Trump Campaign

Openly fascist politics used to be political kryptonite in the US. No longer.

The Trump campaign may be getting some new, openly fascistic political backing as an online group, LionsGuard, has called for the formation of a militia to “protect” rally attendees from the “violent far left.” That online group’s twitter handle is not leaving anything to the imagination about the political genesis of its beliefs, and of the new militia.

Militias have long been a staple of the extremist right, reaching a peak in the early Clinton years and then declining in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombings in 1995.

The Obama administration ushered in a new rise in militias and in far right paramilitary groups as a whole. Most recently, Mormon anti-government extremists representing the Bundy family from Nevada squatted in an Oregon wildlife preserve for weeks

A Homeland Security document in 2009 was infamously buried after Congressional Republicans threw a nationwide temper tantrum over the contents. The report has, of course, been thoroughly vindicated as the far right has mobilized in reaction to the Obama presidency in unprecedented fashion.

Donald Trump’s presidential candidacy is the nadir of the rise of the anti-Obama, reactionary right. There are many, many reasons for his success which I and countless others have already written about extensively. But the one underlying theme to Trump’s rise in power has been racial hatred and white supremacy.

Trump has slowly been warming to outright acceptance of this trend. A non-rejection rejection of David Duke’s endorsement a few weeks ago has quickly become forgotten now that the billionaire’s supporters give the Hitlergruß on camera and scream at protesters to go back to Africa or Auschwitz. Blatant racism was once anathema to a political campaign in America.

Now it’s one of Trump’s strengths and it’s been embraced in the new militia group’s online presence. The group, which goes by the name “LionsGuard”, represents itself on twitter with the handle @LionsGuardSS. The SS, one assumes, represents Schutzstaffel, the Nazi paramilitary organization responsible for some of the most horrifying repression and atrocities in the Second World War.

The militia’s stated purpose, to protect “innocents who are being beaten and harassed for their political views,” is only going to be used to assume a great latitude of political control over Trump rallies and to stifle dissent and protest through brutality and violence. The comparisons to the SS they’ve styled themselves after hardly need to be explained.

We’ve officially entered a new political reality in the US. For all of the country’s flaws, embracing the Nazis, the KKK, and fascism used to be unthinkable in a major political campaign. Not any more.

Update:

Presented without comment.