So What Happens Now?

[Content Note: White supremacy; anti-semitism; violence.]

Now that white supremacists have been even further empowered by Donald Trump's catastrophic failure to singly and strongly condemn their ideology, it's unlikely, to put it mildly, that they are going to do anything but escalate and intensify public displays of their vicious bigotry.

Which will in turn oblige decent people to push back. While the president and his administration fail utterly to side with citizens who resist violent oppression.

If anything, this administration will begin cracking down on the resistance.

A couple of relevant items today then:

Alan Feuer at the New York Times: Far Right Plans Its Next Moves with a New Energy.

The white supremacists and right-wing extremists who came together over the weekend in Charlottesville, Va., are now headed home, many of them ready and energized, they said, to set their sights on bigger prizes.

Some were making arrangements to appear at future marches. Some were planning to run for public office. Others, taking a cue from the Charlottesville event — a protest, nominally, of the removal of a Confederate-era statue — were organizing efforts to preserve white heritage symbols in their home regions.

Calling it "an opportune time," Preston Wiginton, a Texas-based white nationalist, declared on Saturday that he planned to hold a "White Lives Matter" march on Sept. 11 on the campus of Texas A&M — with a keynote speaker, Richard B. Spencer, who was featured at the Charlottesville event.

One hitch: Texas A&M has canceled the rally. "The school said in a statement that it made the decision after consulting law enforcement and 'considerable study.' The event won’t happen because of 'concerns about the safety of its students, faculty, staff, and the public,' the school said. The move is sure to prompt questions about its legality, however, because A&M is a public university that can't block an event because of the views of its organizer."

But the school's got a fairly compelling argument about safety, given that Heather Heyer was killed and 19 people injured by a single person at the white supremacist event in Charlottesville, and many others, like Deandre Harris, were seriously injured by mobs of white supremacists, too.

[CN: Video may autoplay at link] Meanwhile, in Boston, a 17-year-old young man "dressed in all black" smashed the Holocaust Memorial, which is the second time it has been vandalized this summer. "The suspect was detained by two bystanders until police arrived at the scene. Witnesses said they heard the suspect ranting incoherently."

With an utterly different goal, protesters in Durham toppled a Confederate monument. "Gov. Roy Cooper criticized the action, tweeting that 'the racism and deadly violence in Charlottesville is unacceptable but there is a better way to remove these monuments.'" Cool, you should do that then!

As for the administration, when asked whether Trump would make a presidential visit to Charlottesville, one White House official bluntly responded: "Why the hell would we do that?" Hahaha of course. Why would Donald Trump behave like a president? Good point.

Trump did, however, announce that he is "considering pardoning former Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, who was convicted of criminal contempt of court in July." Said Trump: "He's a great American patriot and I hate to see what has happened to him." Arpaio is a terrible human being, who is aggressively bigoted. He's also a hero of many white supremacists and nativists. So the timing here is important: Trump is signaling to white supremacists that he's got their back, after ostensibly condemning them.

And this morning, he signaled that he is still waging war on the free press by retweeting a cartoon image of a train bearing his name smashing into a CNN reporter. "The cartoon reads 'Fake news can't stop the Trump train.' In July, Trump shared a GIF of himself beating the CNN logo to a pulp. Thirty minutes after promoting the cartoon at 7 a.m. Tuesday, it was deleted from Trump's Twitter feed." Which was long enough for his supporters to see it. As always, deleting the tweet may be a violation of the Presidential Records Act, but he doesn't give a fuck.

Finally, on the subject of the administration cracking down on the resistance, Julia Carrie Wong and Olivia Solon at the Guardian report: U.S. Government Demands Details on All Visitors to Anti-Trump Protest Website.

The US government is seeking to unmask every person who visited an anti-Trump website in what privacy advocates say is an unconstitutional "fishing expedition" for political dissidents.

The warrant appears to be an escalation of the department of justice's campaign against anti-Trump activities, including the harsh prosecution of inauguration day protesters.

On 17 July, the department of justice served a website-hosting company, DreamHost, with a search warrant for every piece of information it possessed that was related to a website that was used to coordinate protests during Donald Trump's inauguration. The warrant covers the people who own and operate the site, but also seeks to get the IP addresses of 1.3 million people who visited it, as well as the date and time of their visit and information about what browser or operating system they used.

The website, www.disruptj20.org, was used to coordinate protests and civil disobedience on 20 January, when Trump was inaugurated.

"This specific case and this specific warrant are pure prosecutorial overreach by a highly politicized department of justice under [Attorney General Jeff] Sessions," said Chris Ghazarian, general counsel for DreamHost. "You should be concerned that anyone should be targeted simply for visiting a website."

The warrant was made public Monday, when DreamHost announced its plans to challenge the government in court. The department of justice declined to comment. A hearing is scheduled for Friday.

Chilling.

All of this is headed in the worst possible direction. Our worst fears about a Trump presidency were our worst fears for a reason.

It's likely going to get a lot worse before it get better. I wish I had better news. I really do.