Quote (Goomshill @ Sep 16 2024 06:16am)
I think both the left wing and right wing have their radicalized political causes that have attracted people with destructive personalities, the whole "cause attracts the rebel". There's a common thread between the nutter plastering Trump stickers over his van as he mailed nonfunctional pipe bombs to people, and the Berniecrat trying to gun down Steve Scalice, and this guy clearly obsessed with the Ukraine war to the point he wrote a book about it nobody bought. Heck, I've had the misfortune of dealing with some of these psychotic types in my life and it seems oddly common for them to have a book listed for publication with 0 copies sold.
But generally speaking over the past few years, the right wing nutters have been drawn to Trump's deep state talk. There aren't too many factions, and they've largely been kept in check by Trump himself being the moderating voice, all his 'be peaceful' posts. They culminated with January 6th, but got nobody killed but themselves and largely were just a bunch of chuds roaming the capitol taking selfies after a crowd crush killed people. They are right on the edge of the mainstream of republican politics, still within the party's official platform, but consciously repudiated if they escalate to violence. By contrast, the left wing nutters are more fractious, but also more violent. The three main camps- loosely interconnected and with overlap- are the black lives matter mobs, the anti-israel mob and the ukrainian ultranationalists. Not surprising to see nazi flags percolate into those groups. They don't have the same goals, don't have the same militancy and aren't treated the same by the party. BLM and Ukrainians get tolerated and endorsed as firmly within the party's mainstream even when you've got BLM rioters torching cities or black nationalists assassinating police officers, or azov battalion nazis tattooing themselves with SS symbols while filming war crimes. The anti-israel crowd, whatever amalgation of muslims, tankies and greens- is firmly rejected by the party establishment. Shut them out of the convention and sicced the police on them to lock them up en masse. In all three cases though, there's a high degree of radicalization and potential for violence and terrorism, I'd argue moreso across the board than the Trumpists.
Ryan Routh here doesn't exist in a vacuum. He didn't become a quixotic radical on his own. There are whole internet communities and a swathe of the democratic mainstream who have embraced an incredibly violent and inhuman fatalist position on Ukraine. The radicals who look at all Russians as orcs, gleefully post and repost footage of drones bombings, trench shootings, etc. They started with ultranationalists and Nazi fringes of Ukrainian society in 2014 but quickly became mainstream and now their beliefs have been adopted by people like Routh who have no actual connection to the conflict but share a fatalistic devotion. He wrote in his book how he wants Biden to ship nuclear weapons to Ukraine to use to strike Moscow, but only on the condition Ukraine promises to use up all the bombs. He's not alone. The top post on /r/combatfootage right now is +977 / 217 comments for "Russian soldier is torn apart by FPV drone, April 2024". Some old footage of a person's body shredded into giblets, zoomed in to show maximum gore, slowed down and overlaid with techno music as all slavs seem to really love. There's a post below it of compilations of gore and dismember bodies from drone drops over the past year, mostly on people already clearly incapacitated, so you can relish their painful last moments for vicarious thrills. One post at the very bottom "Yea Russia shouldn’t be invading… but this is fucked. If you support this you’re just as bad" - hidden by downvotes.
Normal well adjusted Americans can look at horrors around the world and say- this is not really our concern. We should evaluate if we can help, and what is actually going to help, not reflexively take sides with zealots. That butchery is inherently bad, and nobody should ever think war is a good thing, at best a necessary evil, and glorifying torturing people to death and committing war crimes is inhuman and insane. Have the folks on Trump side of the aisle, who wanted to stop the steal and drain the swamp- actually reached that level of barbarity? I really don't think so. Not even close. But the left has fully embraced actual Nazi war criminals and declared mainstream support for the position that killing as many Russians as possible is a good thing. The same day a Ukrainian partisan tried to murder Trump, Biden laid out that he'd use his remaining time in office to prop up the Ukraine war.
I don't really think the Ukrainian faction is significant enough here to categorize by itself. A lot of these radical pro-Ukrainian people can fit in either one of the two prior categories, while a significant part are basically neocon types that believe in US supremacy and imposing our geopolitical will on every corner of the earth. Many of these crossed over from the Republican side as Trump's populism displaced neocons. It's the same people that were anti-Assad, that wanted us to parking lot Libya and so on. The Lindsey's, Cheney's types, or ones that are brainwashed by a front cover of a Syrian child on a beach to be used to perpetuate war and depose of people we don't like.