Ray Epps quite likely is the least sympathetic defamation litigant in history, at least among those who have a legitimate legal argument. To win his recently filed lawsuit against Fox News, Epps has to convince a jury that he sincerely wanted to overthrow the U.S. government to install a fascist dictator and that anyone who suggests otherwise is a dirty, rotten liar. “I’m exactly the piece of scum my detractors deny that I am,” is a weird legal argument. But such is the topsy-turvy world that we live in. A world where Epps may actually win a big pot of gold.
For those blissfully unaware of the saga of Ray Epps: He was one of the thousands of people who, heeding Donald Trump’s call, descended on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, in a violent effort to halt the certification of Joe Biden’s election to the presidency. The night before the riot, Epps was caught on video hyping up the MAGA crowd: “We need to go into the Capitol!” The day of, however, he was seen on video impotently offering to help Capitol police to tell rioters to back down.
The simplest explanation for his behavior is that Epps, like many newbie criminals, got cold feet once he realized he was in too deep. But, led by the now-fired Tucker Carlson of Fox News, right-wing conspiracists have spun out a fanciful tale about how Epps was secretly working for the FBI in a plot to trick conservatives into rioting. The right’s attention continued for months. So now Epps is suing Fox News. That’s how a modern Republican protects his reputation these days: By getting a court to rule that he was quite sincere when he backed a fascist insurrection.
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The notion that the FBI is a leftist organization out to destroy the American right is, it goes without saying, among the dumbest ideas ever generated by human brains. And yet, FBI Director Christopher Wray — a lifelong Republican and Trump appointee — had to sit in a House Judiciary hearing for five hours on Wednesday while congressional Republicans harangued him with variations of the same conspiracy theory Epps has been subject to. Wray did not conceal his exasperation, repeatedly denying that he’s some secret “deep state” plant out to get conservative America.
As Steve Benen of MSNBC wrote, the FBI is “one of the single most conservative agencies in the federal government,” and is so biased towards Republicans that “the FBI that went out of its way to oppose executing a court-approved search warrant at Mar-a-Lago.” It’s just that Donald Trump is such an extravagant criminal that he’s forced the FBI to take action on cases like the stealing of classified documents or inciting an insurrection.
On its surface, these anti-FBI conspiracy theories are further evidence there is nothing too low for Republicans when it comes to running interference for Trump. It’s never that Trump is such a massive criminal that he overcomes law enforcement’s unwillingness to deal with him. No, it must be an anti-Trump conspiracy! The Epps conspiracy theory is more of the same. They can’t admit that Trump is the one who incited the Capitol riot, even though we all saw him do it on national television. Instead, they blame some random dude.
But watching Republicans vomit conspiracy theories at Wray, the name that came to my mind was not Trump’s, but Timothy McVeigh, the right-wing terrorist who blew up the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995, killing 168 people. McVeigh and his co-conspirator, Terry Nichols, were motivated by anti-government conspiracy theories that sounded very much like the garbage being peddled by Republican congressmen during Wednesday’s hearing. Like Republicans now, they also weren’t super fond of Attorney General Merrick Garland, as he was part of the prosecutorial team that secured convictions for McVeigh and Nichols.
Everything that follows, from the gun nuttery to the “globalist” and “deep state” conspiracy theories, comes back to this basic right-wing anger over having to share a country with people that aren’t exactly like them.
McVeigh’s views would have been right at home with what House Republicans were spouting Wednesday: That the U.S. government is being secretly run by a decadent “elite” that wants to brainwash right wing Americans. In the 90s, conspiracists called the fictional secret leaders the “new world order,” and now they use the term “deep state.” Either way, it’s the same conspiracy theory, and it dates back to the overtly anti-semitic conspiracy theories that motivated the Nazis. Then, as now, what was really driving the right-wing anger was not legitimate concerns about FBI overreach. Instead, the anger was over federal authorities prosecuting white men who thought themselves above law. Back then, right-wingers rejected bans illegal weapons or sex with underage girls. Both were going on with cult leader David Koresh, whose 1993 suicide in Waco, TX, after a gunfight with federal authorities, inspired McVeigh’s domestic terrorism. Now, the anger is over any law that might touch Trump, such as the ones against seditious conspiracy or stealing government secrets. But the thread throughout is some men should be above the law, and the right will burn it all down if the government disagrees.
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In the 90s, McVeigh’s views were seen as fringe, and there was no pushback from Republican leaders when he was sentenced to death. Things have certainly shifted in the nearly three decades since. The January 6 rioters, who also attacked a federal building while drunk on anti-government conspiracy theories, are started to be romanticized as martyrs for the Republican cause. Trump rallies regularly feature videos venerating the riot, complete with music recorded by those sentenced to prison for their role in the attack. During the 30th anniversary of Koresh’s standoff, Trump held one of his pro-insurrection rallies near the site where Koresh and his followers killed themselves by setting fire to their compound. Republicans pretended it was just a coincidence, but most observers understood that Trump, like McVeigh, was invoking Koresh’s memory as justification for denying the legitimacy of the U.S. government.
This unfortunately gets downplayed in much of the historical coverage of McVeigh’s terrorist attack, but it wasn’t just anti-government animosity that motivated him. As David Masciotra of the Washington Monthly noted in May, “An avowed white supremacist, McVeigh also embraced the ‘Great Replacement Theory,’ which posits that ‘Jewish globalists’ conspire to crush whites by opening the borders to immigrants of color.”
The basic components of McVeigh’s views are all over Republican politics these days, especially the demonizing language painting refugees as “invaders.” But things have escalated recently with Sen. Tommy Tuberville, R-Ala., doing his damnedest to normalize not just some of the concepts McVeigh believed in, but the identity of “white nationalist.” Tuberville has been trying to bait people into a debate over whether or not white nationalists are being unfairly maligned, by insisting that it’s unfair to say they are “racist.”
This is a standard rhetorical gambit of white nationalists, who claim it’s not racist to want different races to have “their own” countries. Of course, the argument falls apart if given any scrutiny, as this view requires stripping millions of people of color of their citizenship, at bare minimum. If taken to its logical conclusion, it requires genocidal violence to remove people white nationalists believe don’t belong. Right now, Republican governors like Ron DeSantis of Florida or Greg Abbott of Texas are using trickery to “ship” immigrants out of their states, but it’s not hard to see how, if things keep moving in this direction, gunpoint gets involved.
In trying to make white nationalist ideas a “debate,” Tuberville, like McVeigh, is fleshing out why anti-government ideology is so appealing to its adherents: They’re racists who would rather destroy democracy than share power with people who look different than they do. Everything that follows, from the gun nuttery to the “globalist” and “deep state” conspiracy theories, comes back to this basic right-wing anger over having to share a country with people that aren’t exactly like them.
There were 19 children among the 168 that McVeigh killed, and the images of first responders pulling tiny dead bodies out of the rubble are hard to shake from the memory. Because of that, he’s unlikely to enjoy the reputation rehab that Republicans are offering to the January 6 rioters. But watching the clips from Wednesday’s hearing, it’s clear that McVeigh was successful at his goal of mainstreaming his racist and anti-government views. The accusations of “deep state” corruption flung at Wray’s head wouldn’t have been out of place at any of the militia meetings McVeigh was radicalized at, except this time it was on C-SPAN and being paid for by the taxpayers. McVeigh died by lethal injection 22 years ago, but his spirit lives on in the Trumpified GOP.
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