I'm Terrified of the Inevitable Backlash to Trump's De-Platforming and All-Around Public Humiliation

These folks are NOT going to handle things well.

As we all hopefully learned in high school, Adolf Hitler rose to power by appealing to nationalist Germans who felt humiliated and defeated after World War I. Hitler essentially  promised to Make Germany Great Again, to restore it to what he and his supporters saw as its former glory by punishing those responsible for its loss.  

In that respect, Hitler’s appeal to the German people was very similar to Trump’s spiel to voters in 2016 and 2020. Trump told Republicans who felt humiliated and defeated by social progress that he would turn back the clock to a time when our country was white and Christian and heterosexual and conventional ideas about gender and sexuality were rigidly enforced. 

Trump told white people scared by the election of a black man with an exotic-sounding name to the highest office in the land, the legalization of gay marriage and marijuana and the increasing power and visibility of the trans community that he would single-handedly halt the social progress that made them feel powerless and ignored. 

Trump rode a wave of racial resentment, xenophobia and white supremacy to the White House against seemingly impossible odds. 

Mostly, Conservatives were angry about the way Obama kept insolently stepping on the Constitution.

Now the movement that Trump has led is seemingly in tatters and disarray, not unlike Germany after the First World War.  Trump’s cultists, particularly the QAnon wing, feel humiliated and defeated. In a matter of months, the Trump brigade have seemingly lost just about everything. Trump famously lost the 2020 presidential election, then compounded that loss by having his lawyers launch an endless series of legal challenges that were individually and collectively laughed out of court. 

Seemingly overnight Trump went from being the biggest, most influential and dangerous person on social media to being persona non grata on pretty much every major platform: Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and pretty much all the others. 

Parler, which pitched itself as a right-wing alternative to Twitter where the MAGA crowd could be as hateful and extreme as they’d like, is essentially being de-platformed out of existence due to the unfortunate amount of credible threats to Democrats being tossed about willy nilly among its rage-filled, paranoid users. 

The failed insurrection at the Capitol caused even spineless, soulless sycophants like Betsy Davos to turn on her master. Even the PGA took dramatic action, removing its championship from Trump’s New Jersey golf course. 

This is certainly how I see him.

The backlash against Trump’s campaign to overturn the will of the American people and score a second term on the basis of debunked conspiracy theories has been fierce and intense. 

My fear is that the coming backlash against all of these measures to hold Trump and his people accountable for their actions and the seemingly irreparable harm they have caused both democracy and their own movement will be fiercer, more intense and dangerous, even deadly.

I worry that in the years ahead an Alt-Right leader will arise promising to avenge the humiliations and defeats Trump and his followers have incurred over the past two and a half months. 

He’ll tell a group of people who feel angry and defeated and despondent that what happened to Trump and his followers was a terrible, terrible crime that he will avenge on their behalf. 

Because we live in a deeply stupid world, there are undoubtedly true believers willing to risk their lives to avenge what they see as the unforgivable loss of Trump’s Twitter account.

Trump will go from being the man who would avenge the MAGA crowd’s losses in the Culture War to being a man whose losses MUST be avenged by a MAGA movement for whom Trump will remain an inspirational, iconic, God-like figure. 

I worry that Trump’s cultists are so angry and so desperate that they see the rioters at the Capitol as heroes and martyrs doing EXACTLY what they thought Trump wanted them to do rather than as traitors and criminals directly responsible for one of the darkest days in American history. 

I am concerned that people with a lot of guns and a lot of anger will see Trump’s defeats as their own and enact bloody revenge on his behalf. 

I’m terrified that what happened at the Capitol on January 6th is not a sad final act on behalf of the Trump cult’s Golden God but rather a prelude to even more unhinged and intense violence.

Things are bad. They could get MUCH worse.

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