For outside
observers, the attempt to overturn American democracy on 6 January might come
as an eye-opening surprise. But for anyone who’s paid attention to the news or
cracked open a newspaper, it was the natural conclusion to the decades-long
mainstreaming of American extremism and its normalisation of both violent
rhetoric and violent action. Its contempt for reality and basic facts is built
on a bedrock of lies, conspiracy theories, and threats of terror against its political
opponents.
But long
before lies, conspiracies and terrorism came together in that very public January
attempt to overturn a democratic election, American extremists honed their playbook
for successful violence and politics through the anti-choice movement. Long
before American extremists weaponised lies and alternative facts to delegitimise
everything from vaccines to facemasks to election results, they devoted years to
perfecting their strategies and terrorism through their anti-choice attacks on women’s
rights.
I’m not talking
about the fact that so many anti-choice leaders and convicted terrorists
participated in the January insurrection. Everyone’s already heard the jokes
about how anti-choice superstar Abby Johnson spoke at the Capitol insurrection,
before later turning around and claiming it was organised by antifa once she realised the legal consequences.
You likely wouldn’t be surprised if you knew convicted clinic bomber John
Brockhoeft also participated in the insurrection, just months after shaking hands with
anti-choice leaders in Ohio – the same leaders who claim their movement opposes violence. Let’s
face it, picking on these idiots is low-hanging fruit.
Nor am I
talking about the role of the anti-choice movement in providing the blueprint
for radicalising half of America to oppose not just abortion but masks, medical
experts, and democracy itself. Sure, we know that decades of demonising
medicine and government alike laid the groundwork for American conservatives to
believe the pandemic is a myth and masks are a socialist plot. From there, we
saw the anti-choice playbook redeployed in
service of radicalising Americans, through lies and conspiracy theories, to believe coastal elites are
using vaccines and antifa to secretly declare war on white people, take away
their guns, and steal an election.
But as we
think back to the armed militias and white supremacists who stormed the
Capitol, waving Confederate flags that 400,000 Union soldiers gave their lives
to keep out of Washington for 160 years, one may believe the anti-choice
movement’s playbook of radicalisation and terrorism gave birth to the racist
militias that stormed the Capitol.
That is not
correct. Racist militias were the ones that gave birth to the modern
anti-choice movement. The movement did not recruit militias to turn its
violent rhetoric into violent action. Militias birthed the modern anti-choice movement
through their paranoia that Jews and immigrants would soon supplant America’s
white Christian identity.
In the
1980s, white extremists like the KKK began developing wanted posters
for abortion providers, publicising their personal details and encouraging their
assassination. The anti-choice movement quickly adopted and popularised this
tactic. As multiple abortion providers died as a result, militias like the White Aryan Resistance organised rallies
in support of the killers, claiming such killings “protected Aryan women and children”. When Operation
Rescue popularised the use of protests to threaten and intimidate patients and
providers alike, it recruited enthusiastic protesters from white nationalist groups like the
American Front.
Perhaps today’s
anti-choice movement knows that associating with the same violent militants that
it claims to denounce is a bad look. If so, the movement hasn’t shown much
evidence that it’s ashamed. Cheryl Sullenger was convicted in 1987 of
attempting to bomb a clinic on the West Coast. She now serves as Operation Rescue’s
senior vice president.
Previously she served as senior policy analyst, where she provided information that assisted Scott Roeder in his
assassination of Dr George Tiller. Most recently, anti-choice extremists like Derrick Evans have begun openly
deploying the Oath Keepers, a far-right militia opposed to racial
equality, to
provide armed “protection” for anti-choice extremists.
The anti-choice movement has devoted half a century to perfecting its playbook for radicalising violent rhetoric into radical violence. Because most of its victims have been marginalised women and the medical professionals trying to help them, society has been able to ignore the anti-choice movement’s escalation from attacking women to defying democracy itself. Police and even presidents sneered at the concerns of prochoice advocates who warned that far-right radicals were fuelling anti-choice terrorism and anti-government militias alike. In January, we saw how our failure to acknowledge those canaries in the coal mine led to an attempt by armed white supremacists to overthrow our democracy.
On 20 January, Joe Biden became the first President to acknowledge white supremacy in his inaugural address, promising to tackle it with the full force of his federal government. But our fight against American extremism will outlast Joe’s presidency. The forces that literally overran our democracy have had half a century to mainstream themselves from the fringes into the White House itself. For prochoice advocates, their work has become more than fighting for reproductive rights. It is now about protecting our nation.