If the history of the second American civil war is ever written, there might be a chapter titled “Where’s Nancy?″⁣. This phrase has become a touchstone of the American far-right’s war on American democratic institutions. It was first shouted during the January 6 insurrection as self-styled American patriots stormed the Capitol building hunting for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Now it has been chillingly reprised as David DePape allegedly broke into the Pelosi home, failed to find Nancy, and proceeded to take to her husband’s skull with a hammer instead.

Of course, this is not how it was meant to go. As DePape [allegedly] explained to San Francisco police, he was planning to hold Pelosi hostage until she told him “the truth”. If she lied, he’d break her kneecaps. That way, when she was next wheeled into Congress, her colleagues would know there are consequences for their lies.

These details are contained in the FBI’s affidavit, filed this week. If they’re [allegedly] accurate, we’re looking at a textbook case of terrorism. It is quite plainly violence enacted for a political cause. It even has that performative element so common in terrorism: that it is intended to send a message to a broader audience.

Right now, this sort of thing is exploding. While Paul Pelosi was being assaulted, a Pennsylvania man pleaded guilty to making death threats against a Democrat Congressman. A couple of days before that, three men in Michigan were convicted of a plot to kidnap and kill the Governor for her COVID policies.

And on Monday, a Democrat candidate for the Pennsylvanian Congress was knocked unconscious outside his house. He can’t say for sure that the attack was politically motivated but in the past few weeks – as America’s midterm elections rapidly approach – he’s had someone spray-paint threatening messages on his garage door and throw a brick through a window of his house. Before that, he says, his neighbourhood had no crime.

Now we see all the usual post-terrorism tropes play out. Where once we had September 11 conspiracy theories of an “inside job”, we now have conspiracy theories of the Pelosi attack as a “false flag” operation perpetrated by Democrats to make the far-right look bad (and other far more bizarre ones). Where once we saw attempts to categorise Osama bin Laden as something other than a Muslim, we see attempts to cast DePape as a left-wing, nudist hippy. Where right-wing politicians would castigate Muslims for failing to condemn terrorism clearly enough, now Republicans are largely stopping short of saying that violence is never acceptable, even if they say this is a terrible attack. Some Trumpist commentators have simply mocked the whole thing.

We shouldn’t be terribly surprised at this because, while terrorist attacks vary wildly – and obviously September 11 is light years away from anything like the Pelosi attack – the basic psychology of radicalisation is the same. It is always rooted in a loss of faith in the machinery of conventional politics (PLEASE WALEED, THE MACHINERY OF CONVENTIONAL POLITICS IS A BASTARD CASE OF DISTORTIONS, DECEIT AND BLAMING OTHERS NO MATTER WHERE YOU TURN AND MANY PEOPLE KNOW THAT GOVERNMENTS LIE TO THEM, INCLUDING THE BIDEN ADMINISTRATION).... This means mainstream political action is insufficient and something more radical is required. From there, extreme action – like violence – becomes a morally viable option, perhaps even a moral necessity. But you can only really act on that once you’ve come to see your enemy as something less than human. Evil, even.

America’s on the precipice because more and more people are beginning to feel this way. In early 2021, more than two-thirds of Republicans saw the Democratic Party as “downright evil”. About half of Democrats reciprocated the feeling. Between 2017 and 2020, the belief that violence is sometimes justified to advance one’s political goals doubled in America among both Republicans and Democrats – from 8 per cent in both cases to 16 per cent of Democrats and just over 17 per cent of Republicans. We’re familiar with the idea of an individual becoming radicalised. What we’re watching now is the radicalisation of the world’s most powerful country.

Right now, that radicalisation is disproportionately on the right and radical violence overwhelmingly so. Since 2015, there have been about four right-wing plots or attacks for every left-wing one. This is what happens when one mainstream party positions itself against the very institutions of democracy, as the Republicans have largely done and the Democrats have largely not.

And it’s a particular danger of the Republican axiom that the 2020 election was stolen. If radical politics begins with the idea that conventional politics is corrupt, this is about as quintessentially radical an idea as there is. By attacking the democratic legitimacy of elections, you remove the meeting point between democratic political rivals and transform it instead into a war zone.

The worry is that if things go a certain way, there will be more than enough Democrats willing to confront them there. While it’s true the radicalisation problem is disproportionately with the right, it’s also true that the seeds have already been sown on the left, too. Surveyed opinions of political opponents as “evil”, “less than human”, or on the legitimacy of violence in some circumstances are more pronounced among Republicans but exist in worrying and growing numbers among Democrats.

There have also been significant examples of left-wing violence. A Bernie Sanders volunteer opened fire on a baseball practice session of Republican congressmen in 2017, shooting the Republican House whip. In June, a man was charged with the attempted murder of Supreme Court judge Brett Kavanagh when the draft decision overturning Roe v. Wade was leaked.

If Republicans believe elections are illegitimate, not a few Democrats feel similarly about the Supreme Court.

Democracy is a politics of frustrated winners and good losers. America has plenty of the former but precious few of the latter. That’s the nature of radicalisation. It makes all politics existential, loss intolerable and opponents therefore vanquishable by any means necessary. It’s therefore contagious: radicalisation begets counter-radicalisation until radical postures are all that exist, all that is morally imaginable.

If American democracy comes through this, if it can resist the gravitational pull of radicalisation into civil war, it will only be because there are sufficient numbers across the political spectrum who can imagine a moral world with their opponents in it. In short, a world where defeat isn’t death. This is therefore a moment in American politics where history will be written by the losers.

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https://www.smh.com.au/world/north-america/where-s-nancy-terrorism-in-the-us-now-goes-by-a-new-name-20221102-p5bv3a.html

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A new documentary will air on Tuesday about the career of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), whose four-year stint at the top of the US House of Representatives will come to a close next month.

The film is composed of footage captured by the lawmaker’s daughter, documentary filmmaker Alexandra Pelosi, and spans her most recent period as House speaker, from 2019 until 2023. The 82-year-old lawmaker previously served in the role from 2007 until 2011, during another Democratic majority.

According to Politico, which viewed the documentary “Pelosi in the House” ahead of its airing on HBO at 9 p.m. Eastern Time on Tuesday evening, it includes a number of candid moments.

In one incident in April 2020, amid the massive society-wide lockdown at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Pelosi was on a video call that included then-Vice President Mike Pence, who headed up the Trump administration’s pandemic response. As Pence spoke, the speaker tidied up her bedroom and folded laundry while her husband, investor Paul Pelosi, cooked a meal in the kitchen.

At one point, Alexandra points the camera at her mother and asks: “What is the point of this call?”

“They’re checking a box,” the lawmaker responds without breaking away from her chores.

The House speaker then unmuted herself on the call, sarcastically told Pence “this has been a useful exchange,” and then proceeded to grill him about how the administration was tracking the spread of the virus. She ended her spiel with a cheery “Happy Easter!”

“Am I a b*tch?” the elder Pelosi then asks her daughter after muting the computer. Alexandra’s answer, if any, is not recorded.

The documentary also includes numerous other candid moments, including during the assault on the Capitol on January 6, 2021, by supporters of then-US President Donald Trump. The insurrectionists succeeded at temporarily dispersing Congress, sending lawmakers fleeing for cover, with some far-right elements seeking to detain and possibly execute senior officeholders like Pelosi and Pence.

The film is Alexandra Pelosi’s 14th for HBO. Although Politico derided the film as “a talented daughter’s flattering account of her mother’s life at the pinnacle of American politics,” she reportedly did not get explicit permission from her mother to make the film and knew little about its details.

"What's she gonna do, sue her daughter? She’s not gonna sue me,” Alexandra told Vanity Fair. “I hope. I hope.”

Following the November 2022 midterm elections, in which the Republicans narrowly won a majority in the House, Pelosi announced she would not seek a leadership position in the coming Congress, although she would retain her seat representing San Francisco Bay-area constituents. In her place, Democrats selected New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries as their minority leader.

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https://sputniknews.com/20221213/am-i-a-btch-in-new-pelosi-film-house-speaker-muses-to-daughter-over-grilling-vp-pence-1105431727.html

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https://yourdemocracy.net/drupal/node/45958

The former speaker of the US House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, invited priests into her home to perform an exorcism in November, a month after an attack on her husband Paul, her daughter told the New York Times on Sunday. Alexandra Pelosi explained that her mother felt “really guilty” about the injuries her husband sustained.

The attack “weighed really heavy on her soul,” the younger Pelosi said of her mother, suggesting it “really broke” the career politician. “Over Thanksgiving, she had priests coming, trying to have an exorcism of the house and having prayer services.” 

Paul Pelosi’s attacker, Canadian illegal immigrant David DePape, had allegedly been looking for Nancy, who wasn’t home, when he found Paul asleep in a bedroom instead. Police stated that the pair were found struggling over a hammer and that DePape assaulted Pelosi with it after officers told him to drop the weapon. 

Nancy Pelosi confirmed to CNN’s Chris Wallace on Sunday that she felt “very sad” about the assault on her husband, “because [DePape] was searching for me, and my dear husband, who’s not even that political, actually, paid the price.”

Paul is still not “back to normal” and may not “be really himself” for another three or four months, she continued. The 82-year-old real estate investor suffered a fractured skull and wounds to his right arm and hands during the attack.

DePape allegedly entered the Pelosi home on October 28 hoping to restrain and “interrogate” the Democratic congresswoman, according to a federal affidavit. If DePape thought Pelosi “lied,” he planned to break her kneecaps as a warning to her congressional colleagues that there were consequences to their actions, the affidavit claims he told police. 

The hammer-wielding vagrant also allegedly told San Francisco Police Sgt. Carla Hurley that he was on a “suicide mission,” that there was an “evil in Washington,” and that California Governor Gavin Newsom, actor Tom Hanks, and the US president’s son Hunter Biden were next on his attack list. 

Pelosi announced in December that she would not run for Speaker of the House again, although she continues to represent San Francisco as a Democrat in Congress. 

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https://www.rt.com/news/570311-nancy-pelosi-exorcism-paul-hammer/

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