F
ar-right violence is on the rise again in the United States – but unlike prior waves that came from the fringes, this time the violence is institutionalized, emanating from the federal government itself.
During the first Trump administration [January 2017 - January 2021], far-right violence surged in tragic and lethal ways, starting with the 2017 death of Heather Heyer during the neo-Nazi "Unite the Right" protest in Charlottesville, Virginia. In the years that followed, mass attacks took the lives of dozens of innocent civilians, targeting Jews at a Pittsburgh synagogue [October 27, 2018], Latinos in an El Paso Walmart [August 3, 2019], and Black Americans in a Buffalo supermarket [May 14, 2022], among other horrific attacks.
But when the poet Renee Nicole Good was killed during a protest against Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on January 7, it was a federal agent who shot her. As she died, his cellphone video recorded a male voice saying, "fucking bitch." Instead of condemning the killing or promising investigations, the Trump administration vigorously defended the ICE agent, falsely claiming Good was a domestic terrorist and "a deranged leftist." Despite clear video evidence showing her tires were pointed away from the officer and he was not in the path of her car, the administration has claimed she tried to run him over and posed an imminent threat.
