I've been thinking a bit lately about the global rise of what I think of as warlordism--essentially the capture of some functions of the state by local and regional actors who may simulate or perform the identity of being insurgents, revolutionaries, etc. but where it's really just about having control of military, juridical and carceral power in a locality to the extent that the ostensible national authority is substantively absent from some portion of its territory. For at least some nation-states this condition has been part of their entire postcolonial history since the second half of the 20th Century. In others, it's a relatively new thing, and in others still it's just a threat on the horizon.
Basically the way I read this initiative, these guys are thinking about a warlordist program, not so much a fascist seizure of the entire territory of the nation-state. What I think they're looking ahead to is a situation where the next generation of Joe Arpaio-types are being hooked up with the administrative structures of counties and states that are 'deep red' with the plan to simply reject any meaningful attempt to assert federal authority over the territory and to make it physically dangerous for any federal official or representative to tread into the warlord's jurisdiction. Abbott and DeSantis are halfway there already to this strategy--Texas is off the power grid, Abbott is sending his own forces to the border, he's shipping migrants to New York City on his own authority, he's thinking about strategies that allow Texas to control its residents even if they travel to other states, and his administration openly scoffs at federal initiatives and commands regardless of their content. It is creepy as hell to see Claremont's people be as instrumentally conscious that the missing piece in this project is an organized ability to mobilize law enforcement on behalf of warlordism, e.g., that you can't just wait for a Joe Arpaio to appear but you need to recruit and organize the spread of Arpaioism.
Their localism always seems to be largely opportunistic, they're usually not averse to federal power when it does what they want. (E.g. asserting states' rights when states were much more interested in enforcing racial bigotry with violence than was the federal government but [in the case of white-Southern Democrats] not objecting to the New Deal so long as they were allowed to make sure it mostly benefited white people.)
I, of course, am immune to the analogous—my support for states' liberalising marijuana laws beyond federal limits and cities' not coöperating with La Migra is _completely_ consistent with my support for federal supremacy in the matters of racial and sexual equality and labour law…because I just wrote so, didn't I?
I'm a political theorist, so naturally I am wondering who is teaching this "Sheriff's Fellowship" course. Also, more pessimistically: it's really disheartening to witness the amount of money flowing into programs like this (from Thiel maybe?), while it's just so damn difficult to get anything funded on the Left.
I grew up with an uncomfortable amount of exposure to 80s/90s militia / Sovereign Citizen movement crap. People who had strong opinions about Lon Horiuchi. And I can't overemphasize how central to that ideology is the idea that the highest law enforcement authority anyone is obligated to respect is the county sheriff. You're absolutely right that Claremont stuff is just the well-dressed version of that worldview.
Sheriff Villanueva's campaign to recall George Gascon, and his current targeting of local officials with criminal investigations should be used to prominently highlight just how quickly this can spin out of control with people who would otherwise assume this is an issue that will primarily affect rural and exurban counties. People in cities like, Los Angeles, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Atlanta should attest to the danger of openly hostile county law enforcement affecting their cities with the general public, and emphasize how a plan to organize Sheriff's along this ideology can very easily lead to disruptions to election administration in their cities.
He launched a campaign to recall Gascon before the man ever took office, he's in the midst of targeting whistleblowers and journalists for criminal prosecutions, and he's covering up for extra judicial criminal gangs within his ranks, all of this has been reported corroborated. Being a Democrat doesn't make someone immune to openly working against any form of accountability which he's clearly been doing. The refusal to examine the state of policing and the deference to sheriffs is exactly what makes this project from Claremont plausible, there's a shared belief in the ultimate deference to their office across the political spectrum. If this wasn't the case sheriff's wouldn't be anywhere near as useful as targets for their assumed authority. This is not some wild unsubstantiated claim simply because he's in the Democratic Party.
Yes there are are some key distinctions between as Sheriff like Villanueva and the recruits for the Claremont Institute but the reason they're not pushing a Postmaster Fellowship or a Prosecutor Institute is the shared deference towards law enforcement along with the relationship with the public created by being electoral figures as opposed to police chiefs which are typically appointed.
Sheriffs like Villanueva (LA), or David Clarke (Milwaukee), or Joe Arpaio (Phoenix) become prominent reactionary political figures at the local level under the same logic Claremont Institute is using to expand their impact at the national level. In communities large and small they're too often given extremely wide latitude which has allowed them to exercise their political influence without too much blowback until they become a spectacle. This isn't going to be true of every sheriff but we should recognize the pattern and understand it isn't just by happenstance the right has zeroed in on this office as a vehicle for its ambitions.
(Also want to add that while Sheriffs like Villanueva, Clarke, and Arpaio aren't adherents to a racist far right political movement the fact that they're not white doesn't mitigate how their worldview and political actions dovetail with those of the rural sheriffs the Claremont Institute have recruited are pursuing.)
I've been thinking a bit lately about the global rise of what I think of as warlordism--essentially the capture of some functions of the state by local and regional actors who may simulate or perform the identity of being insurgents, revolutionaries, etc. but where it's really just about having control of military, juridical and carceral power in a locality to the extent that the ostensible national authority is substantively absent from some portion of its territory. For at least some nation-states this condition has been part of their entire postcolonial history since the second half of the 20th Century. In others, it's a relatively new thing, and in others still it's just a threat on the horizon.
Basically the way I read this initiative, these guys are thinking about a warlordist program, not so much a fascist seizure of the entire territory of the nation-state. What I think they're looking ahead to is a situation where the next generation of Joe Arpaio-types are being hooked up with the administrative structures of counties and states that are 'deep red' with the plan to simply reject any meaningful attempt to assert federal authority over the territory and to make it physically dangerous for any federal official or representative to tread into the warlord's jurisdiction. Abbott and DeSantis are halfway there already to this strategy--Texas is off the power grid, Abbott is sending his own forces to the border, he's shipping migrants to New York City on his own authority, he's thinking about strategies that allow Texas to control its residents even if they travel to other states, and his administration openly scoffs at federal initiatives and commands regardless of their content. It is creepy as hell to see Claremont's people be as instrumentally conscious that the missing piece in this project is an organized ability to mobilize law enforcement on behalf of warlordism, e.g., that you can't just wait for a Joe Arpaio to appear but you need to recruit and organize the spread of Arpaioism.
right, authoritarianism in America has always been localist, but they did try to overturn an election!
Their localism always seems to be largely opportunistic, they're usually not averse to federal power when it does what they want. (E.g. asserting states' rights when states were much more interested in enforcing racial bigotry with violence than was the federal government but [in the case of white-Southern Democrats] not objecting to the New Deal so long as they were allowed to make sure it mostly benefited white people.)
I, of course, am immune to the analogous—my support for states' liberalising marijuana laws beyond federal limits and cities' not coöperating with La Migra is _completely_ consistent with my support for federal supremacy in the matters of racial and sexual equality and labour law…because I just wrote so, didn't I?
I'm a political theorist, so naturally I am wondering who is teaching this "Sheriff's Fellowship" course. Also, more pessimistically: it's really disheartening to witness the amount of money flowing into programs like this (from Thiel maybe?), while it's just so damn difficult to get anything funded on the Left.
To clarify: yes there are small fellowships out there, but they're always for civility projects to "overcome polarization" and so on
I grew up with an uncomfortable amount of exposure to 80s/90s militia / Sovereign Citizen movement crap. People who had strong opinions about Lon Horiuchi. And I can't overemphasize how central to that ideology is the idea that the highest law enforcement authority anyone is obligated to respect is the county sheriff. You're absolutely right that Claremont stuff is just the well-dressed version of that worldview.
Sheriff Villanueva's campaign to recall George Gascon, and his current targeting of local officials with criminal investigations should be used to prominently highlight just how quickly this can spin out of control with people who would otherwise assume this is an issue that will primarily affect rural and exurban counties. People in cities like, Los Angeles, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Atlanta should attest to the danger of openly hostile county law enforcement affecting their cities with the general public, and emphasize how a plan to organize Sheriff's along this ideology can very easily lead to disruptions to election administration in their cities.
He launched a campaign to recall Gascon before the man ever took office, he's in the midst of targeting whistleblowers and journalists for criminal prosecutions, and he's covering up for extra judicial criminal gangs within his ranks, all of this has been reported corroborated. Being a Democrat doesn't make someone immune to openly working against any form of accountability which he's clearly been doing. The refusal to examine the state of policing and the deference to sheriffs is exactly what makes this project from Claremont plausible, there's a shared belief in the ultimate deference to their office across the political spectrum. If this wasn't the case sheriff's wouldn't be anywhere near as useful as targets for their assumed authority. This is not some wild unsubstantiated claim simply because he's in the Democratic Party.
Yes there are are some key distinctions between as Sheriff like Villanueva and the recruits for the Claremont Institute but the reason they're not pushing a Postmaster Fellowship or a Prosecutor Institute is the shared deference towards law enforcement along with the relationship with the public created by being electoral figures as opposed to police chiefs which are typically appointed.
Sheriffs like Villanueva (LA), or David Clarke (Milwaukee), or Joe Arpaio (Phoenix) become prominent reactionary political figures at the local level under the same logic Claremont Institute is using to expand their impact at the national level. In communities large and small they're too often given extremely wide latitude which has allowed them to exercise their political influence without too much blowback until they become a spectacle. This isn't going to be true of every sheriff but we should recognize the pattern and understand it isn't just by happenstance the right has zeroed in on this office as a vehicle for its ambitions.
(Also want to add that while Sheriffs like Villanueva, Clarke, and Arpaio aren't adherents to a racist far right political movement the fact that they're not white doesn't mitigate how their worldview and political actions dovetail with those of the rural sheriffs the Claremont Institute have recruited are pursuing.)