On Dec. 4, a 28-year-old North Carolina man bearing a handgun and a military-style rifle stormed a Washington, D.C., pizza joint called Comet Ping-Pong, determined to “self-investigate” rumors that the restaurant was the center of a child sex-slave ring with connections to the Clinton campaign. Edgar M. Welch, of Salisbury, N.C., who fired his weapon inside the restaurant but injured no one, later admitted “the intel on this wasn’t 100%.”
A federal jury stunned court watchers on Oct. 27 by delivering a not guilty verdict for Ryan and Ammon Bundy and five other defendants charged in connection with the armed, 41-day-long takeover of Oregon’s Malheur National Wildlife Refuge.
Much has been made of the rise in racist and xenophobic rhetoric, anti-Muslim attacks, and anti-Semitic trolling in the wake of Donald Trump’s ascent, and rightly so. But just as Trump’s promises to build a wall on the U.S.-Mexico border, block Muslim immigration, and restore “law and order” have emboldened nativists and racists, so has his history of casual misogyny and alleged sexual assault (“grab them by the pussy”) energized an explicitly sexist element within the noxious “Alt-Right” movement.
The story of 2016 was one of right-wing extremists ascendant. But even as young racist radicals gained attention and influence, important members of the generation that preceded them passed away. Among them:
Google aspires “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Facebook’s mission is to “make the world more open and connected.” Twitter, while occasionally billing itself as “the free speech wing of the free speech party,” prohibits “hateful conduct,” telling users: “You may not promote violence against or directly attack or threaten other people on the basis of race, ethnicity, national origin, sexual orientation, gender, gender identity, religious affiliation, age, disability, or disease.”
Orlando, Fla., became the site of the deadliest mass shooting by a single gunman in U.S. history, and the deadliest terrorist attack on U.S. soil since 9/11, when a man who proclaimed allegiance to the Islamic State killed 49 people and wounded 53 at Pulse, a popular gay nightclub, before dawn on June 12.
A nation roiled by a vicious and protracted presidential campaign and shocked and saddened by graphic evidence of the deaths of multiple unarmed black men at the hands of police officers, woke on July 8 to the nightmarish news that a sniper had assassinated five Dallas police officers who were providing security at an otherwise peaceful Black Lives Matter protest.
The horrific list just keeps growing.
Emboldened by a presidential candidate who embraced their ideas with a nudge and a wink, and electrified by his victory, white nationalists in 2016 fanned out and spread their message of fear and loathing among the nation’s young people.
Last December, an armed, 28-year-old North Carolina man stormed into a Washington, D.C., pizza parlor called Comet Ping-Pong, bent on investigating the stories he’d heard about it being part of a child sex-slavery ring closely tied to the presidential campaign of Hillary Clinton. Before it was over, Edgar Welch had fired a shot that harmed no one, but terrified restaurant customers and staff alike.
