Brenton Torrant’s Manifesto is an important read.

It explains his views and actions very clearly, and shows that that he is one big dead-ender. Torrant has good reason to feel so desperate.

I’ve read Brenton Torrant’s 74 page Manifesto.

IMO it’s is an important read — in its entirety. 1/12 tinyurl.com/y5rbd9wg

(His bodycam video of the killings is another matter — I will not watch that. It would only have appalling shock value, and one would learn nothing from it.) 2/12

But the manifesto is different. Torrant, although he is not well-educated, is obviously quite smart, articulate, and well-travelled. If you read it, you will understand his thinking perfectly and why he thought he was justified in doing the heinous thing he did. 3/12

And that’s good: his extremist, violent *action* will lead to a wholesale revulsion against his extremist, violent *views*.

If you can’t sell it, don’t do it. 4/12

Torrant says in his manifesto that there are no Nazis anymore, that they haven’t been a political or social force anywhere in the world for more than 60 years. 5/12

He’s right. But his own views aren’t differentiated enough from prototypical 1930s European Fascism and Nazism for his own views to get any traction now. Been there, done that. 6/12

The historical forces that Hitler, Mussolini, and Franco resisted are much stronger now than they were in the 1930s — and they’ve gone global and international. No wonder Torrant feels desperate. 7/12

Torrant fears things have gone so far that even his desperate, “historic” and “heroic” acts will not be able to turn the tide of history, which is running strongly against him. He’s right: they won’t. 8/12

Torrant is no doubt right that his internet-savvy viral video and manifesto will lead to more violence (THAT is a real worry), but more broadly, Torrant’s worldview has no future. Torrant is one big dead-ender. 9/12

I became convinced, very shortly after the 2016 presidential election, that Trump’s election victory was a fluke, bc his voter base alone would prove to be too small, and bc Ds would be energized and the moderate middle Indies would turn against him. 10/12

And that is exactly what has happened. Ds showed in 2018 that they have a path to 50+ 1 of American voters (actually *much* more than that) — and that is true even for the Electoral College, though admittedly that will be a lot closer.

Trumpism does not have such a path. 11/12

Torrant’s base, if one can call it that, isn’t even a tiny, tiny fraction of the roughly 40% Republican voting base that is sticking to Trump no matter what. And Torrant-type violence even threatens that 40% politically — contrary to what Torrant thinks. 12/12