The Right Has Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Boot.
The Far Right used to care about government oppression, now they are loving being part of it.
The Alex Jones I remember during the Bush Administration would have burnt down his studio in anger if Obama had sent in shock troops to a major American city and shot two citizens in less than a month.
Hell, he nearly lost his mind when Obama’s DOD planned a training in Texas called Jade Helm. Sam Biddle just published this excellent piece in The Intercept on it today where he quotes Jones. “This is an emergency broadcast,” Jones began, warning of an impending campaign to “militarize police and to put standing armies on the streets to suppress the population and to carry out political operations.” Sam’s article is so good it caused me to rewrite everything I had in draft for this piece. So go read it, and then come back here.
Over the last couple weeks I’ve been noticing an odd trend - far right influencers embracing the boot.
Now, I’m not any naive NYT’s journalist just now in 2026 realizing that the Right in America wants freedom for themselves and not… well anyone else. I documented Proud Boys nearly a decade ago now chanting “Helicopter Rides” outside of a May Day Rally in NYC. Fascism for you, not for me is a core belief in American Conservatism (and Libertarianism for that matter). It’s outrageous when someone comes for Randy Weaver at Ruby Ridge but not when the Philadelphia Police Department literally bombs the MOVE house and the “ensuing fire kill[s] 11 people, including five children, and destroy[s] more than 60 nearby homes.”
That’s justified. They weren’t American. They were Communists. They found drugs. They didn’t comply. They weren’t patriots. They, they, they…
There’s always been an excuse why the boot stomping out someone else isn’t state violence, but justified. They have convinced themselves that the boot will never come for them, as long as Trump is in office.
And of course when the boot came for J6ers is was WRONG! These people were patriots, they weren’t doing anything more than doing a slightly unsanctioned tour of the Capitol. Worst charge they should have got was trespassing.
I broached this subject when I spoke to pardoned J6er and Islamophobe Jake Lang last year. He told me in my interview with him that if “antifa” had done J6th do you think they should have been pardoned? He said no, they wouldn’t have been “patriots” (more on Jake soon.)
wiki - Cognitive dissonance: In the field of psychology, cognitive dissonance is described as a mental phenomenon in which people unknowingly or subconsciously hold fundamentally conflicting cognitions.
We live in a nation that is post-irony and post-reality. The leftists I know accept that the immigration policy of the Obama Administration that deported millions and awarded Tom Homan the Presidential Rank Award was monstrous and can see that Trump’s street violence is different. This is something that much of the right cannot admit.
Far-right broadcaster and man that believes in literal demons Alex Jones on the day that Alex Pretti was shot and killed by two ICE officers blamed it on him “play[ing] in traffic.”
Yeah, they had a million people protesting up there this weekend. And one guy with a gun, and he gets tackled. And then there’s stuff flying around and things falling out and clips on the ground and gun, gun, gun, and in the hysteria he gets shot. Yeah. Don’t play in traffic. Sad. He’s dead. [hat tip to Knowledge Fight podcast]
Jones before he became side tracked by his well earned billion dollar Sandy Hook lawsuit built his career on being the guy that was above the right/left paradigm. Jones claimed that both the Bush and Obama Admins were trying to create a police state.
In the early 2000’s he created a “documentary” series called Police State where he claimed that that the military and police were combining. As with some things Jones claimed there was something “true” on the surface. The police forces were getting military surplus and training and were treating the public like a occupied nation - but they were not in fact being run by “foreign globalist banker controllers.” (read: The Jews)
As the saying goes, the broken clock is right twice a day. Except that saying is bullshit - the clock is never right, it’s broken and it’s lying to you the other 23 hours and 58 mins a day. Jones was fine with police oppression if it was people that he viewed as deserving it: activists, leftists, Black people, immigrants. Anyone he perceived as an enemy to his John Birch Society inspired patriotism. Go listen to the Knowledge Fight Podcast if you want to know more about Alex Jones.
Jones isn’t the only one to embrace the boot there’s also right wing streamer Tim Pool. Pool claims now to once been a Democrat as late as 2020. I actually knew him during Occupy Wall Street, he was a best a “classical liberal” - whatever that means anymore. Soon after OWS he got media attention and money, hopping from FusionTV and VICE and finally going back to independent. He started his libertarian/right drift and eventually Pool joined (whether he’d agree or not) the alt-right. In 2017 he was the conspiracy of Muslim “investigating” “no-go zones” in Sweden.
Now, Pool is excited not just for the ICE raids and kidnappings but happy to be apart of it. Responding to claims that he was licking he boot, he told his audience that “I’m not licking the boot. It’s my boot. I voted for it. I’m the one stomping…” The fascism they feared was one that they weren’t on the side stomping heads.
It’s hilarious from Pool as he was too terrified to even leave his SUV at Ferguson to go out and cover those protests.
My final example of boot-embracing right-wingers is friend of pardoned J6er and Islamophobe Jake Lang (whom I’ve written about previously) Gregor Butzow. Butzow hasn’t really made a name for himself yet, just really starting to get media attention as a right wing agitator in Minneapolis the last couple of weeks. The red-haired pro-ICE activist explained to News2Share’s Ford Fischer at the Federal Whipple Building that the boot could be “we the people.”
All you need to do is look at X and you’ll find hundreds of replies saying “FAFO” or something along that lines anytime a journalist posts a video of ICE’s street violence. Nearly every single one of them has “PATRIOT” in the bio and none of them can imagine a world where the boot might eventually come for them.
