Laughing off GOP's Clay Higgins' civil war threat would be 'painfully naive': militia expert

Rep. Clay Higgins (R-LA) prompted a lot of confused laughter with his tweeted response to Donald Trump's indictment, but the chuckles died down when a militia expert deciphered his message as a threat.

Author Jeff Sharlet sounded the alarm Friday and followed up with a column for The Atlantic probing the congressman's background as a military veteran and law enforcement officer who resigned from two departments over excessive force and other questionable behavior that he doesn't shy away from mentioning.

"He does not claim to be a saint," Sharlet wrote. "He refers often to his past. Last May, he posted a video of himself lifting a protester off his feet at a press conference and heaving him away. His fans know about the times he’s crossed the line; that’s why they like him. A 'straight from central casting' type, as Trump might say, Higgins has cultivated the veneer of a man who’s seen, and done, dark things. Necessary things."

Higgins' tweet was first perceived as an incoherent display of poor writing ability or even mental illness, which Sharlet said was understandable but woefully insufficient.

"Such are the means by which some imagine the center still holds," Sharlet wrote. “'Humor,' they hope, is the best antidote to fascism, a term that more and more historians and political scientists say at last applies to a mass American movement, even as many news organizations still shy away from it. But the idea that liberals can or should just laugh off the threat is painfully naive."

Sharlet breaks down the GOP lawmaker's tweet phrase by phrase to show that he's using QAnon language about "oppressors" and suggesting Trump was the "real president," making Joe Biden an imposter, and make preparations for possible military action to seize bridges or other infrastructure in the buildup to a civil war.

"Do they believe what they’re saying? Do they mean their violent implications? Does it matter?" Sharlet wrote. "Their civil war is imaginary, but there really are men with guns, more now than I’ve seen in 20 years of reporting on the right."

Higgins followed up that tweet with another one similar that suggested federal authorities were trying to bait right-wing "patriots" into committing violence, but hammered home some of the same paranoid paramilitary themes.

"There are, of course, 'Feds' everywhere, as every militia member knows," Sharlet wrote. "Since January 6, it’s become conventional wisdom on the right that public displays of force are most likely antifa in disguise or FBI trolls, trying to make patriots simply fighting the cabal look crazy. The patriots aren’t. You are. You thought this was funny. That’s what they wanted you to think. Or so they tell themselves, communicating on a frequency that they believe the libs — the demon-crats — the globalists — the cabal —can’t hear. Too often, they’re right."