How to Counter a Fascist Convention
This summer Milwaukee will play host to a disaster. It’s a disaster that the elected leadership of our city not only allowed, but invited. They begged for this catastrophe, sold the city on it, and even now continue to naively celebrate its coming. The 2024 Republican National Convention is set to descend upon Milwaukee from July 15-18. As of this writing, we have six weeks to get organized and protect ourselves. There’s an outside chance we can still dodge the catastrophe, maybe even prevent the RNC entirely.
The Republican Party has embraced racism and authoritarianism. Hosting their convention is an obvious and egregious mistake, one that Mayor Cavalier Johnson, County Executive David Crowley, and other Milwaukee officials made, but that everyone else in the city will have to actually deal with.
Scholars and pundits have been talking about the fascist creep in the Republican Party since the notorious George W Bush leveraged 9/11, passed the Patriot Act, and used false claims of weapons of mass destruction to whip up national fervor for the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. Bush centralized state power in combination with fanatical moral traditionalism and fear of foreigners. That combination has a name: fascism. In the decades since, Republicans doubled down. They enacted minority rule through courts, gerrymandering, and other bad faith manipulations of US governing rules and norms. They embraced and enabled right wing terrorism. They even attempted to invalidate an election and seize control of the government on January 6, 2021. To this day, they defend that attack and celebrate its perpetrators.
These authoritarian moves target the same people fascists always target. They bolster a police force that saturates Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities, murdering more than three people on average daily. They relentlessly attack queer and gender non-conforming people, trying to drive us back into the closet or to suicide. They embrace building walls and camps for migrants and climate refugees. They impose forced-birth policies on women and anyone who can get pregnant.
It’s past time to recognize that fascists are no longer creeping, they are striding into power within the Republican Party, and their ascent will likely culminate at their 2024 convention. Between the GOP’s Project 2025, Trump’s Agenda 47, and his frequent public screeds, it is clear the 2024 RNC will feature a major political party unveiling a platform of open fascism in the United States.
Republican rhetoric has grown even more violent following Trump’s 34 felony convictions. He will be sentenced, potentially to jail time, mere days before the convention. We should expect his most unhinged supporters to be at a fever pitch. The RNC will be an infamous week—a horror—unfolding at our doorsteps. Unless we stop it.
No Easy Options
There is no good or easy response to being picked as ground zero for a gathering of MAGA goons, Proud Boys, and Republican Party delegates. Wisconsin has already been seeing a rise in white supremacist activity, which the RNC will likely supercharge. We’ve heard people say, “just leave town for the week,” and that’s nice for those people, but it does nothing for the rest of the city. Those of us who can’t afford to take a compulsory vacation need to make a plan, which means choosing from a few bad options.
One option is keeping our heads down. We can remove the pride and BLM flags from our houses so they don’t incense drunk Republicans staying at the Airbnb down the block. If we start now we might even learn how to stifle our initial reactions to fascist displays. Practice averting your eyes and quietly shuffling away when someone throws up a sieg heil or flings a slur at you. Pretend it isn’t happening. Cringe and cower our way through four days of burgeoning fascism in the city we call home.
If that’s hard to stomach, let’s consider our other bad option: organizing against it.
Organizing counter demonstrations, like the ones planned by the Coalition to March on the RNC and MICAH risks walking directly into the polarized shouting match or messy street fight Trumpists want to have. Mayor Johnson and the Milwaukee Police Department have made it clear they don’t want us taking this option, bringing in 4,500 guest cops, and shutting down most of downtown to protest. Even if antifascists and counterdemonstrators turn out strong enough to navigate those protest rules and counter the Proud Boys and MAGA goons, we will also have to contend with thousands of cops wielding an extra $75 million worth of military and surveillance equipment. Thanks to a Fire and Police Commission decision to suspend body camera requirements, police will be able to handle protesters with even less oversight than normal.
From Charlottesville, to January 6th, to Kenosha everywhere fascists go, the cops have their back, if they aren’t bolstering their ranks, they’re enabling them. Here in Milwaukee, former Sheriff David Clarke literally called for the Proud Boys to start a Wisconsin chapter. Of course, there already was one, and it was a swamp for racism.
At the same time, when the MAGA crowd comes to a city looking for a fight and they don’t encounter antifa resistance, they still find a fight. They take to the streets, looking to jump people. Random interracial couples, Black churches, youth of color, and LGBTQ events are among their favorite targets.
If all the Coalition to March on the RNC does is get in shouting matches with fascists in a crowded, highly controlled police cordon downtown, they will still be doing a public service. Keeping the fascists’ attention on a counter demo keeps it off the rest of the city. Odds are that’s the best we can hope for.
Others are trying a new strategy. The Great Milwaukee Block Party is planning events outside of downtown that encourage “a multitude of interactions that take place in a diverse array of locations” that will “cater to a wide range of interests” and “mitigate the harm to… those who will be targeted” by the attendees of the RNC. The legendary radical metalcore band Racetraitor is planning a midwest tour prior to the convention, building awareness and a bail fund for protesters who get arrested countering the RNC.
These events will provide a welcome alternative to the Republican exploitation Mayor Cavalier Johnson has inflicted upon us. They might even create spaces of celebration, local pride, and resilience, protected from drunken Proud Boys and belligerent convention delegates.
While efforts to gather, hold each other safe, and defend our city are vital and encouraging, they don’t address the core problem: this should never have happened. We cannot let the people who put us at risk off the hook. The community response to the RNC needs to include holding the elected officials who invited the fascists here responsible for what goes down during their party in our city.
The RNC Contract
One way we can do that is to make sure the Republican Party, the RNC Host Committee, and the City of Milwaukee are strictly adhering to the contract they signed together. We cannot trust our elected officials to do this, because deals between Milwaukee and Republicans generally do not go well for us.
The modern Republican Party, in addition to being an increasingly fascist organization, is also a clown car in a train wreck with a dumpster fire. They are bleeding money, cutting corners, and embracing a crook who made his fortune on short-changing people foolish enough to do business with him. Trump is notorious for not paying his bills. He has consolidated his grip on the Republican Party, replacing top leaders with his people, and blocking a resolution that would have prevented the RNC from paying his bottomless legal fees for him.
The modern Republican Party is a party of Trump, a party of lying and cheating. We would be naive to think they aren’t going to cheat Milwaukee this summer. In fact, it looks like they may already have. The RNC Host Committee was initially run by Gerard Randall, first vice chair of the Republican Party of Wisconsin. He’s also the executive director and sole employee of the Milwaukee Education Partnership (MEP) an organization that took $1.29 million from Milwaukee Public Schools in no-bid contracts since 2012. Randall resigned from the host committee and MPS declined MEP’s contract when reporters and newly elected school board members questioned his use of funds intended for Milwaukee youth education.
Scandalous resignations are not the only thing troubling the RNC. Republicans are pressing for greater impositions on our city and relying on Democrats and local businesses to help pay for the convention after dumping RNC money into Trump’s legal bills.
Wisconsin’s elected Democratic leaders seem to love making bad deals with Republicans, and cannot be counted on to oversee or enforce agreements with the RNC on their own. That’s why regular people like us need to look at both the contract, and the conduct of the Republican Party and RNC Host Committee closely. Without pressure from us, Mayor Cavalier Johnson, Governor Tony Evers, and City Attorney Evan Goyke are unlikely to enforce the contract.
If we stay vigilant, review the contract ourselves, contact our elected officials and demand they keep the host committee on a tight leash, we can make them reign in this fascist fiasco. This scrutiny and pressure might even get the convention canceled, giving the modern Republican Party the national convention they deserve: no national convention.
In upcoming articles, Milwaukee Beagle will be tracking the RNC. We’ll be sniffing out the motivations and loyalties of local leaders responsible for bringing the fascists here, and shoving our nose deep into the contract itself to find what protections we might have against this disaster. Canceling the RNC entirely is certainly a long shot, but, when it comes to protecting our homes and our lives, you can’t fault us for aiming high.
Any lawyers, amateur sleuths, detail oriented nit-pickers, anonymous whistleblowers in the Host Committee, Mayor Johnson, or City Attorney Goyke’s office, or other antifascist researchers are welcome to send us tips and leads at milwaukeebeagle@gmail.com.
