Living In The Florida County That Became A Breeding Ground For Capitol Rioters

[marmar]

Living In The Florida County That Became A Breeding Ground For Capitol Rioters
Seven residents of Brevard County — where cruelty and violence are fixtures of "Make America Great Again" politics — have been arrested since Jan. 6, 2021.

By Christopher Mathias
01/06/2022 08:08pm


Brevard County, Florida, home to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center and the SpaceX project, typically makes headlines for sending people beyond Earth. Recently, however, it has drawn attention for a different reason: the number of residents it sent to Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021.

Federal authorities have accused seven Space Coast locals of taking part in the historic attack on the U.S. Capitol, giving Brevard County the dubious distinction of having the sixth-highest number of people arrested in the riot investigation in the country, according to a George Washington University analysis. (The top five counties represent major urban areas: Los Angeles, New York City, Chicago and Seattle.)

Among those arrested were a high school teacher who coached the football team; a pastor at a local church; his son, the church’s vice president; a parishioner at the church; and an Army veteran who belonged to the far-right militia the Oath Keepers.

Why do so many of the rioters hail from this coastal region east of Orlando? In the year since the Capitol riot, academics have studied data to divine why places like Brevard County were such hotspots — an effort to better understand the underlying social conditions driving conservative Americans toward violent insurrectionism.

Perhaps the most compelling study on the subject was published by Robert Pape at the University of Chicago, who found that Capitol insurgents were more likely to come from counties where the white population was getting smaller. “For every one-point drop in a county’s percentage of non-Hispanic whites from 2015 to 2019, the likelihood of an insurgent hailing from that county increased by 25 percent,” The Atlantic reported, citing his research. ...................(more)

https://www.huffpost.com/entry/brevard-county-florida-capitol-rioters-maga-politics_n_61d75b5fe4b0bb04a6425e0d?

[Scottie Mom]

1. I just read this article.

Very interesting. Thanks for posting on it.

[elleng]

2. 'Capitol insurgents were more likely to come from counties where

the white population was getting smaller.'

[babylonsister]

3. Ugh. Brevard is home sweet home for me. nt

[appalachiablue]

7. Anglo- Cuban friends moved there from Boca, this is sad for the Space Coast

For Pape, a political science professor and expert in political violence, the findings were further evidence that the Capitol attack was fueled by white nationalist fears over the “great replacement” — the conspiracy theory that one day Black people, Hispanic people and other minorities will not only overtake whites as the majority population in America but will also have more rights.

Brevard County is indeed home to a diversifying population. In 2020, according to an analysis of census data by Florida Today, 74% of Brevard County identified as white, an 11% drop from a decade earlier. (The seven Brevard arrestees are overwhelmingly white, all men and have a median age over 40 — a profile consistent with the majority of the over 700 Capitol riot suspects arrested from around the country. They all either declined or did not respond to interview requests for this story.)



- A expletive-bearing flag denigrating President Joe Biden & a Confederate flag fly over a home in Brevard County, Fla., on Dec. 16.

[BigmanPigman]

4. Church go-ers, veterans, teachers....

When did their morals disappear? Oh yeah, the racism thing, losing white power, etc explains it. Evil hypocrites!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Duppers]

5. Indeed!

You said IT.

[TygrBright]

6. Fear doesn't 'just happen'... someone has to gin it up.

Someone has to whisper in the ear... "Can you trust them? They're different. They hate people like you. And there's more and more of them..."

Over and over.

Different variations for different people.

But we are not born hating those who are different from us. It's a cultural imperative of a sick, threatened culture. And it can be exploited by those who, for their own ends, want to sow more fear, more hate, more division, more chaos.

So they can make money off it.

So they can increase their own power.

THAT is the reason these counties with declining percentages of white population are developing this mysterious psychosis.

Cui bono?

bitterly,
Bright

[Hortensis]

11. Yes. A tendency is baked into each of us, though, by nature (genetics)

and developed or countered by nurture -- both to widely varying degrees and directions in each individual.

The Republicans have been specializing in drawing and ginning up, as you say, those particularly prone to hostility to change and differences for several decades now. Since conservatives and liberals separated out and became concentrated in separate parties, instead of having to work together in each of them.

On passing the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 LBJ told an aide, “We (Democrats) have lost the South for a generation.”

It was a lot worse than that: After America's conservatives consolidated in one, Southern conservative culture took over the Republican Party. America's worst racists and reactionaries culturally affecting others most vulnerable. Even southern Christianity different from other regions'. I suspect LBJ, a Texas pol with few illusions, may have foreseen that possibility while he was at it.

[TygrBright]

12. Just so. And they have a lot of help from the oligarchs, American-born and otherwise, who benefit...

...from a fractured America with a crippled culture, economy, and commons.

bitterly,
Bright

[Hortensis]

13. I'd say we were doing pretty good until over time people

across the spectrum thought it came naturally and would always be there. People who had to build it out of the wreckage of the disasters they and those who came before had let happen knew differently, but those generations are mostly old or dead now.

You bet there was a vast right wing conspiracy. It uses RW triggers to sow anger and victimhood, and a sense that they must save America, to drive them to the polls.

And LW language to convince those vulnerables to not vote because they have nothing to save or be proud of, much to be ashamed of, and are both exploited and downtrodden and exploiters and down-trodders. Lucky them. They get to be BOTH resentful victims and shamed, dispirited victimizers.

I'm not among those targeted for either type of messaging, in case it doesn't show. Btw, I believe that someday people will look back and be amazed at all the advances half the nation continued while the other half was under the influence of a vast political malignancy.

[Hekate]

8. KnR

[SergeStorms]

9. Four of the seven came from one "church".

Many churches have obliterated the line between church and state. It's time to push back.

Any church that preaches politics from the pulpit, that involves itself in anti-government practices, should be taxed at the highest rate applicable to any business (which admittedly isn't much).

Enough is enough. It's time for push-back, or they'll keep pushing until they establish a national religion, complete with armed "christian soldiers" with the express purpose of eliminating all other religions.

[Geechie]

10. From the I4 corridor over to Brevard

Has been Klan country since … forever. Some of the most evil deeds on the books happened here.