Nance: “We Are on the Last Leg of the American Experiment”

BIANNA GOLODRYGA: Well, the January 6th hearings have thrown up some explosive evidence of Donald Trump’s efforts to subvert democracy. And we’ve heard a lot about the role of far-right extremist groups and their links to the former president. A new book by a counterterrorism expert, Malcolm Nance, delves into this growing threat. He is the executive director of the Terror Asymmetrics Project. And Malcolm joined Michel Martin to talk about far- right ideologies. And also, his own experience fighting in Ukraine.

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MICHEL MARTIN, CONTRIBUTOR: Thanks, Bianna. Malcolm Nance, thank you so much for joining us.

MALCOLM NANCE, EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, TERROR ASYMMETRICS PROJECT AND AUTHOR, “THEY WANT TO KILL AMERICANS”: It is my pleasure to be here.

MARTIN: The title of your book is, “They Want to Kill Americans: The Militias, Terrorists, and Deranged Ideology of the Trump Insurgency”. Who’s they?

NANCE: They are your neighbors. They are the people you would never suspect. They are the people who may keep their political opinions to themselves for the most part. Who may just come out and do your plumbing or your tax returns, or maybe your, you know, open heart surgeon. They are a collective of people that believe in one overriding ideology in America. And that is, that the trends towards diversity, equality, common decency should be ended in order to give the — what they view as the beleaguered white society in the United States. An opportunity to maintain supremacy over the other 60 to 65 percent of Americans. And now, it’s moved to the point where, as we saw prior to January 6th, where they’re more than willing to take up arms. And then throughout the tremor of 2020, the people that you saw coming out with the arms protesting were no longer the individual malicious, like the three percenters or the Oath Keepers, the Boogaloo Boys, the Proud Boys. Oh, no. For every one of them, there were nine average Trump voters who were as frustrated and believed that their country was under attack. Their version of America was under attack. And they were showing up at these protests armed as well. They got it into their heads that America was crumbling and they started bringing out weapons. So, for every militia person, there are more Americans who take part in this — the insurrection, good example, that you would never imagine going out there and being proud of tearing down the fabric of American society.

MARTIN: So, as we are speaking now, the last scheduled hearing of the January 6th Investigative Committee is scheduled to meet. Do you feel that anything has been accomplished by these hearings?

NANCE: Well, they have certainly made an accurate and commendable public record. The problem is, we have a governmental system right now that is so institutionalized, as we said it back as an institution. And I’m speaking of you, the Justice Department, that what should have been emergency, emergency investigations into a conspiracy to overthrow the government of the United States should have already been out bringing people in before grand juries and issuing indictments. The urgency of the defense of American democracy went out the window with the appointment of Merrick Garland. And I know he’s going to get a lot of grief, but we find out from reporting from MSNBC in the last day that he sent a memo saying that very thing. He will not carry out investigations as elections are coming in. That means you have stopped the wheels of American justice. You have stopped it out of deference to people that tried to overthrow the American government. I mean, there is a time, OK, to go get a sip of water during a gun battle, OK. But you don’t go out and say you’re going on a vacation to Acapulco during a war. So, this is what is happening. And I can only say from what I see. If there are lawyers at justice who are neck deep and going out and running secret grand juries, then this is the tightest ship in the history of the United States over the Justice Department. I don’t believe that for one second. None of the American public who are watching this believes this for one second. Donald Trump committed crimes. His staff committed grievous crimes, which amount to sedition. And to a certain extent, if there had ever been a third party involved, it would’ve been treason. But there weren’t. They just tried to overthrow the government. There is a reason we had those laws in place at the end of the civil war.

MARTIN: So, how worried are you though? I mean, just to be as blunt as you can be, and you are very blunt.

NANCE: I am.

MARTIN: How worried are you that our democratic institutions are going to hold?

NANCE: Oh, I’m thoroughly convinced that we are quite possibly on the last leg of the America Experiment. Now, I’ve said that before. I said that in the runoff to 2020. And it was true at the time. If we had lost in 2020, the presidential election or the House of the Senate. Good, God. I just can’t imagine where we’d be. Look at this movement over the last year to codify into law, taking away the right to vote from blacks, women, liberals, all over the United States because they imagined, they imagined that their power was being eroded by Donald Trump not being appointed president of the United States. We are in the last inning. And we’re just lucky that we had an extra inning in 2020. This November, if there is not a coalition of independents who love America, the we, the real people. People like me. I’m from Philadelphia. I am a strict originalist about what they wrote down at 5th and Chestnut Street, I do not like the idea of people thinking America belongs to any one person or group. I’ve read the words. I know what the America Experiment truly is. It’s a republic if we can keep it as my fellow citizen Benjamin Franklin said. My problem is, these people don’t seem to understand that our republic is a democracy in which the rights of the minority are protected. They view this as a dictatorship that will give them what they want. And if they don’t get what they want, they will dismantle the rest. This November will be the defining moment whether the America Experiment ends in practice, not in theory.

MARTIN: It is a fact that the overwhelming majority of people who are storming the Capitol were white and were white males. But it is also a fact that Donald Trump received a larger percentage of the African-American vote and Latina vote that he had in the prior election. And I’m just curious what you make of that.

NANCE: Following the siege of the Capitol, and I watched almost — I was watching in real-time. I had six people — six-man team watching this thing. 40,000 people descended on that building. I am certain there weren’t a dozen black people out of that 40,000. I am certain of it. Look, two or three or 12 African-Americans speaking for Donald Trump, whether it’s Kanye West or his spokesman, spokeswoman, they do not represent 42 million African-Americans. We vote as a block because we understand we don’t vote against our own interests. We don’t vote for our own destruction.

MARTIN: Why do you think — what do you think is his enduring appeal? Especially to people who you would think understand the benefits of a rules-based international order and not an international order that is subject to the whims of an autocrat? The least, the last, and the loss did not charter planes to go to the Capitol. You see them saying, they didn’t charter buses to go to the Capitol. They didn’t pay four blocks of hotel rooms, you know. And yet there is a significant version of corporate America that continues to support him, his ideology, and the people who continue to uphold his ideology. And I’m just interested in your take on that.

NANCE: When I think about the definition of the word, fascism, as coined by Benito Mussolini, it’s a dictatorship of the corporate right in which the corporations, the rich, the upper middle class, the wealthy gained benefits by using the lower class to create a political system in which decisions are made at the top. You see it in Russia today, which is an oligarch. No oligarch is allowed to exist or be rich in that country unless Vladimir Putin, the dictator, allows it. So, I think in the United States, it’s opportunism, it’s greed, it’s the people who believe that Donald Trump is rich, even though he’s not. It’s the people who believe that the trappings of wealth and, you know, riches are something they could glam onto. And maybe, I can — you know, when — I’ve heard people say, if you join, you know, these blacks for Trump group, which is almost 100 percent white, OK, you are the only black in a sea of white people. I think it’s Dr. Cornel — Professor Cornel West who called it the only Tom syndrome. If you’re the only one in the room you’re approved of, and you’re not like the other 42 million horrible black people who take all of our money. And there are opportunities for you, individually. But then again, I also caution — and in the period of the slave catchers. The slave catchers always bought a slave with them to go out into the woods and catch other slaves by promising them food. And then they end up in the clutches of the authorities. Trump uses these individuals, the Kanye West’s, who no one takes seriously. To shave off votes. To go out and to mobilize a branch of the African- American society that might not vote. But might vote if they see somebody who’s out there driving around in a Bentley. I don’t know. It’s not as appealing to listen to Zora Neale Hurston or, you know, Neil deGrasse Tyson with their true ingrained intellect. Then they hear Kanye West talk about how he loves Donald Trump. 42 million of us get what that means, but there’s always one or two who will see it as an opportunity.

MARTIN: You have spent much of the last year with Ukraine. And I think maybe people might be interested to know why you made the decision to go?

NANCE: Well, it was an easy decision to make. I mean, I spent a month in the prewar analyzing the Russian order of battle. Determining how they would invade. Where they would invade? And just by fluke, I flew out on one of the last jets from the country because I had a family matter to attend to. And by the time I had landed in Dublin, you know, Putin was finishing his speech and was launching the blitz on the nation. They destroyed the airport we flew out of. So, you know, I was just lucky. But within three or four days, I was hearing from my friends who were telling me they were going to dock on the battlefield. And you hear somebody say that. You hear President Zelenskyy appeal for help. I could not stand by. With my experience in the military, in the intelligence community, and not assist my friends, I went, I joined the international legion, and I’m on the battlefront. I am active in intelligence operations. And letting Russia have exactly what they deserve.

MARTIN: How do you assess the state of the conflict so far?

NANCE: Well, first off, let’s take the law — let’s take the view that we’re at right now. Russia is losing this war. They are losing it. They had three combined armed armies wiped off the face of the Earth between February 24th and the beginning of May. They lost the entirety of the north of — northern combat forces in Russia. And this runaround to try to incrementally take back the borders of Donetsk and Luhansk by marching artillery forward and not moving forward with tanks will only get them so far. They are losing their capacity to have any combat power. For those of you who are historians, you are looking at the Battle of the Ardennes in 1944, the Battles of the Bulge in reverse. The Ukrainians traded territory for Russian lives, and they are going to get it back, because Russia will have nothing to resist with. Especially if they get the multiple rocket launch systems and the HIMARS multiple rocket launch systems, which has already changed the nature of the entire war. If they were to go from eight to 50, this war would be over by September, to where Russia could not resist an offensive punch. And I suspect that they will get back Kherson, may retake all of Donetsk and Luhansk.

MARTIN: Do you feel confident that Ukraine will prevail?

NANCE: Without any question. I’m on the battlefield. I see — I have a long line of battlefront with nothing but Russians in front of me, and we’re holding it. But Russia has nothing to punch with. They are bringing up men older than me with tanks twice as old as me out on the battlefield, and they are — they have no logistics training. Their ammunition dumps are blowing up. Their men do not want to be in Ukraine. They don’t want to fight. And they are up against an army. And let me tell you about the Ukrainians, they like to fight and they are taking this to Russia. And they will fight and they will retake their land. That is a guarantee.

MARTIN: Does the Western support for Ukraine give you any encouragement? I’m kind of looping back to where we started our conversation.

NANCE: Yes.

MARTIN: Does the fact that sort of Western democracies have rallied to the support of Ukraine give you any hope that the anti-democratic forces that you have been cautioning against for so many years now, that the West is — that they are in — that they are being challenged?

NANCE: Democracy is on the move again, finally. I mean, it looked like it was completely retrenched in the Trump years, you know. But now, we find the actions of autocrats is breaking, right? They don’t have a hold on the United States, it’s 10 U.S., but they don’t have a hold on the United States. The we’re sending over there are critical. The problem is we’re not sending them fast enough. We know with the urgency that we need. If I were the president of the United States I would say, 50 HIMARS, 50 multiple rocket launch systems, all the rockets that they could use, give it to them now. Politics be damned. End this war. And it’s not just about, you know, one weapon system. The combination that we have sent over there now, the Ukrainians are ready to attack. It’s just that we need to make sure that the Russians in their trenches do not raise their heads, do not go to their artillery systems, and only start thinking about getting in those trucks and running back to the Russian boarder.

MARTIN: So, before we let you go, you’ve given us a lot to think about, what is your message to Americans? What should — those who share your concern about the fragility of these institutions, of democratic institutions, what is your message to them?

NANCE: You know, I try to end my books on a very positive note, quoting the finding fathers. And I couldn’t find it in me in this last book to do that. I couldn’t find it in me. But let me go back to a previous book. I grew up in Philadelphia. I later in life ran into Washington Square, which was an old African American cemetery, right behind Independence Hall. And it is also the location of the first two of the unknown soldiers. They were like, you know, 1,200 dead American service members from the Continental Army buried there, right under the park. And across the inscription above Washington had led me to where I am in the intelligence world now. And it says, liberty is a light from which many men have died in darkness. We do not have to give up on what America is. These people in the Trump world need to ask themselves, are they true patriots? Are they sunshine patriots? As Thomas Paine put them. Are they the real winter soldiers who will stay for the hard slog of making American better, or are they ready to throw it away? I will stand against them if it comes to that. I will stand against them in protest. I will stand against them in work. I will stand against them in deed if I have to. To correct them, to understand that we will not go down in darkness through some mad king’s idea of what he thinks America is, one of the most ignorant people to have ever hold office in the United States and that their guns mean nothing, all right, to the words of our founding fathers. I was just in Philadelphia, I saw the — you know, I always visit the Liberty Bell, I bought a new copy of “Common Sense,” you know, because George Washington had all his officers reading. You should re-commit yourself to the love of America, true America. America way. The black guy next to you in the battlefield is the truest ally that you have. The woman on the heavy machine gun is the person who will die for you. It is not about color. It is about creed. The creed to defend what we have built. The motto of the U.SA army is, this will defend. And that is what all of us need to commit ourselves to, to defending what is true and right, and breaking this fever of our neighbors that have been misguided by Donald Trump.

MARTIN: Malcolm Nance, thank you for speaking with us today.

NANCE: It is my pleasure, truly.