![]() This summer, some ranchers and farmers in nearby Siskiyou County went rogue, ignoring state orders to stop taking water from rivers to irrigate their fields. Many blame their woes on liberal policies - such as bans on extensive logging or maintaining stream flows for endangered fish. ![]() government has been captured by Jews,” said Ross, referring to the West’s extremists, who say they have an obligation “to restore America by destroying the federal government.”Įven those without extremist goals are fed up enough to defy authorities and regulators. Extremists are already targeting these vulnerable communities with paranoid answers about how to save a sacrosanct way of life, Hughes said.ĭonnell has heard conspiracy theories about Jewish-controlled space lasers and tales of government officials who want to burn people off their land as part of a socialist plot.Īlexander Reid Ross, an extremism expert at Portland State University, points out that, in the American West, antisemitism has long married itself to an anti-governmental cowboy ethos - a combination that has become supercharged and mainstreamed as MAGA Republicanism has mined the discontent for converts. It’s natural to be livid when you lose something dear, he points out. In both cases, there’s a tipping point where it becomes impossible to turn the heat back down.īrian Hughes, a founder of the Polarization and Extremism Research and Innovation Lab at American University, warns that “an awful lot of radicalization and extremist propaganda works because it finds a reasonable hook.” Ignoring that growing fury is just as dangerous and foolish as ignoring the rising temperatures themselves. That’s especially true if California uses financial leverage to discourage rebuilding fire-destroyed towns and encourages rural denizens to move to more defensible places.Įxperts who track domestic unrest are raising these concerns. As climate change worsens, water gets more scarce and the land becomes hotter, drier and harder to live upon, this discontent could very well metastasize into violence. There’s no denying that the extremist turn of MAGA Republicanism is flourishing throughout the state’s pastoral parts. We all know each other way too well, and so we learn to live with those things.” “It’s the drama and beauty of life in a small community. “There were a lot of divisions within our community pre-fire,” Donnell told us, standing by a portable bar at the festival, wearing a flamboyant red cowboy hat that set off his blue eyes and black fanny pack. But he’s not blind to the problems that plagued his beloved little town before the flames - faults that are growing back, perhaps even faster than the homes and trees. He’s a hippie with the heart of a dreamer. Ken Donnell, a musician and inventor originally from Los Angeles, lost a business and a home to the Dixie fire and is in the process of rebuilding. Not far away, a Confederate flag caught the evening breeze. But just below it was a “state of Jefferson” flag, the symbol of the anti-government separatist movement with racist undertones that would like to see everything north of Sacramento become its own territory, free of “King Newsom,” as some around here call him. The Stars and Stripes flew at its recent Gold Diggers Day celebration, held in a decimated downtown ringed by the skeletons of fire-blackened trees. It can even be found in the politically mixed town of Greenville, which burned to the ground during last year’s Dixie fire. ![]() Drive up past Sacramento, and there’s a real sense among many that urban California has betrayed them, ravaged their resources and simply doesn’t respect or value their way of life. It’s not something hidden under the surface, and it’s not just the radical fringe. It’s hard to explain just how much some people in rural California dislike and distrust the rest of us, especially Gov.
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