Westneat: The cracking of a cult

Whipped into a “stop the steal” frenzy, about 200 of them showed up in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, 2021, organized by Nordean and several others, where they breached the Capitol to try to stop the certification of the election.

Their trial lasted four months. Some themes emerged about how inane, but also how precarious, American politics has become. One is that the Proud Boys’ lawyers presented Nordean and the others as witless dupes of Trump, drunks who were conned into chasing a lie.

“They are basically incompetent people, they can’t even order McDonald’s, and they’re planning to stop what the government is calling the peaceful transfer of power?” Nordean’s attorney, Nicholas Smith, asked incredulously during closing arguments (Nordean didn’t testify).

Smith also called them “confused, unarmed men with cans of beer.”

None of the above was the prosecution talking — that was the defense.

The verdicts ought to put to rest the Republican historical revisionism that Jan. 6 was simply a protest or “legitimate political discourse.” Three different juries now have handed down sedition-related verdicts to 14 people, calling it what it was: a directed movement — with beer, yes, and lots of chest-pounding nonsense — but with an overarching goal to use force to stop the wheels of democracy.

“We were openly expecting a civil war,” testified one of Nordean’s foot soldiers.

The final striking theme of the trial is that everyone — the prosecutors, the defense attorneys, sometimes even the Proud Boy defendants — treated the underlying rationale for the insurrection, a stolen election, as a discredited farce. Yet outside the courtroom, that farce still courses through the veins of right-wing politics.

Nordean’s own attorney said in court that this claim the election was stolen was “misguided, you can call it stupid. … But whatever the former president’s personal crimes are, you have seen no evidence that Mr. Trump conspired with Ethan Nordean from Seattle.”

To this day, though, these “stupid” beliefs are an animating core of the Republican Party. They are the war cry for the current front-runner for the party’s nomination for president.

When I wrote recently about this phenomenon — how the state GOP is immolating itself by hosting a slew of election-deniers at a conference — some local GOPers reacted like, well, Proud Boys.

“Screw the Seattle Times and its troll Danny Westneat,” said Dave McMullan, the chairman of the Pierce County GOP.

I get it, you don’t want to hear it from me. Maybe listen then to the epiphanies of Ethan Nordean? He certainly has more lived experience than most about where Trumpism ultimately leads you.

“I’ve followed this guy for 4 years and given everything and lost it all …” Nordean said in a message entered as evidence in the trial. “Now I’ve got some of my good friends and myself facing jail time cuz we followed this guys lead and never questioned it. … (Bleep) you trump, you left us on the battle field bloody and alone.”

That he did. That he will do again, over and over.

These convictions are extremely important. They aren’t about the past; they serve as a warning.

Sedition is a volcanic word, almost unthinkable, but the jury got it right. They laid down a historical reality check for a party, and a huge segment of the country, that’s lost its way and its collective mind. Something’s got to crack this cult.