Walls and Cows: Social Media,Vigilante Vantage,and Political Discourse

Abstract

Vigilante groups in the United States and India have used social media to distribute their content and publicize violent spectacles for political purposes. This essay will tackle the spectacle of vigilante lynchings, abduction, and threats as images of vigilante violence are spread online in support of specific candidates, state violences, and election discourse. It is important to understand the impact of not only these vigilante groups, but understand the communicative spectacle of their content. Using Leo R. Chavez’s understanding of early 2000s vigilante action as spectacle in service of social movements, this essay extends the analysis to modern vigilante violence online content used as dramatic political rhetoric in support of sitting administrations. Two case studies on modern vigilante violence provide insight into this phenomenon are as follows: (1) Vigilante nativist militia groups across the United States in support of border militarization have kidnapped migrants in the Southwest desert, documenting these incidents to show support for the Trump Administration and building of a border wall and (2) vigilante mobs in India have circulated videos and media documenting lynchings of so-called “cow killers”; these attacks target Muslims in the light of growing Hindu Nationalist sentiment and political movement in the country. Localized disinformation and personal video allow vigilante content to spread across social media to recruit members for militias, as well as incite quick acts of mob violence. Furthermore, these case studies display how the social media livestreams and video allow representations of violence to become attention-arresting visual acts of political discourse.

In June 2018, armed volunteers assembled in the United States—Mexico borderlands, sparking controversy with their social media content that documented their vigilante policing activities. This group called themselves the United Constitutional Patriots (UCP) and live streamed radio and video showing their members threatening migrants traveling to the United States in the New Mexico desert. Like previous militia groups in the region, the UCP had a political goal that went beyond aiding the border patrol with individual arrests (Shoichet & Murphy, 2019). “We’re just here to support the Border Patrol and show the public the reality of the border,” UCP spokesman, Jim Benvie stated in April 2019, and told the press that they would remain on the border until President Trump’s border wall was built, or US Congress adopted more punitive immigration measures (Romero, 2019). Their presence on YouTube and Facebook was instrumental in attracting coverage from the press and general US audiences, and they circulated disinformation across social media to recruit members for the militia, to organize funding, and justify their actions (Shorenstein Center, 2018).

The UCP and its social media strategy are not isolated phenomenon, and violent content is spread online by vigilante actors in many countries to publicize political ideology. India has received substantial press coverage regarding disinformation-fueled violence in the country, but there has been little analysis on the purposeful political use of social media and disinformation by vigilante groups there. Vigilante mobs in India organize attacks on so-called “cow killers” over social media and circulate images of the violence in support of legislation that furthers Hindu Nationalist goals. Vigilantism is defined as socially enacted use of force by autonomous citizens in response to a transgression, either of perceived norms or laws, with varying levels of premeditation, spontaneity, and organization (Johnston, 1996). Scholars have written on online extremism and its facilitating role in real-world violence before, but far less on vigilantisms connection to online spaces. Here, I focus on two case studies in the United States and India where vigilante groups have willfully created and publicized content over social media in support of election discourse, desired legislation, and specific political figures. These cases demonstrate how representations of violence can become attention-arresting visual acts of political discourse. While vigilante groups recruit, fund, and operate through social media networks, these platforms also allow them to enact and communicate violent political discourse from an intimate and personal vantage point, which is particularly affecting in populist political climates.

Case Study: Walls

Within the discourse of the 2018 United States primary elections and the approach of an estimated 7,000 Central American asylum seekers to the country’s Southern border, US vigilante group UCP assembled and operated in the New Mexico desert for roughly a year (O’Rourke, 2018). Though a relatively small group, they boasted helping the Border Patrol detain over 5,600 migrants in New Mexico over the span of 2 months (Hay & Chavez, 2019). This made their political goals clear, stating the group would operate on the border until the “wall is up” and the United States was safe from the incoming “invasion” (Agence France-Presse, 2019; Nathan, 2019).

The UCP posted these armed detainments through livestreams on Facebook and YouTube between 18 June 2018 and 24 May 2019, with a total of 113 sessions uploaded. Along with active documentation of armed detainments, hours-long radio broadcasts detailed requests for money and supplies, as well as men with combat backgrounds to join and “be the eyes of the border patrol” in South New Mexico (United Constitutional Patriots Radio Live Stream, 2019). The last statement refers to the Border Patrols tacit but established acceptance of the militia’s help throughout the UCP’s time on the border (Horton, 2019). The UCP hosts justified their presence in the New Mexico desert with disinformation, characterizing migrants as “invaders,” “locusts,” child-traffickers, ISIS terrorists, and gang-members, and denying that the migrants were genuinely seeking asylum (United Constitutional Patriots Radio, 2018). These videos were supplemented by associated social media posts containing false information directed at the public, potential recruits, and US President Donald J. Trump himself. In one post, an armed group of vigilante members posed with the caption “Mr President, all you have to do is call on us. There are legions of patriots who stand ready to defend you” (Shorenstein Center, 2018).

Despite setbacks throughout 2019, the UCP has so far kept its political promises to remain on the border until President Trump’s wall is built. In April and then May of 2019, the group’s leadership was arrested, first for conspiracy to assassinate high-level democrats and then for impersonating law enforcement, which resulted in PayPal and GoFundMe stripping the UCP of their crowdfunding accounts (Hay & Chavez, 2019; Nathan, 2019). The UCP has since rebranded themselves the Guardian Patriots and continued to seek recruits by posting livestreams and videos of their members detaining migrants at gunpoint (Nathan, 2019). As of September 2019, the group has moved to private land and continues to operate advocating and posting on social media in support harsher immigration policies and the continued construction of the border wall through prominent non-profit conservative advocacy groups (Southern Poverty Law Center, 2019).

Case Study: Cows

Far from New Mexico where nativist militias push for a border wall, other vigilante groups work to establish a Hindu national identity in India. Over the past 5 years, attacks against Muslims, Dalits, and Adivasis, all marginalized populations in India, have exponentially increased in Indian states controlled by the Hindu Nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP; Banaji & Bhat, 2019). Since 2014 when the BJP came to national power, a growing Hindu Nationalist ideology has resulted in the deaths of an estimated 44 people as vigilante groups of gau rakshaks, translated to “cow protectors” target those accused of eating or trading beef, which is in violation of Hindu religious beliefs. Estimates of exact number of casualties remain difficult due to tacit approval and cover-ups of these attacks by local law enforcement and political leaders (Bajoria, 2019).

Gau rakshak vigilantes operate on social media to find their targets and publicize attacks, with the express purpose of showing political leaders that there is extreme support to “make cow the national animal and hang those who slaughter her” (Ahuja et al., 2019; Angad & Johri, 2016). In 2016, two Muslim women were filmed being beaten by a mob over allegations they possessed beef, and in another video beef transporters were attacked and forced to eat cow dung (Krishnan, 2016). In June 2019, Tabrez Ansari, a young Muslim man, was beaten to death by a vigilante mob of Hindu Nationalists in an Eastern state of India. Doctored videos of his death were circulated first by the vigilantes and videos continued to circulate as disinformation campaigns claiming Ansari had harmed a cow (Krishnan, 2019; Youth Ki Awaaz, 2019).

Social media, and the close-networks of personal ties it facilitates, has provided vigilantes a platform to achieve their goals. In east Delhi, the Rashtriya Goraksha Sena, or the National Cow-Protection Army, has 2,700 members across 14 Indian states, and they consider themselves political activists (South Asia Journal, 2017). Social media work is vital to their operation and publicity, and they routinely post videos that document their own raids on cattle trucks. Ashoo Mongia, the national president of Rashtriya Goraksha Sena, explains that raids begin when one of their informants post videos of cow slaughter or beef trading along with the alleged perpetrator through social media, and then the offensive begins, with calls to action across further social media messaging and posts (Angad & Johri, 2016). According to members of Rashtriya Goraksha Sena, they have support within the current national government, an east Delhi leader states, “People in the BJP government are more sensitive to issues regarding the cow and so we are giving them time to enact a law” (Angad & Johri, 2016; Frayer, 2019).

Vigilante Violence and Vantage

Addressing the earlier case studies where nativist and nationalist groups publicize and spread violent proof of their vigilantism over social media, I turn to a historical analysis of similar phenomenon, as well as new understandings of social media, violent content, and the interaction of the two as political statement. The concept of visible political violence as spectacle provides a useful framework for understanding why vigilante groups publish their violence on social media, and how this vigilante content functions on these platforms as arresting political discourse.

Fourteen years before the UCP assembled in the US–Mexico borderlands, the 2005 Minutemen Project was another group of self-publicized vigilantes organized around the US–Mexico border (Chavez, 2007). Its stated aims and tactics were akin to the UCP’s; in response to a perceived danger, groups of organized citizens patrolled the border armed with personal firearms and contacted near US Customs and Border Patrol Agents when they suspected unsanctioned border crossings. The Minutemen vigilantes did not obscure their vigilantism, but instead purposefully drew press coverage and public attention to themselves as a form of effective political theater, which ultimately had effect on national legislation (Lechuga, 2017).

Scholar Leo R. Chavez explains this phenomenon with the Foucauldian function of political spectacle: above all, visible political violence allows power to “deploy its pomp in public” (Foucault, 1977, pp. 48–49). Although Foucault addressed sanctioned violence by the state through public torture, Chavez succinctly notes the substantial political power that violent spectacle afforded the small vigilante group in the rural US–Mexico Borderlands, particularly as they echoed larger state projects of race and othering on local levels. The relatively small group utilized political spectacle to its full effect, inviting press to join them as they “worked,” in this way, chasing down and threatening migrants “became part of the show” (Chavez, 2007, p. 27). The press provided an intimate vantage to the public, letting the audience ride along on the vigilante’s “nation-defining” hunt for those that do not belong within nativist ideas of race and citizenship (Chavez, 2007, p. 45).

Chavez’s framework deserves revisiting in the age of social media. UCP livestreams and gau rakshaks videos are recorded from the vigilante’s vantage point, and then uploaded and spread directly through their social media connections without any initial framing by press. In this way, images of firsthand violence operate as arresting displays of political power and influence, as vigilantes visibly and successfully enact violence usually reserved for the State (Agamben, 2005; Johnston, 1996). This communicative spectacle of power is validated further by the tacit approval of State agents, which vigilante groups in both case studies enjoy (Bajoria, 2019; Horton, 2019). Vigilantes are permitted to not only enact violence in a state of exception, but to communicate and engage civil discourse through violent spectacle where others would not be permitted. This tentative privilege is likely due to the groups’ propensity to reinforce the nativist and nationalist discourses already popular in their respective country’s leadership.

Both vigilante groups had effect on the political discourses of their respective countries, specifically in the light of the 2018 midterm elections in the United States and the 2019 general election in India. Both groups’ vigilantism gained headlines in the lead up to national voting; US President Trump repeated “invasion” claims spread by the UCP about the “migrant caravan” of asylum seekers, and BJP Prime Minister Modi campaigned in the months prior to the election with the phrase “Cow is our mother” (Beniwal & Parija, 2019; Lartey & Durkin, 2018). Scholars have noted the space social media provides to perform critical rhetoric within the frame of nationalist and populist politics, a space President Trump, Prime Minister Modi, and their respective vigilante supporters continue to utilize (Gerbaudo, 2018; Gonawela et al., 2018). While the UCP and gau rakshaks groups recruit, fund, and operate through social media networks, these platforms also allow them to enact and communicate violent political discourse from an intimate and personal vantage point, which is particularly affecting in populist political climates, such as those found recently in both the United States and India.