POSTED BY MARTIN KICH

These are the opening paragraphs of an article written by Alexandra Hutzler for Newsweek:

Education Secretary Betsy DeVos’s security detail, one of the most extensive in the Trump administration, will cost U.S. taxpayers nearly $20 million through the fall of 2019.

DeVos began receiving nonstop security from the U.S. Marshals Service immediately after she was just barely confirmed to her position by the Senate in February 2017. No other cabinet member has been provided an armed detail like the one assigned to the education secretary, the cost of which will be $19.8 million according to figures provided by the Marshals Service to NBC News.

The security team was assigned by now former Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who departed the White House the day after the midterm elections at the president’s request. The Marshals Service was ordered to protect DeVos after the Michigan billionaire was heckled and barred entry to a public middle school in Washington by a group of protesters.

The Department of Justice said in a statement that DeVos’s security team was assembled after “threats” were made against the education secretary. “The U.S.M.S. was identified to assist in this area based on its expertise and long experience providing executive protection,” the agency added.

DeVos’s security squad cost about $5.3 million in 2017, $6.8 million in 2018 and is projected to cost $7.74 million in 2019. The cost is eventually reimbursed the Education Department. The average amount of money spent per day on the Marshals Service is about $34,000.

Photo by Michael Reynolds, EPI File, with article for NBC News by Heidi Przybyla.

There have now been multiple reports of unprecedented levels of personal security being provided to members of President Trump’s cabinet. I think that it is fair to ask why such security is necessary if the members of his cabinet actually feel that the administration’s policies are as popular as the President has frequently claimed.

And if someone takes this opportunity to remind me of Antifa’s recent very ill-conceived attempt to intimidate Tucker Carlson at his home, I am going to scream. First, the protesters outside of a middle-school who seem to have prompted the high-level of security for DeVos were not Antifa. Second, I don’t endorse the premise for groups such as Antifa because I think that adopting the tactics of the groups that exist to undermine progressive values is counterproductive, creating a false equivalency that suggests that the fundamental issues are political, rather than moral. That said, if the Klan and other White supremacist groups were as generally benign as Antifa has been (at least to date in the U.S. and in comparison to other groups identified or self-identified as extremist), the Southern Poverty Law Center would have much less reason to exist. For all of the Far Right rhetoric about Antifa violence, as far as I know, no Antifa members in the U.S. have ever been charged with murder or attempted murder. Third, the way in which the Far Right has latched onto the demonization of Antifa demonstrates in itself that the group is not actually equivalent, in its numbers or in the level of violence in which it engages, to many Far Right extremist groups. I receive many digital newsletters from Far Right media sources, groups, and political figures, and I do not have to do an official count to determine that the dumb Antifa stunt outside of Tucker Carlson’s home has received as much attention as the pipe bombs mailed to almost a dozen and a half major figures in the Democratic party, including two former presidents, a former vice president, and a former presidential candidate.  And those were crimes for which someone has actually been arrested and charged with several dozen felonies—unlike the criminal charges against Hillary Clinton that supposedly have been “imminent” for several years now and seem to have become even more “imminent” as President Trump’s potential legal problems become more obvious and in all likelihood more imminent.

The Wikipedia article on Antifa includes this illustrative discussion of Far Right efforts to exaggerate the threat posed by Antifa:

There have been multiple efforts to discredit Antifa via hoaxes on social media, many of them false flag attacks originating from members of the alt-right and 4chan posing as members of Antifa on Twitter. Some of these hoaxes have been picked up and reported as fact by right-leaning media.

These include an August 2017 “#PunchWhiteWomen” photo hoax campaign spread by fake antifa twitter accounts. In one such instance, Bellingcat researcher Eliot Higgins discovered an image of British actress Anna Friel portraying a battered woman in a 2007 Women’s Aid anti-domestic violence campaign that had been re-purposed using fake antifa Twitter accounts organized by way of 4chan. The image is captioned “53% of white women voted for Trump, 53% of white women should look like this” and includes an antifa flag. Another image featuring an injured woman is captioned “She chose to be a Nazi. Choices have consequences” and includes the hashtag #PunchANazi. Higgins remarked to the BBC that “[t]his was a transparent and quite pathetic attempt, but I wouldn’t be surprised if white nationalist groups try to mount more sophisticated attacks in the future”. A similar fake image circulated on social media after the Unite the Right rally; the doctored image, actually from a 2009 riot in Athens, was altered to make it look like someone wearing an Antifa logo attacking a member of the police with a flag. After the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, similar hoaxes falsely claimed that the shooter was a member of Antifa; another such hoax involved a fake antifa twitter account praising the shooting.

Another high-profile fake Antifa account was banned from Twitter after it posted with a geotag originating in Russia. Such fake Antifa accounts have been repeatedly reported on as real by right-leaning media outlets.

Some of the opposition to Antifa has also been artificial in nature; Nafeesa Syeed of Bloomberg reported that “[t]he most-tweeted link in the Russian-linked network followed by the researchers was a petition to declare Antifa a terrorist group.”

The demonization of Antifa is part of a broader mischaracterization of progressives as a violent “mob.” I am not sure if President Trump initiated this mischaracterization or simply latched onto it. But a lot of people on the Far Right, including “rehabilitated” televangelist Jim Bakker, have latched onto it. Her’s an excerpt from one of Bakker’s recent sermons:

“Do you people understand what you’re facing today? You don’t understand, but the biggest division in the United States of America is built on the Bible. Those who are against what God says in his word are fighting those who study the word and believe in the word.

“I’m going to tell you something and I probably shouldn’t, but I’ve known this for quite a while. They’re going to be assassinating preachers of the Gospel soon. They are so angry. They want what they want. That’s why they’re mad at Trump. You don’t get it. You really don’t get it, why they’re mad at Trump. They’re mad at Trump because he’s like taking candy from a baby. They’re crying, they want what they want and they want it now and they want it forever and they’ve taken over America, basically.”

“This is the supernatural events of the Last Days. They’re now! And the church has to wake up, the people need to wake up. God spoke to me before this election that this election was life and death.”

Alexandra Hutzler’s complete article is available at: https://www.newsweek.com/betsy-devos-security-detail-costs-taxpayers-20-million-1219161.