In Cleveland, militiamen scanned for snipers and cheeseheads dreaded terror from Mexico. The only thing delegates seemed not to fear was fear itself

The ministering of fear: dystopia and loathing at the Republican convention

For Alan Stansbery, it was a sniper. For Timothy Phelps, it was God. For Haleigh Stallworth, it was Michelle Obama.



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Many of the people in Cleveland’s Public Square on Tuesday seemed to have something to fear. The space had become the de facto hub for a small carnival of exhibitionists – protesters, conspiracy theorists, religious extremists and hate groups – who had descended on the city for the Republican national convention. Hundreds of police circled like cogs in a gear system, then swarmed at the first sign of conflict.

Stansbery, a builder from Dayton, Ohio, was holding an AR-15 rifle. His pistol was holstered to his flak jacket and a large hunting knife protruded from his belt. Sweat dripped from his brow in the roasting heat. The 38-year-old was one of eight members of the West Ohio Minutemen patrolling the square’s perimeter.

“That would be the worst,” he said, of the sniper that existed only in his imagination. “[If they] start taking people out, that would be terrible.”

Phelps, a 52-year-old corrections officer from Topeka, Kansas, held a sign that said “God is America’s terror”. He and members of his religious hate group, the Westboro Baptist church, who said they “hated” both Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, had stood in the square on Tuesday afternoon, drawing boos from the crowd as they told onlookers – who heckled them – to prepare for hell.

“I think I don’t care about anything but obeying God,” Phelps said, when asked what he was afraid of most.

Stallworth, a 47-year-old white woman from Huntsville, Texas, had come to show her support for Trump and to “take my country back”. She accused the first lady of making “extremely incendiary” speeches, which encouraged African American students to “stop being put down”.

The vast majority of Americans do not feel safe. They fear for their children. Rudi Giuliani

This anger and fear was mirrored half a mile away. At the Quicken Loans Arena, speakers took turns to spell out a host of worst-case scenarios.

Major American cities were at risk of being lost to terrorists with weapons of mass destruction, warned the former Republican House speaker Newt Gingrich. “Instead of losing 3,000 people in one morning,” Gingrich said, with reference to the 9/11 attacks, “we could lose more than 300,000.”

Hillary Clinton could have indirect links with Lucifer, said the retired neurosurgeon and failed presidential candidate Ben Carson.

“The vast majority of Americans do not feel safe,” said the former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani to an audience who gave him a standing ovation on Monday evening. “They fear for their children.”

Trump gave his acceptance speech on Thursday. “Our convention occurs at a moment of crisis for our nation,” he said. “The attacks on our police, and the terrorism in our cities, threaten our very way of life.”

‘The speeches haven’t frightened me. They’ve inspired me’

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Members of the West Ohio Minutemen gather in the Public Square in Cleveland. Photograph: Jim Lo Scalzo/EPA

Many inside the air-conditioned hall said such terrifying themes actually made them feel better. As the band fired up on Wednesday evening, reeling off an up-tempo rendition of Sweet Caroline, delegates danced arrhythmically. In the Wisconsin delegation, Barbara Finger sat in her chair. On her head was an enormous wedge of Styrofoam cheese – the adoptive headgear of devoted fans of the Green Bay Packers.

“The speeches haven’t frightened me,” she said. “They’ve inspired me. There is kind of an electric atmosphere to this convention.”

Despite the fact that the 60-year-old lives in the small city of Oconto, 1,574 miles from Mexico, she worried that terrorists may have made it to her hometown by crossing the southern border.

People from the Middle East, they tend to have the darker hair, maybe slightly darker complexion. They blend in Barbara Finger, Wisconsin delegation

“People from the Middle East, they tend to have the darker hair, maybe slightly darker complexion. They blend in with the South Americans and Mexicans.”

“You mean like me?” I asked.

“It could be.”

There is no evidence to suggest Finger’s broad fears are well-founded.

Jeffrey Barke, a 53-year-old member of the Californian delegation, from Orange County, shared the Wisconsinite’s sense of joy.

“There was nothing scary. It was real,” he said, dressed in a two-piece suit made of the stars and stripes. “It was encouraging. It was uplifting.

“Finally somebody is going to take our problems seriously and not just talk political nonsense and do something about it. So, not unlike Great Britain, that just disassociated itself with the European Union, I look at Trump as a similar movement to fix what’s wrong with America.”

What did Barke make of Carson’s insinuations about Clinton and Lucifer?

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Roger Stone, seen in New York. Photograph: LR/Pacific Press/Barcroft Images

“I think he’s spot on,” Barke said. “It’s absolutely refreshing to call, by name, the enemy that we face.”

Throughout the four-day convention, Clinton remained in sight: speeches were punctuated with loud chants from delegates to “lock her up”. The chants were the best indicator of the naked, aggressive populism that had filtered onto the convention floor.

Roger Stone, one of Trump’s closest former advisers, could barely contain his elation. Speaking to the Guardian at the Westin hotel on Wednesday, where minutes later Trump’s son Donald Jr could be seen embracing Gingrich before the former speaker’s convention speech that night, Stone said: “The American people are ready for a non-politician.”

After describing Clinton as a “venal greedy witch”, a comment he defended as “the reality”, Stone said he himself feared nothing.

“One cannot live in fear,” he said, straight-faced. “I get 10 to 12 death threats a day … and they’re always the same. ‘I have a bullet with your name on it.’ ‘I have a second bullet with Trump’s name on it.’

“I’m not going to be deterred by some anonymous goon, who probably works for the mainstream media, making these calls.”

‘This is not new for America’

Fears for the city of Cleveland never became reality. Despite widespread concerns that Trump’s presence could lead to civil unrest, the thousands of police who descended on the city from all over the country made just 24 arrests.

Protests were small. Journalists were often the largest cohort in the scrum. In one bizarre moment on Wednesday, reporters were invited to a “flag burning protest at 4pm” on Prospect Avenue, close to the arena. The flag was extinguished by firefighters and law enforcement after, police claimed, the man who set it on fire accidentally set fire to himself.

The philosopher and academic Cornel West made cameos at marches. Asked what he feared the most, he was circumspect.

“This is not new for America,” he said. “We’ve always had moments in which the politics of fear surface and you get that lethal combination: the rule of big money, the scapegoating of the most vulnerable – in this case it’s Muslims and Mexicans – and then militaristic policies abroad.

“That’s the makings of an indigenous American neo-fascism. And we have to be very clear about that. We don’t want to fetishize that. It doesn’t have magical powers. Trump is not almighty.”