> he literally just posted a video on his account of a woman being violently beaten to death with a hammer as a call for people to do something about immigrants

Zero dispute. I’m challenging the notion that Americans are rising to that call. (Or cheering on specific attacks, versus general notions of violence.)

In a weird way, maybe social media helps in this one instance. We can’t let the enemy be faceless. There is no glory in shooting a specific mother or nurse.

You're missing that the Americans rising to the call are employed by the state itself. ICE over Trump's tenure with a burgeoning budget has become filled with folks that were part of known white supremacist groups. The most violent believers have been state sanctioned and paid to inflict his agenda.

> Americans rising to the call are employed by the state itself

This is a problem. But it’s categorically different from vigilantism. That sort of grassroots violence is basically impossible to stop once it gets started without major abrogations of rights, at least temporarily. And we have not seen organized grassroots vigilantes taking up arms to pot Trump’s enemies. Not systematically or at any scale that doesn’t just scream gun-control problems.

It's not categorically different and it requires you to really dig your head deep in the sand. The 'unite the right' rally in 2018 was filled with the sort of vigilante violence you say is a problem. The reason why these rallies dwindled is not because of any sort of advancement or government attempt to squash out the problem; it's because they've become embedded within the government.

You're attempting to find step 1 when we're already passed that and into step 2. The vigilantes are coming from inside the house, and the murders committed in Minneapolis combined with the government working overtime to shield them should be the primary signal.