Trump got shot, by a strange loner with an assault rifle. That’s an all-American story. We lionize the hero with his gun, then arm our sickest people with 400-yard firepower.
Some Republicans blamed the shooting on Democrats, saying they used inflammatory language against Trump. That’s rich:
given everything Trump did — or tried to do — during his first term and since it ended, and given all he’s promised to do in the future, it’s hardly extreme or inflammatory to call on Americans to stand up and stop him.
Even richer, the GOP as a whole showed a newfound disbelief that anyone could possibly have used violent rhetoric.
But who is spouting that violent rhetoric? That quote above is from writer Jonathan Thompson, and High Country News reprinted Thompson’s clear reminder of exactly who was talking about violence: them.
The “high country” of the West has a long exposure to the American right’s gun obsession, the militia movement, and the politics of threats and intimidation. Thompson describes that paranoid history, but also how Reagan and many earlier Republicans denounced political violence. But today
Trump regularly calls journalists the “enemy of the people” and praised Montana Gov. Greg Gianforte for body-slamming a reporter who dared ask a question; Trump and his sons mocked Rep. Nancy Pelosi after her husband was nearly killed by a politically motivated attacker; Trump said a “bloodbath” would result if he lost the election; and, by the way, he also said that Biden is “the destroyer of American democracy.” He agreed with the violent January 6 mob calling for lynching Mike Pence. The list goes on and on… Remember when Rep. Paul Gosar circulated the anime of him murdering Rep. Alexander Ocasio Cortez? Or the time Marjorie Taylor Greene called Democrats “flat out evil” or wielded a high-caliber sniper rifle in a campaign ad? Rep. Lauren Boebert likes to put guns in her kids’ hands and make them pose for Christmas cards, and Blake Masters, the failed Trump-endorsed Arizona candidate for U.S. Senate in 2022, made a creepy ad featuring a gun that is “not a hunting rifle. It’s designed for killing.”
Remember this concluding line from Thompson:
inciting or threatening or simply exuding violence is a central tenet of the new GOP. And that sort of violent rhetoric is part and parcel of authoritarianism.
Violence is a political tool. It only ever works in one direction—violence creates authoritarianism in society, and allows the worst to rule. That is why the worst cling to it and incite it.