Republican leaders are not looking to de-radicalize their MAGA/QAnon base so much as find ways to coexist with the tiger they are riding. Fighting left-wing extremism: good. Fighting right-wing extremism: bad.
“Republican politicians suggest that attempts to enforce any kind of accountability for or reckoning with the events that led to Jan. 6 are threats to their political freedom,” writes Josh Kovensky at Talking Points Memo:
Sen. Ron Johnson (R-WI) said on Jan. 22 that he was “concerned” that the “74 million Americans who voted for President Trump” would be “labeled as insurgents,” as a Fox News chyron reading “Domestic Terror Proposal Raises Fear Of Overreach” blared beneath him.
“I think what we’re witnessing is the cancel culture purge being kicked into overdrive here,” Johnson said.
Sen. Josh Hawley (R-MO), who played his own well-known role in challenging legitimate election results, fanning the flames on Jan. 6, has flirted with a similar idea.
“Joe Biden and the Democrats talk about unity but are brazenly trying to silence dissent,” said Hawley (R-MO) in a statement on Jan. 21. “Democrats appear intent on weaponizing every tool at their disposal — including pushing an unconstitutional impeachment process — to further divide the country.”
Hawley later blocked the nomination of Department of Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas, accusing him of being weak on immigration, but prompting consternation from specialists in far-right extremism.
One reason Trump’s Nov. 6 insurrection caught authorities off guard is the lack of a threat assessment from the FBI and Homeland Security’s Office of Intelligence & Analysis. The Trump administration’s “top-down aversion” to monitoring right-wing extremists and white nationalist groups led to a dismantling of the infrastructure for doing so.
But top-down aversion for taking right-wing violence seriously is a reflection of the paranoid style of the Republicans’ extremist base. It is the same reflex that brands Black Lives Matter protesters a threat to God and country. Right-wing shooters and insurrectionists are by contrast deranged lone-wolfs, patriots or heroes instead of domestic terrorists.
Veteran journalist Katie Couric reflected last month on how the country might cope with right-wing extremists propagandized 24/7 via the internet and conservative media. “And the question,” she told Bill Maher, “is how are we going to really almost deprogram these people who have signed up for the cult of Trump.”
Okay, she might have chosen her words more carefully.
“Deprogram these people? Into what, conservatives want to know? Little totalitarians? Little socialists?” asked the Family Research Council’s Tony Perkins. To his audience which includes people who chanted “Lock her up” or “Lock them up” at Trump rallies, Perkins added unironically, “America has become a nation where the ruling party wants to lock up anyone they disagree with — and then brainwash them into their radical way of thinking.”
Radical is in the eye of the partisan.