It’s obvious
If there is a difference between the Republican party of yesteryear (meaning pre-Newt) and today, I would say that in the past there was an awareness that you can’t let the crazies drive the car. They are useful to energize the voters but you can’t put them in charge because they’ll hit the gas and run off a cliff. Unfortunately for all of us, they either forgot that in recent years or just got so greedy and power-mad that they decided to let them take the heel and the results are obvious.
David Leonhardt in the NY Times:
Over the past decade, the Anti-Defamation League has counted about 450 U.S. murders committed by political extremists.
Of these 450 killings, right-wing extremists committed about 75 percent. Islamic extremists were responsible for about 20 percent, and left-wing extremists were responsible for 4 percent.
Nearly half of the murders were specifically tied to white supremacists:
As this data shows, the American political right has a violence problem that has no equivalent on the left. And the 10 victims in Buffalo this past weekend are now part of this toll. “Right-wing extremist violence is our biggest threat,” Jonathan Greenblatt, the head of the ADL, has written. “The numbers don’t lie.”
The pattern extends to violence less severe than murder, like the Jan. 6 attack on Congress. It also extends to the language from some Republican politicians — including Donald Trump — and conservative media figures that treats violence as a legitimate form of political expression. A much larger number of Republican officials do not use this language but also do not denounce it or punish politicians who do use it; Kevin McCarthy, the top House Republican, is a leading example.
It’s important to emphasize that not all extremist violence comes from the right — and that the precise explanation for any one attack can be murky, involving a mixture of ideology, mental illness, gun access and more. In the immediate aftermath of an attack, people are sometimes too quick to claim a direct cause and effect. But it is also incorrect to pretend that right-wing violence and left-wing violence are equivalent problems.
Fears in Washington
If you talk to members of Congress and their aides these days — especially off the record — you will often hear them mention their fears of violence being committed against them.
Some Republican members of Congress have said that they were reluctant to vote for Trump’s impeachment or conviction partly because of the threats against other members who had already denounced him. House Republicans who voted for President Biden’s infrastructure bill also received threats. Democrats say their offices receive a spike in phone calls and online messages threatening violence after they are criticized on conservative social media or cable television shows.
People who oversee elections report similar problems. “One in six election officials have experienced threats because of their job,” the Brennan Center, a research group, reported this year. “Ranging from death threats that name officials’ young children to racist and gendered harassment, these attacks have forced election officials across the country to take steps like hiring personal security, fleeing their homes, and putting their children into counseling.”
There is often overlap between these violent threats and white supremacist beliefs. White supremacy tends to treat people of color as un-American or even less than fully human, views that can make violence seem justifiable. The suspect in the Buffalo massacre evidently posted an online manifesto that discussed replacement theory, a racial conspiracy theory that Tucker Carlson promotes on his Fox News show.
Leonhardt goes on to point out that there are quite a few GOP leaders like Marjorie Taylor Green who have a history of calling for violence against Democrats with no sanction and little resistance from the Party. Trump, of course, has a long history of calling for violence and incited the insurrection on January 6th so the undisputed leader of the GOP is actually leading the charge.
There is simply no dispute that white supremacy is the overwhelming motivator in political violence in this country today. Yes, there is a lot of hate to go around and there are mass shootings that have nothing to do with politics. But to claim that the violent American right wing isn’t waging domestic terrorism attacks regularly is just plain wrong. Add in the anti-abortion violence, the anti-government violence and the pro-Trump violence and you have a dangerous terrorist movement living among us. And they are all armed to the teeth.