Are Troubles are coming?
Photo: “Nazis Hail George Washington as First Fascist.” Source: Life 4:10, March 7, 1938, 17.
“Remarkable moment,” observes Plum Line’s Greg Sargent:
@JoeNBC flatly states that “fascism” is rising in the GOP, and that Republicans must condemn the Eric Greitens “RINO hunting” ad, or it will get worse.
“Scholars of democratic breakdown agree that what GOP leaders do now is critical,” Sargent tweets, referencing a column written last week after retired judge J. Michael Luttig’s “foreboding” testimony before the Jan. 6 investigating committee on Thursday. Donald Trump and his allies pose a “clear and present danger to American democracy,” Luttig warned:
Two of those experts, Steven Levitsky and Lucan Way, professors of government and politics, recently argued that we’re heading into a “coming age of instability.” This is not a claim of pending “civil war.” It’s more subtle: a future of smoldering conflict akin to “the Troubles” in Ireland.
“Such a scenario would be marked by frequent constitutional crises, including contested or stolen elections,” they wrote, predicting our elections might devolve into periodic referendums on whether the United States will be “democratic or authoritarian.”
This portends “heightened political violence,” they suggested, including assassinations, bombings and violent confrontations in the streets, “often tolerated and even incited by politicians.”
How GOP leaders respond to the moment will help determine whether that happens, the scholars noted. It bodes badly that GOP leaders rejected a bipartisan Jan. 6 accounting and have “refused to unambiguously reject violence.”
A strong stance against violence by party leaders “would make all the difference in the world” to what happens next, Levitsky said.
Luttig concurred. If they don’t, we are headed for “protracted democratic instability.”
“Here’s what troubles me,” tweets Sargent. “It’s easy to get seduced by these vivid, damning revelations” in the Jan. 6 hearings. “But in the background, even as headlines explode around the country, scores of pro-coup GOP candidacies continue.”
And they are “packing.”
Trumpists think intimidation and threats of violence work for them. Appearing in ads holding weapons is a tribal signifier on the right. A mark of manliness, virility. When Republican candidates start posing barechested like Benito Mussolini and Vladimir Putin, brace yourselves.
The best Donald Trump can do is tweet photoshops.
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