There are already Trump AR-15s
Politico reporters watched 20 Trump rallies and, to their credit, reported what they heard. Donald Trump is still preaching the dark “weird shit” of American carnage eight years after his inaugural speech. Rapists and murderers are everywhere, and “animals,” “stone cold killers,” the “worst people,” and the “enemy from within.” The monsters are due on Maple Street.
Trump is one Grade A paranoiac, and he’s likely getting a lot of this from Discount Goebbels.
Haitians, Venezuelans, Mexicans, and Chinese immigrants are targets. And you too, Dear Reader (Heather Cox Richardson):
And on Sunday, October 13, Trump made the full leap to authoritarianism, calling for using the federal government not only against immigrants, but also against his political opponents. After weeks of complaining about the “enemy within,” Trump suggested that those who oppose him in the 2024 election are the nation’s most serious problem.
He told Fox News Channel host Maria Bartiromo that even more troubling for the forthcoming election than immigrants “is the enemy from within…we have some very bad people, we have some sick people, radical left lunatics…. And it should be easily handled by, if necessary, by National Guard, or if really necessary, by the military.”
“Efforts to blame outsiders, a politically voiceless group, which Trump is an expert at doing, has led to atrocities in the United States — everything from Japanese internment to Operation Wetback,” said Ediberto Román, a Florida International University law professor who studies xenophobia and immigration.
Vivid imagery, such as telling crowds of rally attendees that migrants will “cut your throat,” are now a staple of Trump’s speeches. He cites cases of U.S. women and girls allegedly murdered by immigrants in the country illegally, even as studies have shown that immigrants are less likely to commit crimes than U.S.-born Americans.
But Trump says they are — because they are inherently worse people. He’s told nearly all-white crowds in the past that they have “good genes,” even before his explicit suggestion this week that non-white immigrants are genetically inferior — when he told conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt that migrants have “bad genes.”
Read: eugenics.
“What is so jarring to me is these are not just Nazi-like statements. These are actual Nazi sentiments,” said Robert Jones, founder of the Public Religion Research Institute, the author of “The Hidden Roots of White Supremacy” and a vocal critic of Trump’s rhetoric. “Hitler used the word vermin and rats multiple times in Mein Kampf to talk about Jews. These are not accidental or coincidental references. We have clear, 20th century historical precedent with this kind of political language, and we see where it leads.”
We don’t even have to look beyond the last decade of the 20th century. The Rwandan genocide and the Srebrenica massacre were a mere 30 years ago. Trump is performing Radio Rwanda for white people in preparation for a pogrom. The world watched Trump incite a mob to violence once. He’s doing it again. When Trump told his Aurora rally, “We have to live with these animals, but we won’t live with them for long,” someone shouted, “Kill them!”
Notice, Trump is spending precious days not campaigning in key swing states. Because he’s not planning to win at the ballot box. He’s moved on to Plan B. For that he needs control of Congress.
The backup to Trump’s 2020 Plan B was mob violence. He’s clearly preparing that contingency again.
Trump campaigned over the last week in Aurora, Colorado where, despite local authorities’ and GOP officials’ denials, Trump proclaimed the city a “war zone” occupied by Venzuelan gangs. A Right Side Broadcasting host proclaimed: “These people, they are so evil. They are not your run-of-the-mill criminal. They are people that are Satanic. They are involved in human sacrifice. They are raping men, women, and children—especially underaged children.”
Trump spoke in Coachella, California where he has no hope of winning that state. He has plans for a rally at Madison Square Garden in New York City, evoking comparisons to the American Nazi rally held there in 1939.
Threats of MAGA violence are all over social media. There are already Trump knives and Trump AR-15s. Can Trump machetes be far behind?
This is what it looks like when fascism comes to America. Not just wrapped in a flag and carrying a cross, but echoing rhetoric that led to the worst atrocities of the 20th century. Take this seriously. Get busy beating MAGA soundly at the polls, people.