The moral panic driving conservatives to madness will perhaps get a name from historians and psychologists of the future. The Red Scare got one, as did the Satanic Panic. QAnon named itself. All three were afflictions more of the right than the left. The sense that control of “their” country was slipping away from nice, decent white people led to decades of post-Reconstruction lynchings and Jim Crow oppression by those same nice, decent white people. The need for scapegoats has led to waves of violence against any number of racial, ethnic, etc. minorities in many cultures across time. The question hanging above as all like a Damoclean sword is whether the right’s present agitations will lead to more.
The U.S. House on Wednesday voted to censure Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.) and to strip him of his committee assignments. The vote was bipartisan insofar as Republican Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, themselves pariahs in their party for actively opposing the last Republican president, voted with Democrats.
Historian Heather Cox Richardson writes:
At stake was what to do about the fact that Gosar posted on his official Twitter account an anime video that showed a character with his face photoshopped onto it killing a character wearing the face of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY). The “Gosar” character also slashed with swords at a character wearing the face of President Joe Biden.
Democrats have been outraged at the video, while Republicans have largely kept mum about it, focusing instead on attacking the Republicans who voted with the Democrats to pass the bipartisan infrastructure bill.
A stunt like that would get one fired at any workplace in America, but not Congress.
The vote should have been an easy one for Republicans, observes Richardson:
He is a problematic colleague: he has embraced white nationalist and neo-Nazi culture, and six of his nine siblings have cut ads urging voters not to support him. (He retorted that they are “leftists” of whom “Stalin would be proud.”) One of his brothers said on television today: “My brother is unhinged. He needs to be more than censured. He needs to be expelled. And if it is determined that criminal charges need to be filed, then they need to be filed.”
But only Cheney and Kinzinger would join Democrats in the censure vote while their erstwhile colleagues screamed at times, hurling charges of totalitarianism and “abuse of power” at the Democratic majority. Gosar defended the post, condemning the “false narrative” that it was “dangerous or threatening” and likened himself to Alexander Hamilton.
After the censure vote, Gosar doubled down after the vote by retweeting it.
Republicans threatened to retaliate once they regain control of the House. Democrats may have done the right thing, writes Joel Mathis at The Week, but if committee stripping becomes more commonplace, “Democrats will pay disproportionately because they care more about actually governing.”
But conservative retaliation could be more than legislative.
Citing the recent “When do we get to use the guns?” incident at a speech by right-wing bomb thrower, Charlie Kirk, Richardson adds:
The march toward Republicans’ open acceptance of violence has been underway since January 6, as leaders embraced the Big Lie that the Democrats stole the 2020 election, and then as leaders have stood against mask and vaccine mandates as tyranny. Those lies have led to a logical outcome: their supporters believe that in order to defend the nation, they should fight back against those they have been told are destroying the country.
Thirty percent of Republicans believe that, per a recent poll.
The vigilantism of the current Republican Party is evidence that its leaders know they cannot win free and fair elections—if they could, there would be no need for terrorizing opponents—so they are working to rig the system.
Ocasio-Cortez, who pays thousands for private security because of past threats against her, addressed the Gosar matter from the floor (Washington Post):
“What is so hard about saying that this is wrong?” she asked.
In defending Gosar, she said, Republican lawmakers have embraced “the illusion that this was just a joke, that what we say and what we do does not matter so long as we claim a lack of meaning.”
“Now, this nihilism runs deep, and it conveys and betrays a certain contempt for the meaning and importance of our work here,” Ocasio-Cortez said.
Mathis observes that Donald Trump set that precedent (in deadly fashion), “Republicans are increasingly more interested in putting on a show. Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) notably built his staff ‘around comms rather than legislation,’ a choice to maximize his chances to get on Fox News rather than do actual work.”
But there is more here than nihilism (and Cawthorn’s self-promotion). It is White fear and panic perhaps not seen since Black former slaves won political office during Reconstruction. We know where that led: to the Wilmington race riot and coup of 1898, to Tulsa’s 1921 Greenwood massacre, and to thousands of lynchings over decades.
Underlying today’s threats of violence, actual violence, and the Republican scramble to secure power as a minority party is the same Dread:
It’s been out there, building slowly, subconsciously for years. White people would eventually become just another minority in the United States. Still quite a large plurality, to be sure, but, short of a parliamentary-style coalition with Others, lacking the electoral clout to rule as God intended. White people know well how this country treats minorities. They have been the ones doing the treating for centuries.
We are in grave danger.
Where have you gone Barry McGuire?
Hate your next door neighbor but don’t forget to say grace
And you tell me over and over and over and over again my friend
You don’t believe we’re on the eve of destruction
You don’t believe we’re on the eve of destruction