Through Trump, the Republican Party has finally embraced (if only implicitly) violent white supremacy. Trump flirts with violent white supremacist groups through his speeches, and he either doesn’t know or doesn’t care. Various radical “right” fringe groups (neo-Nazi organizations, “Oath Keeper” and similar paramilitary groups, Proud Boys, etc.) are growing larger and more violent because Trump’s created and sustaining a rhetorical smoke screen for them. At his rallies and on Twitter, he “jokes” about how he wishes people would beat up protestors and the press. And at the same time he lies about the violence on the “left,” to distract from the current near-monopoly that the “alt-right”/far right has on political violence. The largest source of domestic terrorism are far-right white supremacist groups, and the vast majority of headline-worthy, politically-motivated violent events are perpetrated by the white men who make up 90% of their membership. The Republican Party so far has either ignored or embraced the turn to violence, and if it (and the country) is going to survive with a minimum of violence, we need to vote it out of the government until it purges its violent streak.
Jonathan Chait, in New York magazine online:
…In the closing weeks of the 2018 midterm elections, Republicans have taken this message national. Democrats are an “angry mob,” charges President Trump. “You don’t hand matches to an arsonist, and you don’t give power to an angry, left-wing mob. And that’s what the Democrats have become.”
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One difference between anti-Trump protests and anti-Obama protests is a handful of episodes where left-wing protesters have confronted high-ranking Republicans in restaurants. I don’t think that tactic makes much sense, unless you’re prepared to defend conservative protesters doing the same thing to Democratic officials in restaurants next time around, which I am not. It’s worth noting that the restaurant screamers have been organized by Democratic Socialists of America, a group outside of and usually hostile to the Democratic party. Either way, the debate around protesters is almost entirely partisan special pleading over low-stakes tactical disputes.
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What actually is new to American politics is Trump’s assault on democratic norms. French dismisses the “lock her up” chants as empty rally talk. In fact, the chant, which began in the campaign, prefigured Trump’s deadly serious ambition to turn the Department of Justice into a weapon of personal control, that would harass Trump’s enemies while simultaneously quashing any wrongdoing by him and his allies…
What’s more, defining “lock her up” as the Republican offense erases from the equation the entire authoritarian spirit that has infused Trump’s political style. He offered to pay legal bills to supporters who beat up protesters at his rallies. This is a president who has repeatedly attacked the news media as “the enemy of the people,” an epithet used by communist dictators, and has at least gestured at using his power to punish them. (Trump has mused about challenging licenses for television stations that report independently, and instructed the post office to raise rates on Amazon as retribution for critical coverage in the Washington Post.)
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The method on display is familiar if you study any historical episode of democratic backsliding. One party, either from the far left or the far right, sets out to attack and weaken democratic norms. The small-d democrats resist, trying to maintain democratic norms. But they’re fighting at a disadvantage against a ruthless foe that does not observe their limits, and at least some of the opposition undertakes a more drastic action. Any offense becomes a pretext for the authoritarians, who exaggerate the threat of violence and chaos by their enemies to justify the antidemocratic measures they were planning all along.
The threat Trump poses does not excuse the left from upholding democratic standards. (I have made this case repeatedly, in fact.) That said, Trump’s illiberalism only works because respectable conservatives cooperate with his fiction that he is more victim than aggressor. French writes, “It’s time to stop excusing, rationalizing, and minimizing behavior that is dangerous, menacing, and threatening.” Indeed it is.