Last August, an armed Trump supporter was killed after trying to break into the Cincinnati FBI office to protest the search of Trump’s Mar-a-Lago home for classified documents. More recently, the Manhattan district attorney who convened the grand jury that decided to indict Trump for alleged pay-off to a porn star has received death threats.
Now there is concern about violence when Trump is arraigned. The next time you hear about extremist right-wing violence, recall the former president’s use of the language of war to stir his supporters.
“I am your warrior,” he told the audience at the Conservative Political Action meeting in early March. “I am your justice. And for those who have been wronged and betrayed: I am your retribution.”
He vowed to “liberate America from these villains and scoundrels once and for all.”
Such threatening, militaristic language from a former president — some of whose supporters violently attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021 — was a one-day news story. Most Americans shook their heads and dismissed it as typical red-meat rhetoric from Trump.
He was at it again just days after, predicting (incorrectly) his own arrest on a New York grand jury indictment. On March 24, Trump posted on his Truth Social site that “a false charge” by Manhattan’s district attorney could unleash “potential death & destruction” that “could be catastrophic for our Country.”
It is past the time for Americans to stop normalizing the abnormal.
Look around at how everyday life in America is changing as the result of Trump’s threatening talk.
Pay attention to how he has made it acceptable for many of his followers to engage in intimidation of political rivals — and even join in mocking Americans with different ideas.
Consider just three examples.
Last month, Reuters news service documented 220 cases of teachers, principals and school board members “being inundated with threats of violence and other hostile messages from anonymous harassers nationwide, fueled by anger over culture-war issues. ”
In one episode, the daughter of a school board member in Loudon County, Va., received a scrawled note: “It is too bad that your mother is an ugly communist whore … If she doesn’t quit or resign before the end of the year, we will kill her, but first, we will kill you!”
Last month, The Washington Post told the distressing story of a bakery in Warrenton, Va., being forced to temporarily shut down due to violent threats against its workers and harassment on social media.
Why the threats?
The bakery offered free cups of coffee to Black Lives Matter activists. By the way, the people in the protest were mostly middle-aged white people who live in the area and regularly visit the business.
Similarly, three Michigan coffee shops trying to reach out to gay people were forced to close after they were threatened with violence by right-wing extremists.
Then there are the threats that lead librarians and teachers to live in fear that any schoolbook, any literature, any historical work might include references to gay people or slavery.
As the Washington Post reported, educators are “facing threats of censorship fueled by hard-right politics and Christian nationalism that, in some areas, is backed by intimidation from local armed groups.”
To repeat, librarians are being threatened with violence for allowing young people the freedom to explore the world through books.
This is authoritarian government come to America, through tactics of intimidation like those used by repressive communist regimes in Russia, China and elsewhere.
Trump and his imitators, such as Gov. Ron DeSantis (R-Fla.), condemn so-called “cancel culture,” politically correct behavior and wokeness. But they are content with canceling businesses and people they disagree with, the politically correct behavior for conservatives now promoting places where “woke goes to die.”
Their words have conditioned the atmosphere and riled up the most reactionary people in our society to look towards violence as an acceptable course of action.
It is an appeal to the basest, primal instinct of humans. If you tell people their children are under threat from “groomers” or “indoctrination,” their natural response is to protect their children and fight against the people threatening them.
In his first inaugural address, Donald Trump set the tone for his presidency and his post-presidency with talk of “American carnage.”
And in the hours before the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol, Trump told his supporters: “We fight like hell. And if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.”
There is a direct line between this kind of apocalyptic, craven rhetoric and the rise in violence we are seeing.
Another Republican president, George H.W. Bush, knew the danger of this type of rhetoric. He famously resigned his membership in the National Rifle Association and condemned the organization after it described the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives as “jackbooted thugs.”
Bush’s resignation letter to the NRA stated that “your broadside against Federal agents deeply offends my own sense of decency and honor; and it offends my concept of service to country. It indirectly slanders a wide array of government law enforcement officials, who are out there, day and night, laying their lives on the line for all of us.”
This dark political development recalls an insight from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr:
“The ultimate weakness of violence is that it is a descending spiral begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy, instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. Through violence you may murder the liar, but you cannot murder the lie, nor establish the truth. Through violence you may murder the hater, but you do not murder hate.
“In fact, violence merely increases hate. Returning violence for violence multiplies violence, adding deeper darkness to a night already devoid of stars. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”
The same could be said of too much of today’s Republican rhetoric.
Where is the Republican willing to stand up and call out this dangerous language?
Juan Williams is an author and a political analyst for Fox News Channel.