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"From encouraging his supporters to beat up protesters at his rallies, to invoking the possibility of 'Second Amendment people' attacking Hillary Clinton, to glorifying police brutality, to inciting an insurrection, to suggesting military leaders he doesn’t like should be executed, to mocking Paul Pelosi after he was assaulted by one of his supporters —"
~ Aaron Rupar
https://www.publicnotice.co/p/trump-shooting-butler-pennsylvania
"glorifying violence and threatening his enemies with it has been a weapon Trump has wielded over and over again throughout his political career.
This is the reason the calls by Trump supporters to turn down the rhetorical temperature in the wake of Saturday’s shooting ring so hollow."
"The idea that Democratic opposition to authoritarian plans like those outlined in Project 2025 caused violence might convince MAGA Republicans, but it will likely be a hard sell for Americans who remember things like:
•Trump’s own suggestion in 2016 that 'Second Amendment people=' could solve the problem of Hillary Clinton picking judges;"
~ Heather Cox Richardson
"•the October 2022 tweet by Trump’s son Donald Trump Jr. mocking then–House speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband Paul after a home intruder hit him in the head with a hammer; or Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Greene’s 2022 campaign video in which she promised to “blow away the Democrats’ socialist agenda” as she took aim with a rifle;"
"•in 2023, House Republicans wearing AR-15 lapel pins on the floor of Congress; Representative Don Bacon (R-NE) saying his wife slept with a loaded gun after he voted against Representative Jim Jordan (R-OH) for House speaker; or Republican representatives sending Christmas cards showing the whole family toting guns;"
"•in 2024, the Kansas Republican Party’s March fundraiser where attendees could donate to kick and punch an effigy of President Biden; or Don Jr.’s reposting an image of Biden bound and gagged in the back of a pickup truck;
•or Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson of North Carolina, who is running for the governorship and who is scheduled to speak at the Republican National Convention starting tomorrow, saying just two weeks ago: 'Some folks need killing! It’s time for somebody to say it.'”
/7
"Fascism feasts on violence. In the years since his own supporters attacked the Capitol to overturn the 2020 election—many of them threatening harm to Speaker Pelosi and Vice President Mike Pence—Trump has championed the invaders, would-be kidnappers, and would-be murderers as martyrs and hostages. He has vowed to pardon them if returned to office. His own staffers have testified to the glee with which Trump watched the mayhem on television."
~ David Frum
#violence
/8
https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2024/07/donald-trump-democracy-dictator/679006/
"We might be tempted to think that violence against one side must come from the other side. But the bloody genie, once unleashed, often stays close to home. Those who have made violence normal are especially vulnerable, because they will always have colleagues or followers who think they have not gone far enough."
~ Timothy Snyder
"Nothing in recent American political life resembles Trump’s call for 'Second-Amendment people' to kill Hillary Clinton, his mockery of Paul Pelosi after an attempted murder, his belittling of Gretchen Whitmer after a kidnapping attempt, the stochastic violence he directs against critics to intimidate them and against his fellow Republicans to keep them in line, the brutal language of his rallies since 2016,"
"It’s just Orwellian to say that you’re emboldening violence by trying to stop someone from overthrowing liberal democracy and turn the country into an authoritarian state. And yet that is what the Republicans are saying in this terrible, terrible frightening moment. I don’t know that I can remember another moment in my adult life where I felt things were this bleak. But here we are."
~ Peter Beinart
https://peterbeinart.substack.com/p/calling-trump-an-authoritarian-doesnt
@wdlindsy@toad.social"Two years ago, Congress considered banning 18-20 year-olds from buying AR-15s and other semi-automatic rifles after the Uvalde massacre, and some Republicans were briefly open to doing so but ultimately blocked including a ban in the bipartisan gun bill signed by Biden."
~ Steven Dennis quoted by Greg Dworkin
"The reason MAGA loyalists such as J.D. Vance are targeting people who have called out Trump as authoritarian, calling them 'fascists' and blaming them for the shooting, is because those call-outs have educated Americans effectively to recognize the danger we are in.
So the last thing we should be doing now is silencing ourselves."
~ Ruth Ben-Ghiat
#Trump #violence #Republicans #JDVance
/14
https://lucid.substack.com/p/silence-enables-the-autocrat-talk
"Authoritarian movements thrive on political violence for a number of reasons.
1. It intimidates ordinary people who might otherwise resist.
2. It destabilizes institutions that are supposed to act as guardrails.
3. Because authoritarian movements are not bound by honor or norms, they can exploit any violence for their own ends.
4. Chaos is a ladder."
~ Jonathan V. Last
"See the Reichstag fire; or Mussolini’s use of street violence; or the American tradition of bloody-shirt politics. This is what authoritarian movements do. They promote violence and chaos—and then use the spread of violence as a justification for their illiberal aims."
"Why would an assassination attempt make a candidate more popular. Because we live in a country where many people’s entire philosophy of life can fit on the front of a t-shirt."
~ Kareem Abdul-Jabbar
#Trump #violence #fascism #media
/18
https://kareem.substack.com/p/the-trump-assassination-attempt-and
"We have to remain clear-eyed about where the real threat to our security and democracy lies. Today, that threat disproportionately lies with Trump’s MAGA movement, which has taken over one of our two political parties, and with Vance who is now aiding and abetting it. These conclusions are backed up by clear evidence."
~ Robert P. Jones
#Trump #violence #fascism #MAGA #Republicans
/19
https://www.whitetoolong.net/p/we-cant-let-political-violence-be
"Support for political violence is not evenly distributed across the population. Across all surveys, we find a consistent pattern. ...
Republicans are 2.5 times more likely than Democrats to support political violence. One-third of Republicans (33%) believe that true American patriots may have to resort to violence to save the country, compared with 22% of independents and 13% of Democrats."
The figures are from: https://www.prri.org/research/threats-to-american-democracy-ahead-of-an-unprecedented-presidential-election/
"The unrelenting pace of events echoes 1968, the standard for tumultuous years in politics, with the assassinations, an incumbent Democratic president who is unpopular despite his historic legislative accomplishments, and his party’s convention in Chicago. The backdrop is different. Then it was the Vietnam War, white backlash to the civil rights movement, and a generational moment as the baby boomers came of age."
~ David Kurtz
#Trump #violence #fascism #MAGA
/21
https://morningmemo.talkingpointsmemo.com/p/the-whirlwind-of-events-defies-what
"Now it’s the existential threat of climate change and a far-right politics that makes even the worst fears of a prospective Richard Nixon presidency seem tepid by comparison. The white backlash remains and is, it seems, eternal."
This bears repeating: "The white backlash remains and is, it seems, eternal."
Racism still fuels the engine of Republican politics, and many of us never intend to get over the ugly racism that determines our political decisions.
"The fact that a registered Republican shot at the Republican presidential candidate with the gun that Republican politicians have worshipped so much they literally wear it as a badge of pride and pose with it in Christmas photos like the weird family you warn your kids to bike nowhere near, no, that doesn’t mean that Democrats bear the responsibility for this attack and that Democrats have to adjust their rhetoric."
~ Kevin M. Kruse
"No one should give in to blackmail based on the notion that criticizing politicians’ authoritarian aspirations is equal to incitement to violence. Aspiring authoritarians do want to control speech; before they have reached power, they cannot do so – unless the fearful or the ignorant become their accomplices."
~ Jan-Werner Müller
#Trump #violence #fascism #authoritarianism #MAGA
/24
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/jul/16/trump-authoritarian-election
Just going to leave this here….
The report is citing an ABC-WTAE news report which states, "Neighbors say they saw pro-Trump signs in his [the shooter's] yard."
@wdlindsy
Thank you for this comprehensive thread.
This is indeed a terrible frightening time in history.
I wonder (from Australia) if ANY of us will survive this?
He'll renege on NATO and climate agreements.
War in Europe could become very possible.
"Drill baby drill" will end any notion of corporate responsibility for pollution and will send global emissions way over tipping points.
We say here that American voters will have to learn the hard way. Many vulnerable helpless ppl will die on his watch.
@Godfrey642 I very much agree. Part of the terror is the discovery that so many of us simply do not intend to learn the hard lessons the 20th century should have taught us about how authoritarian turns inevitably end in violence, bloodshed, suffering for everyone. It's as if many of us are determined to put us (and themselves) though that learning experience all over again, because the siren call of authoritarianism and its invitation to stigmatize and hate vulnerabl communities is so compelling
@wdlindsy
Just woken up here in Australia to read that Vance is Trumps VP and that Aileene Cannon has decided to dismiss Trumps *classified-docs-in-the-shower* case.
America is broken.
In fact (imho) Biden and the Dems haven't really been the ones in charge since the mid-terms.
Slippery slope into hell now. The only discussion is "how bad" it'll get?
If i ŵere a prominent Dem Id be looking to organise a bolt hole somewhere outside of USA.
@Godfrey642 America is broken, indeed. And breaking it has been just what the super-rich have been about for some time now, the Kochs, Mellons, Thiels, Musks, etc.
@wdlindsy @Godfrey642 Convincing a host of white working class Americans that conservative billionaires have their best interests at heart is no mean achievement - scary to watch the gaslighting of a whole nation in progress.
@frankcat @Godfrey642 I agree. I think frankly that they cannot be convinced, because they do not want to be convinced. The use of culture-war red-meat issues to distract, enrage, and blind working class people, this use being manufactured by economic elites, has proven highly successful. They'd rather hate imagined enemies than improve their economic and social conditions.
@wdlindsy @frankcat
So just watching the Republican Nazi Convention:
Calls for Mass Deportations (not just for illegals, but also for legals if someone somewhere sometime deems their paperwork is null & void).
Calls for ban on women leaving their state for an abortion.
Calls for ban on contraception.
THIS IS NOT THE LAND OF FREEDOM.
@Godfrey642 @frankcat You're very right.
@frankcat @wdlindsy
What's happening in Millwaukee is anything but a political convention.
It has the pomp of a Beauty Pageant; the yelling and venom of a Jerry Springer show; the crass brashness of The Apprentice; the toxic masculinity of wrestling; cheap nastiness of All-You-Can-Eat over the top burger challenges.
Its trashy showy and pointless Trumpism. Lets be honest: playing the audience is all Trump the felon is good at.
Well done MAGAs - you wanted entertainment. Thats what you've reduced America to. A joke.
But the rest of us - both in USA and globally - expect more from politics than a bad TV show. And none of us have a remote to switch it off. It'd be laughable if it wasnt so serious and terrifying for global stability.
@wdlindsy I can’t stop thinking about the mass shooting committed by a different boy with an AR15 at a Walmart in El Paso after being inspired by Trump’s hate speech. 23 killed, 22 wounded.
@Giddey_up Yes — thanks for adding that incident, which we absolutely should not forget, to the list.
"We became victims of our own crime."
SearingTruth
Human nature is capable of great fear, endless greed and self-interest.
Why would our brains be wired in this way? It is tempting to speculate that it was selected by evolution precisely because, on balance, it enhances the odds of survival.
@Smalltofeds And yet anything lasting in history and culture has been built via creatiivity, cooperation, and generous sharing of gifts.
Values often overcome our innate fear and greed, yielding that which you eloquently state.
Values are a product of factors that we as individuals inherit through the gene pool, as enhanced by our unique experiences in life.
Creative, cooperative individuals , are most at peace when permitted to pursue their values in their personal and professional endeavors.
If they cannot achieve that harmony they will seek change.
@Smalltofeds I see no reason to make fear and greed the fundamental stuff out of which things arise. Fear and greed are there, but they always coexist next to creativity and cooperation, it seems to me. Whereas fear and greed can build nothing because their nature is to do the opposite, what lasts and gets built is effected through creativity and cooperation.
Over half of my 78 years have been expended in the military and the weapons systems business.
What we see on the world stage today is consummate economic greed among the 5 five huge U.S. defense contractors, the lobbyists and the politicians who vote them into power.
Our constitution is colliding with our economic system and the authoritarian powers across the globe.
It will take some real creative, lasting, non-fearful, collaborative leadership to turn it around.
@Smalltofeds Yes, it will take real, creative, lasting, non-fearful collaborative leadership. To have any future at all, the human community has to have that.
@wdlindsy I’d long been grateful I was a little kid in ‘68, never dreaming...
Tho I had some awareness of events & some even touched me (my dad was a Marine who’d served a tour in VN & would soon serve a 2nd; neighbors took me to pay respects to Bobby Kennedy’s funeral train as it passed near our NJ town & I recall Mom sobbing as she watched his funeral on TV & I tried to understand; nearby Trenton had curfews due to riots) — I had a child’s obliviousness to much, a luxury adults can’t afford.
@wdlindsy
You might also perhaps consider the Battle of Cable Street?
@midgephoto Do you mean that Jonathan V. Last should do that.
"Once again, here's how it goes. First, a tyrant 'suspends' just a 'little' liberty, to protect democracy. Then, a tyrant monitors everyone, everywhere, all the time, to assure freedom. Finally, a tyrant imprisons or executes all those observed in abeyance of authority, to uphold liberty. No step may proceed without the other, the accomplice of a complacent people, and the corruption of a civil state."
SearingTruth
@SearingTruth Well-noted.