They Cry "Violence!" Fascism before Our Eyes

The Trump movement has escalated its calls for violence. We're so enured to extreme political behaviors that we've hardly noticed. 

• Last week Donald Trump posted that Senator McConnell "must have a DEATH WISH!" (his caps), which is nothing but a death threat. As we've seen from folks who assaulted the Capitol on January 6, people take Trump's suggestions as orders. Vanishing few Republican politicians have the integrity to denounce this.
• At a political rally Saturday night, Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene declared, "Democrats want Republicans dead and they have already started the killings.”
•  Running for reelection, Rand Paul released an ad that intones, "It's clear that [his opponent] Charles Booker doesn't believe in civil discourse, only violence."
  

These are wildly dangerous things for politicians to say, especially so when social media references to civil war are spiking. Once we might have called them irresponsible. But let's be honest: these people know what they're doing. They're fascist.

Political violence is already a reality in this country. The January 6 insurrection brought it before our faces in a shocking way. Violent threats and intimidation of politicians have intensified dramatically since then. Although the threats target members of both parties, the escalation clearly points to Donald Trump.

Check out this fact: 

In the five years after President Donald J. Trump was elected in 2016 following a campaign featuring a remarkable level of violent language, the number of recorded threats against members of Congress increased more than tenfold, to 9,625 in 2021, according to figures from the Capitol Police, the federal law enforcement department that protects Congress.

Violent rhetoric incites violent behavior.

Donald Trump has incited violence ever since he started campaigning. He encouraged police to bang people's heads against car doors as they shoved them in, evoked the old days when you could rough up protesters, boast that his supporters included the toughest people, and openly courted violent right wing militias. This is what fascists do.