Michael E. Hayden: One Year After Jan. 6, the Hard Right Digs In (SPLC Hatewatch)

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2021/12/30/one-year-after-jan-6-hard-right-digs


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‘Fear and vengeance’

There are two stories of the radicalization of the pro-Trump wing of the Republican Party. One is slower moving and arguably starts during the 1990s, around the launch of Fox News. The other story begins on Sept. 7, 2020, when polling made it apparent that Trump’s path to reelection faced significant challenges. Far-right influencers such as Jack Posobiec and Ali Alexander used right-tilting social media giant Twitter to start pushing the five-year-old Roger Stone-inspired hashtag #StoptheSteal. “Stop the Steal” became both the rallying cry for pro-Trump Republicans seeking to overturn the will of American voters, and the name this anti-democracy subgroup took for their movement. From the moment #StoptheSteal went mainstream, pro-Trump Republicans have accelerated in one direction – toward a path undermining or attacking our democracy to gain and retain power.

The barrage of voter suppression bills Republicans introduced in statehouses across the country in 2021 disproportionately impact Black, Brown and Indigenous people. The laws restrict the number of available polling places, increase the likelihood that officials purge voter rolls under false pretenses, drastically affect mail-in voting, and shrink election day hours. Republicans also purged election boards in swing states such as Georgia, and replaced election officials with partisans who can exert influence the way those votes are counted. They have targeted nonpartisan election officials around the country in campaigns to destroy personal reputations, for the purpose of installing pro-Trump loyalists. Trump himself has also used his prodigious influence in the party to drive out Republicans he perceives to be disloyal and replace them with proponents of his Big Lie.

“This is really just the politics of fear and vengeance. This is not about ideas. ... They have effigies they want to burn and that’s it,” Kevin Kennedy, who was Wisconsin’s longest serving election official before retiring after 34 years in 2016, told the Associated Press of the campaign to dismantle to the democratic infrastructure of that state.

Pro-Trump Republicans have justified their push to undermine the right to vote to their own supporters by saturating right-wing media and social media with lies about voter fraud in the 2020 election. Two-thirds of Republicans still believe opponents of Trump stole the election from him, according to polling published in November by Public Religion Research Institute. Within that same group, nearly 40% believe that “patriots might have to resort to violence in order to save our country.” The 60% of election lie believers who do not agree that acts of political violence are justified represents perhaps the best firewall between pro-Trump politics generally and the outright acceptance of violent extremism.

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[Nevilledog]

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