Don't let MAGA Republicans off the hook for enabling violence

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Tweet text:Jennifer 'I stand with Ukraine' Rubin 🇺🇦🇺🇦
@JRubinBlogger
We must see the endless stream of mass shootings together. They show that the Republican Party is responsible both for political paralysis on gun reform and for enabling the rise of right-wing domestic terrorism, evidenced not only in Buffalo

washingtonpost.com
Opinion | Don’t let MAGA Republicans off the hook for enabling violence
They are not innocent bystanders.
11:06 AM · May 26, 2022

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/05/26/dont-let-republicans-off-hook-enabling-violence-racism-mass-shooting-texas-buffalo/

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https://archive.ph/N2AHd

Less than two weeks ago, the slaughter of Black people at a grocery store in Buffalo transfixed the nation. Now, attention has turned to mass murder at an elementary school in Texas and the galling suggestion from Republican Gov. Greg Abbott that the solution to the slaughter of children is to arm teachers.

We cannot let one episode of violence bury the last. We must see the endless stream of mass shootings together. They show that the Republican Party is responsible both for political paralysis on gun reform and for enabling the rise of right-wing domestic terrorism, evidenced not only in Buffalo, but also the mass shootings at the Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, S.C., in 2015 and at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh in 2018.

As to the latter, we would do well to stop railing at the scourge of racism and start excoriating the racists. Fox News host Tucker Carlson is not the only Republican to fan racial hatred by promulgating “replacement theory.” (Disclaimer: I am an MSNBC contributor.) The No. 3 House Republican, Rep. Elise Stefanik (N.Y.), blatantly traffics in fear-mongering about minorities displacing Whites. Sen. Ron Johnson (Wis.) blurted out the racist assertion that he didn’t fear White Jan. 6 insurrectionists but would have been frightened by “Black Lives Matter and antifa protesters” in the same circumstances.

Demagogues on race are not outliers. The titular head of the GOP, defeated former president Donald Trump, perfected the party’s appeal to White grievance and its nonstop demonization of immigrants. Similarly, the Houston Chronicle observed that Texas Sen. Ted Cruz’s recent denunciation of an “invasion” of immigrants was “far from the first Texas Republican to refer to migration at the border as an invasion. U.S. Reps. Chip Roy of Austin, Troy Nehls of Houston and Ronny Jackson of Amarillo are among the Texas Republicans who have repeatedly referred to an ‘invasion’ on the border, as recently as last week.”

*snip*