‘Numbers don’t lie’
Over the past decade, the Anti-Defamation League has counted about 450 U.S. murders committed by political extremists.
Of these 450 killings, right-wing extremists committed about 75 percent. Islamic extremists were responsible for about 20 percent, and left-wing extremists were responsible for 4 percent.
Nearly half of the murders were specifically tied to white supremacists:
Source: Anti-Defamation League
As this data shows, the American political right has a violence problem that has no equivalent on the left. And the 10 victims in Buffalo this past weekend are now part of this toll. “Right-wing extremist violence is our biggest threat,” Jonathan Greenblatt, the head of the ADL, has written. “The numbers don’t lie.”
The pattern extends to violence less severe than murder, like the Jan. 6 attack on Congress. It also extends to the language from some Republican politicians — including Donald Trump — and conservative media figures that treats violence as a legitimate form of political expression. A much larger number of Republican officials do not use this language but also do not denounce it or punish politicians who do use it; Kevin McCarthy, the top House Republican, is a leading example.
It’s important to emphasize that not all extremist violence comes from the right — and that the precise explanation for any one attack can be murky, involving a mixture of ideology, mental illness, gun access and more. In the immediate aftermath of an attack, people are sometimes too quick to claim a direct cause and effect. But it is also incorrect to pretend that right-wing violence and left-wing violence are equivalent problems.
Fears in Washington
If you talk to members of Congress and their aides these days — especially off the record — you will often hear them mention their fears of violence being committed against them.
Some Republican members of Congress have said that they were reluctant to vote for Trump’s impeachment or conviction partly because of the threats against other members who had already denounced him. House Republicans who voted for President Biden’s infrastructure bill also received threats. Democrats say their offices receive a spike in phone calls and online messages threatening violence after they are criticized on conservative social media or cable television shows.
People who oversee elections report similar problems. “One in six election officials have experienced threats because of their job,” the Brennan Center, a research group, reported this year. “Ranging from death threats that name officials’ young children to racist and gendered harassment, these attacks have forced election officials across the country to take steps like hiring personal security, fleeing their homes, and putting their children into counseling.”
There is often overlap between these violent threats and white supremacist beliefs. White supremacy tends to treat people of color as un-American or even less than fully human, views that can make violence seem justifiable. The suspect in the Buffalo massacre evidently posted an online manifesto that discussed replacement theory, a racial conspiracy theory that Tucker Carlson promotes on his Fox News show.
(This Times story examines how replacement theory has entered the Republican mainstream.)
“History has taught us that what begins with words ends in far worse,” Representative Liz Cheney, one of the few Republicans who have repeatedly and consistently denounced violence and talk of violence from the right, wrote on Twitter yesterday. “The House GOP leadership has enabled white nationalism, white supremacy, and antisemitism,” Cheney wrote, and called on Republican leaders to “renounce and reject these views and those who hold them.”
A few other Republicans, like Senator Mitt Romney, have taken a similar stance. But many other prominent Republicans have taken a more neutral stance or even embraced talk of violence.
Some have spoken openly about violence as a legitimate political tool — and not just Trump, who has done so frequently.
At the rally that preceded the Jan. 6 attack, Representative Mo Brooks suggested the crowd should “start taking down names and kicking ass.” Before she was elected to Congress, Marjorie Taylor Greene supported the idea of executing Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi and other top Democrats. Representative Paul Gosar once posted an animated video altered to depict himself killing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and swinging swords at Biden.
Rick Perry, a former Texas governor, once called the Federal Reserve “treasonous” and talked about treating its chairman “pretty ugly.” During Greg Gianforte’s campaign for Montana’s House seat, he went so far as to assault a reporter who asked him a question he didn’t like; Gianforte won and has since become Montana’s governor.
These Republicans have received no meaningful sanction from their party. McCarthy, the Republican leader in the House, has been especially solicitous of Brooks and other members who use violent imagery.
This Republican comfort with violence is new. Republican leaders from past decades, like Ronald Reagan, Bob Dole, Howard Baker and the Bushes, did not evoke violence.
“In a stable democracy,” Steven Levitsky, a Harvard political scientist, told me, “politicians unambiguously reject violence and unambiguously expel from their ranks antidemocratic forces.
Numbers don’t lie
https://messaging-custom-newsletters.nytimes.com/template/oakv2?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20220517&instance_id=61553&nl=the-morning&productCode=NN®i_id=102846851&segment_id=92459&te=1&uri=nyt%3A%2F%2Fnewsletter%2F095cc587-8474-5c7c-834e-f5a99763488e&user_id=c574959b2396ae305d0e41f671e9d4d0
‘Numbers don’t lie’
( But people do )
Over the past decade, the Anti-Defamation League has counted about 450 U.S. murders committed by political extremists.
Of these 450 killings, right-wing extremists committed about 75 percent. Islamic extremists were responsible for about 20 percent, and left-wing extremists were responsible for 4 percent.
Nearly half of the murders were specifically tied to white supremacists:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/tucker-carlson-race-politics_n_6282e94be4b0c84db728ad5a?utm_source=Sailthru&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Morning%20Email%205-17-22&utm_term=us-morning-email
Tucker Carlson condemned the 18-year-old suspect accused of shooting 13 people at a Buffalo, New York, grocery store this weekend. But the Fox News host failed to take accountability for the white supremacist “great replacement” theory he’s peddled on prime time for years, instead lambasting Democrats and the media for attacking free speech.
In response to your original either or query, sadly it’s all of the above as the Right Wing in all of its manifestations appears to be taking over and in my opinion destroying America. Of course I’m doing everything in my power to stop it by staying awake every night and worrying about it. After 4 to 6 years of this behavior, beginning with Trumps campaign, I think I’ve got it pretty much under control. I give up! As one of the ladies in our women’s group said the other night, there is something we can do, Vote and Pray. I’ll cast my vote of course but My prayer is for the Serenity to Accept the things I cannot change. The way that the right wing has systematically changed our vocabulary and mind set to define a violent insurrection as patriots who love their country, the spreading of lethal misinformation as Free Speech and the abandonment of women’s rights even in cases of rape and incest as Pro Life, they appear to be rationalizing mass murder as collateral damage for our precious 2nd amendment.
I love America and always will but the words of that well sung song Stand Beside Her and Guide Her… our guidance system is way off track. Biden gave up a comfortable retirement to try to Save the Soul of America and Build Back Better. I thought these were easily repeatable memes and honorable goals. Sadly however they are being drowned out by relentless hate. I have a theory I call the give us Barabbas Syndrome, wherein when given a choice the mob often chooses evil over good. They did it on Good Friday, we did it on Tuesday November 8, 2016 and I think we’re about to do it again on November 4, 2024. Two good men and one good women, cut down with hate and lies. Very, very, very sadly, many of the people, working class people, who the Democrats are so focused on helping, simply don’t get it. I overheard a couple of negative conversations between workers, one of whom described Biden as a bag of rocks….
I simply don’t have an answer but I’m going to stay awake again all night worrying about it and maybe that’ll fix it this time. 😉
Pete and Tess
On May 15, 2022, at 9:58 AM, Dave Bock <bock@htva.net> wrote:
We can all thank Fox and the Republicans for this. They are not the cause of the underlying bigotry, but they are happy to inflame it, and to leverage it to attain and hold political power.
On May 15, 2022, at 8:15 AM, Pete T <peteandtess@gmail.com> wrote:
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2022/05/14/nyregion/buffalo-shooting?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20220515&instance_id=61426&nl=the-morning®i_id=102846851&segment_id=92322&te=1&user_id=c574959b2396ae305d0e41f671e9d4d0#at-least-10-people-are-killed-in-a-mass-shooting-at-a-buffalo-grocery-store-a-local-official-says
Shortly after Mr. Gendron was captured, a manifesto believed to have been posted online by the gunman emerged, riddled with racist, anti-immigrant views that claimed white Americans were at risk of being replaced by people of color. In the video that appeared to have been captured by the camera affixed to his helmet, an anti-Black racial slur can be seen on the barrel of his weapon.
Pete and Tess
On May 12, 2022, at 3:21 PM, Dave Bock <bock@htva.net> wrote:
It’s not the secularism itself, John, it’s the reaction of the religious. Secular folks generally have a live-and-let-live outlook. I may not believe what some religious neighbors do, but I’m fine in letting them believe it, so long as they afford me the same courtesy and don’t demand that the nation’s laws hew to their narrow views. But many of them are not willing. We’re not in trouble because the country is secularizing; no, it’s because the conservative religious crowd won’t stand for it.
And Zakaria did describe the rural-urban split; that involves both race and religion. But you are correct that he did not mention the income/wealth gap.
Your addition gives us 3 candidates as root cause of the potential American demise:
* religion (in its reaction to secularization),
* racism,
* capitalism,
and I’ll add a 4th Horseman:
* disinformation.
Perhaps the Perfect Storm.
On May 12, 2022, at 1:30 PM, JOHN BODAMER <jbodamer@bellsouth.net> wrote:
The change over the last 15 years has been increased secularism. Maybe that will be seen as the root cause of death of the American experiment?
Of course, this is all over simplification. There’s a rural-urban split. There’s those “left behind” who turn to populism both right and left (mostly right). There’s the income and wealth inequalities.
JB
828-551-4474
From: Dave Bock
Sent: Thursday, May 12, 2022 12:48 PM
To: Fred Como; Walt&Cheryl Snyder; joe Kavanaugh; Pete and Tess; Bob Miles; John Bodamer; Bud; Laurie Roe; Roger Beck; Casey Creamer; Bob Carlson; Kim Chao; Mark Sussman
Subject: Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde?
When a lot of people think about statistics, “average” is the first thing that comes to mind. But a (ahem) noted textbook says that actually Statistics is about variability. And that’s at the core of this piece by Fareed Zakaria. Have a look at his analysis of our current sociopolitical divide, where half the country aligns with the democratic secularism of Northern Europe and the other half with the religious authoritarianism of Nigeria and Saudi Arabia.
https://www.cnn.com/videos/tv/2022/05/08/exp-gps-0508-fareed-take-on-polarized-america.cnn
Not sure whether it’s racism or religion that history will see as the root cause the death of the American experiment…
— Dave
'There's No Such Thing As a Lone Wolf.' The Online Movement That Spawned the Buffalo Shooting
VERA BERGENGRUEN
The gunman accused of murdering 10 people in a Buffalo supermarket seemed to fit a familiar pattern. Isolated and bored during the pandemic, he had become increasingly radicalized by consuming white-supremacist content online. He had previously threatened a shooting at his high school and been sent for a mental health evaluation, according to authorities. After he carried out the violent solo massacre, in which he targeted Black shoppers, local police said they believed he had acted alone. So it’s no surprise that Payton Gendron, 18, was widely portrayed as a “lone wolf” attacker, like many white-supremacist terrorists before him.
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