Reps. Lauren Boebert (l) and Marjorie Taylor Greene Photo: Shutterstock
Extremist rhetoric from Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) and Rep. Lauren Boebert (R-CO) has helped “normalize violence” that led to this weekend’s assassination attempt against former President Donald Trump, according to an expert on political violence.
“An awful lot of violence that has been unleashed by the MAGA faction has been unleashed against moderate Republicans,” Rachel Kleinfeld, an expert on political violence who is a senior fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, recently told Politico. “An attempted assassination on a presidential candidate was almost just a matter of time.”
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“Sadly, I am not surprised — given the reality of a tenfold rise in threats against members of Congress, increases in violence and threats against everyone, from people running for school board to state legislators, the doubling of serious threats against judges,” Kleinfeld added.
Both Greene and Boebert have both run campaign ads with violent rhetoric.
In a January 3, 2021 ad, Boebert said she would “carry my Glock to Congress.” In a September 2020 Facebook post, Greene shared an image of herself holding a gun next to a picture of the four Democratic congresswomen of color, who made up the House’s progressive group known as “the Squad.”
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Facebook removed Greene’s post for violating its policy against violent threats after “Squad” member Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) wrote, “Posting a photo with an assault rifle next to the faces of three women of color is not advertising. It’s incitement. There are already death threats in response to this post.”
Just yesterday, Greene wrote in a Truth Social post, “We are in a battle between GOOD and EVIL. The Democrats are the party of pedophiles, murdering the innocent unborn, violence, and bloody, meaningless, endless wars.”
“They want to lock up their political opponents, and terrorize innocent Americans who would tell the truth about it,” she continued. “The Democrat party is flat out evil, and yesterday they tried to murder President Trump.”
Kleinfeld said, “When polarizing figures attempt to normalize political violence and make that a way in which they quiet moderates in their own party and opponents, they can’t stop where that violence will go. And whether the [Trump] shooter, who was a registered Republican, turns out to be acting from motives of the right or from the left, or was just a disturbed individual, we don’t know. But once political violence is normalized, it spreads across the spectrum.”
“When you have political leaders like Marjorie Taylor Greene or Lauren Boebert or so on, who are elected with less than 10% of their voting public because it’s just a small primary base, then you’re allowing more extreme positions to put political leaders in place, who then continue normalizing violence,” she added.
Kleinfeld said that the normalization of violent political rhetoric and its resulting violence can be stopped by “widespread condemnation” from the public and politicians on the same side as those spouting such rhetoric. She pointed to declines in political violence internationally and throughout history after violence-advocating politicians are removed from office.
“The best way to stop it is to vote out the political leaders who are trying to use incendiary rhetoric and normalize violence in our system. Political primaries are actually incentivizing extremism, and getting rid of political primaries and allowing people to run straight to a general electorate would help a lot,” Kleinfeld said. “It’s all of us regular people saying we don’t want this in our society, and we’re going to change how we speak about the other side to make it less common.”
Last Saturday’s assassination attempt against Trump was carried out by the now-dead 20-year-old shooter Thomas Matthew Crooks, a registered Republican who once gave $15 to progressive Democrats.
After the shooting, Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) criticized Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), a leading contender to become Trump’s vice presidential pick, after Vance blamed Democrats for causing the shooting by calling Trump a “fascist.” Torres called Vance “despicably demagogic to their core” and said they chose “partisanship over statesmanship, even when the gravity of the moment calls for a moratorium on the usual partisan politics.”
