How would you react if one day you were sitting at home and the phone rang and when you picked it up you heard a man shout: "Kill yourself now so we can save ammo!" Moments later, an email arrives that says: "I hope the Federal government hangs you and your daughter from the Capitol dome, you treasonous piece of shit! I pray that I will be sitting close enough to hear your necks snap."
This is what happened to "Shaye" Moss and Ruby Freeman when Trump and Giuliani decided to blame Trump's loss in Georgia on them, incorrectly claiming they were stuffing ballots for Biden. Just a few hours later, a mob with torches and a bullhorn showed up at Freeman's house, although she'd already left after being warned by the FBI that she was on the "kill list" of a January 6th defendant they'd just arrested.
Mitt Romney, speaking with writer McKay Coppins for his book " Romney: A Reckoning," told him the story of multiple Republican senators who were so terrified of violence at the hands of Trump's fascist followers that they set aside their consciences and voted against convicting him of trying to blackmail Zelenskyy and, later, trying to overthrow the government of the United States. "One Republican congressman confided to Romney that he wanted to vote for Trump's second impeachment, but chose not to out of fear for his family's safety.... Later, during the Senate trial, Romney heard the same calculation while talking with a small group of Republican colleagues. When one senator, a member of leadership, said he was leaning toward voting to convict, the others urged him to reconsider. You can't do that, Romney recalled someone saying. Think of your personal safety, said another. Think of your children. The senator eventually decided they were right."
... Similarly, multiple judges [are] also unwilling to have their families suffer the death threats and harassment that comes with being an "enemy of Trump." When the justices on the Colorado Supreme Court finally found the spine to vote him off the ballot, within hours the threats began . Now they're having to pay for security for themselves and their family members, and go to sleep every night dreading the possibility that a lone wolf Trump supporter -- like the one who broke into Paul Pelosi's home and attacked him with a hammer -- may be looking for them, too.
As NBC News reported, Trump's followers reacted to the Colorado justices with predictable ferocity: "'This ends when we kill these f--kers,' a user wrote on a pro-Trump forum that was used by several Jan. 6 rioters. "'Kill judges. Behead judges. Roundhouse kick a judge into the concrete,' read a post on a fringe website. "Slam dunk a judge's baby into the trashcan.'"
...
This is how fascism takes over a nation from within: with violence and the fear of violence.
...
There is no movement advocating political violence on either the American left or in the center. It is entirely confined to the American right, and the media needs to admit that and the FBI needs to recalibrate their efforts.
...
Ever since the Reagan Revolution, in their zeal to cut their own taxes and stop regulation of the fossil fuel and other polluting industries, [billionaires and their puppets have] been hammering the message that our government has been seized by "deep state socialists" bent on destroying our country. Republicans and the billionaires who own them have repeated this conspiracy theory so often for the last few decades that an entire religion, Qanon, as arisen around it.
...
As fascist followers act out their violent threats against their leaders' perceived enemies, they get an inner sense of strength and the feeling that they've joined a community: that diminishes their own fear for a short while.
The more an "other" -- political enemies; racial, religious, and gender minorities; women -- are blamed for the ills of the nation, the more vigilante-style violence against them is justified and the more violent the future becomes....
This is what Trump and the GOP he's captured are working toward: the silencing of dissent and accountability, replacing them with fear and a guilty complicity. Just take a look at the state of social media today, particularly Xitter and Facebook, which have dialed back on their content moderation and thus loosed the fascists on anybody who dares criticize Trump or the GOP....
