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Why Donald Trump exalts Kyle Rittenhouse: nothing makes the base work like violence

 


The strangest thing about Donald Trump and the GOP’s increasingly open endorsement of political violence is how unnecessary it is, even by the right’s own grotesque standards.

Since Trump’s failed coup that culminated in the Jan.6 insurgency, Republicans have carefully laid the groundwork for a bloodless destruction of democracy. They requisitioned election offices and filled them with Trump lackeys eager to break the law for their leader. They have held elections for Republicans to “win” even when Democrats have strong majorities. And they’re launching a strong voter suppression so Democrats can’t go to the polls in the first place. Even Trump’s path to retaking the White House despite a very likely defeat in 2024 is mapped out without the need to fire a single shot: Republican-controlled state legislatures and Congress could overturn the vote in the districts that Joe Biden wins and reject the elections to Trump.

“The main attackers of democracy today are not generals or armed revolutionaries,” Harvard political scientists Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt explained in The Atlantic, but rather politicians “who gut the substance of democracy behind a carefully crafted veneer of legality and constitutionality ”.

RELATED: The Line Between Right-Wing Trolling and Violence Crumbles

But even though a bloodless fascist takeover is in the works, Trump and other leaders of the Trumpist movement have spent the past few years building right-wing enthusiasm for political violence. For months, Trump and his allies have tried to rewrite the January 6 narrative, making insurgents heroes and martyrs. Now, following the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse who shot three people, killing two, during a Black Lives Matter protest in August 2020, they are doing the same. Rittenhouse is portrayed on the right as a noble hero, instead of what he is, a disturbing creep that had nothing to do with an AR-15 in a volatile situation.

As soon as the trial was over, Fox News host Tucker Carlson invited Rittenhouse for an interview, praising him as “the kind of person you would want a lot more for in your country.” (As a reminder, Rittenhouse was pictured at a Michigan bar in January, partying with Proud Boys and waving a White Nationalist hand.) Trump also brought Rittenhouse to Mar-A-Lago to pose for photos outside a wall conspicuously decorated with a photograph of North Korean dictator Kim Jong-un. Trump called Rittenhouse shot dead Joseph Rosenbaum, 36, and Anthony Huber, 26, a “nice young man”.

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Trump and Carlson do this, even though they know full well that it encourages the most anxious men to view political violence as a way to alleviate their own stubborn fears of mediocrity. Indeed, manipulating men so that they commit violence seems to be the main thing. As Mark Follman wrote in Mother Jones last week, “Trump has recently highlighted, in other words, that he is the inspirational leader of a national terrorist movement.”

But again, the question is why?

Most of the available evidence suggests that not only can Trump’s desired fascist takeover occur without violence, but that it would in fact be more likely to work if it were bloodless. The 21st century autocrat’s best weapon is not violence, but demoralization wears down the opposition into believing that there are no legal avenues to save democracy. As Michelle Goldberg explained to the New York Times on Monday, there is a “growing desperation arising from the feeling that ousting Trump has given American democracy only a brief reprieve,” and the result is that ” progressives are retreating into private life to preserve their sanity, a retreat that will only accelerate the decline of democracy.

RELATED: Wisconsin GOP Wants To Take Control Of Elections And Even Send Commissioners To Jail

Without violence, the Trumpist right can claim that its evisceration of democracy is flawless and crush its opponents into a state of learned helplessness. The violence, however, makes it very difficult to claim that the rise of fascism is anything but what it is. Without the Capitol Riot capturing public attention, Trump’s attempts to steal the 2020 election through bureaucratic corruption might have been pushed into the memory hole. Right-wing violence, on the other hand, is unambiguous. It solidifies the resistance of the left instead of undermining it.

Part of the craze for violence is due to Trump’s personality. Unlike his father, who was arrested in a KKK riot in 1927, Trump is a physical coward. However, he likes the idea of ​​violence and loves to send servants to commit acts of violence on his behalf. This was true when he called the rioting neo-Nazis “very good people” in 2017, when he sent cops to fire tear gas at peaceful protesters at Lafayette Parkin 2020, and when he incited the Capitol riot in 2021.

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Trump probably understands that his most ardent supporters also love violence and are also caught up in fantasies of beating and killing liberals and getting away with it. A Media Matters analysis released Tuesday shows the Rittenhouse verdict was a boon to right-wing pages on Facebook. Those pages saw nearly 30 million interactions on November 19, a particularly high number since the verdict was announced late on a Friday, which is typically a period of low online traffic. The only other days these pages received more traffic were in response to January 6 and its aftermath, Trump’s acquittal of riot incitement and Biden’s nomination. Notably, 4 of the 6 highest trafficking days were due to Trump and his allies exhilarating or inspiring political violence. Obviously, the base is really into the idea of ​​breaking skulls in the name of Trumpism.

Of course, Republicans have other uses of political violence.

RELATED: The NRA Gave Us Kyle Rittenhouse

Rittenhouse’s beatification, like tear gas from protesters in Lafayette Park, is meant to keep progressives away from protest. It might matter if and when progressives take to the streets in response to efforts to steal elections. Cleaning up the homes of honest election officials, replacing them with Trump cronies, is also facilitated by violence, as evidenced by the number of election officials resigning rather than face death threats.

Most importantly, the violence appears to be aimed at motivating the Trump base. The idea of ​​a fascist takeover without bloodshed does not really move the ideas of the right. What ignites them is to celebrate the death of political opponents. Many of these people have spent thousands of dollars over years, if not decades, to build up arsenals. Destroying democracy with red tape probably seems unsatisfactory. Asoneman, at a Turning Point event in October, plaintively asked, “When can we use guns?” “

Keeping these people energized and engaged means holding out the fantasy of political violence. Trump and Carlson got it, which is why they are determined to make Rittenhouse a hero on the right.

Sources

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2/ https://www.salon.com/2021/11/24/why-donald-exalts-kyle-rittenhouse-nothing-gets-the-base-going-like-violence/

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