The violent style in American politics
Filling an hour of airtime every night obviously means that, on occasion, you’re going to have to go back to the same well. So, during his Fox News show on Monday night, Tucker Carlson framed the arrival of refugees from Afghanistan in terms that his show’s viewers would find familiar.
“They’re just using a crisis to change our country,” he said at the end of an interview, casually referring to a component of his toxic long-running White replacement theory rhetoric. “They’ll never lose another election. That’s the point, as you know.”
Just by itself, this is a ridiculous claim, a hammer announcing the discovery of a nail. Refugees from Afghanistan are being brought to America because their country was overtaken by a group that, at another point on this show, Carlson described as a “medieval theocracy,” not because Democrats are trying to offset Republican voters.
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If that is the Democratic strategy, it’s a foolish one. About 120,000 Afghans were evacuated from the country, not all by the United States. But if they did all come here — and all became citizens, all registered to vote and all voted as Democrats — it would constitute 0.07 percent of the votes cast in 2020 — potentially bringing President Biden’s victory margin last year from 4.46 percentage points to 4.53 percentage points. Those devious Dems!
Carlson’s point, though, isn’t really about electoral politics, as he has made clear repeatedly. It is, instead, to foment a sense of America under threat, to argue that the nation is being remade in dangerous and unprecedented ways. When he says that Democrats won’t lose another election, he means that White Republicans will find themselves a diminishing component of the country. That’s the sentiment he is hoping to stoke, in part because he seems to believe it and in part because it keeps his viewers at a rolling boil.
In 1964, Harper’s Magazine published an article from historian Richard Hofstadter that considered the candidacy of Republican presidential candidate Barry Goldwater as part of a long tradition of American political turbulence. Hofstadter outlined “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” as the article was called, tracing various patterns of conspiracy theorizing that had overlapped with politics at various points in the country’s history. One point made by Hofstadter is worth elevating in the context of Carlson’s claims: that the perceived diminishment of power helps amplify instability.
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“The situation becomes worse when the representatives of a particular social interest — perhaps because of the very unrealistic and unrealizable nature of its demands — are shut out of the political process,” Hofstadter wrote. “Having no access to political bargaining or the making of decisions, they find their original conception that the world of power is sinister and malicious fully confirmed.”
It is not the case that Republicans or members of the right-wing fringe are shut out of the process. But it is the case that Carlson and others are amplifying the sense that they’re about to be, or that rampant voter fraud means that to some extent they already are. Their followers are primed through these false claims or apocalyptic predictions to view their opponents as a danger to the country and to themselves. And instead of simply burrowing deeper into conspiracy theories, they are often excited by the idea that they can and must take up arms in defense of their country.
At a Republican event over the weekend, Rep. Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) argued that nonexistent fraud might necessitate violent revolution.
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“The things that we are wanting to fight for, it doesn’t matter if our votes don’t count,” he said. “Because, you know, if our election systems continue to be rigged and continue to be stolen, then it’s going to lead to one place — and it’s bloodshed.”
He later added that there was “nothing that I would dread doing more than having to pick up arms against a fellow American,” an attempt to suggest that such an event was an undesired worst-case outcome. Yet it is also one that he might nonetheless at some point “have” to do.
The violent style in American politics. Not new but apparently having a moment.
It’s deranged to go from accepting obviously false claims about election fraud to the purported need to murder fellow citizens. Cawthorn has been a good example of how violent or extreme rhetoric can wobble between sincere and utilitarian. He makes a comment to gain attention and then tries to moderate it. In a statement to CNN, his spokesman insisted that Cawthorn is “CLEARLY advocating for violence not to occur over election integrity questions,” which is a bit like the bully arguing that he’s CLEARLY telling you not to hit yourself.
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Again, though, notice that Cawthorn’s argument that violence might be necessary is centered on the idea that electoral power is otherwise unattainable because of that nonexistent fraud. If Republicans lose power, then it’s illegitimate, and bloodshed will be the result.
It echoes another recent comment from Steve Lynch, a candidate for county executive in Northampton County, Pennsylvania. At a rally over the weekend, Lynch — who was at President Donald Trump’s rally on Jan. 6 and who has espoused false claims of fraud — argued for the forcible takeover of school boards because of mask mandates.
“Forget going into these school boards with freaking data. You go into these school boards to remove them. That’s what you do,” he said. “They don’t follow the law. You go in and you remove them. I’m going in with 20 strong men. I’m going to speak in front of the school board, and I’m going to give them an option — they can leave or they can be removed.”
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This, he said, is “how you get stuff done.”
That is not how you get stuff done in America or in a democracy. It’s how you get stuff done under fascism. It’s a far less important point, but this wouldn’t even work as Lynch seems to suggest. The power of a school board doesn’t derive from who is in the room during a school board meeting but from the authority granted by the election of the members.
But the point isn’t really that Lynch wants to reshape the system. It’s that he feels impotent. He preceded his furious demand about storming a school board meeting with a desperate request for masculine backup: “Men, where are you?” he said. “Make men great again. Make men men again. Let’s go, men, I need you.”
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Lynch, like Cawthorn, framed the urgency of the moment in life-or-death terms.
“Forget writing your legislators. Forget it. They’re not listening. You’ve got to do something,” he said. “When I see criminals trying to take my rights and my beautiful children and everything that they’re going to do — you’re going to have to take my life. There’s no way. I’ll die on this hill.”
It’s easy to see why rhetoric like Lynch’s and Cawthorn’s would meet with applause. Polling from YouGov conducted for CBS News earlier this year found that most Republicans view Democrats not as political opponents but as enemies. And, of course, most Republicans also believe Trump’s false claims about election fraud.
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It’s also absolutely true that part of this rhetoric is a function of the scramble for attention in a right-wing media ecosystem that rewards this sort of “I hate to say it but” extremism. Here I am, writing about an obscure candidate for a county seat. Here’s Cawthorn getting another write-up for another sly bit of controversy. But this, too, is the point: It doesn’t take much to go from self-aware rhetoric about violence to real violence.
Earlier this month, the Department of Homeland Security sent an alert to local law enforcement that rhetoric about stolen elections might lead to acts of violence. Two weeks later, a guy showed up on Capitol Hill claiming to have a bomb in his pickup truck and insisting that Biden would be removed from office. Less than a month later, a member of Congress argued publicly that such a response is justifiable.
Then there’s Carlson. Millions of people were probably tuned in to his show last night to hear him disparage the effort to provide refuge to Afghans fleeing the Taliban. They also heard him rant about the withdrawal of U.S. troops from the country and the need for an apology from the Biden administration. Such an apology is “not just practically important, it’s spiritually important,” he said.
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“This can’t go on,” Carlson said. “When leaders refuse to hold themselves accountable, over time, people revolt. That happens. We need to change course immediately and start acknowledging our mistakes. The people who made them need to start acknowledging them, or else the consequences will be awful.”
There was no similar demand for accountability from Trump, certainly, but again Carlson is only addressing his real point obliquely. The point is that America is slipping away and, lamentably, there is little recourse but the worst. Carlson then went to commercial, teasing his upcoming segment about the dangers of those refugees.
correction
This article originally misstated the seat Lynch is seeking. It has been corrected.
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