There’s a name for someone who calls violence ‘legitimate.’ It isn’t ‘Republican.’

There’s a name for someone who calls violence ‘legitimate.’ It isn’t ‘Republican.’

Dana Milbank — Read time: 3 minutes

Columnist |

The Republican National Committee last week passed a resolution condemning GOP Reps. Liz Cheney (Wyo.) and Adam Kinzinger (Ill.) for serving on the House committee investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection — or, as the RNC called it, “a Democrat-led persecution of ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse.”

Legitimate political discourse! Seven people died in connection with the attack, 140 police officers were hurt and 734 people have been prosecuted on charges ranging up to seditious conspiracy. Marauders sacked the Capitol for the first time since the War of 1812, threatening assassination, and smashing, clubbing and defecating to the tune of $1.5 million in property damage. But the Republican Party says it’s all legit. Just a bit of civil discourse.

As Rudy Giuliani once said: “Truth isn’t truth.” Piling on the absurdity, RNC Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said the resolution doesn’t refer to insurrectionists; its plain language says otherwise.

Can we now expect others to exercise their right to legitimate political discourse as the insurrectionists did? Hauled into the principal’s office after a schoolyard fight, Johnny explains that his knuckles engaged in legitimate political discourse with Billy’s nose. After a bar brawl, a drunk tells the cops his chair entered into legitimate political discourse with another patron’s skull. A homeowner informs animal control his dog was engaging in legitimate political discourse with the postal carrier’s leg. An angry dad threatens to “open a can of legitimate political discourse” on his curfew-breaking teen.

Pretty soon, we’ll be reporting the news RNC-style:

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Euphemisms have been with us since even before the Reagan-era MX missile was dubbed the “Peacekeeper” and the estate tax became the death tax. But calling violence “legitimate discourse” is a particularly illegitimate twisting of the English language.

Then again, former president Donald Trump’s GOP has been a serial offender. Trump aides had a euphemism for Trump’s laziness: “Executive time” was the item listed on his official schedule when he wanted to sit on the couch and watch Fox News. They had a euphemism for his misogyny: “locker room talk.” His fabrications were alternative facts, or “truth impressions” in the phrase of Mark Meadows, Trump’s last chief of staff. They even had a euphemism for his racism: He refused to be “politically correct.”

Now, the insurrectionists have become peaceful tourists or “political prisoners,” the Capitol Police murderers, the would-be assassins martyrs. Newt Gingrich, the former House speaker now advising House Republicans, proposes jailing the members of the Jan. 6 committee. A week ago, Trump himself called for uprisings against “radical, vicious, racists prosecutors” investigating him, “because our country and our elections are corrupt.” He dangled pardons for the insurrectionists if he’s returned to power.

Poll after poll shows about 10 percent of the American public believes violence against the government is justified at this moment. Among Republicans, and particularly Republican men, the figure is substantially higher.

And this was before the Republican National Committee decided it would officially decree that violence is “legitimate political discourse.” Among the Jan. 6 activities so justified:

Blinding police officers with bear spray.

Throwing rocks, bottles, furniture and incendiary devices at them.

Beating them with flagpoles, sticks and bullhorns.

Punching, kicking and dragging them down stairs.

Tasing them and hurling a fire extinguisher at them.

Smashing windows and doors.

Carrying zip ties onto the Senate floor.

Ransacking desks and offices.

And all this with murder on their lips.

Now, the Republican National Committee, the official leadership of the GOP, has embraced this unspeakable violence as legitimate discourse. It’s an absurd euphemism — and it points to another one.

To call a person who endorses violence against the duly elected government a “Republican” is itself Orwellian. More accurate words exist for such a person. One of them is “fascist.”