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Remember cars swarming Biden's bus in Texas at high speed on the highway, forcing the campaign to cancel events?
That was organized by a former police detective and one of the Capitol Hill insurrectionists /1
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/16/us/capitol-riot-funding.html
That was organized by a former police detective and one of the Capitol Hill insurrectionists /1
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/16/us/capitol-riot-funding.html
Threats like that throughout the campaign were normalized as Trump himself cheered the high-speed attempt to run the Biden bus off the road.
Trump was inciting violence in his supporters long before he lost the race. /2
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/01/biden-harris-bus-highway-texas-trump-train
Trump was inciting violence in his supporters long before he lost the race. /2
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/nov/01/biden-harris-bus-highway-texas-trump-train
The media failure to call this attempted assassination of Biden set the stage for not taking seriously the clear death threats spread all over the Internet targeting Capitol Hill. /3
Trump was not alone in praising that high-speed attack on Biden. Here is Rubio encouraging more of that kind of violence and threats. /4 https://twitter.com/therecount/status/1323273438916710401
Video of the event showing the cars cutting off the bus and nearly running it off the road. /5
We need to make the connection between the lies made about the election - and the lies made by the same paid hacks about public policy, whether climate change or the minimum wage. A party built on lies ends up turning to violence as a last resort. /6 https://twitter.com/nathansnewman/status/1350783177481191430
And Trump is not some aberration but just the Klan violence that has permeated GOP politics for decades, politely overlooked in some circles, but as Stuart Stevens details in his book, always there below the surface. /7 https://twitter.com/nathansnewman/status/1350800208549081088
When truth is whatever your warped media ecosystem says it is, even a murderous insurrection by your political allies is converted into a plot by your enemies. The truth-free bubble of the Right is scarily resilient- and breeds more violence. /8
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/17/us/politics/Capitol-conspiracy-theories-blm-antifa.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/17/us/politics/Capitol-conspiracy-theories-blm-antifa.html?action=click&module=Spotlight&pgtype=Homepage
Quoting Stuart Stevens again, conspiracy mongering is deep in conservatism's DNA, dating to McCarthyism and belief media didn't know how to or didn't want to see Communist infiltration all around - a glide path to 79% of GOP denying election results confirmed by every court. /9
The "Big Lie" as a virus is a good metaphor by Jake Tapper for the warping of MAGA's minds by the cynical leadership of the Right. Trump himself is just the result of that racist conspiracy-mongering over decades. /10 https://twitter.com/CNNSotu/status/1350835895033856002
But biggest lie at heart of conservatism is the denial of racism. And when you look at voting divide in society, particularly among young Trumpers who are most radicalized, the racism denialists make up almost all of the Trump vote. (From 2016 vote) /11
https://dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/poverty-doesnt-make-you-racist
https://dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/poverty-doesnt-make-you-racist
GOP voters resist all evidence of persistent discrimination- and nothing highlights it more than this study that found a white person with a felony conviction was more likely to get a job callback than a black person without a criminal record. /12
https://www.irp.wisc.edu/publications/focus/pdfs/foc232i.pdf
https://www.irp.wisc.edu/publications/focus/pdfs/foc232i.pdf
Bruce Bartlett, another defector from the Right, talks about his former comrade's "Farcical Denial of Systemic Racism" and gives great catalogue of persistent discrimination in our society- but doubts any of it will convince blinded MAGAs. /13 https://newrepublic.com/article/159589/conservatives-systemic-racism-denial
And as a counter to "both sides" rhetoric about BLM violence, compare imagery of MAGA insurrectionists beating cops to one of the most prominent stories of a BLM activist "assaulting a cop" - involving improper use of a bullhorn. /14
https://cnn.com/2020/08/08/us/nypd-protest-derrick-ingram-trnd/index.html
https://cnn.com/2020/08/08/us/nypd-protest-derrick-ingram-trnd/index.html