Menace, as a political tool, enters the Republican mainstream

At a conservative rally in western Idaho last month, a young man stepped up to a microphone to ask when he could start killing Democrats.

"When do we get to use the guns?" he said as the audience applauded. "How many elections are they going to steal before we kill these people?" The local state representative, a Republican, later called it a "fair" question.

In Ohio, the leading candidate in the GOP primary for Senate blasted out a video urging Republicans to resist the "tyranny" of a federal government that pushed them to wear masks and take vaccines authorized by the Food and Drug Administration.

"When the Gestapo show up at your front door," the candidate, Josh Mandel, a grandson of Holocaust survivors, said in the video in September, "you know what to do."

And in Congress, violent threats against lawmakers are on track to double this year. Republicans who break party ranks and defy former President Donald Trump have come to expect insults, invective and death threats — often stoked by their own colleagues and conservative activists, who have denounced them as traitors.

From congressional offices to community meeting rooms, threats of violence are becoming commonplace among a significant segment of the Republican Party. Ten months after rioters attacked the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, and after four years of a president who often spoke in violent terms about his adversaries, right-wing Republicans are talking more openly and frequently about the use of force as justifiable in opposition to those who dislodged him from power.

In Washington, D.C., where decorum and civility are still given lip service, violent or threatening language still remains uncommon, if not unheard-of, among lawmakers who spend a great deal of time in the same building. But among the most fervent conservatives, who play an outsize role in primary contests and provide the party with its activist energy, the belief that the country is at a crossroads that could require armed confrontation is no longer limited to the fringe.

Political violence has been part of the American story since the founding of the country, often entwined with racial politics and erupting in periods of great change. More than 70 brawls, duels and other violent incidents embroiled members of Congress from 1830 to 1860 alone. And elements of the left have contributed to the confrontational tenor of the country's current politics, although Democratic leaders routinely condemn violence and violent imagery. But historians and those who study democracy say what has changed has been the embrace of violent speech by a sizable portion of one party, including some of its loudest voices inside government and most influential voices outside.

In effect, they warn, the Republican Party is mainstreaming menace as a political tool.

Omar Wasow, a political scientist at Pomona College in Claremont, Calif., who studies protests and race, drew a contrast between the current climate and earlier periods of turbulence and strife, such as the 1960s or the run-up to the Civil War. "What's different about almost all those other events is that now, there's a partisan divide around the legitimacy of our political system," he said. "The elite endorsement of political violence from factions of the Republican Party is distinct for me from what we saw in the 1960s. Then, you didn't have — from a president on down — politicians calling citizens to engage in violent resistance."

From Trump's earliest campaigning to the final moments of his presidency, his political image has incorporated the possibility of violence. He encouraged attendees at his rallies to "knock the hell" out of protesters, praised a lawmaker who body-slammed a reporter and in a recent book interview defended rioters who clamored to "hang Mike Pence."

Notably few GOP leaders have spoken out against violent language or behavior since Jan. 6, suggesting with their silent acquiescence that doing so would put them at odds with a significant share of their party's voters. When the Idaho man asked about "killing" political opponents at an event hosted by conservative activist Charlie Kirk, Kirk said he must "denounce" the question but went on to discuss at what point political violence could be justified.

In that vacuum, the coarsening of GOP messaging has continued: Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz., this past week tweeted an anime video altered to show him killing Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., and swinging two swords at President Joe Biden.

Lee Drutman, a senior fellow at left-leaning group New America who has studied political violence, said there was a connection between such actions and the growing view that politics is a struggle between enemies.

"When you start dehumanizing political opponents, or really anybody, it becomes a lot easier to inflict violence on them," Drutman said. "I have a hard time seeing how we have a peaceful 2024 election after everything that's happened now," he added. "I don't see the rhetoric turning down; I don't see the conflicts going away. I really do think it's hard to see how it gets better before it gets worse."

Democrats are seeking Gosar's censure, arguing that "depictions of violence can foment actual violence and jeopardize the safety of elected officials."

The ranking GOP lawmakers, Sen. Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California, did not respond to repeated requests for comment. McCarthy, who initially condemned the Jan. 6 attack and said "violence is never a legitimate form of protest," more recently has joked about hitting Nancy Pelosi in the head with a gavel if he were to replace her as speaker. Like nearly all of the members of his caucus, McCarthy has said nothing about Gosar's video.

For his part, Gosar suggested that critics were overly thin-skinned, insisting that the video was an allegory for a debate over immigration policy. He was slaying "the policy monster of open borders," not Ocasio-Cortez or Biden, his office said. "It is a symbolic cartoon. It is not real life."

There is little indication that the party has yet to pay a political price.

Even after corporations and donors vowed to withhold donations to the GOP after the Jan. 6 attack, Republicans outraised Democrats. And they outperformed expectations in the elections this month, capturing the Virginia governorship, winning a host of upset victories in suburban contests and making a surprisingly strong showing in New Jersey.

Yet, violent talk has tipped over into actual violence in ways big and small. School board members and public health officials have faced a wave of threats, prompting hundreds to leave their posts. A recent investigation by Reuters documented nearly 800 intimidating messages to election officials in 12 states.

And threats against members of Congress have jumped by 107% compared with the same period in 2020, according to the Capitol Police.

Bradford Fitch, president of the Congressional Management Foundation, which advises lawmakers on issues such as running their offices and communicating with constituents, said he now urges members not to hold open public meetings because of security concerns. Politics, he said, had become "too raw and radioactive."