Led by Donald Trump, Republicans have devised their 2020 election strategy: to actively encourage and encourage violence, and then turn around and dispel anger while promising voters “law and order.”
It’s a strategy Trump used in Washington, DC, when he ordered federal police to harass peaceful Protestants in Lafayette Square, clearly in hopes of using the chaotic images that followed to confirm a lie about violence of Protestants. He did so in Portland, Oregon, and sent federal police in for the sole purpose of causing violent clashes that he could accuse of Protestants. He attempted to pull off the same stunt at his “comeback” rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, but failed because local police did not take the bait and prevented attacks by peaceful Protestants.
But while Trump’s provocations have so often or not returned, his strategy of inciting violence and then “blaming it on the left” began to spread among the Republican series and Fox News. Wednesday night, both at the Republican National Convention and at the party’s favorite propaganda network, the tactic of inciting violence under the guise of ‘law and order’ was fully seen.
Tucker Carlson, whose Fox News show is increasingly distinguishable from white nationalist forums online, was not even subtle about it. His opening segment Wednesday night tried to turn Kyle Rittenhouse – a 17-year-old accused of murder after he accused three Protestants of Black Lives Matters, and two of them murdered, in Kenosha, Wisconsin, on Tuesday night – into a hero.
“How shocked are we that 17-year-olds with guns decided they had to keep order like no one else would?” Carlson said, allegedly, in a shameless lie, “Kenosha has disappeared into anarchy because the authorities responsible for the city have abandoned it.”
None of this is true. Kenosha has caused unrest in the streets since police shot a man named Jacob Blake in the back seven times in front of his children. As with most protests across the country that have become violent, this is not because local police are leaving their messages, but because police are actively making it worse.
As USA Today reported earlier this week, protesters in Kenosha were largely peaceful on Sunday night until police used the “emergency bell traffic” declared by the province as an excuse to start the public in tears. It was only then that the fires and other unrest followed, all started by aggression from the police.
Rittenhouse, a Trump supporter with an adolescent fascination with police, had moved from his hometown in nearby Illinois to Kenosha to join militia groups claiming they were there to ‘help’ keep order. Any fool can see that was not their real purpose. This was a bunch of judges who have spent years with violent fantasies and see the protests as an excuse to crack down on people who demonize them as “warriors of social justice.” These militias are all too often openly supported by police, who may be less interested in keeping order than in defeating protests.
Not surprisingly, the presence of the militia then leads to more disorder and violence, not less. And it’s really rich for Carlson to ask for some enthusiasm for “order” when he actively glorifies a young man accused of murder – while no BLM Protestants in Kenosha have murdered anyone, or are accused of doing so.
Vice President Mike Pence may have been more subtle with his rhetoric, but he was no less guilty than Carlson of inciting legal violence in his keynote address at the Republican National Convention Wednesday night.
After claiming to believe that “violence must stop,” Pence continued to sue Dave Patrick Underwood, a federal police officer “who was shot and killed in the Oakland riots.”
This assertion was wildly misleading. Pence clearly intended his audience to believe that BLM Protestants (like antifa, or other “radicals”) had murdered Underwood. In fact, those accused are Air Force Staff Sgt. Steven Carrillo and a maker named Robert Justus, who are apparently affiliated with the far-right “boogaloo” movement.
Proponents of her case have been working to make the actual transcript of this statement available online. Proponents of her case have been working to make the actual transcript of this statement available online. The plan is to use BLM protests as a cover for violent acts. a conflict.
In Facebook posts just before the assassination, Carrillo said explicitly: “We have mobs of angry people to use to our advantage.”
While angry about Underwood’s murder, Pence gave the alleged killer exactly what he wanted: A bait-and-shoot in which BLM Protestants were accused of violence caused by the law. It may have been more refined than what Carlson did, but Pence still encouraged right-wing militaries to act on their violent fantasies, signaling that they would be rewarded by the Trump administration for helping them escalate their false stories.
Do not buy Pence’s crocodile tears over a dead officer. If he was actually against police being killed, he would not encourage the boogaloo movement that much.
Trump’s belief that he needs violence on the streets to be re-elected has now become the common wisdom of the Republican Party and Fox News. And because Trump thinks he needs violence, the order of the day is to encourage it, in any way that is necessary. All this Republican manipulation on “law and order” is extremely limitless. Trump wants violence, and by God his allies will give it to him. They do not do much harm to anyone who is injured or killed along the way.
