There is free speech, and then there is speech that incites and foments rage and violence. These MAGAs are drifting far more toward the latter. On the same night that Trump told his rallygoers in Warren, Michigan, that the Democrats want him in prison “because they’re sick” (This coming from a man who won office on “Lock her up”), Marjorie Taylor Greene told an audience that Democrats are killing Republicans.
From The Insider:
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene deceptively claimed at a rally for former President Donald Trump in Warren, Michigan, on Saturday that Democrats are murdering Republicans. “I’m not going to mince words with you all,†Greene said. “Democrats want Republicans dead. They’ve already started the killings.â€
Greene, who has repeatedly spread bizarre conspiracy theories, went on to reference a local news story to support her baseless claim that Democrats are hunting down GOP voters. “An 18-year-old was run down by a Democrat driver who confessed to killing the teenager simply because he was a Republican,†said Greene.
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However, North Dakota Highway Patrol Captain Bryan Niewind told Fox News that his department’s investigations have “uncovered no evidence to support the claim†that the murder had anything to do with politics or that the victim was a Republican.
It is difficult to establish whether a random 18-year-old is a Republican, Democrat, completely agnostic, whatever.
But these people are conditioned to embrace conspiracy theories. Even more dangerously, many of them are now conditioned to see violence as a legitimate political tool, given that Democrats are “sick,” and “already murdering” Republicans. As violent as the MAGA rhetoric may be, if someone claimed on Twitter that “MAGAs are murdering Democrats,” it wouldn’t be believed. It would be a national story if it were a pattern worthy of generalization. Any one incident is meaningless. Awful random stuff happens all the time.
So one is left with the question, why would Greene even say such a thing and there are no good answers. The worst answer, however, is that it’s coordinated communication meant to normalize the idea of political violence because the MAGA pols want their minority of Americans to lash out violently if Trump is indicted. It is possible.
@JasonMiciak believes a day without learning is a day not lived. He is a political writer, features writer, author, and attorney. He is a Canadian-born dual citizen who spent his teen and college years in the Pacific Northwest and has since lived in seven states. He now enjoys life as a single dad of a young girl, writing from the beaches of the Gulf Coast. He loves crafting his flower pots, cooking, and currently studies philosophy of science, religion, and non-math principles behind quantum mechanics and cosmology. Please feel free to contact with any concerns.
