Paul Pelosi, David DePape, and the War on the Internet: The Phenomenology of Right-Wing Political Perturbations

The embrace of conspiratorial and violent ideology and rhetoric by many Republican politicians during and after the Trump presidency, anti-government anger related to the pandemic, disinformation, cultural polarization, the ubiquity of guns and radicalized internet culture have all led to the current moment, and none of those trends are in retreat. Donald Trump was the first American president to rouse an armed mob that stormed the Capitol and threatened lawmakers. These factors form a social framework that allows for political violence that can undermine a democracy. We wouldn’t be the first.

Given such alarming statistics and the harrowing nature of the attack on Paul Pelosi, it is likely that those who can influence extremists to cool the temperature will be the natural response. It is a mark of the unchained times that right-wing politicians turn up the political outrage machine when Republicans condemn the attack.

According to a federal affidavit, the accused, David DePape, who is due to be arraigned Tuesday, told investigators that he planned to kidnap the third-ranking federal official and break “her kneecaps” if she lied. He said that Paul Pelosi had struck the elderly man on the head with a hammer after he missed her.

This version of events will be examined in court and it is not smart to link one piece of rhetoric to another. But the incident leaves extremist politicians who fling vitriol – yet refuse to take responsibility for their words – on ever more tenuous ground.

Republican politicians who told the truth about Trump’s election fraud nonsense found themselves subject to threats against them and family members. Two years on from that tumultuous election, temperatures are boiling again. The FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, the US Capitol Police and the National Counterterrorism Center warned last week that the perception of election fraud in 2020 will radicalize violent extremists and that similar feelings could result in heightened threats to ideological opponents and election workers. So while the Paul Pelosi attack is a specific case, it fits into a broader stream of political menace.

The elevation of such conspiracy and commentary on the internet was not confined to the fringes of the internet; they were also coming from one of Donald Trump’s sons and a Republican candidate for the governorship of Arizona. Lake joked about Paul Pelosi’s assault and security at his home. That anyone could find humor in a physical attack is troubling, especially given America’s recent history of political violence.

Since the 2016 election campaign, rhetoric from former President Donald Trump and MAGA Republicans in Congress has inspired right-wing domestic terrorists to violence. We have seen an increase in the number of extremists willing to engage in political violence, militia groups are more likely to engage in political violence, and political violence is still occurring even after Trump was elected.

The Paul Pelosi attack also took place against a backdrop of tension surrounding the midterm elections next week, including reports of groups monitoring voter drop boxes in Arizona. A former poll worker from Georgia shared with the House select committee earlier this summer that she felt unsafe due to Trump’s voter fraud claims and asked if she knew how it felt to be the target of a president.

Trump, Musk and an Oath Keeper: Predicting the January 6 National Resurrection Attack on the Capitol & the Associated Violence

A Washington Post poll taken around the anniversary of the insurrection in January found, meanwhile, that 34% of Americans – and 40% of Republicans – said violence against the government is sometimes justified.

We have seen threats against congress people and their families go up to 9,500, which is double what we have seen before.

Donald Trump Jr. retweeted a conspiracy theory social media post featuring a hammer, as though the ordeal suffered by Paul Pelosi, who is still in the hospital, was funny. Musk, the new owner of the social media service, deleted a post that he had reposted, raising the possibility that the new owner might cause more angst in the political community.

“This attack goes to the core of our democracy and it can’t be just written off to some crazy person. What our leaders say matters,” Ed Davis, a former Boston police commissioner, said on “CNN Newsroom” on Monday.

For instance, Trump claimed in an interview that what happened was terrible, but that it was a symptom of rising crime in American cities.

The House January 6 committee has already shown how Trump’s incitement before and after that day convinced those who attacked the Capitol they were doing what he wanted. That impression was further underlined on Monday when a former member of the Oath Keepers extremist group told a jury that after the election, he felt a “sense of desperation and hopelessness” because he believed Trump’s claims that fraud was committed in the 2020 election.

“I guess I was acting like a traitor against my own government,” said Graydon Young, the first Oath Keeper to plead guilty to conspiracy in connection to January 6.

Resolving the Pelosi Attack on Election Day: “What happens if we don’t know what to do?” Reply to Finchem

His comments showed the power of inflammatory rhetoric coming from leaders like Trump who have made comments about political violence.

“It is very sad to see that once again, we are at a point in history where people believe it is okay to express their political sentiments through violence,” she said.

The Pelosi attack added to those concerns after the release of an internal bulletin within federal agencies about a heightened threat from domestic violent extremists.

She said that there was little violence around Election Day in 2020. “There was lots of preparation and has been even more preparation by government, non-government groups to ensure that that’s the case this year again.”

Still, early voting in some places has been fraught. In Arizona, armed civilians in tactical gear showed up at ballot drop boxes, ostensibly to monitor voters. Republicans have encouraged activities that prompted claims of voter intimidation.

Mark Finchem is the Republican nominee for Arizona’s secretary of state and he has encouraged his followers to watch vote operations in their communities, because of his allegations of election fraud.

You are responsible for your election, not me. There were people at the rally who pledged allegiance to the flag at the Capitol on Jan. 6. You need to be at the polls. You cannot leave this to someone else.”

Ronna McDaniel, chair of the Republican National Committee, said recently the RNC had trained more than 30,000 poll watchers ahead of this year’s midterms.

The clerk of Weld County, Colo., told Colorado Public radio that the 35 poll watchers that she approved for the primary had ties to election denial groups.

It can present a difficult situation. On one hand, having conspiracy-minded volunteers involved in the process can be a valuable chance to educate them on the way elections actually work.

It can be a powder keg if some people think there is widespread fraud and need to look into it.

“It is not about service nor volunteering; it’s about activism and vindicating an election from a couple years ago,” he said. That can lead to conflict.

Researchers say the days following the election may pose a greater risk of violence than Election Day itself, particularly in locations where vote counting drags on.

Oren Segal, vice president of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, said that what happens if people don’t have their preferred candidate win? “They have seen that denial is a way forward, that you’re able to create a community of conspiracy around that. I don’t think violence is that far behind.

They have seen that denial is a way forward, that you’re able to create a community of conspiracy around that. I think violence is not that far behind.

Creating Evidence: How the Far-Right Campaign is Preparing for 2020 Elections and its Implications for the 2020 Democratic Reionization

The voices on the Right are preparing for litigation surrounding races that don’t favor Republican candidates.

Tape recently surfaced of former Trump lawyer John Eastman, whose involvement in trying to overturn the 2020 election has been a central theme of the Jan. 6 committee’s investigation into the attack on the Capitol, encouraging a crowd in New Mexico to scrutinize their election officials and take detailed notes that can be used in future lawsuits.

“You are allowed to make a written record of anything you see not going on correctly,” Eastman said, according to audio obtained by the watchdog group Documented. “That’s called creating evidence.”

Hiller, of the Bridging Divides Initiative, said she expects the field of locations where threats of violence are most pernicious to narrow fairly quickly. Her team is specifically keeping an eye on races in the swing states of Arizona, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Michigan and Georgia, where false claims of past election fraud have been embraced not just by many voters, but by some political leaders as well.

She said that the states are where senior leaders in the GOP are already questioning the results or advocating for violence around it.

Hiller is optimistic that there will be resources available for the institutions that have preserved the democratic process.

One of the stories of 2020 is that many fail-safes worked. The court systems were effective. A lot of the recounts that happened were incredibly effective. She said that people were able to rush resources to those locations. We are in for another election that’s going to test those resources and resolve.

It is possible this cycle may portend the next presidential election in just a few years. If Donald Trump runs for president again, experts say there will be more effort to undermine democracy in the upcoming elections, which they say could affect the outcome of the White House race.

People will be allowed to get away with confronting people at voting booths, polling stations, etc. Segal asked about it. “In that sense, perhaps that’s what people mean by a ‘dry run.’ “

The upcoming election will test whether local organizing of far-right groups around challenging voter rolls and vote counting will be a success or a failure. If it does, those efforts would be expected to continue or ramp up into the presidential election cycle.

“Groups have been preparing day in and day out,” she said. If someone attempts to create issues in a polling place, the majority of polling places are going to be well prepared for that. There’s a lot of thought to make sure folks are supported with de-escalating skills.

Segal said it’s critical that local and national institutions and leaders demonstrate in the coming weeks how they will navigate a supercharged political event.

The Violence That Prevents the Birth of Democracy: A Democrat-Laborative Comment on the March 6, 2016 Attack on the US Capitol

The Chairman of the Committee on Homeland Security is a Democrat from Mississippi, named Bennie G. Thompson. The views expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion on CNN.

This August, after the execution of a federal search warrant at Mar-a-Lago, violent rhetoric from the far-right escalated exponentially, including – shockingly – calls for civil war. Sen. Lindsey Graham, a Republican from South Carolina, warned that if former President Trump is prosecuted, there will be “riots in the streets.” MAGA Rep. Paul Gosar of Arizona compared the FBI to “brown shirts,” a term used to describe Nazi storm troopers.

There is still no way that the nation can stop a slide toward chaos. If institutions and individuals make it intolerable in American public life, violence in the service of political objectives can be pushed to the fringes. When a faction of one of the country’s two main political parties embraces extremism, that makes thwarting it both more difficult and more necessary. A well-functioning democracy demands it.

According to a survey, half of the country believes there will be civil war in the United States in the next few years; and more than one in 10 Americans say they are willing to commit political violence in order to get their wants.

Violence is increasingly faced by our public spaces. Mass shootings, hostage taking and other violent plots have reduced state capitols, grocery stores, schools, houses of worship, and concerts to crime scenes. Just last week, the federal government released a bulletin warning that there is a heightened threat to next week’s midterm elections by a rise in violent domestic extremism.

According to experts at the University of Chicago, an estimated 13 million Americans believe force would be justified to restore Trump to the White House, and an estimated 15 million Americans would support using force to prevent the former president from being prosecuted. These numbers show that the rule of law and safety are under attack.

Having spent nearly 30 years in Congress, including as Chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security and, since last year, the Select Committee to Investigate the January 6 Attack on the US Capitol, I know that not every Republican embraces the MAGA extremism that is turning many to violence. I am aware that the leader of the Republican party is scuttling out the voices of reason while they erode American democracy. In fact, many on the right are all too willing to exploit this extremism – and resulting division – for political gain.

What ensued has been all too predictable. Within an hour after the search, there were over three hundred% more posts about “civil war”. Federal law enforcement saw a rise in the number of threats against them. A week later, an armed man attempted to breach an FBI office in Ohio before engaging in an hours-long standoff with police. The man was killed when he pointed his gun at the police.

Statutes against private paramilitary activity are written into state constitutions, as well as the legal tools to do so. “I fear that the country is entering a phase of history with more organized domestic civil violence than we’ve seen in 100 years,” said Philip Zelikow, the former executive director of the 9/11 commission, who pioneered legal strategies to go after violent extremists earlier in his career. We have done it before and can do it again.