Robert Reich: The threat of 'fascist political violence' has 'clearly intimidated Republican lawmakers'

19 January 2024

Countless Donald Trump foes, from special counsel Jack Smith to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg Jr. to former Elle Magazine columnist E. Jean Carroll, have been inundated with death threats from the former president's MAGA supporters.

The Lincoln Project's Rick Wilson, a Never Trump conservative and former GOP strategist, obtained a license to carry a concealed weapon because of the MAGA death threats he has received. And Paul Pelosi, former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's husband, was attacked by a hammer-wielding MAGA extremist who broke into their home in October 2022.

Many Trump critics fear the possibility of violence during the 2024 presidential election — a possibility that liberal economist Robert Reich, former labor secretary in the Clinton Administration, explores in his December 19 column for The Guardian.

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Reich notes that death threats have been a disturbing reality for many of Trump's detractors, including Smith, Judge Tanya Chutkan and Fulton County, Georgia District Attorney Fani Willis. And Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold, he adds, said she received "64 death threats" within three weeks after filing a lawsuit calling for Trump to be removed from the state's election ballot.

These are not isolated incidents, Reich warns, but rather, show a pattern of violence from the MAGA movement — and everyone from judges and prosecutors to members of Congress has been threatened and feared for their safety.

"In 2016, the Capitol Police recorded fewer than 900 threats against members of Congress," Reich explains. "In 2017, after Trump took office, that figure more than quadrupled, according to the Capitol Police. The numbers continued to rise every year of the Trump presidency, peaking at 9700 in 2021.… Data also shows extraordinarily high levels of threats against mayors, federal judges, election workers and administrators, public health officials, and even school board members. The threats have clearly intimidated some Republican lawmakers."

Reich continues, "The retiring Sen. Mitt Romney recounted, in McKay Coppins' biography of him, that during Trump's 23 January 2021 impeachment for incitement of insurrection, a member of the Republican Senate leadership was leaning toward voting to convict Trump. But after several other senators expressed concern about their personal safety and that of their children, the senator in question voted to acquit. Former Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney said that in that impeachment vote, 'there were members who told me that they were afraid for their own security — afraid, in some instances, for their lives.'

"Political violence," Reich warns, "is an inherent part of fascism."

"America is not the Weimar Republic on the eve of 1933, and Trump is not Hitler," the economist/Guardian columnist argues. "But it is important to understand the parallels."

Robert Reich's full Guardian column is available at this link.

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