FLASH
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In all likelihood, the threats have also worked to suppress the growth of a meaningful anti-Trump faction within the Republican Party.
To be a Republican politician in the age of Trump is to live under the threat of violence from his most fanatical and aggressive followers.
Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah hired personal bodyguards for himself and his family at a cost of $5,000 a day to protect them from threats on their lives after he voted to impeach the former president and remove him from office for his role in the January 6 attack on the Capitol.
After voting to impeach President Donald Trump in the House of Representatives on the same occasion, former Representative Peter Meijer of Michigan bought a bulletproof vest as a precaution against threats on his life. Republicans who voted against Representative Jim Jordan — a staunch Trump ally — for House speaker during last year's leadership stalemate received death threats aimed at themselves and their families.
It's not just Republicans in Congress. Republican lawmakers and election officials in critical states like Georgia, Arizona and Wisconsin have received death threats for enforcing the law and refusing Trump's requests to find or cast ballots in recent presidential elections. And there have been more recent threats against those officials in the political, legal and criminal justice system who have tried to hold Trump accountable for his actions.
On Sunday, an unknown provocateur filed a false police report about the shooting at the home of Judge Tanya S. Chutkan, who is overseeing the Jan. 6 criminal case against the former president. The purpose of this tactic, called "swatting," is for police to react with force under the assumption that someone's life may be in danger. Jack Smith, the federal special counsel leading multiple criminal investigations against Trump, was also a victim of swatting. So was Shenna Bellows, Maine's secretary of state, who removed the former president from the state's primary ballot.
Although so far no one has been physically harmed, these threats have had an effect. First of all, as Zack Beauchamp notes in a perceptive article for Vox, they work to "discipline elected Republicans - to force them to toe whatever line the Trumpists want them to walk, or else"..!
It stands to reason that threats of violence deterred more Republicans from voting to impeach Trump after the January 6 attack. In all likelihood, the threats have also worked to suppress the growth of a meaningful anti-Trump faction within the Republican Party. It is difficult, under normal circumstances, to take a stand against the leader of your political party. It is even more difficult, but also frightening, to do so when the cost of your opposition is a threat to your life or family.
This kind of threat, directed internally against dissidents as much as externally against rivals, is certainly not unique in American history. It has at least one important ancestor.
After the Civil War—when political loyalties were torn across much of the former Confederacy—opponents of black suffrage, the black government, and the Republican Party used violence and intimidation to shake down and discipline those whites who even thought about cooperation or had already agreed to the new order.
There is also a contemporary parallel in how this and other forms of Reconstruction-era violence interacted with the political system.
" The objective was not simply to destroy Republican governments by attacking and dispersing their supporters, but to enable the Democrats to regain power by winning elections. Ironically, the goal was to use violent and illegal means to gain power legitimately, through the electoral process ," said historian Michael Perman in a 1991 essay on the subject.
The former president is no longer able to try to overturn an election result using the power of the federal government. But Trump may try, whether he's the nominee or not, to use the enthusiasm of his followers and associates to tilt the playing field in his direction. He can use intimidation and violence to make officials and ordinary election workers think twice about their decisions. And he can use the example of those Republicans who have crossed the line as a warning to faltering lawmakers and anyone who resists the force of his will.
The story we like to tell about American democracy is that, for the most part, our experiment in self-government has been characterized by restraint and nonviolence more than the reverse. The opposite is true, of course; violence is deeply intertwined with the American experience of democracy.
But there are times when violence is more widespread, when conflicts are sharper. And the thing to keep in mind is that political violence doesn't just stop by itself. There is almost always a starting point. There is almost always a winner. And if we know one thing for sure about Donald Trump, it is that he will do everything not to lose./ Adapted "Pamphlet" from "The New York Times"
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