People have been warning for some time that the rhetoric of violence, particularly on the left, would at some point provide the psychological justification in the mind of some already unstable individual to actually carry out an attempt to vent his hatred in a notorious act of violence.I gave some examples of what I was talking about and remarked that I was unaware of anything comparable to the left's hateful rhetoric emanating from the right, and invited readers to send me examples of conservatives engaging in equally violent discourse.
We can't marinate our politics in constant expressions of hate for our opponents without eventually having that hatred boil over in horrible violence.
The hateful rhetoric on the left, from our president on down, has now issued in the death of at least one man, serious injury to a couple of others, and the near assassination of a political candidate.
A friend took me up on the invitation and sent me a few links that contained some despicable stuff written, presumably, by people on the right. As I mentioned to my friend, I should've been more clear in my original post that what I had in mind were repugnant statements from conservatives who were more influential in our society than are most internet trolls since most of the objectionable material I was complaining about was generated by culturally prominent lefties.
Even so, my friend was correct that it's not hard to find disgusting stuff on both left and right. And yet, I'm not convinced that I was mistaken in thinking that expressions of political violence are predominately a characteristic of the left, a conclusion supported by this Daily Mail article:
Until now, many assumed that only a few bad apples wanted the Republican candidate to take a round to the head.Then, more anecdotally, I came across this from Chris Queen at PJMedia:
Not so, says alarming new research from a UK-based academic.
Eric Kaufmann says a shocking third of Democratic voters wished Trump had left his July 13 campaign event in a body bag.
Among progressives, the figure is much higher, says the University of Buckingham politics scholar.
A staggering 71 percent of hard-line lefties said they supported the attempt on Trump's life.
Some items on Amazon shouldn’t be there. Specifically, I’m talking about an array of shirts that call for the death of Donald Trump. I found out about one this week that reads, “THE ONLY GOOD TRUMP IS A DEAD ONE.”Finally, what on earth did Joe Biden mean by saying that House Speaker Mike Johnson was "Dead on arrival" not once, but twice? Imagine the outrage if Trump had said something like that.I searched for “Dead Biden T-shirt” and “Dead Kamala T-shirt,” and while I found a few anti-Biden and anti-Harris shirts, I didn’t see any calling for the death of the president or vice president.
