We’ve talked a lot here at The Hot Screen about the ongoing transformation of the GOP into America’s authoritarian party, and the basic fact that Republicans have continued to build this movement against democracy even though Donald Trump is no longer in office. Indeed, the cracked notion that Trump is actually our rightful president and had the office stolen from him by corrupt Democrats is now a key tenet of the Republican Party.
The move toward lawlessness isn’t just coming from GOP congressmen and other elected officials, though. In recent months, we’ve also seen right-wing parents and others attempt to pressure local school boards on covid-related matters (such as opposition to masking and vaccination requirements) and the teaching of American history that includes references to slavery or racism. The latter effort is embodied in supposed opposition to the teaching of critical race theory, which in reality isn’t even taught at the elementary or high school level at all. These two broad concerns are, not coincidentally, also central emphases of the authoritarian GOP. In fact, there’s plenty of evidence that these protests are being encouraged and organized at least in part by right-wing interests such as Turning Points USA and the DeVos Family Foundation.
It’s not surprising that right-leaning parents, aided by right-leaning groups, are attempting to drum up the appearance of a mass parental movement against vaccine and mask mandates associated with Democratic governance, or against the purported poisoning of white student brains with accurate knowledge of American history. And while these objectives are insane and fundamentally racist, respectively, giving voice to these ideas is hardly out of bounds in and of itself; of course parents have a right to express their thoughts and feelings about what they want their children to be taught. What is out of bounds, though, is the effort not to debate the goals of education, but to harass and intimidate school board members and teachers, including through the threat of violence — which marks this movement as one in which parents are not so much arguing in good faith for certain educational standards for their children, as asserting their right to a style of fascist politics in which might makes right and the ultimate goal is to intimidate your opponents from fighting back or participating in a reasoned debate. And when you add in the role of right-wing corporate groups encouraging this violence, a dark and damning picture emerges of the authoritarian threat we face.
The situation has become so bad that, a week and a half ago, Attorney General Merrick Garland directed “the F.B.I. and U.S. attorneys’ offices to meet with local officials over the next month to coordinate a response to the threats,” and noted that such actions “are not only illegal, they run counter to our nation’s core values.” For once, the Biden administration seems to be acting with dispatch against clearly illicit right-wing agitation against American society.
Garland’s order also had the benefit of fleshing out the relationship between GOP elected officials and the illiberal effort to intimidate schools on basic matter of public health and the teaching of American history. Senator Mitch McConnell pretended that Garland had ordered federal law enforcement to suppress parental free speech, writing to the attorney general that, “Parents absolutely should be telling their local schools what to teach. This is the very basis of representative government.” McConnell’s misdirection, by cutting out reference to the actual violence and harassment that prompted Garland’s action, effectively gives cover and encouragement to that violence and harassment by pretending it’s not happening, and that the U.S. government is engaging in tyrannical overreach. McConnell was not alone in his highly misleading condemnation; Florida Governor Ron DeSantis essentially echoed the senator, stating that, “Florida will defend the free speech rights of its citizens and will not allow federal agents to squelch dissent.” Rather than joining the attorney general in condemning violence against civil servants and educators, both McConnell and DeSantis promoted a false story about a federal crackdown on parents that will likely encourage even more violence and intimidation.
McConnell and DeSantis provide further, chilling evidence that the Republican Party now sees violence as key to its political future, and that supposed grassroots efforts to intimidate opposition to this authoritarian party and movement have the protection of GOP leaders. This is a high-risk strategy, depending greatly on the reluctance of journalists and media outlets to fully report on the party’s embrace of violence, and willingness to accept statements like McConnell’s and DeSantis’ at face value, rather than the dog whistles to further violence that they are.
Such politicians are also depending on the Biden administration and Democrats not to press this case. It’s notable that Garland’s effort to confront what is essentially right-wing violence has provoked efforts by GOP leaders to provide cover for this violence. This is yet another piece of evidence that we are no longer in the realm of peaceful democratic competition between our two major parties, and that the Democrats had better quickly form a coherent and comprehensive strategy for dealing with the fact that the GOP sees violence as just another tool in the toolbox, just as the party has also decided that subversion of elections is an acceptable way to gain power.
Paradoxically, the perceived need to resort to violence and harassment of their opponents, as dangerous as it is for American politics and society, is also the ultimate sign of the basic weakness and failure of the contemporary GOP, and of the roots of the authoritarian movement that has overtaken it. Lacking majority support for morally reprobate ideas like white supremacism and vaccine resistance, enforcing such beliefs through the rule of the gun and rigging our elections system are the remaining, twinned ways forward.