When Political Lies Lead to Political Violence

From high-level lawmakers to to local poll workers, people who would not live by Trump’s lies have been violently targeted.

What are we learning from the Jan. 6 committee hearings? A lot.

We now know that virtually everyone around Trump – in the White House, the Justice Department and even campaign officials – told him two things: he lost the 2020 election and there was no evidence of significant voter fraud. They were all Republicans who had stayed with Trump to the bitter end; and told him truths he did not want to hear. 

Despite knowing the truth, Donald Trump decided to keep lying and spread that lie to his supporters. 

When the political lies began, political violence followed. 

Some Trump supporters, believing the lie, stormed the Congress of the United States on January 6. They assaulted Capitol police officers and searched for political leaders whom they intended to kill, erecting a noose to “hang Mike Pence” for refusing to obey Trump’s dictates to block certification of the election. We’ve also learned that public servants in Arizona and Pennsylvania who were caught in the president’s politican cross-hairs continue to be threatened by angry mobs. From high-level lawmakers to to local poll workers, those who would not live by Trump’s lies were targeted.

Arizona House Speaker Rusty Bowers and election poll worker Shaye Moss offered harrowing testimony this week about the ugliest, most vicious, hateful, sexualized and racialized taunts and threats they and their families have faced.

Every member of the Jan 6 committee will likely have security details assigned to them, following an increase in the number of violent threats, according to the Washington Post.

Congressman Adam Kinzinger, a committee member, has reported death threats, with specific references to “executing” his wife and child. As the Post reports “Kinzinger warns that the political violence of Jan. 6, 2021 was not an aberration, but a consequence of his party’s repeated lies.”

“There is violence in the future, I’m going to tell you,” Kinzinger said on ABC’s “This Week” program. “And until we get a grip on telling people the truth, we can’t expect any differently.”

Adam Kinzinger🇺🇦🇺🇸✌️ @AdamKinzinger

Here is the letter. Addressed to my wife, sent to my home, threatening the life of my family. The Darkness is spreading courtesy of cowardly leaders fearful of truth. Is the what you want @GOP? Pastors? businessinsider.com/kinzinger-rece…

Political lies lead to political violence.

This is a documented fact.

Donald Trump is a fascist, and the people around him seek fascism over democracy by any means necessary, including violence. Jan. 6 Committee member, Rep. Adam Shiff (D-Calif.) said it most clearly:

“The president’s lie was and is a dangerous cancer on the body politic. If you can convince Americans that they cannot trust their own elections, that any time they lose it is somehow illegitimate, then what is left but violence to determine who should govern?” 

We have learned that even Republicans who voted for Donald Trump became subject to violence when they stood up to his election lies. 

But perhaps the most significant and dangerous reality for our American democracy is that too many Republicans have decided not to stand up to Donald Trump, but to do his bidding, to seek his endorsement, to anoint him the leader of their party. 

As many scholars of democracy have pointed out, the first coup against a democracy often fails, before the next one succeeds. To learn more about this, listen to my conversation with Harvard historian Steven Levitsky, co-author of the book “How Democracies Die” on my podcast Soul of the Nation.

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Perhaps the most important thing we have learned from the hearings is that Jan. 6 was not a one day event that is now over and done with. It was part of a plan to end American democracy. 

That’s why one of the most compelling testimonies from the Jan. 6 committee hearings has come from former federal judge J. Michael Luttig, a conservative Republican appointed to the Fourth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals by President George W. Bush. His testimony is worthy of reflection: 

This is from Judge Luttig’s prepared remarks:

Serious thinkers about the American experiment who are not given to apocalyptic prophesying question whether America is on the verge of a literal civil war. But is even this figurative civil war to be our generation’s legacy to posterity? These wars that we are waging against each other are immoral wars, not moral ones, being immorally waged over morality itself. 

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If one of our national political parties -- one of the two political guardians of our democracy -- cannot agree even as to whether the violent riot and occupation of the United States Capitol, inspired by the President of the United States and carried out by his followers to prevent Congress from counting the votes for the presidency of those same United States, was reprehensible insurrection or needed, legitimate political discourse, we all can agree on nothing. Nor should we. 

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Our polarized political leaders have shamefully and shamelessly failed us. They have summoned our worst demons at the very moment when we needed summoned our better angels …

For years now, taking the lead from our politicians, we Americans have spoken only coarse, desensitizing, dehumanizing political vile at each other, which enables us to speak to each other without guilt or regret. For too many years now, we have spoken to each other as charlatanic political gladiators in an arena that today has become annihilative of America’s future, not promising of that future. 

But still, all it would take to turn America around is a consensus among some number of these political leaders who possess the combined necessary moral authority and who would agree to be bound together by patriotic covenant, to stand up, step forward, and acknowledge to the American People that America is in peril. 

Luttig concludes: “The hour is late. God is watching us.”

To which I will only add, Amen.