A rising tide sinks all boats
Seeding the atmosphere for more political violence
David DePape, 42, is the individual charged with attempted murder and other crimes in the attack Friday morning on Paul Pelosi, the husband of Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. DePape broke into the Pelosis’ home looking for “Nancy” and then assaulted Paul with a hammer after he found out she wasn’t there. Many news accounts since have attempted to determine what motivated the attack and, in one sense, the answer seems clear: DePape has, in various online fora, been trafficking in all sorts of conspiracy theories for years, including that the 2020 election was stolen. And, it would appear, he deemed Nancy Pelosi a prime culprit for that which such conspiracy theories say hurt our country.
Every account so far of DePape’s beliefs reveals someone consumed by a pastiche of off-the-wall ideas and it seems fair to suppose that he is, in fact, mentally ill. The latter characterization has become especially loaded in our political discourse in recent years, since to deem someone mentally ill is understood to be, in some senses, letting them off the hook for their behavior. I generally agree with what Freddie DeBoer has to say about how we adjudicate and argue over questions of mental illness in this political era. In that light, I mention DePape’s possible mental state not to give him a free pass, but to note that one can both be deemed mentally ill (a characterization of an individual’s state of mind) and part of a disturbing larger trend that reflects the increasingly perilous state our country is descending into. We’ve had unhinged would-be assassins before, like John Hinckley, Jr.1 and Squeaky Fromme2. And violent attacks on top elected officials (and their families) remain rare in our politics.
But something larger is going on. Several news outlets reported on Friday that a joint intelligence assessment about the upcoming elections warns that domestic violent extremists pose a significant threat in the upcoming elections and beyond. Quoting from some of CNN’s report on the assessment:
“Following the 2022 midterm election, perceptions of election-related fraud and dissatisfaction with electoral outcomes likely will result in heightened threats of violence against a broad range of targets―such as ideological opponents and election workers,” it states.
Enduring perceptions of election fraud related to the 2020 general election continue to contribute to the radicalization of some violent extremists, and likely would “increase their sensitivity to any new claims perceived as reaffirming their belief that US elections are corrupt,” according to the assessment.
…
“We assess that election-related perceptions of fraud and [domestic violent extremist] reactions to divisive topics will likely drive sporadic [domestic violent extremist] plotting of violence and broader efforts to justify violence in the lead up to and following the 2022 midterm election cycle,” the bulletin states.
“The midterm elections are occurring at a time when the nation is experiencing what has been described as the most volatile, complex and dynamic threat environment in recent times,” former DHS intel chief and counterterrorism coordinator John Cohen told CNN. “Communities across the nation continue to experience mass casualty attacks and other acts of targeted violence by individuals inspired by conspiracy theories.”
In some ways, none of this is new. As I’ve written about before, national security officials have been warning for over a decade that right-wing extremism has emerged as the most significant violent domestic political threat we face. All of that has worsened in recent years, of course, as groups like the Proud Boys and Oathkeepers have been legitimized by GOP elites, most consequentially by Trump himself. The attempted overthrow of Joe Biden’s election victory was only the most high profile of a broader gathering storm.
In discerning the relationship between climate change broadly and extreme weather events, one cannot “prove” that every specific hurricane is a consequence of atmospheric changes induced by increased carbon emissions (perhaps someone will correct me about that). But it is certainly possible to draw a relationship between climate change and the heightened frequency of extreme weather events.
Likewise, it can be a fool’s errand to try to discern specifically what motivates individual acts of political violence. I don’t mean that we can’t hypothesize that DePape wanted to harm (or worse) Pelosi for political reasons. I just mean that millions of people share at least some of DePape’s views, most notably the myth of the stolen 2020 election, without deciding to break into the Speaker’s home. It still takes a special kind of person to actually go that far.
But we can say with greater confidence that GOP elites, starting with Trump, and including Tucker Carlson, MTG, Ted Cruz3, Jim Jordan, Alex Jones, Ron Johnson, Mike Lindell and many others, see it as in their political and economic interests to poison the political atmosphere as much as possible, thus seeding a climate in which political violence like the intended attack on Nancy Pelosi and her husband’s assault is evermore common. I still can’t get over this little-reported incident:
It’s hard to imagine what could de-escalate this rising tide of violence-normalization, since there is no meaningful counterweight in the GOP - Republican officials who did speak out against this stuff risk immediate excommunication. None of this to deny that some political violence targets political figures on the right. But only on one side’s elites is there such normalization and that starts with the conscience-less and bloodthirsty man at the top - the person who in 2016 William Saletan described as the “warlord” of the GOP’s “failed state.” So, while DePape himself remains an outlier, the pool from which the David DePapes of the world are drawn will continue to broaden. We face more political violence ahead.
Hinckley, Jr shot and seriously wounded President Reagan in 1981.
Fromme, a former “Manson girl,” attempted to shoot President Ford in 1975. He was not injured.
Sources have informed me that Cruz issued a clear condemnation of the attack on the Pelosis. For the record.