Texas teacher Frank Strong receives threats after a video depicting himself as an extreme groomer who endangers children with sexually explicit books is posted on social media, and anger and retribution shape the unrest. He believes he became the target of a toxic culture. It’s been a decade since Donald Trump continued to politically dominate the American imagination.
Mr. Strong, a high school English teacher, said the backlash he has endured in his fight to prevent schools from banning books about racial and sexual identity has had a “chilling effect.” . “I don’t know who these people are or what they’re capable of. This ugliness and intimidation is a Trump-era thing. There’s a real danger of it accelerating.”
Librarians are being harassed, teachers are being vilified, and election workers are being threatened. Immigrants are demonized and armed groups march outside state capitols. Even meteorologists are targets of conspiracy theories.
“One election worker said, ‘I can’t go to the grocery store without looking like an outcast,'” said Tammy Patrick, chief program officer at the National Association. Election officials said Trump’s supporters have shown disdain for the election system since his defeat in 2020. “Another had to remove his name from the mailbox of his family’s farm in Wisconsin, which had been run for five generations, because he feared threats from people coming from out of town. A worker in Arizona poisoned his dog.
As evidenced by the recent hate-filled rally at Madison Square Garden, President Trump’s increasingly bleak vision of America is less about unity and commitment than about him and his white working-class base. It is a suspicion and dissatisfaction directed at people who intersect with the world. He has so normalized coarse language and sideline inhumanity that his statements and well-documented lies that would have doomed a candidate just a few years ago. has lost the ability to shock even some conservative Christians who support him.
He stands out more than any American president in history for what he does for the country. He has destructive and corrosive power.
— William Howell, Professor of Political Science, on Donald Trump
“He speaks to anger and fear and is the voice for it,” said William Howell, a political science professor at the University of Chicago and co-author of “Presidents, Populism, and the Crisis of Democracy.” “He didn’t invent divisive rhetoric. We have a long history of that. But he took it to new heights. He’s doing it for the country. He is a destructive and corrosive force unlike any previous American president.
A recent study by the Chicago Project on Security and Threats suggests how President Trump has incited extreme actions and increased the potential for political violence. Six percent of Americans (representing 15 million adults) believe that force is justified to return President Trump to the White House. Eight percent of adults (approximately 21 million people) agree that force may be used to prevent Trump from returning to office.
“Sometimes revenge is justified,” Trump said. He called for revenge against his political opponents, including President Biden, and suggested that retired Gen. Mark A. Milley, the former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, deserved to be executed.
Republicans have sought to assuage such sentiments by portraying them as election fanaticism rather than actual intentions. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Florida) told CNN in July: I have no intention of going after his political opponents. ”
President Trump has been described as a fascist by his former chief of staff, John Kelly. He sometimes sounds like a 1930s German newsreel, calling his enemies “vermin” and “sick people” and claiming that immigrants are “contaminating the blood of our country.” He cited gangster Al Capone to woo authoritarians such as Russian President Vladimir Putin and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whom Trump called “my friend.” Speak with all your heart. The CIA concluded that Salman ordered the murder of opposition journalist Jamal Khashoggi in 2018 while President Trump was in office.
President Trump, who has been impeached twice and is facing further trial for a convicted felon, said he, and by extension his supporters, have been persecuted by a “bizarre” and unjust state. According to his ramblings on the campaign trail, he is the antidote and protector of the working class. “At the end of the day, they’re not coming after me,” he tells his supporters. “They’re coming after you and I’m just getting in the way.”
Since the 2016 campaign, Mr. Trump has stirred up America’s culture wars and toyed with his opponent’s politics. This strategy later drove the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, but his recent call that if re-elected he would convene the military and Justice Department to quell the “enemy from within” It’s amplified.
Moved by his message, his supporters and other far-right conservatives have decried COVID-19 restrictions, threatened teachers and librarians who opposed book bans, and in more extreme cases Planned to kidnap Democratic Michigan Governor Gretchen Whitmer. Some people convicted of crimes related to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol have said President Trump was the motive.
Amanda Jones, a librarian in Denham Springs, Louisiana, has come under fire for speaking out against censorship and book banning.
(Pablo Isaac Perez/For the Times)
Amanda Jones feels that anger. The Louisiana school librarian faced harassment and threats from right-wing elements after speaking out against censorship. She said she was concerned about the vengeful atmosphere President Trump is creating.
“Our presidential election will determine how far we go,” she said, adding that if Trump wins, “there will be even more hatred.” There will be a large gathering of working educators and librarians. President Trump has allowed people to hate and attack. I noticed that right after the George Floyd protests. People started saying the quiet parts out loud. ”
Tucson Mayor Regina Romero said President Trump’s years of hate speech against immigrants have added a dangerous tone to the nation’s immigration debate. “The longer you repeat a lie, the more people will believe it,” said Romero, a Democrat and the daughter of immigrant farm workers from Mexico. “It’s a very scary kind of language. …It’s not an invasion [of migrants]. That’s racist rhetoric. ”
Trump and his supporters are specifically aiming to discredit the country’s electoral system. Republicans have filed dozens of lawsuits to pre-emptively challenge the Nov. 5 election if Trump loses.
Pressure is mounting on election officials and front-line workers. Some now wear Kevlar vests to protect themselves from would-be gunmen after being attacked and threatened four years ago. Many people rent cars because their personal cars are being tracked. Election offices are equipped with panic buttons and bulletproof glass, and mail is monitored for envelopes containing fentanyl.
Patrick said the problem comes from “a vocal minority of people who want to suck the oxygen out of the room and sow chaos.” He said election officials have been receiving creepy texts and phone calls, including one saying, “I know your son’s window is on the second floor next to an oak tree.” It added that it was included.
President Trump has sought retribution against those he opposed during his time in office, including former FBI Director James B. Comey, and has vowed to retaliate again if re-elected.
“This is how fascism comes to America,” political commentator and former Washington Post editor Robert Kagan wrote in 2016. “This is how fascism comes to America. Not with jackboots and salutes, but with TV swindlers, charlatan billionaires, and swindlers. “It will come by.” He’s a textbook egomaniac. ”
By the time President Trump slid down the golden escalator to announce his candidacy a year ago, the nation was accustomed to growing hostility and division. The rise of Christian nationalism in the 1980s, the government shutdown in the 1990s, the rise of the Tea Party movement in the 2000s, and an increasingly fragmented and partisan media fueled a politics of blame and grievance. An unabashed showman, Trump has successfully navigated the digital age, channeling the vitriol of social media into the anxieties and fears of a working class who feel angry and betrayed by liberalism and a changing global economic order. tied together.
“This is a populist, anti-establishment era, and it’s about defining and undermining who you’re going against at a time of great life change,” said the longtime political consultant and director of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project. said Mike Madrid, co-founder of. “You can pit people against each other, but if you’re shameless enough, you’ll win in the end. Trump is a product of his time, a voice. We treat them like influencers.”
Turning Point USA co-founder Charlie Kirk will speak at the 2024 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee in July.
(Jason Almond/Los Angeles Times)
Right-wing political activist Charlie Kirk is trying to use the desire for revenge to get his social media followers to vote for Trump. Kirk, co-founder of the student political movement Turning Point USA, who has 4 million followers on Instagram and was once too radical for Republicans, has named one of his podcasts “Retribution Tour 2024?” Ta. he asked his listeners. “Leftists are warning that if Donald Trump is elected president again in 2024, he will use it to exact revenge on the federal government. But the question is, is that a bad thing? .”
Kirk said on another podcast in April that many of Trump’s allies and advisers, including Peter Navarro and Stephen K. Bannon, have been wrongly imprisoned by the Justice Department, which has become a weapon for Democrats. said. “If the other side is willing to put you in jail, leg iron you, handcuff you, and this side just writes op-eds, we’re going to lose,” he said. “It’s time for us to start using handcuffs and leg irons.”
This is the Trump campaign’s fierce argument.
“What happens if Trump wins?” asked Howell, the political science professor. “He promised retribution. This is not about a comprehensive policy. It would be an all-out attack on the administrative state.” He said he plans to seek revenge against those he believes did.
Strong, a teacher from Texas, said that over the past two years he has been exposed to intense right-wing attacks directed at educators who oppose banning certain books about race and sexuality. His Texas Reading Freedom Project monitors attempts at censorship in school districts.
“What struck me was the organization, the amount of money, and the vitriol behind the campaign to ban the book. It was unbelievably bad,” said Strong, who lives in Austin.
He said conservatives with large Instagram and X accounts are “looking for people to target” and directing them to their followers. One person posted on social media last year: [Strong] You’ll regret your pedophilia when power returns. You will be in prison for the rest of your life. To be honest, I want the death penalty for pedo boys like you. Another post said: “Maybe we should contact our local sex offenders and tell them to be honest and tell them that the children of the powerful are fair game.”
Such vitriol is part of the mood of the times, Strong said. “Trump came into office with a sense that it was culturally acceptable to do horrible things to others in public.”
