The results of a recent political poll have been released, and they indicate that 30% of Republicans believe violence may be necessary to solve the problems facing the United States. One in five of the respondents, representing 20% of all Americans or 64 million people, agreed that, “Because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.”
More than two-thirds of Republicans, or 68 percent, continue to believe the 2020 presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump, compared to 26 percent of independents and just 6 percent of Democrats.
If you are wondering how 6% of Democrats could have thought that the election was stolen from Donald Trump, I’m wondering the same thing. Perhaps they actually asked “stolen for Biden” meaning that those Democrats were saying that it was stolen from Sanders. The details of the poll are not yet available.
While it might be fair to paint the machinations during the Democratic primary as, “theft,” the general election was actually tilted in Trump’s favor thanks to the electoral college and voter suppression by Republican-controlled states, which makes the Republican response to this current poll all the more irrational. It’s clear that Americans are still awash in misinformation. Where is it all coming from? The poll results have that covered:
Among Republicans who trust Fox News above other outlets, 82 percent said they believe the election was stolen from Trump. Ninety-seven percent of those who rely mostly on far-right news sources like Newsmax and One America News (OAN) said the same, compared to less than half, 44 percent, of Republicans who trust mainstream news outlets.
By, “mainstream news outlets,” they of course mean outlets that support the Democratic Party (neoliberalism). Fox News is also a “mainstream” news outlet, so it’s an interesting choice of words.
An important detail is that the quality of these responses — with so many believing that Biden stole the general election and that violence is necessary to return the Presidency to far right control — hasn’t really changed since right after the sacking of the capitol. The pollster had expected people to calm down and get back to reality, but they have not.
Meanwhile, the judge in the Kyle Rittenhouse case is doing his best to continue the selective enforcement of laws against violence. Whatever Rittenhouse might have been doing in the moment (it does seem like he was attacked), he was only 17 and was thus illegally open-carrying a rifle in a volatile environment for the stated reason that he wanted to kill people to protect property. In Wisconsin, it is clearly illegal for a 17-year-old to open carry a firearm and it is not legal to kill people to protect property. Ordinarily, an action that is ambiguous (the shooting of a person who attacked him) tends to also become illegal if the accused was clearly in the act of committing another crime. Had he been on the other side, he would be facing at least 3 years in prison.
I mention 3 years specifically because a leftist (anti-fascist medic Daniel Baker) was recently sentenced to 3 years in prison for simply saying that if far-right extremists attacked the US Capitol, they should be met by the armed left. Keep in mind that he didn’t show up anywhere with a gun, and he certainly didn’t shoot anyone like Kyle Rittenhouse did. The crime that Daniel Baker committed, was committed several times by Kyle Rittenhouse, too, yet it isn’t even among the charges that Rittenhouse is facing.
If we broaden our view out to not just Rittenhouse but to include the January 6 sacking of the US capitol, we can see that a leftist can be imprisoned for merely declaring that people should mount an armed defense of the US government, but a fascist cannot be imprisoned for the same thing, or for using deadly force to prevent property crimes, sacking the US capitol, or specifically threatening to execute politicians. This is the essence of selective enforcement, which is just one aspect of systemic fascism.