Comparative Incitement

Welcome, Republicans newly concerned about stochastic terrorism. Kindly look in the mirror.

Since the near-assassination of Donald Trump, there have been calls from across the political spectrum to tone down our overheated political rhetoric. 

In some ways, I’m thrilled by such calls, since I’ve been making them on and off for years, including in this newsletter. But the temerity of Republicans to be making them is astonishing, because when you compare the rhetoric of the left Left and the Right, the Right’s is far more extreme, angry, and personal. Let’s take a look.

1. A Record of Incitement

Here is a small sample of the incendiary, vitriolic things Trump has said during the last year alone:

Trump, March 2, 2024:  “Biden’s conduct on our border is by any definition a conspiracy to overthrow the United States of America. Biden and his accomplices want to collapse the American system, nullify the will of the actual American voters and establish a new base of power that gives them control for generations.”

Trump, Nov. 11, 2023:  “We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections. They’ll do anything, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America and to destroy the American Dream.”

Trump, Oct. 5, 2023: “Nobody has any idea where these people [immigrants] are coming from, and we know they come from prisons. We know they come from mental institutions and insane asylums. We know they’re terrorists. Nobody has ever seen anything like we’re witnessing right now. It is a very sad thing for our country. It’s poisoning the blood of our country. It’s so bad, and people are coming in with disease. People are coming in with every possible thing that you could have.”   (

Robert P. Jones

at White Too Long has done a fantastic, meticulous job comparing these statements with quotes from Mein Kampf.  More on his work below.)

Trump, Feb. 23, 2024: “The greatest threat is not from the outside of our country. I really believe this. It's from within. It's the people from within our country that are more dangerous than the people outside... They're very sick people, in my opinion. In many cases, they're sick. I'm here today because I know that to achieve victory in this fight, just like in the battles of the past, we still need the hand of our Lord and the grace of Almighty God. We have to have that…  The whole thing is crazy what's happening in our country. Let's call these brave Americans [the J6 ‘hostages] what they really are: persecuted Christians. They're being persecuted, and… they are being imprisoned by Joe Biden and his people, evil people. He's surrounded by very evil people.”

Of course, these examples could go on for tens of thousands of words. Each one is exhorting a bitter hatred of its target, framing them as evil, anti-Christian, even inhuman. And I haven’t even included those by Trump boosters like Elon Musk, Tucker Carlson, Jesse Watters, or Alex Jones. That would take a book. Which I do not want to write.

Midjourney flubbed the AI prompt but I’m totally here for it. Also these dogs do look like the candidates, right?

2. Violent Consequences

Nor are these statements mere rhetoric. In fact, they have led to murder.

Even if Trump’s shooter was inspired by something some left-winger said (which we don’t yet know – he was actually a registered Republican and gun nut), he can join a much longer list of mass murderers inspired by the “stochastic terrorism” of loud voices on the Right.  That list includes Robert Bowers (the Tree of Life murderer who believed in the Great Replacement Theory and the lies that “illegals” commit more crimes than other people – lies repeated at the RNC this week), Dylann Roof (the Charleston church murderer who became radicalized by right-wing commentaries on the Trayvon Martin killing), Cesar Sayoc Jr. (the serial mail-bomber and rabid Trump supporter), and numerous others. 

Of course the mass shootings are the tip of the hate iceberg.  Back in 2020, an ABC News investigation found 54 criminal cases in which Trump’s name was used in connection with an act of violence. Mostly perpetrators were white men, and most victims were Black, Latino, Muslim, or gay.

I mentioned Robert Jones above – he and the organization he directs, Public Religion Research Institute, has also done important work tracking support for political violence on the Left and on the Right.  Here’s some of what they’ve found:

As you can see, there’s no comparison between support for political violence on the Left and the Right. Which makes sense; the Right’s authoritarianism valorizes testosterone-and-cortisol-fueled emotions like anger, rage, and cruelty. As

Jeff Sharlet

has recently written about, this emotional language of fascism (more on that word in a moment) is in large part a transgressive embrace of these elements of human psychology that polite society seeks to repress. Trump says the rude thing, does the rude thing, and his followers love him for it. The violent rhetoric is at the core of his appeal.

3. No Comparison with the Left

There is also no rhetorical comparison between the statements quoted above and anything that Joe Biden or any other Democratic politician has said in their lifetime. Of the many Republicans alleging that Biden is responsible for the shooting – which, again, was carried out by a Republican – VP Nominee JD Vance is now the most prominent. Vance said on TwitterX:

Today is not just some isolated incident. The central premise of the Biden campaign is that President Donald Trump is an authoritarian fascist who must be stopped at all costs. That rhetoric led directly to President Trump’s attempted assassination.

That is bunk.

First, unlike Trump’s rhetoric on January 6, Biden has never said things like “at all costs.” 

Second, Biden’s statements are based in fact, not fiction.  For example, last month, Biden posted on X the following:

Donald Trump is a genuine threat to this nation. He’s a threat to our freedom. He’s a threat to our democracy. He’s literally a threat to everything America stands for.

That is hot rhetoric, to be sure, but unlike claims about Soros-sponsored immigrant caravans to replace “real” Americans, it’s based in reality. Trump continues to deny the results of a valid election that every investigation has been shown to be free of any significant fraud, and he egged on those who sought to overthrow the government with violence.  That is a threat to the core of American democracy.  Trump has also promised to use the military to round up those suspected of being here illegally, to use the Department of Justice to go after political opponents.  Project 2025 explicitly seeks to enshrine conservative Christian doctrine in American law. Christian Nationalism is an entire movement now overtly opposed to democracy.

Those aren’t mere policy decisions, like Trump’s insane positions on climate change or reproductive rights.  They are genuine threats to our democratic traditions. 

Nor are Biden’s words dehumanizing or ad hominem attacks, like Trump’s saying Biden is surrounded by “evil people” or that left-wingers “live like vermin” in America.  That, too, is a crucial difference. 

To be sure, I’ve seen many on the left cross the line in social media in all of these ways.  Folks have applauded the violence against Trump, indulged in left-wing conspiracy theories, and dehumanized the Right.  But there’s a difference between some guy on the internet and a once-and-future president of the United States.

4. Am I Now the Free-Speech Libertarian?!

This past week, I wrote a Rolling Stone piece on Aileen Cannon’s decision to dismiss the criminal case against Trump for stealing classified documents.  After analyzing its shocking disregard of Supreme Court precedent, I speculated that Cannon’s decision was so unsupportable that it led to the conclusion that she is one of many “MAGA ideologues who believe they have to ‘save America’ by doing whatever benefits the movement.”  I then proceeded to say:

Now, there is a word for systems like this, where the judiciary is merely an arm of the nationalist movement in power. It’s a misunderstood word, and maybe an inflammatory word, especially coming on the heels of an attempted assassination of the nationalist candidate. Maybe we shouldn’t use the word. But the word is “fascism.”

I thought a lot about those sentences and flagged them for my editor; given the events of the last week, we went back and forth on whether to include them.  But at the end of our discussion, we agreed that the word wasn’t used in an incendiary way, but was an analytical term that (arguably) accurately described Cannon’s actions.  This wasn’t an attack on her character and didn’t have words like “evil” or “vermin.” It described what it’s like to have a non-independent judiciary.

Then, to make the point sharper, reviewing the characteristics of fascism (e.g., “a nationalistic, anti-liberal party controls all the parts of government and society, including the courts, the press, the educational system, and the military”), I added that “I have no idea if Aileen Cannon believes any of this. But her rulings, consistently, have placed the “stick” of judicial power into Trump’s nationalistic bundle.”

Needless to say, some commenters and email-writers quickly accused me of “demonizing” Judge Cannon. But that can’t be right. Conservatives have to be able to say that liberals are destroying American values, or eroding our moral fabric, or demeaning ordinary people who live in the Heartland.  And liberals have to be able to say that conservatives are destroying American values (funny how that goes), or imposing their religious vision on the rest of us, or maligning groups of people like immigrants or trans folks. There just have to be some guardrails.

This is quite a weird position for me to be in, because usually it’s Bari Weiss and other conservatives who complain that offensive speech is being censored, that you can’t say anything anymore without upsetting a bunch of campus snowflakes, and so on. I guess that libertarianism already went out the window when campus activists started chanting ‘Free Palestine,’ but it’s still pretty weird to suddenly be on the opposite side of this argument. Times are strange.

That said, I think it’s clear that the rhetoric of Trump and his supporters go well over whatever guardrails of decency should exist. His speeches are filled with deliberate lies (we know, for example, that Trump knows the 2020 election wasn’t stolen), conspiracy theories, and the most incendiary possible rhetoric: root out, vermin, poison, traitor, evil, lie, cheat, steal.  They have deliberately inflamed race-based, religious, and ethnicity-based hatred, leading to acts of violence — especially his rhetoric about immigrants. They depict opponents not as threatening or misguided, but as personally evil. They are what the law has long called “fighting words.” 

So maybe, in calling for a kinder and gentler political discourse, conservatives are doing what doing what Donald Trump always does: projecting their own misdeeds onto their political opponents.  Or, who knows, maybe they’re sincere. Either way, I welcome this newly-found interest in civility. But it starts, as Michael Jackson once sang, with the man, and the candidate, in the mirror.

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It’s been a busy week here at the editorial offices of Both/And. (I’m looking for a phrase as clever as

Daniel W. Drezner

’s “hardworking staff here at Drezner’s World” — very open to suggestions.) I wrote the aforementioned piece on Aileen Cannon’s truly unhinged dismissal of the classified documents case, did a column for the Forward on Jewish resources for resilience in times of crisis (i.e. now), and launched a newly mobile-friendly version of my website.

Meanwhile, away from this particular spotlight, I’ve also been doing a bunch of work on how religious communities can better relate to psychedelic experiences, and on the diversity of psychedelic mystical experiences. It’s actually been harder to focus on that work this week, because of the news cycle, even though it’s also been a relief.

On Monday evening, I’ll be leading meditation and giving a dharma talk called “Equanimity Now?!?!” at New York Insight Meditation Center — it’s by donation, in person in NYC and online everywhere. Details for that are here.

Here’s some of what I’ve been reading and enjoying this week:

• Working on next week’s newsletter, I’ve been researching tech libertarianism and transhumanism - this

  Jules Evans
  piece is a fascinating read.

• John Ganz
  on JD Vance as “the politics of national despair incarnate.”

• Bill McKibben
  comparing the GOP’s climate plans to those of the Taliban. (It’s a hilarious comparison but also really interesting to see how even theocratic regimes can be climate-sane if they’re not funded by Big Oil.)

• The aforementioned

  Daniel W. Drezner
  shaking his head on why no one is reporting the excellent economic news.

• And, you know, one or two takes on the Trump stuff. But enough of those.

Thanks for your support!