Increasingly, Republicans have repeatedly aimed violent—-and violence-arousing—-rhetoric at their Democratic opponents. This is not a case of careless language that is simply misinterpreted, with tragic results.      

Republicans like Sarah Palin and Donald Trump fully understand the constituency they are trying to reach: Those masses of alienated, uneducated Americans who live only for their guns and hardline religious beliefs—and who can be easily manipulated by perceived threats to either.

If a “nutcases” assaults a Democratic politician and misses, then the Republican establishment claims to be shocked—-shocked!—that such a thing could have happened.

And if the attempt proves successful, then Republicans weep crocodile tears for public consumption.

Since the end of World War 11, Republicans have hurled the charge of “treason” against anyone who dared to run against them for office or think other than Republican-sponsored thoughts.

Republicans had been locked out of the White House from 1933 to 1952, during the administrations of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman.

Determined to regain the Presidency by any means, they found that attacking the integrity of their fellow Americans a highly effective tactic.

During the 1950s, Wisconsin Senator Joseph R. McCarthy rode a wave of paranoia to national prominence—by attacking the patriotism of anyone who disagreed with him.

The fact that McCarthy never uncovered one actual case of treason was conveniently overlooked during his lifetime.

The electoral success of McCarthy’s Red-baiting treason slanders proved too alluring for other Republicans to resist.

Joseph McCarthy

Among those who have greatly profited from hurling similar charges are:

• President Richard Nixon
• His vice president, Spiro Agnew
• Former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich
• Former Congressman Dick Armey
• President George W. Bush
• Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin
• Congresswoman Michelle Bachmann
• Rush Limbaugh
• Fox News host Sean Hannity
• Fox News host Bill O’Reilly
• Donald Trump.

During the 1992 Presidential campaign, Republicans tried to paint Bill Clinton as a brainwashed “Manchurian candidate” because he had briefly visited the Soviet Union during his college years.

After the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, Republicans lost their “soft on Communism” slander-line. So they tried to persuade voters that Democrats were “soft on crime.”

When riots flared in 1992 after the acquittal of LAPD officers who had savagely beaten Rodney King, President George H.W. Bush blamed the carnage on the “Great Society” programs of the 1960s.

George H.W. Bush

After losing the White House to Clinton at the polls in 1992 and 1996, Republicans tried to oust him another way: By impeaching him over a tryst with a White House intern named Monica Lewinsky.

The Republican-controlled House of Representatives voted to impeach, but the effort was defeated in the Democratically-controlled Senate.

The 2008 election of Barack Obama as the first black President pushed the Republican “treason chorus” to new heights of infamy.

Barack Obama

Immediately after Obama took office, he was attacked by an industry of right-wing book authors such as Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh. 

Among the titles:

• Conservative Victory: Defeating Obama’s Radical Agenda by Sean Hannity
• The Manchurian President: Barack Obama’s Ties to Communists, Socialists and Other Anti-American Extremists by Aaron Klein
• The Blueprint: Obama’s Plan to Subvert the Constitution and Build an Imperial Presidency by Ken Blackwell
• Why Obama’s Government Takeover of Health Care Will Be a Disaster by David Gratzer
• To Save America: Stopping Obama’s Secular-Socialist Machine by Newt Gingrich
• How the Obama Administration Threatens to Undermine Our Elections by John Fund
• Power Grab: How Obama’s Green Policicies Will Steal Your Freedom and Bankrupt America by Christopher C. Horner
• America’s March to Socialism: Why We’re One Step Closer to Giant Missile Parades by Glenn Beck
• Obama’s Betrayal of Israel by Michael Ledeen
• Green Hell: How Environmentalists Plan to Control Your Life and What You Can Do to Stop Them by Steven Milloy
• Treason: Liberal Treachery from the Cold War to the War on Terrorism by Ann Coulter
• Guilty: Liberal “Victims” and Their Assault on America by Ann Coulter

Consider the vocabulary Right-wingers use to describe their political adversaries:

“Liberals,” “radicals, “bankrupting,” “treason,” subversion,” “slander,” “terrorism,” “betrayal,” “catastrophe,” “shattering the American dream,” “leftists,” “Communists,” “government takeover,” “socialism,” “power grab,” “secularism,” “environmentalism.”

And while the Right lusts to constantly compare Democrats and liberals (the two aren’t always the same) to Adolf Hitler, its propaganda campaign draws heavily on the Nazi leader’s own advice.

In Mein Kampf, Hitler laid out his formula for successful propaganda: “All effective propaganda must be confined to a few bare essentials.

“Those must be expressed as far as possible in stereotypical formulas. These slogans should be persistently repeated until the very last individual has come to grasp the idea that has been put forward.

“[The masses] more readily fall victims to the big lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods.”

Thus, Republicans spent the eight years of Barack Obama’s Presidency repeating the lie that he was born in Kenya—not Hawaii, as the long-form version of his birth certificate attests.

On June 17, 2015, Dylann Roof, a white high school dropout, gunned down three black men and six black women at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, South Carolina.

The evidence made clear that Roof’s slaughter was racially motivated:

• He told a friend that he hoped “to start a civil war” between the black and white races.
• In the midst of his massacre of unarmed worshipers, he told one of his victims: “You’ve raped our women, and you are taking over the country.” Then Roof shot him.

Yet no 2016 Republican Presidential candidate dared acknowledge it. 

• Jeb Bush, former governor of Florida:  “I don’t know what was on the mind or the heart of the man who committed these atrocious crimes.”
• Bobby Jindal, former governor of Louisiana: “I don’t think we’ll ever know what was going on in his mind.”

But Rolling Stone magazine writer Jeb Lund left no doubt as to what—and who—was ultimately responsible for this crime: Racism and Republicans. 

In a June 19, 2015 editorial—published two days after the massacre—Lund noted: “This [crime] is political because American movement conservatism has already made these kinds of killings political. 

“The Republican Party has weaponized its supporters, made violence a virtue and, with almost every pronouncement for 50 years, given them an enemy politicized, radicalized and indivisible….

“Those leading said insurrection are swaddled by the blanket exculpation of patriotism. At the same time, they have synonymized the Democratic Party with illegitimacy and abuse of the American order.

“This is no longer an argument about whether one party’s beliefs are beneficial or harmful, but an attitude that labels leftism so antithetical to the American idea that empowering it on any level is an act of usurpation.”

On December 15, 2016, Roof was convicted of 33 Federal hate crime charges. On January 11, 2017, he was sentenced to death. He remains on Death Row to this day.

The evidence that Republicans have weaponized hatred—with deadly results—was on display long before Dylann Roof opened fire on “uppity blacks” praying in their own church.

Consider:

On January 8, 2011, Democratic Rep. Gabrielle Giffords was shot in the head while meeting with constituents outside a grocery store in Tucson, Arizona. After a miraculous recovery, she continues to struggle with language and has lost 50% of her vision in both eyes.

Rep. Gabrielle Giffords

She vowed to return to her former Congressional duties, but was forced to resign for health reasons in 2012.

The shooting wounded 13 people and killed six others. One was Arizona’s chief U.S. District judge, John Roll, who had just stopped by to see his friend Giffords after celebrating Mass.

Although the actual shooter, Jared Lee Loughner, was immediately arrested, those who fanned the flames of political violence that consumed 19 people that day have remained unpunished.

Consider the circumstances behind the shootings:

Gabrille Giffords, 40, is a moderate Democrat who narrowly wins re-election in November, 2010, against a Republican Tea Party candidate.

Her support of President Barack Obama’s health care reform law has made her a target for violent rhetoric–-especially from former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin.

In March, 2010, Palin releases a map featuring 20 House Democrats that uses cross-hairs images to show their districts. In case her supporters don’t get the message, she later writes on Twitter: “Don’t Retreat, Instead – RELOAD!”

Sarah Palin’s “Crosshairs” Map

As the campaign continues, Giffords finds her Tucson office vandalized after the House passes the healthcare overhaul in March.

She specifically cites Palin’s decision to list her seat as one of the top “targets” in the midterm elections.

“For example, we’re on Sarah Palin’s targeted list, but the thing is, that the way that she has it depicted has the cross-hairs of a gun sight over our district. When people do that, they have to realize that there are consequences to that action,” Giffords tells MSNBC.

Giffords may have seen the spectre of violence closing in on her. In April, 2010, she supported Rep. Raúl Grijalva after he had to close two offices when he and his staff received threats.

He had called for a boycott of Arizona businesses in opposition to the state’s controversial immigration law.

“This is not how we, as Americans, express our political differences. Intimidation has no place in our representative democracy,” says Giffords. Such acts only make it more difficult for us to resolve our differences.”

John Roll is Arizona’s chief federal judge. Appointed in 2006, he wins acclaim as a respected jurist and leader who pushes to beef up the court’s strained bench to handle a growing number of border crime-related cases.

In 2009, he becomes a target for threats after allowing a $32 million civil-rights lawsuit by illegal aliens to proceed against a local rancher. The case arouses the fury of local talk radio hosts, who encourage their audiences to threaten Roll’s life.

In one afternoon, Roll logs more than 200 threatening phone calls. Callers threaten the judge and his family. They post personal information about Roll online.

Roll and his wife are placed under fulltime protection by deputy U.S. marshals. But Roll finds living under security “unnerving and invasive.”

Authorities identify four men believed responsible for the threats. But Roll declines to press charges on the advice of the Marshals Service.