Threats of violence from Republicans

[Introversion]

This won’t be an isolated incident, so I’m generalizing the thread title.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/20/greitens-rino-hunting-ad/

Former Missouri governor Eric Greitens, a Republican candidate for Senate, is being widely criticized after releasing a campaign ad Monday that shows him pretending to hunt down members of his own party.

“Today we’re goin’ RINO hunting,” Greitens announces in the video, using the acronym for the derisive phrase “Republicans in Name Only.”

In the ad, Greitens stands outside a home with a team of others dressed in tactical gear and whispers: “The RINO feeds on corruption and is marked by the stripes of cowardice.”

The tactical team then busts open the door, detonates smoke bombs inside and storms through with their guns drawn.

“Join the MAGA crew. Get a RINO hunting permit,” Greitens says, standing inside an apparently empty house surrounded by smoke. “There’s no bagging limit, no tagging limit and it doesn’t expire — until we save our country.”

The ad was posted Monday morning to various social media accounts belonging to Greitens and his Senate campaign.

The video was removed from Facebook “for violating our policies prohibiting violence and incitement,” according to Facebook spokesman Andy Stone, but the video remained on Twitter and YouTube as of early Monday afternoon.

“While this video does not violate our Community Guidelines, it is not monetizing nor running as an ad,” YouTube spokeswoman Ivy Choi said.

About four hours after Greitens posted the video, Twitter placed a warning label over the tweet, saying it “violated the Twitter Rules about abusive behavior.” However, Twitter has left the video up with a message that the company “determined that it may be in the public’s interest for the Tweet to remain accessible.”

The ad comes amid a spate of political violence and threats against public officials, as well as a general environment of vitriol within conservative circles between those who believe former president Donald Trump’s baseless claims that the 2020 election was rigged and those in the GOP who have spoken out against those claims.

The Washington Post last year tracked how election administrators in at least 17 states received threats of violence in the months after the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol, often sparked directly by comments from Trump.

On Sunday, Rep. Adam Kinzinger (R-Ill.) shared that his wife had received a letter in the mail threatening to execute his family, including their 5-month-old baby. Kinzinger is one of 10 Republicans who broke with their party last year and voted to impeach Trump, and has since been criticized by Trump and his allies as a “RINO.”

 

[darkprincealain]

Greitens has been a person who can largely be depended on to have atrocious behavior in the past. He stepped down as Missouri’s governor which is how we ended up with Governor Parson’s first term. This is a weird method of attempting to rehabilitate his image.

 

[ElaineA]

This is a weird method of attempting to rehabilitate his image.

I'm pretty sure he's not trying to rehab his image. He's leaning in, because apparently being a violence-touting sociopath is what really does it for GOP voters, now. Whether you're lawyers in dock shoes threatening people walking past your mansion with an AR & a Glock, or a credibly accused child- and spouse-abuser who also participates in adult sexual blackmail on the side. Entirely Trumpian sells in the GOP vote market.

 

[Kaiser-Kun]

With things like this, I think the US is between stages 6 and 7 of the Ten Stages of Genocide.

Edit: Guys don't be so sad. Maybe gun control will happen now that elderly white guys are being threatened.

 

[Kaiser-Kun]

You know, watching the video made me realize something: this is literally how the Trumpies think their civil war is going to be. They think they will gear up, go bust some doors in, kill the pansy weaponless liberals with no resistance, and be back home for dinner. Those who have tried, like the morons who took over some building a few years ago, were terribly unprepared and surrendered at the first sign of real trouble, but not before they caused tons of property damage, terrorized their neighbors and one of them got killed. The purge they want to start will be very destructive, but brief. What worries me is the long-term damage it might cause.

 

[lizmonster]

You know, watching the video made me realize something: this is literally how the Trumpies think their civil war is going to be. They think they will gear up, go bust some doors in, kill the pansy weaponless liberals with no resistance, and be back home for dinner. Those who have tried, like the morons who took over some building a few years ago, were terribly unprepared and surrendered at the first sign of real trouble, but not before they caused tons of property damage, terrorized their neighbors and one of them got killed. The purge they want to start will be very destructive, but brief. What worries me is the long-term damage it might cause.

Yes. I think there's a lot of unrealistic images floating around.

But there are enough people out there with military training who are organizing that I don't know how "brief" it's really going to be.

For your average MAGA, though, they'll quickly learn reality isn't as clean and heroic as it seems. R*ttenhouse notwithstanding, it's actually pretty hard for most ordinary people to proactively kill somebody. There's a reason so many people return from war with PTSD, and it's not all due to watching their friends die.

But yes, I think the long-term damage is that we won't have a single country coast-to-coast anymore. Beyond that, I am trying not to prognosticate. Things so often go differently than my experience leads me to expect.

 

[Paul Lamb]

I have volunteered at the polls for the last three elections, and I'm slated to work on election day for the next two. I do this to do my part to make democracy work. I don't want trouble, but if there is any, I want to be a witness to it.

At a recent election, we did have one man deploying some device around our casting box, alleging that it was transmitting signals (to the Illuminati, I suppose). He got run off pretty quickly, and we were later told that the fact that the volunteer manning the casting box had her cell phone turned on meant that, of course, his device was going to pick up a transmission signal.

I don't expect violence in my upperclass suburban polling station, but I think there is still plenty of mayhem that could happen by the unhinged class.

 

[Tiger1b]

This won’t be an isolated incident, so I’m generalizing the thread title.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/06/20/greitens-rino-hunting-ad/

"In name only."

Barf.

If what they're trying to accomplish succeeds, they'll have whittled themselves down to a core of terrorists.

 

[Unimportant]

R*ttenhouse notwithstanding, it's actually pretty hard for most ordinary people to proactively kill somebody.

I'm not sure how ordinary these MAGgot-insurrectionists/ SEAL wannabes are. And I'm really not sure that they see the people they want to kill as "somebody". I think they see them as non-human vermin. Rottenboy seemed to take killing those people as casually as if he'd chopped the head off a snake or a rat, and I don't think he's an anomaly. The men who chased down and shot Ahmaud Arbery acted like a couple of cowboys roping a calf. The dozens of white men (of course) who drove in from all over the USA to try and disrupt a Pride parade in Idaho (?I think?) don't think queers are their equal. They think we're monsters who should be exterminated.

 

[lizmonster]

I'm not sure how ordinary these MAGgot-insurrectionists/ SEAL wannabes are. And I'm really not sure that they see the people they want to kill as "somebody". I think they see them as non-human vermin. Rottenboy seemed to take killing those people as casually as if he'd chopped the head off a snake or a rat, and I don't think he's an anomaly. The men who chased down and shot Ahmaud Arbery acted like a couple of cowboys roping a calf. The dozens of white men (of course) who drove in from all over the USA to try and disrupt a Pride parade in Idaho (?I think?) don't think queers are their equal. They think we're monsters who should be exterminated.

Oh, I'm not saying none of them would do it. Nor would I suggest that some of them would more easily harm people of a certain appearance.

But I think for most people, even MAGAts, killing is hard. A sizable percentage of them aren't going to be the marauding army they think they'll be.

 

[Unimportant]

But I think for most people, even MAGAts, killing is hard. A sizable percentage of them aren't going to be the marauding army they think they'll be.

One on one, I reckon you're right. There are still plenty of 'lone wolves' who go around shooting up schools or bashing geriatric Chinese women on the street, but the average MAGAt probably could not just walk up to a random stranger and murder them.

On the other hand..... The majority of the Jan 6 invaders were 'most people' (other than the organised SWAT teams bearing zipties and weapons, and that idiot in the horned helmet). Ordinary people in their daily lives. One on one, I doubt they'd do more than swat a fly. Yet, en masse, wound up by a gibbering leader hurling lies and red meat, and then handed several hundred metaphorical torches and pitchforks, they attacked law enforcement officers, smashed windows, howled for Nancy Pelosi's blood, and admitted that if they could've found Mike Pence they'd have killed him.

 

[lizmonster]

On the other hand..... The majority of the Jan 6 invaders were 'most people' (other than the organised SWAT teams bearing zipties and weapons, and that idiot in the horned helmet). Ordinary people in their daily lives. One on one, I doubt they'd do more than swat a fly. Yet, en masse, wound up by a gibbering leader hurling lies and red meat, and then handed several hundred metaphorical torches and pitchforks, they attacked law enforcement officers, smashed windows, howled for Nancy Pelosi's blood, and admitted that if they could've found Mike Pence they'd have killed him.

Yes. But the number of individuals who committed direct, purposeful violence was fairly small. I honestly believe drawing a weapon, aiming it at someone, and firing with intent to kill is a pretty difficult thing for most people.

Look, I'm not arguing we don't have a fucking society-ending disaster on our hands. I'm arguing the army they have is, practically speaking, a lot smaller than they think. Which gives the rest of us a fighting chance.

 

[Diana Hignutt]

I fully expect to experience Republican violence to the extent that I will probably die in a concentration camp in a few years. That's where this is heading. I don't think it can be turned back. Obviously, I will try to bolt (again), but I have no illusions about what will happen if that fails.

Most of the trans people I know are living with this knowledge in the back of their heads. No one will lift a finger to save us. And we know it. It is very hard to function due to anxiety. The world has become super hostile to us.

I'm so tired.

 

[lizmonster]

Anything I could say would sound like a platitude.

I'm not giving up. Not yet.

 

[Unimportant]

I fully expect to experience Republican violence to the extent that I will probably die in a concentration camp in a few years. That's where this is heading. I don't think it can be turned back. Obviously, I will try to bolt (again), but I have no illusions about what will happen if that fails.

Most of the trans people I know are living with this knowledge in the back of their heads. No one will lift a finger to save us. And we know it. It is very hard to function due to anxiety. The world has become super hostile to us.

I'm so tired.

I don't think it's the whole world. Some countries are moving forward. But, yes, some, including the USA, are regressing back to the Dark Age.