Biden Is Coming for You, Tucker Carlson Wants You to Believe
People in the right-wing media bubble are being led to believe that the Biden administration is coming after them, they will be imprisoned and possibly tortured, and they must arm themselves to fight back.
Fox News' Tucker Carlson is among those spreading this disinformation, now in a new ad and Fox Nation special that will air Nov. 1. The ad suggests that the January 6 insurrection was a false flag operation that will be used as an excuse to round up Trump supporters for imprisonment and torture.
And this same week we heard this audience question put to Turning Point USA President Charlie Kirk during a Monday Boise State University event: "When do we get to use the guns? ... How many elections are they going to steal before we kill these people?”
As the crowd cheered, the questioner said the reason for asking this was, "we’re living under corporate and medical fascism. This is tyranny."
Kirk rejected the use of violence. "I'm going to denounce that," he immediately responded before halfheartedly denouncing that. Kirk's reasoning had nothing to do with the ethics of violence. Rather, the problem with shooting people, Kirk proclaimed, is that doing so would help Democrats.
“They are trying to make you do something that will be violent that will justify a takeover of your freedoms and liberties, the likes of which we have never seen," he answered.
Shocking, for sure, but we shouldn't be surprised given the language we've been hearing from right-wing political operatives this year. The questioner believes he's living under tyranny because people like Carlson and Kirk have been repeating that often. Kirk even repeated it in his answer.
In a number of ads already this year, Republican candidates have been eager to show off their guns and imply their willingness to shoot their political opponents.
"The Joe Biden administration is coming after me," Michele Fiore says before grabbing her gun in an ad for her Nevada gubernatorial race.
Josh Mandel, the leading Republican Senate candidate in Ohio, has been encouraging his supporters to purchase firearms in order to "outlast these monsters," referring to his political opponents. On Oct. 12, he tweeted, "Armed with facts and firearms, we will combat tyranny from the government."
After watching the political violence of January 6, there was hope that things would change. That political operatives on the right would become aware of the dangers they wrought and would have a change of heart. By and large, that hasn't happened. Instead of trying to quell the violent urges of Jan. 6, we're seeing right-wing politicos trying to harness it.
"Thank you for being here tonight," Kirk ended his conversation with the guy who asked when he gets to shoot people.
3 More Things
1) Peter Wehner, “The Evangelical Church Is Breaking Apart: Christians must reclaim Jesus from his church.”
The root of the discord lies in the fact that many Christians have embraced the worst aspects of our culture and our politics. When the Christian faith is politicized, churches become repositories not of grace but of grievances, places where tribal identities are reinforced, where fears are nurtured, and where aggression and nastiness are sacralized. The result is not only wounding the nation; it’s having a devastating impact on the Christian faith.
2) Video: CBSN Originals | An (Un)Civil War: The Evangelical Divide
3) “Attacks rise on houses of worship”
2021 is on track to exceed last year's spike in hate crimes in the U.S., many of them linked to religious bigotry. The number of hate crimes reported in FY 2020 was the highest since 2001, when a wave of Islamophobia followed the 9/11 attacks, according to updated FBI data released yesterday.