President, Fox News, and other right-wing media sources continue to demonize the left, emboldening far right groups and inciting violence. Media Matters has put together a compilation of “conservative” media doing just that.
This is not simply a matter of exaggerated speech. Such political hate speech serves as an ill omen unless other Republicans challenge this type of rhetoric. As Jonathan Chait observes in this NY Magazine commentary:
The method on display is familiar if you study any historical episode of democratic backsliding. One party, either from the far left or the far right, sets out to attack and weaken democratic norms. The small-d democrats resist, trying to maintain democratic norms. But they’re fighting at a disadvantage against a ruthless foe that does not observe their limits, and at least some of the opposition undertakes a more drastic action. Any offense becomes a pretext for the authoritarians, who exaggerate the threat of violence and chaos by their enemies to justify the antidemocratic measures they were planning all along.
The threat Trump poses does not excuse the left from upholding democratic standards. (I have made this case repeatedly, in fact.) That said, Trump’s illiberalism only works because respectable conservatives cooperate with his fiction that he is more victim than aggressor. French writes, “It’s time to stop excusing, rationalizing, and minimizing behavior that is dangerous, menacing, and threatening.” Indeed it is.