Back in 2004, GW Bush and the GOP held their political convention in NYC, and many surmised that the city was chosen so as to use 9/11 as a theme and the rebuilding of the World Trade Center cite as a backdrop for promoting the theme of Bush as wartime champion in the war on terror. By this point, however, we were immersed in Iraq, with no end in sight. And so, the decision to choose NYC as the convention city was met by protests, and lots of it. Estimates of the numbers of people disgusted with Bush ranged from 100,000 to perhaps as many as 800,000. And I was one of these protesters, eager to express my outrage.
This is then my way of saying that protests at political events, such as campaign rallies, are not that uncommon, especially when a candidate is a polarizing figure. And normally, such protests are peaceful and are handled peacefully, though again, there are exceptions. One notable exception was in 1968, the year in which a large number of protesters who were mainly motivated by a desire to end the Vietnam War were met with police violence by the Chicago PD. Things were so chaotic that one liberal Senator from Connecticut suggested moving the convention away from Chicago and away from what he called 6the gestapo tactics by the city’s police; that didn't happen.
This then brings me back to the present and to the violence that have been accompanying Trump rallies – fights inside and outside the venues in which these venues have occurred. And it brings me to the question of responsibility for such violence and whether or not the protesters bear any of the blame. One could, I suppose, try to argue that by disrupting an event, one creates anger and hostility. On the other hand, this is what protesters – exercising their rights of free speech – may seek to do so as to make their presence felt. I happened, for example, to have been at a health care forum in 2010 which was sponsored by my then Democratic congressman, John Hall, and as with many other such town halls, this one was repeatedly shouted down by conservative protesters, with this part of the same organized campaign that gave us the tea party.
But in the final analysis, the issue is not protest, it’s how a campaign handles protesters and hecklers. For the Trump campaign – short on policy specifics, but long on theatrics – handling the protests means escalating the conflict – and then shifting the blame (to Bernie? To BLM? To “thugs?” Etc.) But ultimately, the tone of a campaign starts with the candidate him or herself. And in this particular campaign, we have a candidate who has clearly been egging on the more violent, angry and aggressive tendencies of his followers. And so, we get examples like this
Trump addressing a crowd of his followers by reacting to a protester with
"So if you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of 'em, would you? Seriously. Okay? Just knock the hell — I promise you, I will pay for the legal fees. I promise. I promise."
Or with “Here’s a guy, throwing punches, nasty as hell, screaming at everything else, when we’re talking. The guards are very gentle with him. He’s walking out, like, big high-fives, smiling, laughing, I’d like to punch him in the face, I tell ya.” And the response to this by the Trump crowd was loud cheers. Trump’s observation about the protesters “throwing punches” turned out, like so many of his other claims, to be false.
Or with saying things like "in the good old days this didn’t used to happen, because they used to treat them very rough."
And then there’s this
“Look, see, he’s smiling. See, he’s having a good time,” Trump said of the protester. “You know what I hate? There’s a guy, totally disruptive, throwing punches, we’re not allowed to punch back anymore. I love the old days. You know what they used to do to guys like that when they were in a place like this? They’d be carried out on a stretcher, folks.”
So, it’s really Donald Trump setting a tone and example, which others then follow. One follower, a 78 year old man, sucker punched a protester as he was being escorted out of a rally. Other reports have documented the following: A young black woman was surrounded and shoved aggressively by a number of Trump supporters at a rally in Louisville, Kentucky. A black protester was tackled, then punched and kicked by a group of Trump supporters as he curled up on the ground in Birmingham, Alabama. Immigration activists were shoved and stripped of their signs by a crowd in Richmond, Virginia. A Latino protester was knocked down and kicked by a Trump supporter in Miami. Even officials with the Trump campaign, like Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski, have displayed violence, with Lewandowski grabbing the arm of Breitbart news reporter Michelle Fields at an event in Jupiter, Florida, jerking her so hard he bruised her body; she’s now suing.
But, when asked about any of this, Trump basically deflects. Recently, Trump was quoted as saying (about the protests) “We’ve had some violent people as protesters. These are people that punch. These are violent people.”
No proof, such as in the form of video, of this exists.
But what does exist is evidence of Donald Trump, the GOP front runner, with some significant aiding and abetting by Republican info sources (and by those who read and spread accounts from these sources) attempting to silence critics, suppress dissenters and continue to engage in a campaign of fear, hatred and distortion. For this, he and his supporters should expect a whole lot more protest and a lot more lampooning of Trump, she he somehow manage to get elected president. Here’s a small scale preview of what this will likely look and sound like, but on a much larger scale.
This too!