In talking about politics, we often use terms that can relate to violence: A race is “targeted,” a candidate “takes aim” at their opponent. That language is used every day in nonviolent contexts—but when you’re talking about the current atmosphere in which political violence is becoming more common, it’s still worth wondering if there’s another word that could do.
An extremist gun group is doing the exact opposite of that. The American Firearms Association sent out a fundraising email urging supporters to donate in explicitly violent language, Jennifer Bendery reports at HuffPost.
“At midnight tomorrow, we’ll know exactly how much firepower we have to unload on gun-grabbing candidates in AZ, NV, GA, PA, and OH as we head into next week’s election day,” the email reads. Though the candidates aren’t specifically named, it’s not hard to connect the dots from “gun-grabbing candidates in AZ, NV, GA, PA and OH” to Sen. Mark Kelly, Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, Sen. Raphael Warnock, Lieutenant Gov. John Fetterman, and Rep. Tim Ryan. Those are the people the American Firearms Association wants to “unload” “firepower” onto. Sure, the group would no doubt defend itself by saying it’s speaking metaphorically, but the metaphor is a little too on the nose, considering the rising levels of violence coming from the far right.
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Heavily armed, masked people have stationed themselves outside of ballot drop boxes in Arizona, and people attempting to vote in both Arizona and Michigan have been harassed and filmed by such watchers. The Proud Boys are regularly disrupting LGBTQ events. After years of vilifying House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, including an ad showing her face framed by a gun barrel, and now-Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene describing Pelosi as “guilty of treason,” Republicans are pretending it has nothing to do with them that a man fully enmeshed in Republican conspiracy theories broke into Pelosi’s house and, finding her not home, attacked her husband.
Just days ago, the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, the National Counterterrorism Center, and the U.S. Capitol Police issued a bulletin warning of the heightened threat of domestic terrorism around the election. “We assess some [domestic violent extremists] motivated by election-related grievances would likely view election-related infrastructure, personnel, and voters involved in the election process as attractive targets—including at publicly accessible locations like polling places, ballot drop-box locations, voter registration sites, campaign events, and political party offices,” the bulletin said.
Earlier in October, the FBI said election workers in seven states—including the four listed in the American Firearms Association fundraising email—were facing increased threats. An Iowa man has been arrested for threats to Maricopa County, Arizona, election officials, and allegedly left a voicemail for Arizona Attorney General Mark Brnovich, a Republican, saying, “When we come to lynch your stupid lying Commie [expletive], you’ll remember that you lied on the [expletive] Bible, you piece of [expletive]. You’re gonna die, you piece of [expletive]. We’re going to hang you. We’re going to hang you.”
So, no, “we’ll know exactly how much firepower we have to unload on gun-grabbing candidates” does not register as a harmless metaphor.
People who click through to a donation page are asked for $17.76, a reference to the American Revolution that’s been widely used by the far right as a shorthand for insurrection. On the morning of Jan. 6, 2021, for instance, Rep. Lauren Boebert tweeted, “Today is 1776,” and the Proud Boys have sold "1776" merchandise.
Far-right Republicans are gearing up for a violent uprising against any election result they don’t like. They’re not bothering to keep it particularly secret. We ignore them at our peril—or, really, at democracy’s peril, at the nation’s peril.
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