One week ago, on Saturday, a mere half-day before a Republican attempted to kill the Republican (then-presumptive) nominee for president of the United States, the Washington Post published an important article by Hannah Allam of their National Security Team on the violent imagery omnipresent in the apocalyptic vision of the Republican Right and the religious among Trump’s supporters. While the article provides a pointed warning to the generic body politic, a closer and contextual reading shows that we should all be most concerned that in the United States today, Niemöller’s “socialists” are trans and non-binary people.
The article begins:
To his most zealous Christian supporters, Donald Trump’s campaign is a crusade against “evil” liberal forces that must be vanquished by any means necessary to save the republic.
And its primary warning is here:
“You are either on the side of God or the side of the Devil,” said Miranda Zapor Cruz, a theologian at Indiana Wesleyan University, summing up the rhetoric. “If you are on the side of the Devil, then just about anything can be justified to cast you out, to eradicate your influence. And, for some people, that ‘just about anything’ would include physical violence.”
But throughout, there is evidence that the first enemy of today’s Right are gender minorities. A favorite biblical quote of Trumpists, Christian nationalists, and their fellow travellers is Matthew 18:6:
“It were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.”
But the targets of “millstone” threats are revealing both for whom the Right targets, and how that targeting is justified. Kimber Glidden, last seen in the pages of Yr Wonkette being an Idaho librarian who was not stocking pornography on the shelves, was threatened with a millstone in the midst of a campaign labelling her a groomer for pedophiles. Astute readers will notice that’s an accusation leveled at anyone who acknowledges the existence of trans people while children are within 500 feet.
WaPo also details how the threat was used against drag performers:
At a Proud Boys protest outside a drag event in Maryland last year, one man wearing the far-right group’s yellow-and-black insignia held a sign that quoted Matthew 18:6 above the words, “It’s millstone time!”
When one singer who performs for MAGA events and at venues including Mar-A-Lago threatened Biden with a millstone in his lyrics, the justification was telling:
“I never threatened Biden. I referenced what God says about those who hurt little ones.”
In case you missed it, the Republicans who passed bans on trans health care in South Carolina, Texas, and Oklahoma called each bill a “Millstone Act.” To these people, “hurting little ones” is synonymous with allowing trans kids to visit the doctor. While WaPo uses the weaselly “opponents say” framework, the more honest statement simply omits the unnecessary wrapping:
the [Millstone Acts] are part of a bigger right-wing campaign that uses religion to vilify transgender people with unfounded accusations of grooming and pedophilia.
Well, yeah.
In a previous article the Washington Post pointed out the sexist, racist use of “Jezebel” as a biblical attack on Vice President Kamala Harris. Texas pastor Tom Buck justified use of the language, saying,
“My problem is her godless character. She not only is the most radical pro-abortion VP ever, but also most radical LGBT advocate.”
That earlier article also highlights the threat of violence, in that case surrounding the term Jezebel instead of millstone:
Jessica Johnson, an assistant professor of religious studies at the College of William & Mary, said the term has historically been used as a justification for racial violence against Black women.
Another article this week, this one a Substack post from Tim Snyder, took the occasion of a Republican attack on a Republican presidential candidate to remind us that those who come to power through violent rhetoric should be the first we suspect of employing violence even when that violence targets someone on their own side.
If a radical-right politician such as Donald Trump is the victim of an assassination attempt, should we not presume that the perpetrator is on the radical left?
No, we should not.
That sort of presumption, based on us-and-them thinking, is dangerous. It begins a chain of thinking that can lead to more violence. We are the victims, and they are the aggressors. We have been hurt, so it must have been them. No one thinking this way ever asks about the violence on one’s own side.
And this way of thinking is also very often erroneous.
On January 6, the crowd wanted to attack and kill Nancy Pelosi, but the rioters’ rage was just as much if not more focused upon Mike Pence.
We’ve seen legislative campaigns to institute second class citizenship for millions, enforced with threats against their defenders. We’ve seen individually targeted violence gunning metaphorically for Pence and literally for Trump.
The point here is that the rightwing’s base sits upon a foundation of threats, and not just from Trump, not just from random street protesters. The North Carolina nominee for governor is running around saying, “Some folks need killin’.” Mike Johnson himself, yes, the Speaker of the House, told a “Christian women’s conference” in 2022,
“Obviously, this is an increasingly hostile culture. We all know that. We need to understand why that is, and we need to commit to do our part to confront it. The kingdom of God allows aggression.” [Emphasis Wonkette’s.]
This did not begin with Trump and it does not end with him. The power of the GOP as a whole cannot be separated from their practice of threatening others. They have made money from it. They have made an institution of it. And so when the power of the GOP is threatened, it should be unsurprising that some people take those justifications for violence seriously and act violently. With the attempt on Trump’s life, the Right shows itself to be dangerously unstable, which should worry everyone.
Today things are bad enough. Things were bad enough on January 6, and before that on May 25, 2020, and before that on any number of days. But if history is any guide, and if this breakdown continues, a more general theocratic, Trumpist wave of violence would start by targeting the trans people among us, then our defenders, and then? Then they move on to other enemies on their list. It is very difficult to say how it would stop.
G-d help us all if that should come to pass.
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NC Gov Nominee Mark Robinson Not Personally Coming To Kill You. He’s Just Asking Others To Kill You.
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