The best explanation I’ve seen of how politicians like Trump feed violence [View all]
When you shout BREAKING POINT over and over again, you dont get to be surprised when someone breaks.
by Dara Lind on June 17, 2016, 2:30 p.m. ET
If youre worried about the effect Donald Trumps brand of xenophobic populism is having on America, you should be paying attention to whats going on in Britain right now. On Thursday, Jo Cox, a 41-year-old rising star in Parliament who was known for her support for Syrian refugees, was murdered by one of her constituents.
-snip-
Alex Massie, a columnist for the Spectator (a conservative British magazine), wrote
a beautiful column in the wake of Coxs murder. Massie explains, better than any commentator Ive read, the relationship between apocalyptic rhetoric and panic-induced violence:
When you encourage rage you cannot then feign surprise when people become enraged. You cannot turn around and say, Mate, you werent supposed to take it so seriously. Its just a game, just a ploy, a strategy for winning votes.
When you shout BREAKING POINT over and over again, you dont get to be surprised when someone breaks. When you present politics as a matter of life and death, as a question of national survival, dont be surprised if someone takes you at your word. You didnt make them do it, no, but you didnt do much to stop it either.
Sometimes rhetoric has consequences. If you spend days, weeks, months, years telling people they are under threat, that their country has been stolen from them, that they have been betrayed and sold down the river, that their birthright has been pilfered, that their problem is theyre too slow to realise any of this is happening, that their problem is theyre not sufficiently mad as hell, then at some point, in some place, something or someone is going to snap. And then something terrible is going to happen.
We cant control the weather but, in politics, we can control the climate in which the weather happens.
-snip-
full article
http://www.vox.com/2016/6/17/11962618/right-wing-violence-politicians