Blood on their hands
On June 14, 2017, a leftwing activist shot six people, including House Majority Whip Steve Scalise, during a practice session for the annual Congressional Baseball Game in Alexandria, Virginia. Thankfully, no one died. It was a despicable, dastardly act. It was the only instance in recent memory when a Democrat shot Republicans in an action of pure mass terrorism and it was fiercely and justly condemned by both sides. Nevertheless, Republicans never let us forget it.
Yet the vast majority of mass murders before and since have been perpetrated by rightwing nutjobs. Typically they fall into two categories, knuckle-dragging, knuckleheaded cretins in the thrall of the fascist Donald Trump, and knuckle-dragging, knuckleheaded cretins for whom Donald Trump is insufficiently fascistic. The tiny minority of the rest had no particular political agenda at all. They were just crazy.
Now the MAGA cult has finally gone full Taliban. On Tuesday, Justin Mohn, a 32 year old MAGA whack job, beheaded his 68 year old father on YouTube. The reason? His father was a federal civil servant who, in the MAGA “logic” of the cosmically stupid, was insufficiently extremist.
Mohn told his YouTube audience that his father was “now in hell for eternity as a traitor to his country.” He added, for good measure, “I am now officially the acting president of America under martial law.” He also called for a “second American Revolution.”
This horrific act of disgusting public barbarity is the direct result of Donald Trump’s extreme rhetoric of hate and violence. What began as Trump’s dog whistle is now a bullhorn, and this is what happens.
Thus far Republican response to this unspeakable savagery has been tepid at best, silent at worst. That probably won’t be the end of it. Expect the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene to find a way to blame President Biden for this act ofmonstrous sadism. This is another reason why Republicans must go.
Republicans have had blood on their hands. They have had blood on their hands for some time now. This public beheading is merely the latest extreme expression of that blood. Donald Trump is a terrorist, MAGA Republicans are terrorists, Fox News is a terrorist organisation.
What comes next — and believe me, there will be more — can only be envisaged by the sickest and most deranged imagination. We cannot permit this kind of thing to become normalised into a commonplace. When millions of people are fed MAGA bullshit and hate on a daily basis, it becomes a statistical certainty that some small number will act out in expressions of extreme savage violence such as this. This horror must end. And, as ever, ladies and gentlemen, brothers and sisters, comrades and friends, stay safe.
Robert Harrington is an American expat living in Britain. He is a portrait painter.