Calm down, everybody.
We do our elections in the United States peacefully, thank you very much.
This reminder is necessary after right-wing Texas Republican Rep. Louie Gohmert warned Friday afternoon that “riots and violence in the street … as violent as antifa and BLM” might result from several courts ruling against his lawsuit challenging the presidential election results on behalf of President Trump. This was the second time in two months Gohmert had suggested street violence might occur, after telling Trump supporters in November that “revolution” such as when people “went to the streets, all over Egypt” seven years ago “turned the country around … [and] if they can do that there, think of what we can do here.”
To his partial credit, Gohmert tried to walk things back the next day with a tweet saying he had “not encouraged and unequivocally do not advocate for violence. I have long advocated for following the teaching and example of Dr. Martin Luther King. Jr. of peaceful protest.”
Then, however, he continued, more ominously: “That does not keep me from recognizing what lies ahead when the institutions created by a self-governing people to peacefully resolve disputes hide from their responsibility.” Then, yet another shift, this time back to good-guy mode: “Violence is not the answer. The appropriate answer is courts and self-governing bodies resolving disputes as intended.”
If Gohmert doesn’t think violence is the answer, why does he keep talking about it? And if courts are supposed to resolve disputes peacefully, why does he predict violence as the result of unwanted court decisions? Shouldn’t he have said from the start that once the courts have ruled, then the answer is final and that people should accept it?
What Gohmert is doing, in effect, is to threaten, mafioso-style — “That’s a nice little republic you have. It would really be a shame if someone (hint, hint) did something to it” — and then wash his hands of the result.
This is dangerously cynical. It’s not as if this is just idle talk. The nation already experienced an abundance of violent riots, mostly of the left-wing variety, for much of last year, and since the election, right-wing demonstrations have led to violence at least twice. At a December rally of Trump supporters, one prominent speaker seemed eager for a new civil war because, he said, his side is “the ones with all the guns.” In one instance, the right-wing-bully group Proud Boys also burned two Black Lives Matter banners hanging at historically black churches in Washington, D.C.
And, of course, Trump himself has a long, long history of encouraging violence in his favor.
Now, a major pro-Trump rally is scheduled in the nation’s capital for Jan. 6, the day Congress counts the Electoral College votes. Trump, with his usual heedlessness of propriety, is promising not that it will be peaceful, but that it “will be wild.”
Lawful demonstrations are fine. Protests are fine. Being “wild” at a protest isn’t fine at all. Trump and Gohmert and every protest organizer and major supporter should be going to great lengths, even as they encourage attendance, to tamp down the level of anger and to insist on non-confrontational tactics and, in general, on decorum. Just as the left-wing protests last year were always wrong whenever they devolved into looting, arson, and rioting, so too would it be wrong for this week’s right-wing activity to become violent.
One of the great bulwarks of our constitutional order is the peaceful transition of power. Those who would put that tradition at risk should be permanently evicted from the public square.
