After the most recent assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump, vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance showed his outrage by claiming that divisive rhetoric by the Democrats was, in part, to blame. Particularly, he focused on the word “fascist” being leveled at Trump and the claims by opponents that a GOP victory could lead to the end of democracy:
We can disagree with one another. We can debate one another. But we cannot tell the American people that one candidate is a fascist and if he’s elected, it is going to be the end of American democracy.
There is a little problem with his allegation, though, seeing as Trump has called Vice President Kamala Harris a fascist on a regular basis (as well as a Marxist, Communist, and Socialist, even though those are antithetical to Fascism). He has also claimed that a Democratic victory would lead to the end of democracy in his country. And to amp up the divisive and dangerous rhetoric from the right, Elon Musk recently suggested someone should try to assassinate Harris and/or Tim Walz.
Vance, Trump, and the Republicans basically want to have it both ways, where they get to spew any toxic words they choose while at the same time trying to hold their Democratic opponents accountable for saying anything that can be considered divisive (which we should note is a very subjective term). But the fact is that Trump has made divisive and extreme rhetoric his calling card since he started running for president in 2015, and he has only continued to get worse. Vance, along with other members of the GOP, have followed his lead, piling on to the attempts to fracture our country, and they have now clearly moved into the realm of hate speech.
The Oxford Dictionary defines hate speech as “abusive or threatening speech or writing that expresses prejudice on the basis of ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, or similar grounds.” All of that is very clear in the rhetoric coming from Trump, Vance, and other members of the far-right. I would add to it a particular hatred of Democracy based on their constant attacks on our Constitutional System.
Let us look at just a few recent examples to prove the point. Among the most recent are the claims that both Trump and Vance have made about Haitian immigrants, which clearly follow the Oxford definition of hate speech. J.D. Vance first brought the story into the political arena, saying that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio have been eating dogs and cats, which are the pets of other people living in the area. Trump repeated that in the debate against Harris, and both have continued to defend their claims, with others in the GOP also jumping onboard to spread these false rumors.
One of the sources for these claims is a Facebook post that has no corroborating evidence, and both the mayor of Springfield and the governor of Ohio have claimed the rumors are not true. When Vance was pressed for any sort of evidence, his team produced a police report where a resident of Springfield blamed Haitian neighbors for the disappearance of her cat, alleging that they had eaten the animal. However, the cat showed up a few days later, having been hiding in the basement, and the woman ended up apologizing for her accusations.
So, there is no evidence backing the claims, and any attempt to investigate the rumors thus far has come up empty. That makes these simply racist statements by Vance, Trump, and other members of the GOP that certainly fall into the category of hate speech. Vance calls out the Democrats for being divisive, yet he doubles and triples down on these claims, and Trump has promised to deport all these Haitians if he gets into office (despite the fact that they are here legally). I’m not sure that you can get more divisive, hateful, and racist than this, but Vance tries to redirect from that by drawing our attention to people calling Trump fascist, and in so doing, turns his party into the victims.
Let us also take a look at Vance’s attempts to define what is a proper family in this country and his claims that those who don’t fit that definition should be minimized in the political arena. (It should be noted that ever since Vance joined the campaign, he has been driving much of the divisiveness, but Trump appears more than willing to amplify the toxic rhetoric.) Vance has suggested that only a nuclear family that consists of a man and woman and biological children truly counts as a family. People without children, he claims, do not have as much stake in the country, and he has leveled vicious attacks against those he refers to as “childless cat ladies.” He has even suggested that voting power should be directly linked to the number of children in a family (excluding stepchildren and those who are adopted).
By creating this sort of definition, Vance establishes an immediate division across the country. Only heterosexual married couples who have children together truly count in his limited view of the family. And those who have no children are shirking their duty to the country (even though the cost of pregnancy continues to rise to the point that it can be a severe financial burden). This, along with his sexist attacks against women and dismissive attitude toward families with same-sex parents, piles onto his discordant rhetoric, and again verges on hate speech. And yet it is okay for him, Trump, and other Republicans to make these claims while the Democrats are immediately blamed for assassination attempts if they say anything deemed contentious.
Let’s turn our attention next to another member of the Republican Party who has been making headlines lately after some pretty hateful things he said in the past have surfaced. Lieutenant Governor Mark Robinson is running for the Governorship of North Carolina on a heavily right-wing platform, but some of his past comments have come back to haunt him. These surfaced from a porn message board he allegedly contributed to where he called himself a “black Nazi” and also admitted to “peeping” on women in the shower at the gym. He has denied these claims, but they are linked to a username that is tied to him.
On the issue of abortion, he supports a ban, although he has softened from his previous position for a complete ban (perhaps in part because it came out that his wife had an abortion). He has also made the misogynist comment that women need to “keep their skirts down” to prevent the need for an abortion, putting the majority of the blame for the pregnancy on them (which is supported by many of the current state bans, more on that here). He is also linked to the following comment:
Slavery is not bad. Some people need to be slaves. I wish they would bring it (slavery) back. I would certainly buy a few.
And also to the statement: “I’d take Hitler over any of the sh** that’s in Washington right now!” And while you would think the GOP would be trying to wash their hands of this person who has peddled such hate speech (some are), Trump instead continues to support him, and to make it worse, actually called him a better version of Martin Luther King.
And speaking of the former president, he has had more than his share of divisive comments during his political career (going all the way back to the racist birther claims against Obama), but some recent statements are quite eye-opening. At a campaign event hosted by the Israeli American Council, Trump said that “If I don’t win this election… the Jewish people would have a lot to do with a loss.” He also tried to paint Kamala Harris as a hater of Israel, even though her husband is Jewish. And of course, he has questioned her racial identity and suggested that she only got to her current place by providing sexual favors to men. These just add to the divisive rhetoric and strongly suggest his own anti-Semitism, racism, and sexism. I would add to this his comments about rooting out the left-wing “vermin” and claiming that immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of the country—two statements that echo the words of a certain European dictator from the 20th century who I am apparently not allowed to name without being called divisive.
Let us turn for a moment to Trump’s apparent contempt for our democratic system, which I consider its own particular form of hate speech. He started before he was even elected with his many claims of “fake news” and accusations that the election would be “rigged.” And he has continued with that to this day, constantly accusing the news of lying and misrepresenting him while challenging the results of the 2020 election (despite no evidence of fraud) and inciting a riot that led to the first instance in this country’s history where we did not have a peaceful transfer of power. Trump has also regularly challenged the checks and balances and separation of powers in our Constitutional System while doing all he can to consolidate power into the Executive Branch. And these are only a few examples of his attacks on our democracy, proving the hatred he has for a free government run by the rule of law.
So, let us turn now briefly to the rhetoric coming from the Democratic Party that J.D. Vance claims is divisive and has led to two assassination attempts on Trump. Both Kamala Harris and Tim Walz have noted the authoritarian nature of Trump’s previous time in office and how he has indicated he would act if re-elected. Many others have outright called out the elements of fascism found with Trump and his MAGA movement, and I previously looked at that in detail here.
And whether our democracy would come to an end if he were to be re-elected, as many have warned, consider some of his own words. He told a group of Christian evangelicals that they won’t have to worry about voting again if he wins in 2024. Trump has also claimed that he will be dictator on day one, has threatened military tribunals against his opponents, and has promised to round up immigrants and other disloyal people and put them in detainment camps. There is also Project 2025, which is a blueprint for a fascist government. And while he claims no connection to it, many of his former staffers worked on it, and many of his policy claims are in line with it.
Harris, Walz, the Democrats, and every voting citizen of this country has a right and duty to call out these very clear threats to our Free and Democratic country. If somebody is acting like a fascist and showing all the signs that they would take the United States in that direction, the people of this country should speak out against it. That is not divisive, contentious speech—even though it will generate some antagonism—it is what we must do to protect the Freedom and Democracy that this country represents.
As for the assassination attempts, J.D. Vance ignores that these appear to be right-wing-leaning rogues who have grown dissatisfied with Trump’s actions. So, his attempts to point the blame at the Democrats fall short, and the divisive rhetoric that he, Trump, and other MAGA members continue to spew does little to help the situation. Trying to hold the Democrats accountable for “divisive” rhetoric is just a bait-and-switch strategy to redirect blame from Trump and his followers who are truly splitting this country apart. And the best way for us to counter this is to vote against Trump and his MAGA movement in November.