In mid-October, the Soufan Group of experts warned in a report about the possibility of a new outbreak of political violence during the November legislative elections in the United States due to the «hyper-partisanship» that the country is experiencing, particularly that fueled by far-right social networks such as Gab or Truth Social.
This state of tension reached its peak with the attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of the Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, on the 28th of that month by conspiracy theorist David DePape, who had already rejected Donald Trump’s electoral defeat in the 2020 elections.
Pelosi, 82 years old, had to be admitted after DePape, who was really after the top leader of the Democratic party in the lower house with the intention of «breaking her knees», gave her several hammer blows that caused a skull fracture.
The reactions within the Republican rivals were mostly characterized by their immediate condemnation of the event and have denied that this attack was a product of their rhetoric against the Democratic Party since the arrival of Joe Biden to the White House, as they were also for introducing shortly after a more or less hidden attack against the President of the United States.
Below the public reactions, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) highlighted through one of its studies, published last Friday, the close link between the new American ultra-right, the most radical elements of the Republican Party and the disinformation prevailing in conservative platforms and media such as The Gateway Pundit or the Santa Monica Observer, which have devoted the last few days to spread false information about the attack.
South African tycoon Elon Musk, flamboyant «Twitter boss», went so far as to spread a fake news story from the ‘Observer’ linking Paul Pelosi to his assailant; a hoax also spread by the extremist Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, who expressed her revulsion for the attack before blaming Biden for the proliferation of violence in American cities, and a lie that was also circulated by the Truth Social platform of former President Donald Trump, who expressed himself about the attack in practically the same terms as the congresswoman.
All this, taking into account that Pelosi is one of the most demonized Democratic figures by the conservative movement. Former President Trump has shared doctored videos of the Democratic leader designed to question her mental state, retweeted accusations that she was «drinking alcohol on the job» and has addressed her as «Crazy Nancy,» «Nervous Nancy» or «Nancy Antoinette.»
In 2018 and 2019, Taylor Greene dedicated a «like» to a Facebook post suggesting that «a bullet to the head» would be the most convenient way to end Pelosi’s presidency, and claimed in a Facebook video that Pelosi was guilty of treason, and reminded that it is «a crime punishable by death.»
The result: «By the time the week of the attack was over, almost no one on the American right, whether an outspoken extremist or an ostensibly respectable conservative commentator, recognized that the attack was an act of political violence,» according to SPLC’s findings.
INCREASING CRISPATION At the time, the Soufan think tank described the current situation as the result of a multitude of issues of discord between Democrats and Republicans during the first two years of the Biden administration, such as the conservative Supreme Court’s decisions against abortion, the fight against the pandemic, the economic crisis stemming from the war in Ukraine (especially the rise in inflation), the legal proceedings against participants in the January 6, 2021 insurrection on Capitol Hill, or the open investigation against the former president.
A discourse, in short, which, according to the group, is translating into a cultural and ideological war fueled by the «growing threat of Christian nationalism», an identity that «welcomes conspiracists, apocalyptics and members of armed militias» united by the specter of a second civil war in the country.
«By the end of 2022, talk of a potential civil war in the United States is already a fully normalized issue,» the group warned in its report, «and those who call for calm or attempt to present moderate rhetoric have been marginalized.»
