Frequently in conversation friends will ask – sometimes wondering, sometimes angry – “Why won’t any of them [meaning Republicans in House and Senate] step up?” Meaning vote on principle, or follow their better angels, and vote against Trump.
You’ve probably had friends ask that question, maybe pondered it yourself. The answer? Well, sure, they’re worried about some Trump-backed MAGA-spouting candidate – likely more MAGA than they are – taking them on in the primary next time out. But hey, they’ve won their races before, maybe many times. They know their state, their district. They know where the money is. That can’t be all of it. Threat of a primary challenger – even one backed by Trump – can’t so universally scare Republican legislators into silence, can it?
Well, that’s not all of it. A primary challenger is not their only fear. That’s probably the least of what scares them. After all, they’re right when they think as experienced pols they know how to approach and win voters. What they really fear is MAGA trolls on social media: the attacks and threats – even of death – to them and their families that arise like sewer gas when some word, however oblique, comes from Trump or someone MAGAs see as one of his on-line Trump whisperers: J.D. Vance, anti-immigrant in chief Stephen Miller, Breitbart web pages, Steve Bannon’s War Room podcast, weird Laura Loomer, the local party chair, and anybody else seeking Trump’s favor. There are a lot of them to choose from.
For a Republican Congress member or Senator, the effect is paralyzing. It’s fear, fear that goes far beyond just worries about losing an election, fear of reputation destroyed, fear of lost – forever – allies and friends, fear of lies wrongly asserting criminal acts (mortgage fraud, anyone?). Above all, fear of personal harm, fear of injury or death for oneself and family. Fear is powerful.
Iowa’s Sen. Joni Ernst, a combat veteran, was quickly attacked by MAGAs with political power followed by a flock of MAGAs whose status exists only on social media when she said she was reluctant to confirm Pete Hegseth for Secretary of Defense.
There’s no doubt that when MAGA’s big names lead, with little restraint the MAGA trolls follow. And this is different, not politics as usual, not politics as we know it. Social media is a brand-new force, come to the fore with Donald Trump. (Never before has a U.S. president owned one of the social media used for his own personal and government messages – because anything he puts out is a government message.)
The response to Ernst built first in whispers following her initially cool remarks after Hegseth’s nominastion, then into a pile-on from powerful figures in the “Make America Great Again” movement.
Building America’s Future, a conservative nonprofit, announced plans to spend half a million dollars supporting Trump’s pick of Hegseth, the Daily Caller first reported. The group spent thousands on social media – Facebook and Instagram ads featuring Ernst’s photo – and ran a commercial urging viewers to call their senators to back Trump’s man.
According to Newsweek, “On social media, Trump’s supporters railed against Ernst for not supporting Hegseth . . . Gunther Eagleman, a political commentator and MAGA supporter with more than a million followers, replied that Ernst ‘needs to be in the unemployment line.’” Maybe not unemployment, but not senator. Ernst has now decided not to run for re-election.
As Politico (and others) reported: “This spring Sen. Lisa Murkowski said a fear of retaliation under President Donald Trump’s administration is rising to levels she’s not seen before,” acknowledging . . . “that it is so pervasive that even the outspoken senator is ‘oftentimes very anxious’ to speak up out of fear of recrimination.”
Mother Jones reported in March that “Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand (D-N.Y.) cited such threats as a reason Republicans confirmed Hegseth . . . ‘[B]ecause the Trump MAGA machine is powerful. They are aggressive. They are nasty. They issue death threats. They threaten people. They threaten them with retaliation. They have really gotten under the skin of a lot of Republicans who are unfortunately now unwilling to stand up to Trump.’”
Republican Democrat Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth was quoted in the Alternet news site describing it this way: “Joni Ernst received so many threats and attacks outright, you know, threatening her, saying that they would primary her all the way through to threats against her own security.”
In another report, Mother Jones described the Hegseth vote this way: “[L]lurking in the background remained the question of whether it wasn’t just threats of political retribution that steered Ernst and other GOP senators who weighed voting against Hegseth and other controversial Trump cabinet nominees but also threats of violence. How much were they scared for their political lives, and how much were they scared for their actual lives?
In another report Politico said that “Through it all, Hegseth’s allies bulled forward in Trumpian fashion. . . They sought to discredit and silence Hegseth’s accusers. And . . . they sicced what one Senate aide called “MAGA goons” — a band of influential online combatants — onto GOP senators.”
Bottom line is this. Social media is a huge and threatening addition to politics, an essential tool for Republicans in the current “must win” environment, a contest where the party and Trump as a matter of course claim their opponents are not real Americans.
And the online trolls themselves? Sure, there are powerful names whose role is to light the match. But the small-time nameless players sitting at home with their computers writing on social media are just as powerful. They are the numbers; they are the mob. Likely many are new to politics and thrilled with their influence. Using social media, they are a new force happy to spread hate and fear, a new force growing in politics and government for the last 10 or 15 years.
To create fear among your opponents is now a goal of the game. Social media is the tool. There is no referee.
Discover more from Post Alley
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.
“Republican Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth …”
Correction needed. As I’m sure you know, she’s a Democrat.
Spot on, Dick. Kirk himself was under attack from his right, particularly by Nick Fuentes and Laura Loomer. I think one reason Trump et al are moving so fast and hard to blame leftists for the shooting is their fear that the shooter might actually have been a MAGA true believer. Social media creates an opportunity for new squadristi to arise. The squadristi were originally Northern Italian farmers who banded together to fight Socialist attempts to unionize the agricultural sector after WW I. A few years later, encouraged by Mussolini, they evolved into the Blackshirts, mobs of loosely-organized former soldiers & others who physically terrorized anyone who resisted the rise of the Fascists. Social media makes the terrorizing much more efficient. As long as people are occasionally shot or beaten, waves of online threats are effective.