photo by: Contributed

Robert Reich

The FBI is investigating the source of suspicious packages sent to election offices in more than 20 states. Some election offices have been evacuated; staff are frightened.

Suspicious packages, bomb threats, death threats, harassment, assassination attempts, and violence are consequences of the politics of hate, now emanating more ferociously than ever from Trump and his sycophants.

Many explanations have been offered for why two assassination attempts have been made on Trump over the last two months. Some blame easy access to assault weapons; I’m sure that’s part of it.

But the real incitement to violence in America is hatefulness — hate speech, fearsome lies, and dangerous, paranoid rumors — the epicenter of which is Trump.

Trump blames the intensifying climate of violence on Kamala Harris and the Democrats: “Their rhetoric is causing me to be shot at,” he said. “Because of this Communist Left Rhetoric, the bullets are flying, and it will only get worse!” he wrote in a social media post. Trump’s campaign has circulated a list of so-called “incendiary” remarks Democrats have made against Trump and posted video clips from top Democrats calling him a “threat.”

JD Vance says “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.”

Hello? Calling Trump a fascist and a threat to democracy is not inciting violence; it’s telling the truth. American voters need to be made aware, if they aren’t already.

Let’s be clear: The most significant cause of the upsurge in political violence — including the two attempts on Trump’s life — is Trump himself, along with his close allies Vance and Elon Musk, and other cranks and crackpots that have come along for the ride.

Trump’s proclivity for violence was evident when he urged his followers to march on the U.S. Capitol on Jan.x 6, 2021, knowing they were carrying deadly weapons.

He has urged supporters to beat up hecklers; mocked the near-fatal attack on the husband of the Democratic House speaker; suggested that a general he deemed disloyal be executed; threatened to shoot looters and undocumented migrants; warned of “potential death & destruction” if indicted in his New York criminal case; made the ludicrous claim that “Babies are being executed after birth”; and predicted a “bloodbath” if he’s not elected in November.

Trump has never taken responsibility for the consequences of his hatefulness.

He still insists he was not responsible for the attack on the Capitol. Yet since the attack, he has suggested the mob might have been correct in wanting to hang his vice president. And he has called for those arrested in connection with the attack to be released, casting them as “hostages,” “political prisoners,” and “patriots,” whom he will pardon if reelected.

His incendiary rhetoric about immigrants — calling them “vermin,” claiming they’re “poisoning the blood” of America, charging that the United States is “under invasion” from “thousands and thousands and thousands of terrorists” — is worsening the hate and violence.

His baseless claims that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are eating people’s pets continues to generate bomb threats and death threats there. Schools and government offices have been closed. After more than 30 such bomb threats, Ohio’s governor has provided state police to conduct daily sweeps of Springfield schools.

“We did not have threats” before the claims, said Springfield Mayor Rob Rue, referring to the accusations made by Trump and JD Vance. “We need peace. We need help, not hate.”

When Trump was asked last week if he denounced the bomb threats, he said, “I don’t know what happened with the bomb threats” and repeated the lie that Springfield had been “taken over by illegal migrants, and that’s a terrible thing that happened.” In fact, Haitian immigrants are in Springfield legally.

The word “hate” has become Trump’s signature utterance.

During the presidential debate, he claimed that President Biden “hates” Harris, that Harris “hates” Israel and also hates Arabs. After Taylor Swift endorsed Harris, he posted “I HATE TAYLOR SWIFT” in capital letters.

Hate is the single most powerful emotion Trump elicits from his followers. Hate fuels his candidacy. Hate gives Trump’s entire MAGA movement its purpose and meaning.

Trump’s closest allies are magnifying Trump’s hate.

Vance has doubled down on the false claim that Haitians are eating pets in Springfield. He also says he’ll continue to describe Haitian residents there as “illegal aliens,” although most have been granted temporary protected legal status in the U.S. because of Haiti’s crisis.

Elon Musk posted to his nearly 200 million followers on X, just hours after the alleged assassination attempt on Trump, that “no one is even trying” to assassinate President Joe Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris. Musk has since deleted the post and said it was intended as a joke, but millions saw it — confirming that Musk is a threat to the nation’s security.

Meanwhile, Musk’s blatant refusal to moderate hateful lies on his X platform — and his descent into reposting many of them — is also contributing to the rise of hate in America and around the world.

Musk’s X blared out lies that caused race riots in the U.K. Musk himself shared lies that the U.K. was going to open detainment camps for rioters. He claimed that the ex-first minister of Scotland, Humza Yousaf, a Muslim, “loathes white people.”

When Europe’s Digital Commissioner Thierry Breton reminded Musk of his legal obligation to stop the “amplification of harmful content,” he responded by tweeting out a meme: “Take a big step back and literally, (expletive) your own face!”

Before Musk bought Twitter and turned it into X, Twitter had suspended Trump from the platform “due to the risk of further incitement of violence.” Musk has reinstated Trump.

Hate is a dangerous corrosive. It undermines civility, eats away social trust, dissolves bonds of community and nation.

A week ago Sunday, even before the second attempted assassination of Trump, the Libertarian Party of New Hampshire posted on X that “Anyone who murders Kamala Harris would be an American hero.”

The party deleted the post, but two days later it posted on X a lengthy follow-up referring to historical instances of violence supposedly “necessary to advance or protect freedom,” including the assassination of “past tyrants like Abraham Lincoln,” and stating that “it’s good when authoritarians” (that is, “progressives, socialists, and democrats”) are made to “feel unsafe or uncomfortable.”

Trump, Vance, Musk, New Hampshire’s Libertarian Party, and the neo-Nazis they’ve attracted to Springfield, Ohio, show how infectious hate can be as its venom spreads through political bottom-feeders and the swamps of the Internet.

Those who wield hate for personal ambition are among the vilest of human beings.

How to deal with the hate that Trump and his enablers are fueling?

We must call them out for what they’re doing. We must vote against the haters now running for office, from Trump on down, and urge others to join us.

In the case of Musk, we must boycott his products and push the U.S. government to terminate all contracts with him. Musk is a threat to national security.

Most fundamentally, we must hold all purveyors of hate accountable for the consequences of their hatefulness.

— Robert B. Reich is a columnist with Tribune Content Agency.