Republicans and Political Violence

Yesterday morning, 29-year-old Joshua Jahn opened fire on the Dallas, Texas office of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, leaving one immigration detainee dead and two others wounded. Jahn then turned his rifle on himself and took his own life. He also left behind shattered glass and bullet-damaged walls, suggesting that he had fired randomly at the building. Shortly after the shooting, Federal Bureau of Investigation Director Kash Patel tweeted a photograph showing unused cartridges, one of which had "ANTI-ICE" written on it. A host of Republican politicians, including cult leader, convicted felon, and failed President Donald Trump and Vice President JD Vance, immediately blamed Democrats and anti-ICE rhetoric for the shooting. This is similar to the Republican reaction after the murder of Charlie Kirk, when Trump, Vance, and others vowed to launch a broad attack on the left, including going after funders. Despite the quick rush to blame Democrats and the left for the current wave of political violence, it is worth taking a look at how Republicans have reacted to violence in recent months. Republicans may be eager to portray themselves as innocent victims of Democratic attacks, but the truth paints a much different picture.

The pattern that has emerged recently is that Republicans treat any act of violence against Republicans — and some parts of the government — as a "Reichstag Fire" while ignoring attacks against Democrats and other parts of the government. This sort of selective focus leads to such counterfactual statements as that made by Vance recently while hosting Kirk's podcast. Vance said, "This is not a both-sides problem. If both sides have a problem, one side has a much bigger and malignant problem, and that is the truth." While Vance was suggesting that violence is more of a problem on the left, the irony is that his statement would be correct had he directed it at the right. As the Washington Post reported:

Counterterrorism experts have found that right-wing terrorists, particularly white supremacists and anti-government extremists, committed the vast majority of domestic terrorism attacks in the United States over the past two decades.

“And really, it’s not close. It’s something like 5:1 in terms of the number of attacks and deaths that can be attributed to far-right actors as opposed to far-left actors,” Michael Jensen, research director at the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism consortium at the University of Maryland, said in an interview about the GOP’s focus on domestic extremism.

When Republicans talk about political violence these days, they almost exclusively focus on the assassination of Charlie Kirk and two earlier attacks on ICE facilities. The first of those occurred on July 4 when a group of attackers opened fire on the Prairieland Detention Center in Alvarado, Texas. This left a police officer wounded. The second attack occurred just three days later when a man with an assault rifle fired on federal agents outside a U.S. Border Patrol facility in McAllen, Texas. The shooter, identified as Ryan Louis Mosqueda, wounded a police officer before being shot and killed by authorities. None of the perpetrators in these attacks easily fits the mold of a traditional Democrat. Mosqueda was suffering from mental illness, and after he had left home with a weapon the day of the attack, his father contacted the police to warn them that he could present a danger. Nobody in his family remembers him having strong political opinions.

The Prairieland attack is more complicated. As many as 17 suspects have been arrested in the case. Many of them have ties to anti-fascist or anarchist organizations. Several have participated in left-wing activism. While initial descriptions of the attack by federal authorities said that there had been multiple shooters, the official account now claims only a single shooter. The emerging picture is that what was undoubtedly a mostly left-leaning group showed up for a protest at the ICE facility. To their surprise, one member of the group took out a weapon and opened fire. That individual is a "Marine-reservist-turned-anti-fascist activist". There is pretty strong evidence that this is a leftist-motivated political attack, but that makes it more of an anomaly among the recent events.

Both the Dallas attacker and Kirk's alleged murderer have characteristics in common. Neither is known to have strong political opinions. Jahn, the Dallas shooter, was mostly known for edgy humor. A friend said that he was "an edgelord, an irony guy." Few who knew him seem to believe that, despite what was scrawled on the cartridge, he really had strong feelings about ICE. His friend said, "Josh was an edgelord who wanted someone to get blamed. I think he tried his best to write something goofy … to rile people up." Tyler Robinson, who has been arrested for shooting Kirk, was also said to have not been particularly political. The one possible motivation appears to have been a personal beef with Kirk related to Kirk's opinions about gay and transgender people. Despite Republican claims, neither of these attacks is clearly motivated by left-wing politics. Rather, both alleged perpetrators were deeply into on-line gaming culture where memes are the favored means of communication.

In April, the Pennsylvania Governor’s Residence, at that time occupied by Democratic Governor Josh Shapiro and his family, was set on fire by a man throwing Molotov cocktails. 38-year-old Cody Balmer was arrested for the attack. While Balmer claimed that he was motivated by the war in Gaza and personal hatred for Shapiro, he appears to suffer from mental health issues and investigators are not sure how much credence to lend to his remarks. He has been facing a home foreclosure and charges of domestic assault. At the time of the domestic assault, he also attempted suicide. He is not known to have any political affiliation and appears to dislike all politicians. His Facebook page had both anti-Biden and anti-Trump posts. Trump was quick to disassociate the attack from Republicans and seemed to acknowledge this saying "The attacker was not a fan of Trump...The attacker basically wasn't a fan of anybody, he's probably just a whack job". This attack appears most similar to the McAllen, Texas shooting in that both probably have more to do with mental illness than politics.

On June 14, 57-year-old Vance Luther Boelter is alleged to have shot and wounded Minnesota state senator John Hoffman and his wife, Yvette. Boelter is then said to have killed Melissa Hortman, the leader of the Minnesota state House Democratic caucus and her husband Mark. Boelter, who is very religious, is mostly known for his extreme anti-abortion views. A "hit list" that he was carrying listed the names of a number of Democratic politicians and anti-abortion organizations. While Trump and other Republicans condemned the attacks, there was no attempt by them to link the shootings to broader Republican causes or actions. Trump refused to call Minnesota Governor Tim Waltz and did not order flags lowered to half-staff. During Trump's speech at Charlie Kirk's memorial service, he listed incidences of political violence, some going back years, but did not mention this one. For the most part, Republicans seem to have memory-holed these shootings.

Not only forgotten by Republicans, but barely acknowledged in the first place, was the shooting at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention campus in Atlanta, Georgia. On August 8, 30-year-old Patrick White opened fire on CDC buildings full of employees. White hit at least six buildings on the campus, killed DeKalb County Police Officer David Rose, and then took his own life. White was quickly identified as having extreme anti-vaccine views of the type often touted by Republicans and Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who oversees the CDC. Trump has never made a public statement about this act of violence, despite leading the government that employs those targeted. Kennedy sent out an email condemning the attack, but only visited the campus after hours when most employees had left. Both of those actions were several days after the attack. Like the shootings in Minnesota, Republicans would like to forget about this shooting.

But the most clear-cut illustration of the Republican view toward political violence comes from Texas. On July 25, 2020, 30-year-old Daniel Perry ran a red light and drove his car into a crowd of Black Lives Matter protesters. Garrett Foster, a 28-year-old man, who was legally carrying an AK-47 rifle, approached Perry's car. Perry pulled out a handgun and repeatedly shot Foster, killing him. Texas has an open carry law, so Foster was perfectly within his rights to have his weapon. Perry had a history of racist remarks and threatening to kill protesters. There was clear evidence that Perry had long planned to instigate an event in which he could take the lives of protesters and had claimed that he would be let off due to pleading self-defense. Perry was convicted by a jury and sentenced to 25 years in prison. However, in May of last year, Texas Governor Greg Abbott pardoned Perry.

Abbott had pledged to pardon Perry immediately after his conviction. However, the day after the conviction, additional evidence was released showing Perry's history of racism and threats to protesters. This caused Abbott to postpone the pardon. Not only was Perry released from prison, but Abbott restored his firearms rights. So Perry can go back to carrying a weapon and potentially instigating more conflicts with others. Perhaps the most elegant and accurate description of Abbott's action was offered by Foster's common-law wife:

Daniel Perry texted his friends about plans to murder a protester he disagreed with. After a lengthy trial, with an abundance of evidence, 12 impartial Texans determined that he carried out that plan and murdered my Garrett. With this pardon, the Governor has desecrated the life of a murdered Texan and US Air Force veteran and impugned that jury’s just verdict. He has declared that Texans who hold political views that are different from his — and different from those in power — can be killed in this State with impunity.

Separate from the issue of political violence, Perry was also found to have sent inappropriate sexual messages to a 16-year-old through the Kik Messenger platform. He wrote, "I am going to bed come up with a reason why I should be your boyfriend before I wake up."

The Republican attitude toward political violence is clear. If the victim is a Republican, the violence will be blamed on all Democrats regardless of the facts. Moreover, the incident will be used to justify a broad attack on Democrats and Democratic institutions. If the victim is a Democrat or a government institution such as the CDC that is disliked by Republicans, the incident will be ignored. If possible, the perpetrator will be rewarded. There is no indication that Republicans have any principled position regarding political violence whatsoever. Rather, political violence is simply another tool that can be used for political ends.