Sometimes, the Other Guy is Just Wrong
Political violence is not a “both sides” problem
So, I couldn’t help but notice this delicious piece of irony floating around the internet this week:
Now, after looking into it a bit, I discovered that this post is not entirely true. It’s what we might call an “overstatement” based on a previous post from Greene herself. Here are the first few lines of that post:
I am now being contacted by private security firms with warnings for my safety as a hot bed of threats against me are being fueled and egged on by the most powerful man in the world.
The man I supported and helped get elected.
Being contacted by security firms does not mean those firms were hired; however, it says very clearly that people in the security business recognize threats, even if they only see them as opportunities to make money. And Greene probably needs to hire someone and spend real money doing it, and soon.
But even though this particular lie appears to be just another instance of internet people doing internet things to get internet famous, it does give us an opportunity to discuss political violence, and especially how unbalanced it is in America.
When this subject comes up in the news cycle, as it does more and more these days, our corporate controlled talking heads always, without fail, misrepresent the imbalance between left and right-wing violence. And the reality of it is quite simple. While violence can and does happen on “both sides” the notion that this violence occurs “equally” on both sides is simply ludicrous. Marjorie Taylor Greene knows this, but she has only learned to care about it recently.
You see, before MTG spent her time remaking herself in preparation for a presidential run, she made a lot of money for security companies by directing right-wing violence against any and all who opposed her. And then, like now, she promoted herself on the backs of survivors of that horrific violence, most notably when she verbally attacked victims of the school shooting in Parkland, Florida, calling one of the survivors, activist David Hogg, a “crisis actor” when she first ran for Congress in March of 2019. It worked, and she has been a Congresswoman and a darling of the violent political right ever since. At least until she turned on Trump. Now she’s getting the same threats Democrats have been getting for the last decade, and there aren’t enough Jewish space lasers in orbit to protect her.
Now let’s be clear – I oppose America’s political right with all my energy and with all the clever sentences I can manage, but I abhor violence. In fact, I hate it so much that I refuse to lie about it, which is something the right-wing propaganda machine can’t say. They’re too busy reframing each act of violence committed in Trump’s name as something, anything other than what we all know it is. And what we all know is that while violence can happen on “both sides” in America, the simple reality is that the right is far more violent than the left, so much so that any argument to the contrary is just silly. The only thing sillier is the amount of money the GOP spends on right-wing think tank reports telling us the opposite of what we all know to be true.
If you don’t believe me, call a security form that handles high-profile protection and ask how they make their money. They’ll tell you they make it protecting famous people from creepy stalkers and protecting the political left from the political right. That’s an oversimplification, of course, but not as much as one might think.
Simply put, if you’re walking down any sidewalk in America and you see one of Trump’s “bad hombres” walking towards you, chances are you’re perfectly safe because the other guy is a working-class stiff just like you. But if you see a MAGA hat coming at you, it’s time to cross the street.
If you don’t think the MAGA hat means violence is coming, it’s because you’re wearing one, too.
Brett Pransky is a writer, a teacher, a father, and a husband, but rarely in that order. He spends his days amplifying the voices of freedom and democracy as an Editor right here at The Political Voices Network, and he spends his nights trying to fix the world one clever sentence at a time.