In his later years as a Congress member, after making a more moderate turn, he recalled receiving some real vitriol from the base — even facing a crowd in his hometown that seemed so volatile that he refused to introduce his family on stage.

Political scientists have repeatedly found that ethnic violence is particularly likely when a privileged portion of society sees power slipping into the hands of a group that hadn’t previously held it — as has been happening in the United States for years.

A backlash to social change is probably the single biggest reason behind both Trump’s political rise and the rash of white supremacist terrorism starting in the late 2010s, like the Pittsburgh synagogue shooting in 2018, the attack on an El Paso Walmart frequented by Latinos in 2019, or the 2022 massacre of supermarket shoppers in a Black area of Buffalo.

And, at the fateful rally on January 6, 2021, he told his assembled supporters that “if you don’t fight like hell, you’re not going to have a country anymore.” That day, and ones immediately to follow, dramatize just how profoundly threats of violence have come to shape Republican politics.

By contrast, individual Republicans who dissent from the Trumpist line immediately get singled out in conservative and far-right media — attracting the sort of attention reserved for a handful of “most hated” Democrats such as Reps. Nancy Pelosi (CA) or Ilhan Omar (MN).

TREASONOUS SCHMIDTS.” The family left their home for safety reasons after the election, and Schmidt did not run for reelection in 2023 (he was recently appointed to serve as secretary of state under Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor, Josh Shapiro).

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