Donald Trump’s populist, politically incorrect language is often framed as an asset but a troubling escalation in his incendiary rhetoric is prompting fears over the potential for violence among his inflamed supporters.Trump’s exhortations to violence are nothing new — he suggested that protesters should be “roughed up” at a rally in 2016 and that looters should be shot during the 2020 racial protests over the police murder of George Floyd.The 77-year-old is often accused by opponents of “stochastic terrorism” — an academic term meaning the public demonization of perceived adversaries to incite statistically probable but individually unpredictable acts of violence.
Many of Trump’s targets in Congress and the government — from Republican Senator Mitt Romney to recently retired top government scientist Anthony Fauci — have disclosed having to take on private security after threats from the presidential candidate’s supporters.
Greenblatt blamed the Republican tycoon’s “racist, hateful, despicable” rhetoric about immigration in part for the massacres of Latinos and Jews in El Paso and Pittsburgh in 2018 and 2019 that left 34 people dead.
“Violent rhetoric leads to violent actions. And so this isn’t (just) dangerous, it’s explosive,” he told MSNBC. “It’s like lighting a fuse and just waiting for the bomb to go off.”
Trump’s comments about immigration “recall the worst racism of 1930s Germany,” added Gerard Filitti, senior counsel at US-based Jewish and pro-Israel advocacy group The Lawfare Project.
“It is troubling that Donald Trump at times appears to use inflammatory rhetoric that injects a measure of divisive ethnonationalism into what would otherwise be straightforward discussions of policy,” Filitti told AFP.
“Language like ‘poisoning the blood of our country’ is cringeworthy at best, and at worst sows doubt among voters as to what Trump’s true beliefs are.”