How white racism and anti-democracy elite rhetoric create the conditions for right-wing violence | #196 – May 15, 2022

Research paints a picture of a republic frayed by the politics of white grievance and violent rhetoric by far-right politicians

When I blogged last week about how America’s counter-majoritarian electoral institutions and minoritarian politicking have insulated the Republicans from accountability and enabled, eg, the overturning of Roe v Wade, the stakes of the discussion hinged on two likely outcomes. The first is, obviously, the loss of abortion rights for women who want abortions. The second is the violation of the modern democratic principle of our social contract: the dual guarantees that everyone’s voice matters equally in determining who wins elections and that the majority gets most of what they want, most of the time.

This week, the stakes look even higher. When a man walked into a grocery store in a predominantly black neighborhood of Buffalo, New York yesterday and shot 13 people, killing 10, he illustrated the extreme consequences of the same minoritarian, anti-democracy thinking that is used to justify things like ending Roe and the existence of the US Senate, which primarily serves today as a block…