America Can Stop Violent Extremism

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/03/opinion/political-violence.html

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Americans are right to be nervous about the coming midterm elections, and not only about the results. It will be the first time that the nation’s electoral machinery will be tested after two years of lawsuits, conspiracy theories, “audits” and all manner of interference by believers in Donald Trump’s lies about the 2020 election.

I’m nervous for another reason as well: the embrace of violent extremists by a small but growing faction of the Republican Party. Today’s editorial, the first in a series on violent extremism, will explore this peril and what we can do about it.

During the past five years, incidents of political violence have soared. Last month’s attack on Paul Pelosi, the husband of the speaker of the House of Representatives, is just the most recent example, and federal officials are deeply worried about the threat of violence around the midterms.

That’s why it is so alarming to read about far-right extremists and paramilitary and anti-government groups planning to act as poll watchers. Masked, armed people in military gear were spotted last month in a parking lot in Arizona where early voting has been underway. This kind of intimidation is illegal under the Voting Rights Act, but it appears extremist poll watchers are undeterred even as they face lawsuits and restraining orders.

It’s an ill omen that it has become routine to see heavily armed extremists at political events or harassing librarians or poll workers or members of Congress. It is even more concerning that some Republican politicians, in their own coded and not so coded ways, are encouraging it.

To be clear, the overwhelming number of incidents of political violence in recent years has come from the right. Most Republicans oppose it without reservation, and we have seen conservatives targeted. Yet one faction of Republicans is using the threat of violence not only against their opponents on the left, but also in their battle to win control of the G.O.P.

There are things we can do to push this violent extremism offstage, as the arrest of more than 900 people for the attack on Jan. 6 shows. Every state, for instance, has laws banning private paramilitary groups — they just rarely use them, as the editorial explains.

In the past few years, there have been plenty of points at which it feels as if the future of the nation hangs in the balance. Peaceful politics are all we have to manage our deeply divided democracy. Lose that and the country is headed for a dark place — that’s what this series of pieces on extremism is trying to help avoid.