First they discredit the free press.
“For years Donald Trump, Republicans, and Fox News have used tensions to raise money and consolidate power. They created a hyper-divided reality where cops are soldiers against the threat of minorities, protest is treason, and journalists are enemies.
“It was always heading here.
“You cannot chop everything up to dichotomous choices with paranoia and fear and not lead here. Fearmongering mixed with aggressive identity appeal like Blue Lives Matter, fascistic rhetoric and fashion, and stories of conspiracies and traitors gets you to a burgeoning civil war.
“This is what a society looks like when racism and paranoia and fear are the only appeals of a political party that can’t win elections or debates anymore without the destruction of democracy and fairness and basic human decency.
“Let’s be clear. We’ve got militarized police in our streets, brutalizing people, killing unarmed black men, because this nation has failed to live up to its principles and social contract and because its worst fears and prejudices have been played like an instrument by the Right.
“These things have always existed. White supremacy. Police brutality. America as a dangerously paranoid and violent country. These things have always plagued us. And like every time a group dresses itself in fascistic appeals, it escalates to this. The Right is in that tradition.
“It is like the 1960s and 1970s in that regard. Both eras saw calls for fairness and equality met by fascistic resistance by a power group terrified of losing power and militarized by paranoia and fear. These things happen here. It’s happening here now.
“It isn’t a coincidence that Trump, Republicans, and Right Wing media peddle white supremacy and white paranoia while our police forces and military are infected by white supremacists. It is the American disease and the Right has spread it and focused it for profit and power.
“The police are fighting minority protestors and journalists like they’re enemies because they’ve been turned into enemies, specifically enemies of white supremacy and power. There are consequences to fearmongering, to authoring a divisive society where fear wins power.”
Jared Yates Sexton is the author of American Rule, The Man They Wanted Me to Be, and The People Are Going to Rise Like the Waters Upon Your Shore. His political writing has appeared in publications including The New York Times, The New Republic, Politico, and Salon.com. Sexton is also the author of three collections of fiction and is an associate professor of creative writing at Georgia Southern University.