Right-Wing Networks' Extremist Rhetoric Is 'Intensifying,' Experts Say
The extremist rhetoric from right-wing networks has been "intensifying" according to some experts.
One America News Network's (OAN) Pearson Sharp has falsely claimed “traitors meddled” in the 2020 election and that there was a “coup” against former president Donald Trump.
Sharp also suggested that “radical Democrats leave their fingerprints all over this country,” and that the election “was not only tampered with but overthrown.” a claim that has no evidence supporting it and has resulted in over 50 challenges being thrown out of court.
Sharp also suggested that anyone who helped Joe Biden win the election should be executed for treason. Pennsylvania congressman Scott Perry has compared Democrats to Nazis, and Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene has compared mask-wearing rules to the holocaust, which she later apologized for.
Hosts such as Fox News' Tucker Carlson have been railing against Democrats and liberals at every opportunity and their attacks keep getting worse. Last week he suggested that the teaching of critical race theory could lead to the genocide of white Americans, asking his audience “how do we save this country before we become Rwanda” -- a reference to the 1994 Rwandan genocide that resulted in the death of hundreds of thousands of Tutsi people.
His comments come after the Anti-Defamation League asked Carlson to resign, following what it said was a “dangerous impassioned defense of white supremacist great replacement theory.”
There has also been the influence of the QAnon conspiracy theories on thousands of Trump supporters who stormed the Capitol during the Jan. 6 riots.
According to Andrew Carusone, the rhetoric is intensifying and is more widespread but this is not the first time right-wing media has had “flare-ups” or inflammatory rhetoric. He says it was typically just one person using rhetoric such as this and now that Trump is gone his absence “has created a vacuum” and that they are all “jockeying” to get as much of that audience as they can, adding “the inevitable consequence is that there is going to be more violence.”
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