There is an incentive within the Republican Party that is just ghastly. Every member knows if they stoke dangerous conspiracy theories they’ll get an influx of cash from white identity radicals and a possible Fox News guest spot, all the while putting lives at risk. 
It’s not just posturing. Threats like this raise the temperature and lead to threats and violence. They play on paranoia and profit off delusion. By giving that delusion validity, they empower possible killers to take it upon themselves to fight an invisible, imaginary war.
Republicans politicians and their ghoulish staffs don’t consider the risks. It’s an easy fundraising tool and they break the glass whenever numbers look bleak. But it has consequences. Huge consequences. People die because delusional, paranoid radicals hear this and believe it.
But it plays on another level, particularly with Trump and higher Republicans. Creating an environment of unpredictable violence serves to intimidate reformer voices or critics into silence. We live in that environment now, where criticizing any of it is to incite danger.
This is how authoritarian regimes work. They destroy open society and with it any semblance of debate or questioning. By narrowing that circle and eliminating calls for reform, it actively clears the way for authoritarian rule by intimidation and danger, a controlling of thought.
Fascism doesn’t just appear. It eats at the diseased and weakened parts of liberal democracy. It grows with one transgression after another. These moments of blatant intimidation and raising of danger advance fascist societies. It’s not harmless, it’s not small.
