Thread by @tzimmer_history

The Republican Party’s coalition consists of two groups: Those who don’t think that the GOP’s embrace of a politician who wants to execute her political opponents is a dealbreaker - and those who are voting Republican precisely because the party embraces her extremism.

https://twitter.com/ronbrownstein/status/1614386016336646146

The former group is bigger. But a significant portion of the base is in the latter, and the acute threat to democracy results from the fact that the people in the former camp can’t be bothered to break with a party in which the likes of Marjorie Taylor Greene keep rising.

Let’s keep that in mind on #MLKDay, as Republican politicians will inevitably invoke the legacy of Martin Luther King to call for “civility” and “unity” - with the sole purpose of delegitimizing any critique of racist structures and practices, any demand for equality and respect.

“Unity,” Republicans want America to believe, is not undermined by politicians who propagate violent conspiracy theories; not by reactionary moral panics that relentlessly demonize society’s vulnerable groups; not by legislation stripping citizens of fundamental rights.

Instead, Republicans tell us it is those marginalized groups and their pesky insistence on equal rights, respect, and representation that threatens national “unity” - that it is the reactionary quest to uphold the discriminatory traditional order that’s in line with MLK’s vision.

It’s a reminder that elite calls for “unity” and “civility” almost always constitute attempts to discipline the unruly masses who - how dare they! - demand equality and justice. Ignore the substance of their critique, focus on how “uncivil” and “divisive” it is. An old playbook.

Or put it this way: The version of “MLK” Republicans like to propagate is one that comfortably coexists with also celebrating Robert E. Lee, who betrayed his country to fight for the right to enslave Black people. How is that for “unity” and “civility”?

https://twitter.com/josh_moon/status/1614854858112401419

DeSantis is spearheading the red-state assault on the 1960s civil rights revolution - he has been the most effective champion of a white reactionary counter-mobilization against whatever racial and social progress has been achieved. It does not get any more shameless than this.