The Charlotte News-Observer has repeatedly called for the House to censure Adolf Hitler fanboy Madison Cawthorn, who represents a congressional district in the greater Charlotte metropolitcan area. The San Antonio Express-News editorial board wrote that Paul Gosar "deserves to be expelled after he tweeted a video of an altered animation showing him killing congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio Cortez."
Considering right-wing endorsement of or silence on political violence, these editorial boards are taking a great risk in going after the fascist wing of the Republican Party. The recent trashing of the Dearborn, Michigan, office of Democratic Representative Debbie Dingell is a case in point. Not only was the office ransacked by vandals, but irreplaceable memorabilia belonging to Dingell's late husband, veteran Representative John Dingell, was damaged. Other members of Congress, Democratic and Republican, have been subjected to death threats and Democratic Party offices in Austin and Houston, Texas; Portland, Oregon; Louisville, Kentucky; Charleston and Anderson, South Carolina; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; San Diego, Eureka, and Orange, California; and Xenia, Ohio have been firebombed or vandalized. The FBI, which has been infiltrated by Trump loyalists, as has been the case with the rest of the Justice Department and the Homeland Security Department, has taken no action to apprehend the leaders of what appears to be coordinated political vandalism and terrorism.
At least a few newspaper editorial boards are sounding the alarm bells about the Nazification of American politics and the streets of the nation even as many newspapers across the country have already closed up shop or are in the process of doing so. Future historians will ponder how a once vibrant press could allow flat-out Nazis and fascists threaten the very foundations of America's democracy. The candles of the First Amendment and support for democracy still flicker in a few editorial board rooms in St. Louis, Denver, and Buffalo.
As Edward R. Murrow once told an audience after he bemoaned a faltering American press, "Good Night and Good Luck."
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