“I’ve said we need to build more gallows.”
Those words were spoken last month by a Republican state senator from Arizona, Wendy Rogers, at a white nationalist rally. The topic was the execution of political enemies.
There was a time in America when open talk of political violence was restricted to fringe forums among extremists who had little prospect of holding public office. But Rogers has a national presence, is praised by former President Donald Trump, and breaks fundraising records.
She is not an outlier. Today allusions to violence are a routine component of the conservative brand, and some far-right Republicans have adopted violent hatred of opponents as a central ideological tenet.
The longer such rhetoric is allowed to persist the more actual violence is likely to occur.