Why Republicans are suddenly reluctant to condemn political violence
Daniel Drezner is quoted about the similarities he sees between the U.S. Republican party and Lebanon’s Hezbollah, via an article in Los Angeles Times.
The result, says Tufts University political scholar Daniel Drezner, is a GOP that has begun to resemble Lebanon’s Hezbollah, “a political party that also has an armed wing to coerce other political actors through violence.”
“The comparison is stronger now than before,” Drezner told me last week. “The Republicans who wanted to impeach Trump have been marginalized, and the state parties sound more and more secessionist with each passing day.”
The willingness of right-wing extremists to resort to violence didn’t begin on Jan. 6 — and Trump has long sounded as if he was encouraging them.