Senator Tom Cotton wants protesters to be assaulted

He's the latest elected fascist to openly call for violence

Senator Tom Cotton is encouraging everyone and anyone to rampage through protests, assault people who block traffic with their demonstrations, and generally attack anti-genocide protesters. And it’s not just once, he’s doubling and tripling down on calls to attack people who protest in the streets, even going as far as to send out a video of a man assaulting protesters along with the text “How it should be done.”

But that wasn’t even his first time calling for this violence against people who dare to take action againt genocide. The tweet that set off a firestorm of responses rightly asking what the hell a Senator was doing promoting attacks on protesters read, “I encourage people who get stuck behind the pro-Hamas mobs blocking traffic: take matters into your own hands to get them out of the way.” And that’s the edited version. First came the tweet below:

Then he made his edit, which left the sentiment intact but allowed him to pretend that he only wants protesters moved out of the way, not attacked in other ways. There’s just one little problem. He also did a Fox News interview where he expounded upon his views. In the interview he explicitly discusses how back in Arkansas protesters who block roads might be thrown off a bridge, or have their skin ripped off. Yes, those are direct quotes, unfortunately. Cotton phrased it as a hypothetical, but the intent is perfectly clear. And that interview came before he took to Twitter to follow it up, and follow it up again.

Now of course conservatives are trying to have it two ways. They’re doing what they always do, which is saying “Well what he means is you should just get people to move out of the way” while they ignore the content of his interview on Fox. They are also, of course, pivoting to blaming people for protesting “the wrong way.” And I’ll be perfectly honest, for the purpose of this piece I couldn’t care less about debating whether or not blocking traffic is an effective tactic. There’s a whole different piece to be written about how the majority of America wants Congress to force a ceasefire, about how the majority of Democrats want the U.S. to cut off aid to Israel, and about how our government is not responding. Biden and Congress are not behaving as politicians in a democracy ought to behave. They are unresponsive to the will of the people, they refuse to comply with our desire for peace. People would not be growing increasingly disruptive in their efforts to halt a genocide if that were not the case. But that’s for a different piece.

For today, we need to talk about uniting against the ever more fascist right-wing of this country that wants to attack protesters, and the right to protest itself. Because Tom Cotton’s call to violence is happening in the context of the Supreme Court letting a ruling stand that makes organizing mass protests in Louisiana, Mississippi, or Texas close to impossible. It is happening in the context of pro-Palestine protests being criminalized around the country. It is happening in the context of multiple states passing laws since 2020 that protect drivers who run over protesters. Oklahoma, Iowa, Florida, and others have passed these laws to essentially legalize ramming into protesters with your vehicle.

And people have done it. In the summer of 2020 alone there were at least 104 instances of people using their vehicles as weapons to attack rallies and protesters and various assemblies of people gathered together to protest police murders of Black folks. This is the context for Senator Cotton’s calls to violence against people protesting Israel’s genocide in Gaza.

Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash

So the lies that the right is spewing now, in the wake of Cotton’s repeated statements, should be dismissed. This U.S. Senator knows his audience. He’s not asking people to gently escort protesters off the road, he’s asking for violence. He wants people to be assaulted and hurt, and he’s being clear about that. At this point no one should be fooled by the dual fascist pillars of violence and lying. They continually promote attacking protesters and political opponents in general, as Donald Trump and countless far-right figures have done in recent years, and then pretend to hide behind sarcasm or joking or claiming to be misinterpreted. This strategy is allowed to work by the media and often Democrats who are afraid to call them on their bullshit. And when they’re not called out the center is allowed to go along with the assertion that their comments are being blown out of proportion, that they were just joking, that these fascists are simply being misinterpretted by the meanies on the left. Meanwhile, the right knows exactly what was said, and runs with it, leaning further and further into violence.

We’ve seen this before, and it’s led to people getting injured, and even killed. We’ve seen the Proud Boys rally and attack people and we’ve seen cars rammed into protesters. We’ve seen Heather Heyer murdered by a fascist with his vehicle in Charlottesville at the “Unite the Right” hate rally. We know the threat is real, because fascists have already been doing this for some time. They can try to obfuscate their statements, but their actions ring out loud and clear. And deadly.

Here’s the problem this time: Senator Cotton isn’t really hiding it. Some of the fascist movement is running interference as they always do, but he’s embracing his message of violence against protesters. He’s doubling and tripling down and he’ll probably keep it going. In a right-wing environment that loves to run with the most extreme take, he’s most likely getting positive feedback. He’s certainly getting a whole lot of social media engagement, and he might be thinking that all publicity is good publicity. And he’s free to think that as long as he doesn’t suffer any consequences. Here we arrive at our next problem: Why the hell hasn’t a sitting U.S. Senator openly calling for violence against Americans engaged in protected protest activity faced a swift and massive backlash from the Democrats, who control the Senate?

Photo by Pauline Loroy on Unsplash

We all know what happened to Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib. Her principled criticism of Israel earned her a censure from the Republican-controlled House of Representatives. And plenty of Democrats reached across the aisle to participate in that rebuke. Now, Tom Cotton is repeatedly calling for Americans to be attacked and hurt. If he doesn’t face any consequences, that doesn’t just say his statements are okay, it normalizes yet another level of openly advocating fascist violence. Democrats have, for years now, tried to bring business as usual to the fight against fascism. Vote, campaign, and write strongly worded letters at times. It doesn’t work against opposition that pushes mob violence, doesn’t care about rules and decorum, and has no shame. And even more worrisome, many Dems are all too willing to partner with Republicans when it comes to suppressing the movement to free Palestine. So I unfortunately do not believe that Democrats will take Tom Cotton to task for advocating the assault of protesters, but they fail to do so at their own risk.

Ultimately, fighting fascism and responding to the right’s growing propensity for violence is on us, as it has been. We need to defend our communities, we need to plan our organizing and our protests with caution and decisiveness, and we need to not take these attacks lying down. Sticking our heads in the sand and feigning ignorance about the viciousness and violence of our opposition is not an answer – it’s a recipe for our friends and neighbors to be hurt, for us to be hurt. We need to assess the fascist threat in this country with clear eyes and organize accordingly, which means building the power to crush their movement from every angle. It also means building strong alternatives to the entities which refuse to take the appropriate action. Senator Tom Cotton isn’t the first powerful person to advocate openly for attacking his opposition, and he won’t be the last. But we do need to look ahead to a world where men like him have no platform, no power, and no audience. And we need to work diligently toward that world.