Hawley tried to claim protestors “terrorized” his neighborhood. But when it comes to violence, it is far-right radicals—and not anti-fascists—who have killed over 300 people since 1994.
Sen. Josh Hawley, a public servant who swore an oath to defend the US Constitution, called peaceful protesters “scum” after they gathered outside his Virginia home Monday evening to oppose Hawley’s support of President Donald Trump’s anti-democratic coup. The senator also accused them of terrorizing his wife and neighbors, even as a video of the entire self-described “vigil” proves otherwise.
The Missouri Senator and former constitutional lawyer accused the attendees of committing “leftwing violence” for daring to express their outrage at his cynical attempt to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election.
“Tonight while I was in Missouri, Antifa scumbags came to our place in DC and threatened my wife and newborn daughter,” he wrote on Twitter late Monday. “They screamed threats, vandalized, and tried to pound open our door.”
Footage of the vigil contradicts Hawley’s account, however. In the 50-minute video, demonstrators with ShutDownDC, which organized the protest, can be seen using a bullhorn to protest Hawley’s efforts to object to congressional certification of the presidential electoral vote on Wednesday.
“We are not going to let people hold our democracy hostage. We’re not going to let them infringe on our rights,” one protester can be heard yelling. “Every ballot has been counted. It is over.”
At one point, demonstrators also approached Hawley’s doorstep and left a copy of the constitution there, but protest organizers told The Washington Post that they did not engage in vandalism or even knock on Hawley’s door.
“This was not threatening behavior,” Patrick Young, a ShutDownDC organizer, told the Post. “This is people engaging in democracy and engaging in civil discourse. … This was a pretty tame and peaceful visit to his house.”
Police in Vienna, Virginia confirmed that there was no vandalism and that protesters were “peaceful” and left when police explained they were violating local picketing laws, police department officials told the Associated Press on Tuesday.
Young, a 37-year-old research analyst at a nonprofit, told the Post that ShutDownDC focused on Hawley because he was the first senator to announce that he would back Trump’s coup attempt and object when Congress meets on Wednesday to certify the electoral college vote.
More than 10 other senators have since said they will join him in challenging votes from some battleground states in an effort to overturn a free and fair election. While Hawley’s ploy is all but certain to fail, his embrace of unsubstantiated theories about election fraud have caused outrage and amplified the lie that the election was stolen from President Donald Trump—a dangerous myth which could culminate in DC on Wednesday, at a so-called “Stop the Steal” rally. Demonstrators are expected to embrace the conspiracy theory that Trump was in fact re-elected, despite losing by more than 7 million votes and a 306-232 margin in the Electoral College.
Far-Right Groups Have Killed Over 300 People Since 1994
While Hawley decried Monday’s peaceful demonstrators as violent, anti-fascist “scumbags,” it’s the far-right groups descending on the nation’s capital, such the Proud Boys, that have a far more troublesome record of violence. In fact, the group’s leader, Enrique Tarrio, was arrested by DC police on Monday on a warrant charging him with burning a Black Lives Matter banner taken from a historic Black church during a demonstration on Dec. 12.
Four people were stabbed that night as members of the Proud Boys roamed the streets looking to fight counter-protesters. Four churches were also vandalized that night, according to police and more than 35 people were arrested. Police also charged Tarrio with two felony counts of possession on Monday after they found him to be in possession of high-capacity magazines that allow guns to hold additional bullets.
Other members of the group were arrested earlier this summer in Portland and individuals with ties to other right-wing extremist groups or militias have been responsible for other threats and acts of violence this year. In August, 17-year-old Kyle Rittenhouse murdered two protesters in Kenosha, Wisconsin following the police shooting of Jacob Blake. In October, the FBI arrested 13 men with ties to a militia who plotted to kidnap Gov. Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan and mount a coup.
The bigger-picture numbers refute Hawley’s case too. A November report from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a centrist think tank, found that white supremacist groups were responsible for 41 of 61 “terrorist plots and attacks” in the first eight months of 2020, or 67%, compared to only 20% for far-left groups. Of the five lethal domestic terror attacks this year, one was linked to a “far-right extremist,” another to an “anti-feminist,” two to the Boogaoo movement, an anti-government group dedicated to inciting a race war, and one to an anti-fascist activist.
That disparity between the two sides is nothing new. Between January 1, 1994 and May 8, 2020, right-wing extremists and American white supremacists killed at least 329 people in violent attacks, according to another database assembled by researchers at the CSIS. In contrast, anti-fascists killed exactly zero people during that span.
No matter what Hawley, Trump, and other right-wing figures say about the “radical left,” the reality is that organizations ranging from the Department of Homeland Security to the Anti-Defamation League to the Center for Investigative Reporting have all concluded that right-wing extremists and white supremacists presents a far greater deadly threat to Americans than anti-fascists or “far-left” violence.
In total, only 4% of “terror incidents” from 2017 through 2019 involved left-wing extremists, according to the Center for Investigative Reporting. Consequently, they found that far-right terrorists killed 87 people over the first three years of the Trump administration.
Keya Vakil Keya is a reporter at COURIER, where he covers everything from healthcare to climate change. Prior to joining Courier Newsroom, Keya worked as a researcher in the film industry and dabbled in the political world.
