The Right’s Loud Romance With Violence and Fascism

For decades, American conservatives have warned about the “moral decline” of the United States. Sometimes those warnings sounded sincere. I remember the Terri Schiavo case, when many conservatives framed the removal of a feeding tube as a profound moral failure. You could argue some of that outrage was politically convenient, but it was at least plausible that many of the people involved genuinely believed life was sacred and violence, broadly defined as merely ending a human life (even out of medical mercy), was wrong.

That makes the present moment harder to square with those earlier claims.

Over time, the moral language remained, but the restraint did not. What has increasingly animated the modern right is not a principled opposition to harm, but an indulgence in it. Violence is no longer a fringe feature of right-wing politics. It has become the most recurring aspect, sometimes rhetorical, sometimes physical, often winked at rather than condemned. All of this is done while continuing to bizarrely invoke Christianity, peace, and order.

You see this clearly in how right-wing activists talk about political opponents. College campus protests are a good example. There are, of course, unserious and self-aggrandizing figures on the left. Some activists chase attention more than justice, and history shows that a few of them eventually reinvent themselves as right-wing provocateurs. None of this is new.

What is new is how eagerly the right responds to these figures with open belligerence. The goal is no longer to argue, persuade, or even merely mock. It is to dominate and, increasingly, to fantasize about force, and then to take it from fantasy to reality.

A telling moment came at a Turning Point USA event in 2021, when a man asked Charlie Kirk, “When do we get to start using the guns?” Kirk semi-scolded him, but the question did not come from nowhere. It reflected years of rhetoric about enemies, traitors, and the supposed inevitability of violence. When you tell people often enough that their country has been stolen and that compromise is cowardice, someone will eventually ask when the shooting starts.

This mindset resembles how people justify brutality during war. Once everything is framed as an existential crisis, the “ends” can be stretched and redefined to excuse almost anything. Violence becomes not just acceptable, but cleansing. That logic is dangerous, and it is also unhinged.

Trump did not invent this dynamic, but he perfected it. He lacks the patience for sane politics, so he replaces it with grievance and threat. What is striking is how easily his supporters absorb the contradiction at the center of his posture. Trump claims to be a peacemaker while using language that invites chaos. He says he opposed the Iraq War, yet governs as someone comfortable with military strikes. He negotiated the withdrawal from Afghanistan, then attacked Biden for carrying it out. These positions openly conflict, but Trump rarely bothers to reconcile them. He simply moves on.

That incoherence is not accidental. For Trump, every principle is expendable. Violence, restraint, peace, and aggression are all props. What matters is whether they serve him in the moment.

This pattern has only intensified during his second term. Trump now governs with fewer restraints and a clearer sense that intimidation works. The language of law and order has hardened into something closer to punishment for its own sake. Nowhere is this clearer than in immigration enforcement.

By 2026, ICE has become a symbol of this shift. What began years ago as aggressive enforcement has curdled into something more openly extreme. Raids are staged as spectacles. Detainees are dehumanized in official statements. Accountability mechanisms are weakened or ignored. The message is not merely that the law will be enforced, but that suffering is part of the point. Supporters cheer this cruelty as strength, and critics are dismissed as traitors or accomplices.

This is violence dressed up as governance. It is not about safety or legality. It is about asserting dominance over a population that has been cast as an enemy.

To be fair, Trump is not the only politician to speak out of both sides of his mouth. Joe Biden has also presented himself as a peacemaker while overseeing violent policies, both abroad and at home. When defending the withdrawal from Afghanistan, Biden said that American troops should not die in a war Afghan forces would not fight for themselves. That statement was reasonable on its face. What often went unsaid is that the withdrawal plan was largely negotiated under Trump, including the release of Taliban leaders. Trump later attacked Biden for following through, a hypocrisy Democrats never effectively countered.

Still, there is a difference in degree and in tone. Biden’s contradictions come more from the logical limits of American power and political caution. Trump’s come from a willingness to use anything, including the threat of violence, as a tool.

This brings us back to the right’s obsession with moral decay. If morality means anything, it cannot coexist comfortably with casual calls for bloodshed. It cannot thrive alongside cheers for abuse, whether at Abu Ghraib years ago or in detention centers today. I still remember having twisted online debates with conservatives about prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib in Iraq. At least one right-winger at the time argued to me (in so many words) that liberals/leftists should applaud someone getting assaulted with a broomstick, because isn't that the sort of moral depravity we engage in?

Back then, I thought such arguments were the fringe. Now, it seems like it would just be the norm.

On that note: The same instincts that led us into disasters like the Iraq War will not lead us out of our current crises.

Doubling down on force has never produced clarity or peace. It has only hardened divisions and justified further harm.

Trump understands something basic about American politics: many people are exhausted, angry, and scared. He exploits that fear by offering simple enemies and promising punishment. The tragedy is how many accept this as strength rather than recognize t as pathetic desperation.

Building a humane society under these conditions is impossible. But abandoning restraint entirely only guarantees the dangers spread out like snakes.

A desire for relative peace and sanity is not naïveté. It is a refusal to let violence become the organizing principle of political life. In an era when extremism is openly celebrated by those in power, that refusal may be one of the few remaining forms of sanity. Despite ICE's provocations, and my own understanding of the validity of self-defense, I believe there are still effective non-violent tactics that can prevent right-wing violence from growing. That being said, that requires not only hard work but luck...and luck is not always on our side.