In the immediate aftermath of the mob storming the Capitol on Jan. 6, there was hope that the tide of violent rhetoric had peaked. Nearly two years later, this is clearly not the case. Authoritarian attacks on democracy and explicit threats to violence are again on the rise, even more than a year out from the 2024 election. And right-wing media remain the dependable engine for the whole hate machine.
Some mainstream outlets have recently reported on calls to violence from Donald Trump, again the likely Republican presidential nominee. The former president has called for shoplifters to be shot on sight, advocated for the execution of former Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Mark Milley, told his supporters to “go after” New York Attorney General Letitia James, and threatened that if Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg takes legal action against him, the result will be “potential death and destruction.”
Trump is aping what is said in conservative media.
The coverage of these threats, while necessary, has often omitted that, as he did in office, Trump is aping what is said in conservative media. As my colleague John Knefel wrote in May, right-wing pundits are increasingly open about who they believe should be killed. Most recently, Fox News’ Greg Gutfeld said “elections don’t work” and instead endorsed civil war. “You need to make war to bring peace,” he told his “The Five” co-hosts, “because you have a side that cannot change.”
These comments are typical for Gutfeld — who also hosts the late-night show “Gutfeld!” — and belie the mainstream media profiles of him as an affable iconoclast bringing comedy to a channel where you wouldn’t expect it. In June, The New York Times described him as engaging in “merry trolling,” a “striking inversion” of traditional late night comedy that is a “hard-won victory for the right.” Gutfeld’s attempts at comedy are a thin cover for the usual toxic rhetoric. Like the former president, Gutfeld has called for targeting protesters, calling on Fox News viewers to post “exact names and addresses online” to “make their lives extra difficult.” Before the 2020 election, Gutfeld dismissed violence from right-wing militias as “a lie” and “easily disprovable.” At the same time, he blames social unrest on fictitious reverse racism, recently claiming that white people will “always be the target.”
Gutfeld is not the only one on the network promoting violence. A July panel on “The Five” fantasized about a similar scenario to Trump’s concept of shoplifters being shot. Jesse Watters, recently promoted to Fox News’ coveted 8 p.m. slot, recently suggested climate protesters should be “run … over” and has called for “martial law” in San Francisco. On his radio show, Fox host Mark Levin said Trump’s election-interference indictment is like “the Dred Scott decision,” which “served as the foundation for the Civil War.”
Fox News’ competitors both on cable and the web are following suit. Commentators on rival network Newsmax are grasping for relevance by matching this rhetoric. Turning Point USA’s Charlie Kirk suggests Democrats are provoking the right into “violence,” PragerU co-founder Dennis Prager warns that the U.S. is “already in a civil war” and Daily Wire co-founder Ben Shapiro suggested secession more than two years ago. Shapiro’s Daily Wire colleague Michael Knowles has advocated for bringing back public executions, while fellow Daily Wire host Matt Walsh claimed the Founders would “violently overthrow” our current government.
Today’s right-wing media audience will not tune in without the promise of shock value. They’ve become numb to the same old racist fearmongering and political scapegoating of recent years, just as they tired of warmongering and poor-shaming during the Bush and Obama eras. Every time, there’s a demand for outlets and hosts to raise the stakes, lest they lose out to other demagogues. The screaming demand for increasingly violent commentary is a direct threat to the peaceful function of American democracy. We know from the Dominion case that Fox News executives do know better than to play into these impulses — but also that they will say or do pretty much anything to avoid losing their audience. Including, as it turns out, attacking democracy itself. Here we are again listening to the biggest cable news platform, the entire digital right-wing media, and a former president advocate for extrajudicial murders and violent retaliation for the exercise of the constitutionally guaranteed right to free speech. The screaming demand for increasingly violent commentary is a direct threat to the peaceful function of American democracy. Jan. 6 warned us of the consequences of this rhetoric. If even that horrific day was not enough to quench the thirst for violence, we should all remain vigilant to the ongoing authoritarian threat.
Madeline Peltz
Madeline Peltz is the Deputy Director of Rapid Response at Media Matters for America. Her work focuses on emerging trends in the right-wing media. 
