Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene has revived her name for a “nationwide divorce” within the wake of Charlie Kirk’s deadly taking pictures. Consultants in political science warn that such an end result wouldn’t be peaceable ― and that Greene’s proposal is alarming.
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On Monday, Greene shared a prolonged put up on X, previously Twitter, dangerously blaming folks on the left for Kirk’s loss of life, saying “hundreds of thousands” of liberal-leaning folks had been celebrating it. Many Republicans had rushed to publicly blame Democrats for Kirk’s loss of life, even whereas the seek for a suspect was nonetheless underway — and even though each folks on the left and the best have been subjected to political violence and threats in recent times.
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“There may be nothing left to speak about with the left. They hate us. They assassinated our good man who truly talked to them peacefully, debating concepts,” Greene mentioned of Kirk. “Then hundreds of thousands on the left celebrated and made clear they need all of us useless.”
“To be sincere, I need a peaceable nationwide divorce. Our nation is just too far gone and too far divided, and it’s now not protected for any of us,” she continued, earlier than including: “Tighten your circle round your loved ones and shield them always. I’ll pray for the left, however personally I would like nothing to do with them.”
Greene has known as for a nationwide divorce earlier than. Again in 2021, the congresswoman instructed that individuals transferring from blue states to pink states ought to have a “cooling off interval” earlier than they’re in a position to vote.
“All doable in a Nationwide Divorce situation. After Democrat voters and large donors smash a state like California, you’d suppose it smart to cease them from doing it to a different nice state like Florida,” she wrote on X on the time. “Brainwashed those that transfer from CA and NY really want a cooling off interval.”
And in 2023, she wrote on X that “we’d like a nationwide divorce” and that “everybody I speak to says this.”
She added, “From the sick and disgusting woke tradition points shoved down our throats to the [Democrats’] traitorous America Final insurance policies, we’re performed.”
When Greene known as for a nationwide divorce in 2021, political commentator and journalist Mehdi Hasan known as her out on the time in a TV phase on his then-network MSNBC, calling her a “critical risk to democracy.”
Hasan identified that Greene, who represents Georgia’s 14th Congressional District, comes from a state that “tried a nationwide divorce within the 1860s.”
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“Why? Georgia needed to maintain the establishment of slavery,” he mentioned on the time. Georgia was the fifth out of the 11 Southern states to secede from the Union, following the election of President Abraham Lincoln. The Civil Warfare adopted.
Whereas Greene’s tweet on Monday known as for a “peaceable” nationwide divorce, one knowledgeable in political science emphasised that such a situation wouldn’t be doable.
“Georgia Consultant Marjorie Taylor Greene’s renewed name for a ‘peaceable nationwide divorce’ underscores a rising perception that pink and blue America can now not coexist,” Ryan Griffiths, a political science professor at Syracuse College’s Maxwell College of Citizenship and Public Affairs, informed HuffPost.
“Historical past exhibits such a divorce wouldn’t be peaceable,” he continued.
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Historical past has proven that makes an attempt to divide the nation have usually resulted in violence.
Griffiths, writer of The Disunited States: Threats of Secession in Purple and Blue America and Why They Received’t Work, informed HuffPost that the “concept that irreconcilable variations justify secession ignores the violent historical past of such efforts, together with the Civil Warfare, and overlooks the fact that People are deeply intermixed — politically, geographically and ideologically.”
He mentioned that whereas polarization is “actual and worsening,” the answer is to not separate. It’s to seek out frequent floor.
“People share extra values than they understand, and it’s our political management and never the folks that’s most polarized,” he mentioned. “We’d like leaders who reject extremism, denounce violence, and work collectively to heal the divide earlier than the decision for divorce turns into a harmful actuality.”
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Griffiths emphasised that the US “lacks the circumstances for a clear cut up.” Then he added, “Any try to divide, primarily based on what we’ve seen traditionally, would set off cycles of violence, displacement, and lawlessness.”
Alvin B. Tillery Jr., a professor of political science and African American research at Northwestern College, informed HuffPost that he believes Greene’s proposal for a nationwide divorce is “the Neo-secessionist language invoking the Civil Warfare that has been frequent in Republican Social gathering circles, specific in hinterland areas of the South just like the district that [Greene] represents.”
Tillery mentioned that this rhetoric has been standard amongst “white nationalist politicians” all through the twentieth century. And that, then, when most white opponents of racial integration switched events from Democrat to Republican within the Nineteen Eighties, there was loads of “resurgent speak of ‘states’ rights’ and ‘ravenous the beast’ of federal authorities,” he defined.
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“[Greene’s] nationwide divorce language is simply an extension of those themes,” Tillery added, earlier than emphasizing the risks such rhetoric has had on folks throughout the nation — particularly these with public platforms.
He mentioned that as Black schools and professors throughout the nation, together with himself, are receiving loss of life threats within the wake of Kirk’s killing, “nationwide divorce language is extra alarming than regular.”
This text initially appeared on HuffPost.
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