Twitter Inc. added a warning label on Tuesday to an anime video shared by U.S. Republican lawmaker Paul Gosar depicting him swinging swords at President Joe Biden and killing Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
While the post has appalled the New York congresswoman and some of her Democratic colleagues, I couldn’t help think about what the outcome would have been if you or I had put that amine video online,
Democratic Rep. Ted Lieu of California characterized Gosar’s actions as “sick behavior,” responding on Twitter: “In any workplace in America, if a coworker made an anime video killing another coworker, that person would be fired.”
In the controversial tweet, which Gosar shared on Monday, the Arizona Republican is depicted as an anime character who at one point seemingly fatally wounds another character with Ocasio-Cortez’s face, according to Business Insider.
As for Ocasio-Cortez, she predicted last night that House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy would do nothing except cheer Gosar on “with excuses,” reports MSNBC News.
So now the ball is in McCarthy’s court, so to speak, and he has a number of options – if he so chooses to use one or more of them.
McCarthy could endorse Gosar’s expulsion, support a censure resolution, strip the Arizonan of his committee assignments, announce that the NRCC will not support Gosar’s re-election campaign, or possibly choose to do nothing at all.
The whole point is simple – The more McCarthy tolerates his members’ radicalism, the more radicalism our system will be asked to endure. Quite frankly, I think our Democracy has reached the point where any civility, morality, or thoughts of open and frank discourse are lacking.
Twitter should have removed the offending Tweet instead of determining “it may be in the public’s interest for the Tweet to remain accessible.” The only people interested in that Tweet are those who want to continue with this reprehensible behavior.
CBC Canada is reporting that Gosar is among a number of lawmakers whose phone or computer records a House panel investigating the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection asked social media and telecommunications companies to preserve as they were potentially involved with efforts to “challenge, delay or interfere” with the certification or otherwise try to overturn the results of the 2020 election.
I am afraid that MSNBC News may prove to be right in their assessment of what will happen to Gosar. They are saying that “the House GOP leadership will say something mild and meaningless about the “tone” on Capitol Hill, before waiting for the story to fade away, at least until Gosar’s next outrage.”
I am more inclined to agree with top Yale historian, Joanne Freeman, who says the Gosar Tweet is indicative of the “broader threat the Republican party poses to democracy in the US.”
Freeman specializes in early American politics and political culture. She wrote a book on violence in Congress prior to the Civil War: “The Field of Blood.”
In a tweet responding to Gosar’s violent anime video, Freeman said, “Threats of violence lead to actual violence. They clear the ground. They cow opposition. They plant the idea. They normalize it. They encourage it. They maim democracy. And run the risk of killing it.”
