Calling a Florida sheriff's threats against "No Kings" rally participants "beyond chilling," MSNBC host Jonathan Capehart and authoritarianism expert Ruth Ben-Ghiat hammered the lawman on Saturday morning.
On Thursday, Brevard County Sheriff Wayne Ivey held a press conference and addressed the Saturday nationwide protests, "If you throw a brick, a firebomb, or point a gun at one of our deputies, we will be notifying your family where to collect your remains because we will kill you, graveyard dead. We’re not going to play."
He later added, "If you try to mob rule a car in Brevard County, gathering around it, refusing to let the driver leave in our county, you’re most likely going to get run over and dragged across the street. If you spit on us, you’re going to the hospital, then jail. If you hit one of us, you’re going to the hospital, jail, and most likely get bitten by one of our big, beautiful dogs we have here."
After sharing the clip, Ben-Ghiat shook her head in disbelief as Capehart asked, "Talk about how talk like that from an official like that feeds into your work looking at strongmen."
"Unfortunately, what happens is when you have a culture of kind of institutionalized lawlessness and where our the head of our government tried to overthrow the government and is calling protesters insurrectionists, but had incited a violent insurrection of his own, so when someone like that is in power, there's a kind of encouragement for all kinds of what they call a broad state security forces, including law enforcement and state militias and the military to feel empowered to be lawless themselves and speak like that," she explained.
"And so this kind of talk that any protests, and when protesters are criminalized and called insurrectionists, then all protesters are suspect. and you can speak the way that this individual was speaking,' she continued, "saying that we're going to shoot you graveyard dead, which is, again, a kind of trickling down of this idea that the strongman does not tolerate any force and, and sees any opposition as a personal affront that has to be met with maximum violence."
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