11/11/2023 0 Comments Montana bookreader![]() Javed Ali, a former senior FBI counterterrorism official who’s now an associate professor at the University of Michigan, said law enforcement agencies struggle with thwarting homegrown political violence. “A large part of their motivation is the symbolic, frightening nature of fire.”Įxperts continue to worry about how social media can spread extreme or violent images or words to potentially millions of people, increasing the chances of a single person seeing the material as a call to violence. ![]() “We’ve seen this time and time again from groups across countries where groups will burn effigies, crosses and other items, or even just film themselves around large conflagrations,” he said in a email to AP. Eigel’s critics quickly posted online images involving the Ku Klux Klan and Nazi book burnings before World War II.Įvan Perkoski, an associate political science professor at the University of Connecticut, said it’s been “traditional” for extremist groups to use images of fire to “simultaneously intimidate people and signal their intentions to destroy what exists and to rebuild or start over.” Kristi Noem’s staff gave her a flamethrower last year as a Christmas gift.Įxperts who study political extremism said images involving fire or bonfires have long been associated with extremist groups. In 2020, a GOP congressional candidate in Alabama showed her support for then-President Donald Trump by torching a mockup of the first articles of impeachment against him. He finished third in the primary.įlamethowers also have popped up previously. Senate race, running an ad featuring him with a shotgun declaring he was going hunting for RINOs, or Republicans in Name Only. After a sex and invasion-of-privacy scandal in 2018 forced him to resign, he attempted a political comeback in the state’s 2022 U.S. ![]() In Missouri in 2016, GOP candidate and ex-Navy Seal Eric Greitens ran an ad featuring him firing 100 rounds from a machine gun on his way to winning the governor’s race. Last year, a Black candidate seeking the GOP nomination in an Arizona congressional district aired an ad in which he held an AR-15 rifle as people wearing Ku Klux Klan robes and hoods tried to storm a home. Large guns have been a popular prop for some Republicans. Eigel has sponsored measures to ban schools from teaching about gender identity or gender-affirming care and to make it a crime to perform in drag in public.Īggressive and even violent imagery have long been a part of American politics. The outcry also comes after Missouri’s GOP-supermajority Legislature banned gender-affirming health care for transgender minors and required K-12 and college students to play on sports teams that match their sex assigned at birth. An AP VoteCast survey of Missouri voters in the 2022 midterm elections showed that more than 75% of those voting for GOP candidates thought the K-8 schools in their community were teaching too much about gender identity or sexual orientation. ![]() The issue resonates with Republicans in Missouri. are backing conservative efforts to purge schools and libraries of materials with LGBTQ+ themes or books with LGBTQ+ characters. He added, “I would challenge you to find me any non-psychotic Republican who has actually burned” a book deemed objectionable by conservatives.Įigel posted on the X platform that his flamethrower stunt was meant to show what he would do to the “swamp” in the state capital of Jefferson City, but “let’s be clear, you bring those woke pornographic books to Missouri schools to try to brainwash our kids, and I’ll burn those too - on the front lawn of the governor’s mansion.” Kehoe’s campaign had no official comment, but Gregg Keller, a GOP consultant working on Kehoe’s campaign, said Eigel’s promise to burn objectionable books is “typical electioneering hyperbole.” The Ashcroft campaign declined to respond to the video, the uproar it caused or Eigel’s follow-up statement. The best known candidates for the August 2024 GOP primary are Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft and Lt. Some of Republicans’ skepticism over the online outrage stems from Eigel’s status as a dark horse candidate to replace term-limited GOP Gov. “It fit a narrative that they wanted to put out there,” Freedom Fest organizer Debbie McFarland said about claims that Eigel burned books.
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