The Hits Keep Coming

For all the talk and articles and analysis of Republican attempts to pass voter restriction laws in Republican states (and all over) and Republican efforts to pass laws to override the right to an abortion law, there is another that has slipped through the cracks.  It’s more limited in scope and hard to think it will expand far – though not nearly as limited as one who hope in society.  And ultimately is so on brand for today’s fascist Republican Party.

On the one hand, there is currently a trial for organizers of the 2017 "Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville where a woman, Heather Heyer, was killed by a car than rammed into her in the crowd.

On the other hand, there are three red states – Iowa, Oklahoma and Florida – that are farthest along in attempting to pass “"hit and kill" bills that would limit penalties against people in cars who run down protesters.

Yes, you read that right.  Or should I say, far right.

As the Boston Globe reported yesterday, the "Back the Blue Act" was signed by Iowa's Republican governor, Kim Reynolds. Back in June, 202, In June of 2020, the driver of a state-issued Chevrolet Suburban hit a Black Liberation Movement protester who was in Des Moines trying to get the Republican governor Kim Reynolds to restore voting rights.  The bill that Gov. Reynods signed was actually in support of granting some immunity to drivers who run over protesters.  As the paper wrote,

"Iowa is one of three states, along with Oklahoma and Florida, to enact laws this year giving drivers some degree of legal immunity if they use their vehicles to hurt protesters, part of a wave of 'hit and kill' bills introduced in 13 other states by Republican legislators since 2017. Most of those proposals came after one of the most sustained periods of demonstrations in US history following [George] Floyd's murder, and the effort to crack down on protesters has sent a chilling message to activists, who believe it will encourage violence against them."

There currently is also pending legislation in Tennessee, New Jersey and Washington.  Though Tennessee is the only purely red state of these three.

The Republican rationale behind the bills is to question the “legitimacy of dissent,” that the protests are supposed not protected as free speech and peaceable assembly, but rather are riots, and so the public at large (including those in cars) is, apparently, at risk.  Indeed, an analysis by the paper turned up 139 cases of “vehicle rammings” between George Floyd's death on May 25, 2020, and the end of September, 2021, in which there were 100 injuries and at least three people were killed.

Nick Robinson, a senior legal adviser at the International Center for Not-for-Profit Law, warned it the new laws were "just a recipe for disaster."

"There's this kind of vigilantism that's returning," Robinson told the Globe.. "If we deem these protesters to be rioters, we're going to take the law into our own hands. And if that means injuring them with our vehicle or killing them with our vehicle, we have an expectation that the state will protect us."

You can read the full article here.

As always, this is not about Trump, this is about today’s fascist Republican Party that supports and enables and clearly refuses to condemn laws like this.  It may only be three states where the “hit and kill” bills are on the verge of becoming laws – and three others where such bills are pending – and seven others where such bills have been introduced by Republicans – but that’s still a quarter of the states…where Republicans are okay with redefining peaceful protests and assembly as "riots" and ramming legal, peaceful protestors with your car.

Those are two tenets of the definition of fascism -- trying to discredit and silence opposing sources to your authority and the use of violence to achieve your aims.  And that is today’s quite-literally fascist Republican Party.