{"id":339782,"date":"2018-09-28T12:52:14","date_gmt":"2018-09-28T16:52:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/?p=339782"},"modified":"2018-09-28T13:28:14","modified_gmt":"2018-09-28T17:28:14","slug":"authoritarian-rhetoric-about-left-wing-violence-distorted-dangerous-339782","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rochester.edu\/newscenter\/authoritarian-rhetoric-about-left-wing-violence-distorted-dangerous-339782\/","title":{"rendered":"Authoritarian rhetoric about left-wing violence \u2018distorted,\u2019 \u2018dangerous\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Matt Lenoe, associate professor of history. (University of Rochester photo \/ J. Adam Fenster)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Historical authoritarian regimes or rulers have cemented their power by pointing to non-existing violence from their opponents, argues Matthew Lenoe<\/a>, associate professor of history and the immediate past chair of the University of Rochester\u2019s history department. His opinion piece<\/a> appears today in the Washington Post\u2019s<\/em> \u201cMade by History\u201d section, which is edited and curated by historians.<\/p>\n

Lenoe points to a recent address<\/a> to evangelical leaders in which President Donald Trump warned that Democrats will resort to force if they win the midterm elections: \u201cThey will overturn everything we\u2019ve done and they will do it quickly and violently,\u201d Trump said in his address. Lenoe posits that the storyline of a \u201cwave of left-wing terrorism threatening America is wrong,\u201d adding that \u201cthe real threat of violence comes from the right.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lenoe marshalls data from the Anti-Defamation League\u2019s Center on Extremism, which shows right-wing extremists and white supremacists were responsible for 74 percent of the murders committed by political extremists in this country, compared to 2 percent committed by left-wing radicals.<\/p>\n

These narratives about \u201caggressive left-wing violence aren\u2019t just distorted,\u201d Lenoe warns. \u201cThey are dangerous, because they set the stage for replacing democratic institutions with authoritarian rule.\u201d<\/p>\n

Drawing parallels to Italy\u2019s fascist movement in the 1920s, Germany in 1932 just months before Hitler\u2019s rise to power, and the Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia in 1948, Lenoe argues that provoking street violence and blaming one\u2019s political opponents as the instigators is \u201cexactly how totalitarian regimes have gained power in the past.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lenoe, who is an expert on totalitarianism, Russian and Soviet history, and the Eastern front of World War II, concludes that \u201cthe lies and those who sell them must be opposed, before it is too late.\u201d<\/p>\n