“Where’s Nancy?” The man who attacked 82-year-old Paul Pelosi with a hammer in his home in San Francisco on Friday was actually after Ms. Pelosi. That’s what several US media outlets have heard from police sources. And that turns a violent burglary into a political attack. Nancy Pelosi is one of the most powerful women in the United States, one of the leaders of the Democratic Party, Speaker of the House. She is also (or: therefore) the Republicans’ favorite demon.
Analyzing this month news site The Daily Beast that Pelosi appears in twelve official Republican Party attack spots, President Joe Biden in eight. The main political fundraising organization for Republicans, the Congressional Leadership Fund (CLF), attacked Pelosi in 23 spots in September, Biden in 16. The article cited a spokesman for the CLF, who described Pelosi as a “horn of plenty” for Republicans. “She is widely known and widely hated among our constituents.”
Women treated more aggressively
Anyone who ever visits an election meeting of former President Donald Trump cannot fail to notice: female opponents are treated more aggressively than male opponents. When the name ‘Joe Biden’ is mentioned, Trump’s sentences simply run. When he mentions the name of Hillary Clinton, the former Democratic presidential nominee, or that of Nancy Pelosi, he breaks a pause during which the room can roar with indignation. On Amazon, stickers are sold ($4.95) with a caricatured image of Pelosi and the text ‘De Wicked Witch of Washington‘, or another with ‘evil socialist witch from the left’.
The witch theme has been used a lot against female politicians, and not just in the US. In the Netherlands, the D66 politicians Sigrid Kaag and Kajsa Ollongren are routinely called or depicted as a witch. In the US, those rhetorical attacks find themselves in a toxic climate in which one side makes the other the country’s nemesis, and vice versa. And a country where political violence runs like a thread through history: three presidents murdered, countless attacks on politicians. In this election year alone, politicians of both parties have been threatened with death, stalked, attacked with a knife. Earlier this year, a man with a firearm was arrested near the home of Supreme Court Judge Brett Kavanaugh.
Also read: Trump is at the center of the story of what happened on January 6
Conspiracy Theories
The social media statements of the 42-year-old suspect in the attack on the Pelosi’s home are infused with conspiracy theories about corona and Trump fans storming the Capitol on January 6, 2021. CNN found on its Facebook page videos of Mike Lindell, pillow salesman and one of Trump’s best-known supporters. The videos were all about how the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.
Here too Nancy Pelosi plays a leading role in the fantasy of the (extreme) right. She is charged with orchestrating or at least permitting the storming, as well as unfairly accusing Trump, through the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry. During the storm, Trump supporters purposely sought out Pelosi in the Capitol. In July, a woman sentenced to sixty days in prisonin part because, in a video she herself recorded in the Capitol, she said she was looking for Pelosi “to shoot her through the bloody brain.”
Rhetorical Attacks
In the past 24 hours, many Republican politicians have expressed their condolences to Pelosi and her husband. And meanwhile, the rhetorical attacks on her person continued unabated. Hammering in Ohio three Republican candidates on the need to ‘fire Nancy Pelosi’. Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin included a “joke” about Pelosi in his speech. “We’ve had enough of Abigail Spanberger,” he said, referring to a Democratic delegate from Virginia. “Enough of Joe Biden and ge.. I interrupt myself for a moment. There was a burglary at the man of speaker Pelosi, he was attacked. There is of course no room for violence anywhere, but we will send her back to her husband. In California. That’s what we’re going to do.”
Paul Pelosi is in hospital with a head injury and is said to be heading for “complete recovery”.