One of the most incredible accomplishments in the annals of global propaganda is the idea that Republicans in the United States are opposed to civil rights for individuals and the Democrats are for them.

n the summer of 1964, James Chaney, Mickey Schwerner, and Andy Goodman left Oxford, Ohio to go and register blacks to vote in Mississippi. As they well understood, a vast network of self-styled vigilante “justice” existed in citizen councils, State Sovereignty commissions, the KKK, and many other locally oriented partisans aimed to intimidate and if necessary, kill them. For these civil rights activists from the Congress of Racial Equality led by James Farmer Jr., there was little hope of registering blacks to vote and educating black children about their inherent dignity without the protection and law enforcement of the federal government. This nexus of local authoritarians refused federal intervention in their state in a manner not unlike their refusals when Republican president Ulysses S. Grant sent troops into the South to prevent the repeal of civil rights for blacks in the aftermath of the civil war. The Democrat Party has since the inception of the Republican Party in the 1850s refused to accept the federal government’s disruption of their local “warm collectivism.” The Justice Department was created by Republican administrations to thwart the Southern efforts to locally repeal the civil rights of black citizens. One of the most incredible accomplishments in the annals of global propaganda is the idea that Republicans in the United States are opposed to civil rights for individuals and the Democrats are for them.

Republican presidents are like Hitler and Democratic presidents are the rhetorical antithesis is fueling dangerous incivility in our current era. President Bush has largely remained silent while Democratic Presidents Obama and Clinton loudly violate the civic norm of quiet presidential retirement. This is also a feature of our public culture fixated on demonization of Republican presidents. Fantasies about killing President Bush and arguing that he was “Hitler” and determined to ‘kill as many innocent civilians as possible in Iraq and New Orleans’ abounded in his time as president and academic rankings of him as president show he is held in public contempt. This is the over-riding structuration of incivility in 21st century American culture. Trump is undoubtedly a rhetorical reaction to the “compassionate conservatism” of George W. Bush who continually seeks to turn away the partisan tide against him with conciliatory rhetoric.

The Jacobin protest culture of the 21st century is not the heir of the beloved community and civil rights movement formed by great leaders such as James Farmer Jr. and Martin Luther King Jr. They continue to burn and intimidate Christian churches and Jewish voices like the anti-civil rights partisans of the 1960s. The calls for violence against ICE agents and Border Patrol are plainly inconsistent with the central call for non-violence. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum bravely criticized Governor Tim Walz for characterizing his refusal of federal law enforcement as akin to the dangers endured by Anne Frank. The deliberate characterization of ICE officers as “gestapo” is a concerted rhetorical privilege accorded America’s structural anti-Republicanism that has inspired assassination attempts — many successful — of Republican presidents from Abraham Lincoln to Gerald Ford and of course two recent attempts on President Trump. The deaths of Goode and Pretti should be a subject of public lament, but they should be seen as subordinate and caused by a larger culture of incivility incited by a Jacobin culture that refuses the public credibility of Republican presidents. Shortly before the shooting of Pretti, the attorney general of Arizona called upon her residents to treat ICE agents under a doctrine of self-defense allowing them to shoot to kill. This Jacobin culture openly celebrates the death of Charlie Kirk, regrets the failed assassination attempts against President Trump, and fundamentally repudiates the stated principles of nonviolence enacted by leaders such as John Lewis. This public privilege allows and encourages professionally unethical behavior on social media as medical personnel wish harm on an array of individuals serving in the Trump administration. The status and standing of professionals calling for harm of Trump supporters is relatively uncompromised. American history is clear despite the fomented propaganda: Democratic Presidents as diverse as Woodrow Wilson, Franklin Roosevelt, and Joe Biden have fought fiercely against individual civil rights. Democrat cities like Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Minneapolis, Portland, and others have partisan traditions that refuse the public legitimacy of Republican presidents. These traditions incite violent rebellions that since Ulysses S. Grant required justice department interventions including Republican president Dwight Eisenhower at Little Rock in the 1950s. The insurrections of Democratic localities from Mississippi to Arkansas and now Minneapolis and Portland are not commendable and they are not in the tradition of civil rights. Punishing misconduct of law enforcement requires adherence to rule of law that does not surrender localities to mob rule like that seen in Minneapolis. The refusal of Republican federal enforcement in democratic localities is in the same political tradition that killed Chaney, Schwerner, and Goodman. It demonstrates an American structural anti-Republicanism that endangers civil rights for all individuals.

Dr. Ben Voth is professor of rhetoric and director of debate at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. He is the author of several academic books regarding political communication, presidential rhetoric, and genocide.