ICYMI, earlier this week a GQP canvasser working in the Hialeah neighborhood in Miami-Dade County, FL, was assaulted. The story was eagerly picked up by right-wing media and by spineless careerist Sen. Li'l Marco Rubio (who's in a battle with Democrat Rep. Val Demings for re-election) who changed the facts to protect the guilty:
Monday morning, Senator Marco Rubio sent out a tweet with the horrifying news that “one of our canvassers wearing my T-shirt and a Desantis hat was brutally attacked by 4 animals who told him Republicans weren’t allowed in their neighborhood.” Rubio’s account was quickly repeated by conservative organs like the New York Post (“Rubio campaign canvasser ‘brutally’ beaten by man who told him GOPers not allowed in his neighborhood”), National Review (“Rubio Supporter Savagely Beaten While Canvassing in Florida”), Washington Free Beacon (“Marco Rubio Canvasser Violently Attacked in Dem Neighborhood”), and Washington Examiner (“Rubio canvasser brutally assaulted in Florida, senator says”). [snip]
There is no question the canvasser, Christopher Monzon, was the victim of a ghastly assault. But mainstream media reporting on the episode quickly cast doubt on Rubio’s central claim: that the assailant told the canvasser Republicans weren’t welcome there. The initial police report noted no political motivation for the attack, which took place in a high-crime neighborhood. The assailant had been charged with two prior felonies and, according to his mother, has never voted and has no interest in politics.
The true significance of this episode is a detail that emerged shortly after Rubio’s tweet: Monzon turns out to be close with the Proud Boys, a right-wing paramilitary organization. The Proud Boys, a sort of hybrid social club and political gang with racist and violent tendencies, played a central role in organizing the January 6 assault.
Last June, the New York Times reported on how the Proud Boys has begun to take over the powerful Miami-Dade Republican Party organization. It is one of the more alarming signposts of the Republican Party’s evolution into authoritarianism — I would say “most,” except that there are so many — because it signals violent and explicitly racist organizations are being formally welcomed into the party structure.
Monzon was one of the characters featured in the story. Before he joined the GOP, Monzon was involved in other white supremacist causes. He participated in the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, where he allegedly used his Confederate flag to attack counterprotesters. His social-media posts from that period are filled with slurs like “Here’s to all the filthy n- - - - - - out there” and “Dirty n- - - - - - love abusing power.” [snip]
The HuffPost reports that Monzon was paid more than $10,000 by the Florida Republican Party this year. Rubio described him as one of his canvassers. Rubio was the Republican establishment’s choice to defeat Donald Trump in 2016, and he briefly gave a convincing performance as a person who was anguished by Trump’s abuse and lies. That he appears perfectly comfortable to work within a party that is developing a racist paramilitary wing is the clearest sign of the party’s complete surrender to extremism. (our emphasis)
Li'l Marco and his Christofascist party would like you to ignore that they paid a racist Proud Boy thug to represent them, and are now defending him. They'd like to distract you by falsely claiming there was a political motivation behind the assault, which is more typically a tactic of the fascist paramilitary groups the GQP relies on. That this little careerist shit is favored to win re-election over an outstanding Democrat is an indictment of our sick and broken politics and of how vile and low the Christofascist/GQP and its supporters have become.
