From a Google Image Search - Anti-liberal Movement - Vox
At some point in the Obama administration, I decided to expand the sources I was reading to keep up with politics in America. Subsequently, I subscribed to The New York Times, The Daily Beast, and the Washington Post. I noticed that conservative opinion writers were astonished because they were no longer being treated with respect when they visited college campuses. They were sometimes attacked verbally, students walked out of the venues, or the speakers were uninvited because of student protests that occurred before the speakers arrived on campuses. This trend began as early as 2015 (or earlier) and continued until 2023 although the reasons for the protests have changed. Most early protests had to do with a failure of speakers to address inclusive policies for minority groups, both racial and sexual, and most protests were directed at Conservative speakers, including when John Brennan, Director of the CIA was sent packing from the University of Pennsylvania for involvement in drone strikes in the Middle East.
"In the spring of 2017, the Federalist Society Chapter at the City University of New York (CUNY) School of Law invited me (Professor Josh Blackman of South Texas College of Law in Houston) to deliver a lecture titled “The Importance of Free Speech on Campus.” It was a talk that I had given many times before without controversy. Three days before the event, the president of the Chapter wrote, “We passed out the flyers today (first day back from spring break) and a large number of students are already up in arms about the event.” The Office of Student Affairs explained that 'some enraged students . . . apparently, are planning to protest.' I had never been protested before and strongly doubted that there would actually be a demonstration. I was wrong."
"When I arrived on campus, CUNY’s chief of public safety explained that a few dozen students were already assembled in the hallway outside the room. Then, he asked me what my “exit plan” was. He explained that there were certain safe ways to exit the building. As I walked to the classroom, students shouted at me and held up signs calling me a white supremacist, a fascist, and other slanders. For the first eight minutes of the hour-long lecture, a dozen students surrounded me—standing inches away—and shouted at me every time I opened my mouth. The obstruction only ended after I began to engage the protesters. When I explained that—contrary to their false charges—I support the DREAM (Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors) Act, one law student could only respond by screaming “F*ck the law!” With nothing of substance to say, one student actually mumbled, 'I don’t want to hear this.' The protesters exited the room."
"I am relieved by the handful of students who wanted to hear me speak—even if they disagreed with me. Yet, if the CUNY protest is the canary in the coal mine, the future of free expression in America looks bleak."
Another article in Business Insider in 2016 listed 15 speakers who were not treated well on college campuses most for reasons that they supported ideas that conservatives espoused.
https://www.businessinsider.com/list-of-disinvited-speakers-at-colleges-2016-7
Rejection did not sit well with Conservatives who had been speakers at colleges in the past and were shocked by the behavior of the college students they encountered. Colleges had been considered fertile ground for all kinds of speech, so conservatives began to write about why this was happening. Eventually, they summed up the problem by using the term "woke" as an insult, although woke refers to those who respect everyone's human rights.
Republicans never forget a slight. They began an attack on colleges, they accused them of deliberately educating Americans to be liberals who championed diversity and globalism (bad). They started to encourage the founding of Christian colleges which recruited students on TV and the internet. They argued that a college education would not be necessary for future jobs and pushed training programs. They left us with Common Core programs in our schools that stressed nonfiction rather than literature and then turned against Common Core. Trump told us how much he "loved the poorly educated." Then conservatives banned books and black history and anything they considered "woke" in public schools and encouraged the intimidation of local school boards.
Ever since the days of Reagan and of conservative campaigns to rev up a "moral majority," churches and conservatives were partners in implying that liberals were turning America into a cesspool of immorality and sin. The "pill" and passage of Roe v Wade in 1973 found conservatives shocked and full of self-righteous anger about America's (women's) moral decline. Perhaps they wanted to find an issue that inspired their conservative base as deeply as the issues of racial discrimination fired up liberals. Conservatives may have been convinced even that far back that they needed to up the ante to ensure that conservatives would continue to wield power.
Although liberal messages seemed to be dominant in the 1970s, out in our neighborhoods something very different was happening. First Talk Radio and then Fox News were tearing families apart, exploiting grievances of workers who had lost good union jobs. These family members began to complain that their jobs were going to minorities simply because they were minorities. Eventually the new minority hires also lost jobs they had only had for about a minute when factories moved to new geographic areas and finally overseas. The Tea Party movement fed into some citizens' feelings that their tax dollars were being misspent on phones for welfare recipients and free cars for refugees. Many could be easily convinced that affirmative action was putting college out of reach for white families because they already had this thought in mind. It may take extreme propaganda to convince people to believe things they don't already believe but to convince folks to believe things they have already thought about is a less difficult lift.
As we celebrate our national holidays once again and meet with family members to enjoy social events like meals, trips, and events together, our relationships are often more stilted than we would like them to be because there are explosive differences of opinion on topics that we know we must avoid. This has been the case for a decade or more and that is a long time for families to love each other and be leery of each other at the same time. That's a decade of close family ties interrupted by ginned-up differences. Do our right-wing family members really want to live in an autocracy? How about living in a theocracy? Do they want to lose their Social Security and access to the Affordable Care Act? Do they like that millionaires and billionaires keep having their taxes cut? It seems unlikely. That leaves the message that white Christian nationalism will fix America's ills. This message, sadly, seems to have more traction.
Now Trump has upped the ante once again.
First, he told his people that he is their retribution.
"In 2016, I declared: I am your voice. Today, I add: I am your warrior. I am your justice," he said in March. "And for those who have been wronged and betrayed, I am your retribution."
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/trump-told-supporters-retribution-now-im-indicted/
Who wronged and betrayed Trump's peeps? Who will he seek retribution against on their behalf? He is saying that he will hunt down liberals and do something to punish them/us. The details of what he has planned have not been specified, although we know what he has planned for immigrants. He has said he will round them up, put them in camps, and deport them. But for the liberal family members of right-wingers, it is unclear if we will be killed or jailed or perhaps branded.
Then on Veteran's Day in 2023 we heard Trump say this:
“We pledge to you that we will root out the communists, Marxists, fascists and the radical left thugs that live like vermin within the confines of our country that lie and steal and cheat on elections,” Trump said toward the end of his speech, repeating his false claims that the 2020 election was stolen. “They’ll do anything, whether legally or illegally, to destroy America and to destroy the American Dream.”
Well guess who he plans to root out, guess who Trump is calling vermin. It's liberals. Will we be forced to live like zeks in gulags unable to express ourselves in case we speak against the state (our dictator). Will our families be expected to turn us in? Will we be hunted down? I don't know if your liberal heart quakes to hear violent promises to do harm to anyone who expresses a leftist or progressive thought, who speak against Trump's government, but mine does. To have my family tasked to hunt me down and turn me in - it's unimaginable. Many say that Trump can't be taken literally, that he doesn't mean what he says, but with no one around him this time to stop him, we must assume that he might unleash all that anger built up in him and rain fiery vituperation and punishment on us all. His peeps think he is Jesus. It will seem to be a religious firestorm and he will convince them that it will cleanse the nation. It certainly could stifle dissent.
"Words have consequences." (meme)