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- Paul Pelosi, husband of Speaker Nancy Pelosi, was assaulted on Friday morning.
- The attack echoes the calls for violence against the House Speaker on January 6, 2021.
- Experts say the assault occurred in an atmosphere of mainstream rhetoric tinged with violence.
A motive for the Friday morning attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, has not been established, but experts say that the assault on a politically-connected figure comes amid an atmosphere of violent rhetoric gone mainstream.
Carolyn Gallaher, a professor at American University who has researched far-right groups and paramilitaries in the US, told Insider that the idea of targeting a politician like Pelosi wouldn’t come from nowhere, but instead a “stew of misinformation, hate, conspiracy theories, and complete misogyny and disrespect.”
“They may have plotted this alone, but they didn’t get the idea to go to Nancy Pelosi’s house … out of thin air,” Gallaher said. “This stuff is floating around, and it’s not just in the conspiratorial corners of social media.”
Police identified the suspect on Friday as 42-year-old David DePape and have recommended charges of attempted homicide, elder abuse, assault with a deadly weapon, and burglary. According to the San Francisco Chronicle, along with being a nudist activist based in Berkeley, California, and a registered Green Party member, DePape liked to espouse conspiracy theories and far-right views on his personal blog.
The Associated Press and CNN also reported that the attacker broke into the San Francisco home of the Pelosis searching for the congresswoman and shouting, “Where is Nancy?”
The call closely mirrors the chants of some rioters on January 6, 2021. One woman who was arrested for storming the Capitol said that she hoped to shoot Pelosi in “the friggin’ brain,” while other protestors broke into and vandalized the congresswoman’s office.
Gallaher emphasized that she is not creating a direct causal relationship between the words of any particular politician or group and the assault or the motives of the attacker. But the idea to incite political violence becomes normalized when mainstream outlets and public figures choose not to condemn the attacks, she said.
“You have plenty of Republican Congress people who will not come out and condemn what happened on January 6,” she said. “So there’s mainstream rhetoric out there that refuses to recognize the violence that was perpetrated that day.”
A month after the Capitol siege, the Republican National Committee characterized the event as “ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse” and censured Rep. Liz Cheney and Rep. Adam Kinzinger — two GOP members who chose to denounce the riot and participate in the House investigation of the attacks.
Eric Ward, senior advisor to Western States Center and expert on extremism, said the attack came as no surprise when considering the rhetoric from Republican candidates or right-wing outlets such as Fox News. Tucker Carlson, for example, once called the riot, “forgettably minor” and a mere act of “vandalism.”
“It may seem shocking that this incident happened but when you look at the months of political rhetoric by individuals campaigning for office, and the rhetoric from folks like Tucker Carlson on Fox News, you can’t be surprised that someone took this rhetoric and then turned it into an action plan,” Ward told Insider. “This is exactly what we’re seeing and as predictable as the sun rising again.”
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