A crying Shaye Moss testified on Tuesday about the return of political violence in American politics.
Moss was an election worker in the state of Georgia during the 2020 presidential election and was tasked with counting the votes.
Joe Biden won the state by a margin of 12,000 votes, which was the first time a Democrat won the state in the 2000s.
That prompted Donald Trump and his advisers to start spreading baseless allegations of electoral fraud. Shaye Moss was personally singled out by Trump in talks with Republicans in the state, who began spreading lies that Moss had sneaked around with whole suitcases full of ballot papers.
After the accusations became her life a nightmare. She drowned in threats of violence and harassment. Trump supporters have at one point tried to break into her home. Crying, Shaye Moss told me that she could barely leave her house for several months. She could no longer answer when it rang, because it was always a Trump supporter who shouted death threats in the phone. Shaye Moss’ mother Ruby Freeman was forced to move from her home to seek refuge in a secret location for two months because she received so many death threats. Trump supporters also ordered food and products for her at home, which she was then asked to pay for.
What she described were brutal threats of violence and murder against election workers, which were sanctioned by the United States’ own president and encouraged by the president’s aides and an entire army of nationalists who spread the same lies about election fraud.
What Shaye Moss was subjected to should not happen in a democracy. It is reminiscent of fascist and totalitarian regimes, where dissidents are forced to obey the regime with violence and threats of violence.
It is also reminiscent of the United States’ own history, where for many decades blacks were subjected to precisely this kind of threat and violence in the American South.
Shaye Moss’ testimony shocked many listeners, but for blacks in Georgia, this is a familiar story. Before the civil rights movement succeeded in passing the Voting Rights Act in 1965, it was more the rule than the exception that blacks who were politically active, or just trying to do something as infallible as registering voters for the electoral roll, risked violence and brutal harassment.
The Ku Klux Klan and other racist terrorist groups regularly killed blacks who tried to vote or help others vote. In several cases, children were also lynched to the black men and women who tried to vote.
Shaye Moss’ testimony gave us an idea of how this reign of terror risks returning to American politics.
Across the United States, from Arizona to Michigan, we have heard similar testimonies during the year from other election workers and bureaucrats who have been threatened and harassed by Trump supporters for refusing to break the law and cheating on the ballot.
The threats are taking place not only in the conservative south, but in all states in the United States where there is a loud and militant group of Trump supporters.
A Democrat who was responsible for the vote in the state of Michigan during the 2020 election testified earlier this year that Trump threatened to kill her.
We also heard earlier during the interrogations in Washington that Trump, according to the Republican Liz Cheney, should have said that Mike Pence “deserved” to be murdered because he did not want to help Trump cheat himself to the election victory.
Brad Raffensperger, a Republican bureaucrat who played a key role in the Georgia vote, also testified on Tuesday about how he and his family were subjected to threats, burglary and persecution.
These harassments affect election workers who only tried to do their job in the 2020 election. The goal for Trump and his supporters in state governments is to scare away all bureaucrats who have not sworn allegiance to Trump, so that the election process itself can be controlled by Trump sympathizers.
More than 100 Republicans who are running in the congressional election this fall are campaigning for the 2020 election to be stolen by Joe Biden, which is a lie.
Joe Biden has done several attempts to bring to life a national debate on the implications of this, but have not succeeded.
Most Americans today are more concerned about the high gasoline prices, which Biden has limited control over, than the fact that the next election could be a democratic farce.