Opinion | DeSantis’s celebration of vigilantism is a new low in MAGA extremism

“Law and order” and “tough on crime” rhetoric from Republicans goes back more than half a century and has a long history of shading into support for vigilantism in popular culture. (Think of Charles Bronson in “Death Wish.”) But in the Trump era, it seems that wide swaths of one of our major parties have taken to blatantly celebrating extralegal violence.

“The idea that individual citizens should do this — that’s a different place to go,” said Sam Tanenhaus, who recently completed a biography of William F. Buckley, the conservative commentator who played a key role in tough-on-crime politics with his ill-fated 1965 campaign for New York mayor.

DeSantis didn’t merely valorize Penny as a good Samaritan. DeSantis is also raising money for Penny’s defense, arguing that his prosecutors are pro-criminal:

Penny has been charged with second-degree manslaughter in connection with the May 1 death of Jordan Neely, a man with a history of mental illness, homelessness and violence. Neely was shouting on a New York subway car in a disturbing manner, and Penny put him in a chokehold for several minutes. Neely died. Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office said Neely “should still be alive today.”

Like all defendants, Penny should be presumed innocent of the charge until proved guilty. A lot remains unknown about what happened. It would be one thing if right-wing figures were merely reminding people of this presumption and urging them to allow the justice system to do its work.

Instead, some are valorizing Penny as a hero and the victim of a prosecution that has been decreed inevitably unjust, no matter what the facts prove. They argue that Neely was a threatening figure who needed to be restrained, and that subway riders who fear for their safety have been unfairly victimized by political and societal failures. Therefore, not only was Penny’s apparent use of lethal force justified, a jury cannot legitimately decide it was excessive.

Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), for instance, hailed Penny as a “hero” who “stepped in to protect others.” Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.) suggested that Penny is being persecuted for standing up to “anarcho-tyranny.” The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page echoed DeSantis, describing Penny as “the Subway Samaritan.” This, of course, is an allusion to the biblical Samaritan who aids a traveler who had been robbed and beaten; the tale doesn’t involve putting the perp in a chokehold until he dies.

To Tanenhaus, all this is a continuation of — but also a departure from — the history of GOP “tough on crime” politics. Buckley’s 1965 campaign emphasized fear of crime and drew on the White backlash to the civil rights movement, Tanenhaus says, by calling for the unshackling of police and stricter sentencing.

This continued through Richard M. Nixon’s “law and order” presidential campaigns and Ronald Reagan’s use of tropes like the “welfare queen,” Tanenhaus notes. Trump’s 2016 presidential candidacy was consciously modeled on Nixon’s efforts to win over northern Whites disaffected by images, if not experiences, of urban disorder.

That sort of politics long blamed disorder on liberal elites who supposedly restrained law enforcement. But the Trump era has added a more open lionization of violent vigilantes who are supplanting law enforcement as the way to restore “order” and are victimized by law enforcement in retaliation for doing that.

“The vigilante as the lone hero victimized by the Soros conspiracy — we’re in a new place,” Tanenhaus said.

The right in recent years has repeatedly portrayed vigilantes as heroic, and victims as deserving of death. Fox News valorized Edward Gallagher, the Navy SEAL accused by members of his own unit of killing multiple unarmed civilians, and Trump pardoned him. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) vowed to pardon a man convicted for the 2020 murder of a Black Lives Matter protester; the killer had texted about his intent to kill.

And in 2020, Kyle Rittenhouse descended on urban disorder in Wisconsin with an AR-15-style rifle and killed two protesters. Conservatives could have argued that Rittenhouse shouldn’t have gone there but ultimately acted in self-defense, as a jury found. Instead, they celebrated him because he killed people. As Tucker Carlson enthused, “Rittenhouse went to Kenosha to clean up the filth.”

For some on the right, it is self-evident that Neely was mere “filth” that called for a “clean up.” To them, the real criminals are the administrators of the justice system who are pursuing the superfluous exercise of determining whether violently ending his life was justified. As Tanenhaus bluntly concluded of the right’s campaign: “We’re really talking about lawlessness.”