Yes, a hearing on violence against Asian Americans really did descend into Republican ranting about China, lynchings and ‘cancel culture’

‘There’s an old saying in Texas about find all the rope in Texas and get a tall oak tree,’ Chip Roy said, in a speech that went from bad to worse

At today’s House Judiciary Committee hearing on discrimination against Asian Americans, one lawmaker managed to shine a spotlight on his own apparent bigotry. Not only that, but he further showcased the Republican Party’s culpability in the anti-Asian hate crimes we’ve seen over the past year.

Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) used his opening remarks to glorify lynchings, criticize the Chinese Communist Party, and deflect from the topic of racist violence to the topic of “free speech.” After saying the victims of anti-Asian hate crimes deserve justice, Roy went on to add that the victims of violence perpetrated by immigrants and the BLM “riots” last summer also deserve justice. Yes, Roy essentially pulled an “All Lives Matter” in a hearing on Asian hate crimes. “There’s an old saying in Texas about find all the rope in Texas and get a tall oak tree,” he added. “You know, we take justice very seriously, and we ought to do that. Round up the bad guys.”

Roy went on to express concern about the hearing itself, saying it ventures into “policing of rhetoric in a free society.” He went on to repeatedly refer to the Chinese Communist Party as the “Chi Coms” and added that they were the bad guys for concealing information about Covid. While it’s not wrong to criticize China’s secrecy in the early days of the pandemic, this was certainly not the right venue to do so.

There’s a lot to unpack here, to say the least. Rep. Roy behaved, it seems to me, like a classic Trump Republican. When this brand of conservative is cornered and presented with threats of accountability, they double down, deflect, and defame a target. Presumably because the issue of violence against Asians reflects poorly on his party, he used his time to divert attention from the issue. This hearing was not about the failures of the Chinese government. It was not about the Black Lives Matter protests. It was not about “policing speech.” This was about decent people urging those who are spewing violent rhetoric to stop. 

Rep. Roy said nothing can be more dangerous than going down that road of “policing” speech. First off, no one is arguing we do that. Secondly, I can think of a few things more dangerous, like the actions of the Georgia shooter, and a few things more damaging, such as the fear countless Asian families are experiencing right now as a result of his party’s depravity. 

Former President Trump and Trump-supporting members of the Republican Party spent the past year deliberately attempting to rebrand Covid-19 as the “China virus,” “Wuhan flu,” and “Kung Flu.” They did this to deflect from Trump’s indisputable failures. They were repeatedly warned that the rhetoric would lead to violence against Asians. When violence occurred, they continued. In fact, the very night that the Atlanta-area shooter killed eight people, including six Asian women, Trump was on Fox News talking about the “China virus.”

The Republican narrative around Covid gave simple-minded people a license to blame the disease on an ethnicity. As a result, we’ve witnessed a seismic surge in anti-Asian hate crimes across the US. According to Stop AAPI Hate, there were 3,800 reported anti-Asian racist incidents between March 19, 2020 and February 28, 2021. 68 percent of those incidents targeted women.

Unfortunately, the bigoted rhetoric of the Republican Party not only cultivated the environment for these hate crimes to run rampant, but it seeped into law enforcement. The Georgia police officer who sparked backlash when he said that the Atlanta shooter just had “a really bad day” so “this what he did,” ended up being accused of posting anti-Asian Facebook posts of his own. 

You cannot separate hateful rhetoric from its inevitable violent outcome. The self-proclaimed party of “personal responsibility” is seemingly incapable of taking any responsibility for the dark forces they’ve unleashed in America. Instead, Republicans cry “cancel culture” when the public tells them to stop being bigoted and are either silent or defiant when their words radicalize people into violence.

How many people have to be killed as a result of bigoted fear-mongering for this rhetoric to stop? And how many official governmental hearings do we have to see descend this way before the GOP starts taking some responsibility?