Online threats and hateful rhetoric against pro-Palestinian protesters have increased since Republican Senator Tom Cotton of Arkansas encouraged people affected by the mass protests to “take matters into their own hands,” according to a report obtained by CBS News.
Advance Democracy, a nonpartisan nonprofit that conducts public interest research, says it has found that there has been a wave of calls for violence against pro-Palestinian protesters on social media platforms this week following Cotton’s comments, with users threatening to hit protesters to kill or injure. .
The report found that many of the threats were in direct response to Cotton’s post, as well as right-wing accounts and personalities who shared the post online, including Fox News commentator Sean Hannity.
“LEAVE THEM OVER!” wrote a user on Truth Social, the social media platform owned by Trump Media and majority owned by former President Donald Trump. “They are terrorists and should be shot,” wrote another. Others suggested robbing, hanging, executing, tying up or throwing the demonstrators off the bridges they occupied.
To counter protesters who sometimes glue their hands to the roads, a user on the far-right social media site Gettr suggested that their arms be torn off or their hands chopped off.
“I encourage people who are trapped behind the pro-Hamas gangs blocking traffic: take matters into your own hands. It’s time to put an end to this nonsense.” Cotton posted to X on April 15, before editing the post six minutes later to add “to get them out of the way.” Cotton accused the protesters of being pro-Hamas, although he provided no evidence for this.
Earlier in the day before Cotton’s comments, protesters demanding a ceasefire in Gaza had closed major roads and bridges in multiple cities, including San Francisco, Oakland, New York, Philadelphia and Chicago. Dozens of protesters were arrested, but there were no reports of violence.
Cotton continued to encourage a vigilante approach in interviews with Fox News and NBC News, telling Fox News that “if something like that happened in Arkansas on a bridge there, let’s just say I think there would be a lot of very wet criminals who did that. ” thrown overboard – not by the police, but by the people whose path they block.” He told NBC News that if people are stopped by the protesters, “they need to go out and get those people off the streets.”
This isn’t the first time Cotton has used charged language to describe how to handle nationwide protests.
In a 2020 op-ed published in the New York Times, Cotton advocated sending in National Guard troops to stop nationwide protests following the killing of George Floyd by police officers in Minneapolis. After monuments across the country were vandalized by protesters, Cotton called those who defaced or vandalized statues during the Floyd protests “mob vigilantes” who “could come for you, your home and your family.”
“The Senator’s comments encouraging violence against protesters are irresponsible and dangerous. Not only do they complicate the work of local law enforcement, but they have also directly led to a wave of calls for violence against protesters online,” Daniel Jones told CBS News. “The failure of other elected officials and political leaders to immediately condemn these comments – regardless of political party – only contributes to further normalizing divisive and violent rhetoric, which is directly linked to real-world violence. ”
CBS News reached out to Cotton’s office by phone and email Friday evening for comment.
Advance Democracy, founded by Daniel J. Jones, a former US Senate Intelligence Committee investigator, including on the Intelligence Committee, conducts weekly surveillance of far-right media, foreign state media and select social media platforms.
