Under Stalin, the first person to stop applauding was sometimes taken away or treason. In Nazi Germany, failure to give the “Hitler salute” was considered “un-German” and a crime. Such has often been the fate of dissenters under the sway of “strongmen” throughout history.
August Landmesser, June 1936.
In that strongman tradition, Claudia Tenney, Congressman who claims to represent the New York’s 22nd District, has suggested that failure to applaud for her leader is at least un-American and possibly treasonous.
After the 2018 State of the Union message, Tenney called Congressmen who chose to sit quietly rather than applauding during the President’s speech rather than applauding “Un-American” and that “they don’t love our country”. Tenney’s statements are inconsistent with the office she currently holds.
First, our Federal representatives have been not applauding during presidential addresses when they disagree for more than 200 years, indicating Tenney has no sense of the history or traditions of the office.
Second, in another Tenney-hypocritical irony, I’m certain she would not call the Republicans who sat quietly for President Obama “un-American” or possibly treasonous, and in that situation would she be exactly as “un-American”.
Third, this exclusionary rhetoric is meant to cast her political opponents as enemies of the state, while wrapping “her side” in the cloak of the nationalist jingoism, straight from the strongman playbook.
Forth, she was supporting the President, who, incredibly, referred to the action of not applauding as “treasonous”. Tenney said she “doesn’t know if she’d go that far” (WTF1?). The President’s reference to not applauding as “treason” is the statement of a would-be strongman. To have our Congressman call those actions “un-American” and possibly treasonous is to make her a would-be strongman supporter, and proffers the idea that failure to agree with the President is “un-American” and possibly treasonous.
Tenney’s demonization of her political opponents for the most venal of perceived offences — and in support of the President’s even more egregious statements — is an offence against civil government itself and part of a pattern that Tenney and Trump share with anti-democratic forces around the world.
Bluntly, Tenney’s statements have more in common with the legislators of tin-pot dictatorships with democratic veneers than those representing a robust democracy and its part of a pattern of intolerant, extremist rhetoric unbecoming of a United States Representative.
We need a representative who understands and observes the basic polity of the land, not one that promotes the basest acrimonious politicization she espouses and simultaneously decries. Claudia Tenney has repeatedly shown she doesn’t represent the views of the 22nd District and she’s can’t clear the low bar of following civil government norms in Congress.