Member-only story
In 2004 there was an attempt to make voting appeal to young people with the slogan “Vote or Die.” In Texas it might be more accurate to say ‘vote And die’ when a man killed a woman and shot her husband for casting their vote for Joe Biden.
According to the Insider article from Sept 11, 2021 “Police have now charged Joseph Angel Alvarez, 38, with the crime, after finding emails in which he admitted to targeting the Kauffmans because they had a Joe Biden flag.”
In 2019 there were 42 deaths linked to Domestic terrorism, and of those 90 percent were linked to Right Wing extremism. The year before that there were 53. Still this incident feels more disturbing, more personal. A mass murder is, by definition, targeted at a group, sometimes a random assembly at a particular location. This was specific, a man targeting his neighbors because of their specific political behaviour, the relatively innocuous act of flying a flag for their choice of candidate.
The man appeared to be steeped in the Q brand of conspiracies as, according to a KTWX article, “ investigators uncovered emails allegedly sent by Alvarez in which he stated his extremist religious beliefs and identified “pro-choice” advocates as the “Jewish Satanist Party” But of course that’s a fringe belief right? Most Republicans don’t really believe Democrats are Satanists do they? Well no, it wouldn’t be accurate to say…
