After a video surfaced on social media depicting him as a radical carer putting children at risk with sexually explicit books, Frank Strong, a teacher in Texas, has received threats and become a target in a disturbing and toxic culture of anger and revenge shaped, he believes, by almost a decade of Donald Trump’s political influence on the American imagination.

“It has a chilling effect,” Strong, a high school English teacher, said of the backlash he’s endured in the fight to prevent schools from banning books about race and sexual identity. “I don’t know who these people are or what they are capable of. This ugliness and sense of intimidation is a Trump era thing. There is a real danger that it will accelerate.”

Librarians are harassed, teachers vilified, election workers threatened. Immigrants are demonized and armed groups march outside state capitols. Even meteorologists are targeted by conspiracy theories.

“One poll worker told me, ‘I can’t go to the grocery store without being seen as an outcast,'” Tammy Patrick, executive director of programs at National Assn. of electoral officialssaid of the disdain Trump supporters have for the electoral system since he lost in 2020. “Another had to take his name off the mailbox on their family farm in Wisconsin because they were afraid to people who came from outside the city. They have had that farm for five generations. A worker in Arizona poisoned his dogs.”

Trump’s increasingly dark vision of America, as evidenced recently hate rally at Madison Square Garden is less unity and promise than suspicion and resentment directed at those who cross him and his white, working-class base. He has so normalized the outrageous with crude, cutting language that his statements and well-documented lies — which years ago would have doomed a candidate — have lost their ability to shock even some of the conservative Christians who I support him.

“It speaks to anger and fear and gives it a voice,” said William Howell, a professor of politics at the University of Chicago and a co-author of the paper. “Presidents, Populism, and the Crisis of Democracy.” “He didn’t invent divisive rhetoric. We have a long history with this. But he took it to new heights. He stands apart from any American president in history for what he does for the country. He is a destructive, corrosive force.”

A recent study by The Chicago Project on Security and Threats suggests how Trump has incited extremes and increased the potential for political violence: Six percent of Americans — the equivalent of 15 million adults — believe force is justified to return Trump to the White House. Eight percent — about 21 million adults — agree that force could be used to prevent Trump from returning as president.

Trump said that “sometimes retaliation can be justified.” He called for retaliation against political opponents, including President Biden, and suggested he was stepping down General Mark A. Milley, former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, deserved to be executed.

Republicans tried to play down such sentiment, portraying it as campaign rhapsody rather than real intent. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) told CNN in July that “Donald Trump was the one who was very clear: that his revenge will be by winning and making America great again. He doesn’t go after his political opponents.”

Trump has been described as a fascist by John Kelly, his former chief of staff. At times he sounds like a newsreel from 1930s Germany, calling his enemies “parasites” and “sick people” and claiming that immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country.” He invokes gangster Al Capone and speaks fondly of authoritarians, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, whom Trump called “a friend of mine.” The the CIA concluded that while Trump was in office in 2018, Salman ordered the killing of opposition journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Twice impeached and a convicted felon facing multiple lawsuits, Trump has said he and, by extension, his loyalists have been persecuted by a “crazy” and unfair state. He is, according to rambling narratives from his campaign stops, the antidote and protector of the working class. “At the end of the day, they’re not coming for me,” he tells his supporters, “they’re coming for you, and I’m just standing in the way.”

Since his 2016 campaign, Trump has ignited America’s culture wars and toyed with each other’s politics. That strategy, which later propelled the deadly January 6, 2021, attack on the capitol has been amplified lately by his calls that, if re-elected, he would call in the military and the Justice Department to take out the “enemy within.”

Moved by his messages, his followers and other far-right conservatives have criticized the COVID-19 restrictions, threatened teachers and librarians who oppose the book ban and, in a radical case, plotted to kidnap Michigan’s Democratic governor, Gretchen Whitmer. Some of those convicted of crimes related to the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol have said they were motivated by Trump.

Amanda Jones, a librarian from Denham Springs, La., has come under fire for speaking out against censorship and book bans.

(Pablo Isaak Perez / For The Times)

Amanda Jones he felt that anger. A school librarian in Louisiana, she was harassed and threatened by right-wing elements after speaking out against censorship. She said she fears the vindictive atmosphere Trump has created.

“Our presidential election will determine how far it goes,” she said, adding that if Trump wins, “the hate will increase. We will see a great flight of educators and librarians from their jobs. Trump made people hate and attack. I noticed it right after the George Floyd protests. People started saying the quiet part out loud.”

Tucson Mayor Regina Romero said Trump’s repeated hate speech against migrants over the years has added dangerous undertones to the nation’s immigration debate. “If you tell lies long enough, people believe them,” said Romero, a Democrat and the daughter of immigrant farm workers from Mexico. “It’s a very scary kind of language. … It is not an invasion (of migrants). It’s racist rhetoric.”

Trump and his loyalists have made it a point to discredit the nation’s electoral system. Republicans have filed dozens of lawsuits to preemptively challenge the Nov. 5 election if Trump loses.

Increasing pressure has been placed on poll workers and frontline officials. After facing attacks and threats four years ago, some now wear Kevlar vests to protect them from potential gunmen. A number of people rent cars because their personal vehicles are tracked. Panic buttons and bulletproof glass have been installed at election offices, which also monitor mail for fentanyl-laced envelopes.

The problem, Patrick said, comes from a “vocal minority that wants to suck the oxygen out of the room and sow chaos.” She added that election officials received ominous texts and phone calls, including one in which a voice said, “I know your son’s window is on the second floor by the oak tree.”

Trump sought punishment of those who opposed him during his presidency, including former FBI Director James B. Comey, and vowed to do so again if re-elected.

“This is how fascism comes to America, not with boots and salutes,” wrote Robert Kagan, a political commentator and former managing editor for the Washington Post, in 2016, “but with a TV salesman, a fake billionaire, a textbook egomaniac.”

By the time Trump descended the golden escalator to announce his candidacy a year early, the nation was used to rancor and sharpening divisions. The rise of Christian nationalism in the 1980s, government shutdowns in the 1990s, the rise of tea in the 2000s, along with an atomized and increasingly partisan media, fueled a politics of recrimination and discontent. An unabashed showman, Trump tapped into the digital age, connecting the vitriol of social media to the insecurities and fears of a working class that felt angry and betrayed by liberalism and a changing global economic order.

“It’s a populist, anti-establishment era. It’s about defining who you’re against and undermining that at a time when life is very transformative,” said Mike Madrid, a longtime political consultant and co-founder of the anti-Trump Lincoln Project. “Pitting people against each other, if you’re shameless enough, you’ll win in the end. Trump is a product and an articulator of his time. He’s treating the presidency like a social media influencer, not a presidential candidate.”

Charlie Kirk, co-founder of Turning Point USA, speaks during the 2024 Republican National Convention in Milwaukee in July.

(Jason Armond/Los Angeles Times)

Right-wing political activist Charlie Kirk plays on his desire for revenge by working to get his social media followers to vote for Trump. Co-founder of Turning Point USA, a student political movement, Kirk, who has 4 million followers on Instagram and was once too radical for the Republican Party, called one of his podcasts “Retribution Tour 2024?” He asked his listeners: “The left is warning that if Donald Trump wins the presidency again in 2024, he will use it to exact revenge on the federal government. But the question is: is it really bad?”

In another podcast in April, Kirk said a number of Trump allies and advisers, including Peter Navarro and Stephen K. Bannon, were wrongfully imprisoned by a Democrat-rigged Justice Department. “If the other side is willing to put you in jail and handcuff you and handcuff you and our side is only willing to write op-eds, we’re going to lose,” he said. “Time to start using the handcuffs and leg irons too.”

This is the ferocious tenor of Trump’s campaign.

“What will it look like if Trump is elected?” asked Howell, the politics teacher. “He promised punishment. This is not a comprehensive policy. It will be a total attack on the administrative state.” He will sue the Justice Department, Howell said, and seek revenge against those he believes have wronged him.

Strong, the Texas teacher, said he has been buffeted over the past two years by right-wing vehemence directed at educators who oppose banning certain books about race and sexuality. His The Texas Freedom to Read Project monitors censorship attempts in school districts.

“What amazed me,” said Strong, who lives in Austin, “was the organization, the amount of money and the vitriol behind the book ban campaigns. It was unbelievably ugly.”

He said conservatives with large Instagram and X accounts “hunt for people to target” and bring those people to their followers. One person posted on social media last year: “You (strong) will regret your pedophilia when we come back to power. You will be in prison for life. Honestly, I want the death penalty for people like you pedo boy.” Another post said: “Maybe I should get in touch with the local sexual predators and tell them that strong strong kid is fair game.”

Such vitriol, Strong said, is part of the atmosphere of the times. “Trump came to power feeling that it was culturally permissible to be horrible to other people in public.”