Step back for a moment and consider what it takes to believe that leaders of the Democratic Party are bringing immigrants to the country specifically to replace existing American voters. This is the flavor of white replacement theory that is currently (and bafflingly) in vogue among Republicans, having trickled out from white nationalist rhetoric with the assistance of Tucker Carlson’s Fox News megaphone. (You may recall the chant “you will not replace us!” during the nighttime far-right rally at Charlottesville in 2017.) In recent days, it’s been embraced by a range of Republican officials, including Rep. Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.).

       Consider what that means. It means that one believes that migrants are coming to the United States with the active encouragement of Democratic officials and not primarily due to circumstances in their countries of origin (like, say, violence or natural disaster). It means believing that Democrats have somehow created a process to allow those migrants to remain in the United States and to gain the right to vote. It means believing that this is being done because Democrats are concerned about their electoral future, despite the party’s advantages with younger voters. It means thinking of immigrants — or, at least, some immigrants — as a threat to the country’s fabric, not as an integral part of it. It means, as the Atlantic’s Adam Serwer points out, ignoring or failing to understand the deadly aftermath of similar rhetoric 100 years ago. It means, fundamentally, thinking that Democrats are so terrified of losing power that they are willing to (in the eyes of the observer) subvert the country.

       To put it mildly, this is an uncharitable assessment of the left’s worldview. But it’s not a surprising one. After all, we’ve seen partisan antipathy increase over the past several decades. The American National Election Studies surveys conducted at each federal election show how members of one political party have taken an increasingly dour view of the other. It asks respondents to rate how they feel about parties using a sort of thermometer, with zero being cold and 100 being warm. The average ratings by party have slipped from about 50 in 1980 to around 25 by 2016.

       At the same time, there’s been a sharp increase in the percentage of partisans who view the other party the most coldly, with two-thirds of Democrats and Republicans in 2016 saying they rated the other party a 30 or lower.

       Polling from Pew Research Center in more recent years reflects a further increase in that hostility.

       In February, CBS News polling conducted by YouGov asked a question getting to the heart of the issue: Did Americans view members of the other party more as enemies or simply as political opponents. About 3 in 5 Democrats said opponents. About 3 in 5 Republicans said enemies.

       In the same period, a different YouGov poll, conducted for the Economist, asked people to choose between two opposing views of the world: Is it a big, beautiful place full of good people, or are we living in a moment where our lives are under threat from terrorists and undocumented immigrants? Two-thirds of Democrats chose the optimistic vision. Most Republicans — and two-thirds of those who voted for Donald Trump last year — chose the pessimistic one.

       We can leave it to political scientists and, eventually, historians to disentangle this bleak, hostile view of the opposition held by so many on the right from the media ecosystem that bolsters and feeds into it. There’s clearly at least some symbiosis, with Carlson and others on the network hyping overblown or invented allegations and the base seizing upon them. It is obviously the case that hostility points in both directions to some extent, as the graphs above indicate. But it is also obviously the case that there’s something different occurring on the right, among a group that is so dubious of their opponents that most say they think Democrats somehow engineered an undetectable process for stealing the 2020 election. That acceptance of Trump’s dishonest claims about 2020 no doubt contributes to the fertile soil enjoyed by those making claims about replacement theory: If Democrats have to steal the presidency (which, of course, they didn’t), why wouldn’t they engage in some inexplicable process for subverting America itself?

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       So there was Matt Gaetz over the weekend, giving Carlson’s now-race-specific falsehoods about replacement theory a thumbs-up.

       He later tried to scale this back a bit, tweeting that “[t]he Left/Media think of replacement solely on race/ethnicity terms. I don’t at all.” Of course, those terms are both an obvious subtext to “replacement” claims and ones that Carlson himself amplified in the segment to which the Anti-Defamation League was objecting: President Biden, he said, was trying to import “non-White DNA.”

       Gaetz claimed that his argument was that “Democrats failed the voters who relied on them to run their states/cities” and therefore “they are importing new voters.” This makes no sense on either end, given things like the results of the recall election in California and, again, the lack of a mechanism for newly arrived migrants to suddenly gain the franchise. It also means making assumptions about how new immigrants would vote that are themselves dubious.

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       It’s obviously the case that Gaetz has embraced far-right and extreme positions since his arrival in Washington. He’s part of a cadre of Republicans who appear to see their role in politics as being primarily a rhetorical one, injecting far-right lines of argument popular in conservative media into the national conversation. It’s the tactic that made Trump the Republican nominee in 2016 and, then, president.

       But it’s also useful for Gaetz and other Republicans to further excavate the chasm between the parties. Gaetz faces serious legal questions that remain unresolved. To the extent that he can cast those allegations as a function of the “Left/Media” being out to get him, of the right’s perceived enemies acting in concert to take him down, the more he can increase the cost of indicting him or attacking him. (This, too, was a tactic deployed by Trump.)

       In other words, there exist various incentives to amplify this sense of conflict between the parties. Gaetz and his colleagues like Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Madison Cawthorn (R-N.C.) generate attention by making extreme claims about the opposition. Carlson gets millions of viewers by being the most pointedly angry voice on Fox News’s prime-time lineup. Further to the right, the rhetoric deployed on Fox’s competitors is even more explicit.

       This increase in partisan hostility correlates to a decrease in split-ticket voting, meaning that House districts in which voters prefer a presidential candidate from one party almost always also elect representatives from that party. That means that there’s less disincentive for legislators to reach across the aisle; in fact, it heightens the need to win party primaries, for which the electorate skews more conservative. And it can mean making the case as loudly as possible that you are the enemy of the voters’ enemies.

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       The legislators who voted to block the counting of electoral votes on Jan. 6, Gaetz included, have faced no sanction from their party. In fact, those who have been targeted by the GOP were those who voted to impeach Trump for his role in the day’s events. Gaetz and other Republicans who espouse replacement theory rhetoric can similarly feel comfortable that, by making Democrats the target, they themselves will face no repercussions.

       And for Gaetz in particular, with potential criminal charges looming, the angry space of partisan hostility has become an increasingly safe one.