The brazen escalation since taking power shows that they are instigating. They are not just using rhetoric. They want to hypernormalize masked goons dragging people out of courthouses, out of legislative buildings. This is everything that alt right people claimed was happening (it wasn’t) and now are doing it themselves because if they don’t wield the one ring then their perceived enemies (their countrymen) will. They are deluded at best and malicious at worst.