Since the beginning of President Trump’s second term in January, acts of political violence in the United States have been occurring at an alarming rate.
The assassination and attempted assassination on Saturday of two Minnesota state lawmakers and their spouses are horrific recent examples. Since January there have also been politically motivated attacks on Tesla dealerships, an act of arson that could have killed Gov. Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania and his family, the killing of two Israeli Embassy staffers in Washington and the use of fireworks, rocks and glass bottles to attack law enforcement officers in protest of Immigration and Customs Enforcement activity — to cite just a few additional instances.
This spate of political violence comes on the heels of a roughly five-year period that included, among other acts, two assassination attempts against Mr. Trump; a kidnapping plot against Nancy Pelosi, then the speaker of the House; an assassination plot against the Supreme Court justice Brett Kavanaugh; the Jan. 6 assault on the U.S. Capitol; and riots that occurred alongside peaceful protests in the wake of the murder of George Floyd.
What is most concerning is that the conditions for political violence today are worsening. We may be on the brink of an extremely violent era in American politics.
Today’s political violence is occurring across the political spectrum — and there is a corresponding rise in public support for it on both the right and the left. Since 2021, the Chicago Project on Security and Threats, which I direct, has conducted national surveys on a quarterly basis on support for political violence among Americans. These surveys are telling because, as other research has shown, the more public support there is for political violence, the more common it is.
Our May survey was the most worrisome yet. About 40 percent of Democrats supported the use of force to remove Mr. Trump from the presidency, and about 25 percent of Republicans supported the use of the military to stop protests against Mr. Trump’s agenda. These numbers more than doubled since last fall, when we asked similar questions.
In addition, our research has found that support for political violence is linked to seemingly unrelated grievances. In April 2023, my organization and the Anti-Defamation League conducted a survey to examine the overlap of support for political violence and antisemitism in the United States. Among Americans who express strong support for anti-Jewish tropes, there was significantly more support for the use of force in the service of both right-leaning and left-leaning causes, be it restoring Mr. Trump to the presidency or restoring abortion rights.
This may help explain the intensification of political violence today, where violence against the Trump administration’s agenda, against the agendas of Democratic leaders and in the service of antisemitism seem to fuel one another.
Also alarming is not just Mr. Trump’s dangerous decision to deploy National Guard troops and U.S. military forces to the Los Angeles area, which needlessly escalated tensions and increased the risk of U.S. military violence against U.S. citizens, but also the strident language with which some of Mr. Trump’s opponents call for resistance. Last week Gov. Gavin Newsom of California, while urging that resistance be peaceful, nonetheless chose to say that Mr. Trump had “declared a war” on culture and knowledge, that “the moment we’ve feared has arrived” and that “it’s time for all of us to stand up.” Two days later, Kristi Noem, the homeland security secretary, responded by arguing that the federal government was going to “liberate the city from the socialists and the burdensome leadership” of Mr. Newsom and Mayor Karen Bass of Los Angeles.
What I fear is an increasing sense of mobilization between two opposed blocs — one that drives both protesters and government forces to become more militant as each seeks to impose its will on the other.
Many Democratic and Republican leaders have condemned political violence — that is good. But they have almost always done so in separate statements. My research suggests that to de-escalate the political environment and reduce the risk of violence, America’s political leaders need to cross their political divides and make joint statements (and ideally joint appearances) that denounce all political violence, welcome all peaceful protest and call for respecting the rules, process and results of free and fair elections in the country. Mr. Newsom and Mr. Trump, for instance, ought to make such a joint statement.
Do Democratic leaders want to see months of increasingly violent protests that the right can paint as circumventing Mr. Trump’s democratic mandate to deport unauthorized immigrants? Does Mr. Trump want to preside over the potentially lethal use of the military against its own citizens, which would fundamentally alter the relationship between the American people and their government? No one will be added to Mount Rushmore under those circumstances.
Most important, the American people — the ultimate power in the United States — need to stand against political violence. In practice this means that protests must have a positive political goal, not merely the negative aim of stopping the other side at all costs. And the political goal that matters most is what has always been the driving force in America’s democracy: free elections — free from intimidation and interference — and the freedom of elected leaders to legally enact the people’s will.
Robert A. Pape (@ProfessorPape) is a professor of political science at the University of Chicago, where he directs the Chicago Project on Security and Threats.
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