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As the US presidential election rages on, the country has seen a surge in brutal online rhetoric, an increase in threats and two attempted assassinations of major party candidates, leading experts on political violence and terrorism to fear the worst is yet to come.
Trust in electoral system at rock bottom: June poll World Justice Project The survey found that 46% of Republicans would not accept the results of the 2024 election as legitimate if the Democratic candidate wins, while 27% of Democrats said the same about a Republican victory.
A surprising 14% of Republicans in the WJP poll said they would take action to overturn the results if the Democrats won, and 11% of Democrats said they would take action to overturn the results if the Republicans won.
And 20% A March survey found that people across party lines believe violence is the “action” needed to get the country back on track. Marist/NPR/PBS NewsHour Poll.
If these survey figures reflect the entire country, then there are more than 51 million people who believe bloodshed is the way forward.
“This is an extraordinary period of political violence in America,” Robert Pape, director of the Chicago Project on Security and Threat at the University of Chicago, told Business Insider.
Similar spikes of political turmoil and unrest occurred in the 1920s and 1960s, but these unprecedented times have been a bit of a drag. Too This is unprecedented. You are not alone.
“It’s more than just a hunch,” Pape said, and the numbers back it up.
Pape noted that assassination attempts against politicians have been on the rise, pointing to the attack on Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s husband in October 2022, assailants searching the home of former President Barack Obama last June and the back-to-back assassination attempts on former President Donald Trump in the past two months.
“You have to go back to the 1970s to find anything even close to this, so it’s been about 50 years since we saw anything like what we see today,” he said.
Political violence is increasing across the board
Pape and his team of researchers have studied every case the Justice Department has brought regarding threats against members of Congress, going back more than two decades.
“And on an annual basis, we found that threats against lawmakers spiked fivefold in 2017 and remained elevated through the end of 2023,” Pape said.
Rep. Steve Scalise, D-Louisiana, was wounded when a gunman opened fire during practice for the annual Congressional Baseball Game in 2017. Lawmakers and security experts at the time pointed to the rise of social media as a reason for the increased threats. PBS Reported.
The researchers believe the emergence of social media has had a positive impact in several ways. advantage A lot of research suggests that democratic systems can be facilitated by making communication more accessible and people better informed. Extreme political polarizationincreasing cynicism, Populism.
The justification of political violence online has also worsened, with celebrities increasingly laughing off violent incidents. Following Sunday’s assassination attempt on President Trump, he deleted a post on X in which he questioned why there hadn’t been an assassination attempt on President Joe Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris.
In a follow-up post, Musk claimed he was joking.
Trump, meanwhile, has blamed Democratic rhetoric for the threats he has been making to his life, and Pape said while there’s no hard data on whether politically violent rhetoric is seen among Democrats, it’s likely it’s a contributing factor. Pape noted there is plenty of such data about Trump’s behavior and rhetoric, and said there is no doubt that “inflammatory political rhetoric increases support for political violence.”
Indifference and joking incite violence
Democrats who ridicule jokes like Musk’s, or attacks on Trump, are giving social permission for the violence to continue, Pape said.
“What you’re seeing is real-world violence that reflects this significant rhetorical support for political violence. “You have a radical and determined minority on both the right and the left,” Pape said, “basically you have a really radical minority on both the right and the left who support violence for their causes. And the numbers are significant — tens of millions of people on both the right and the left. That’s why you’re seeing this serious increase.”
In the wake of the second assassination attempt on Trump, Pape said he was most concerned about a spiral of retaliatory violence that could spiral out of control. Republicans who support Trump, already angry after the president was shot at a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania, in July, are now furious.
“Given our radicalization, the risks of the election consequences are very concerning,” Pape said, adding that Nov. 5 won’t be the magic elixir that will save the country. “It’s going to be a very tough fight for months.”
Pape said the only way forward is for Republicans and Democrats alike to collectively and vocally condemn political violence, as Biden did in response to the attacks on Trump. But he’s not holding his breath.
“Because I’m motivated “We know it incites support for political violence, and that’s a problem,” Pape said. “Rhetoric that supports political violence has benefits. It has political benefits, it has economic benefits, it has reputational benefits, and those three drivers of human behavior are really powerful.”