It’s not just rhetoric – apathy and jokes can fuel a cycle of political revenge violence, expert warns

• Former President Donald Trump has survived two assassination attempts in as many months.

• Political threats and violence are on the rise, and a terrorism expert believes it will get worse.

• Trump is a particular lightning rod for violence among both supporters and opponents.

Amid a contentious presidential race, the nation has seen an increase in brutal rhetoric online, increased threats and two attempts to assassinate a major party candidate. And an expert on political violence and terrorism worries the worst is yet to come.

Faith in our electoral systems is absurd: A June poll by the World Justice Project found that 46% of Republicans would not accept the 2024 election results as legitimate if a Democratic candidate won, and 27% of Democrats felt the same way about a GOP victory.

An alarming 14% of Republican respondents in the WJP poll said they would take action to overturn the result if a Democrat won, and 11% of Democrats if a Republican won.

And 20% of those polled – across party lines – believe the “actions” that need to be taken to get the country back on track are violence, says March. Marist/NPR/PBS NewsHour poll.

If these survey numbers reflect the country as a whole, more than 51 million people think bloodshed is the way forward.

“This is an extraordinary time for American political violence,” Robert Pape, director of the University of Chicago’s Project on Security and Threats, told Business Insider.

Although the country saw similar political upheavals and unrest in the 1920s and 1960s, if you feel that these unprecedented times are a bit too unprecedented, you are not alone.

“It’s a lot more than a gut feeling,” Pape said — the numbers bear that out.

Assassination attempts on political figures have increased, Pape noted, citing the attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband in October 2022, the alleged attacker who brought down former President Barack Obama’s home last June, and back-to-back attempts on former President Donald Trump. Trump’s life in the last two months.

“You have to go back to the 1970s to find anything close to this, so it’s about a 50-year period before we have anything like what we’re seeing,” he said.

Political violence is everywhere

Pape and his research team have investigated every case brought by the Justice Department involving threats against a member of Congress for more than 20 years.

“And we found that threats against members of Congress increased fivefold year-over-year in 2017 and have remained the same through the end of 2023,” Pape said.

Louisiana Rep. Steve Scalise was wounded in 2017 when a gunman opened fire during practice for the annual congressional baseball game. At the time, lawmakers and security experts pointed to the widespread use of social media as a reason for the increase in threats, PBS reported.

While scholars have found that the advent of social media has had some benefits for democratic systems—making communications more accessible and people more informed—numerous studies have shown that it can fuel extreme political polarization, increase cynicism, and increase populism.

The justification of political violence online is also getting worse, as more and more publicized people laugh at violence. Elon Musk, after Sunday’s assassination attempt on Trump, deleted an X post in which he questioned why there have been no assassination attempts against President Joe Biden or Vice President Kamala Harris.

Musk claimed in later posts that he was joking.

Trump, for his part, has pointed to Democratic rhetoric as the cause of the threats on his life, which Pape says is likely a contributing factor despite the lack of hard data on Democrats’ politically violent rhetoric. There is a lot of such data on Trump’s rhetoric, Pape noted, and he said there is no doubt that “incendiary political rhetoric increases support for political violence.”

Apathy and jokes fuel violence

Jokes like Musk’s — or Democrats laughing at Trump’s attacks — are a kind of social license for violence to continue, Pape said.

“What you’re seeing is actual violence that reflects this significant rhetorical support for political violence on both the right and the left,” Pape said. “So basically what you’re seeing is that there are radical, determined minorities on both the right and the left who are really radical and who advocate violence for their goals. And that’s a significant number — measured in the tens of millions on both sides. right and left — that’s why we’re seeing this serious rise .”

After another assassination attempt against Trump, Pape said he is most concerned about a cycle of retaliatory violence that could spiral out of control. Republicans who support Trump were already angry after the former president was shot during a rally in Butler, Pennsylvania in July — but now they’re furious.

“Given the radicalization that we have, the risk of fallout around the election is very worrying,” Pape said, adding that November 5 is not a magic potion to walk the country back from the brink. “It takes months, very intense.”

The only way forward, Pape said, is for everyone — Republicans and Democrats alike — to fully condemn political violence across the board, such as Biden’s statements in response to attacks on Trump. But he’s not holding his breath.

“There is an incentive to do what we know increases support for political violence. That’s a problem,” Pape said. “Rhetoric that supports political violence pays off. It pays politically, and it pays financially, and it pays reputationally. And those three factors in human behavior are really powerful.”

Read the original article on Business Insider