Opinion | How Political Violence Went Mainstream on the Right

The attack against Paul Pelosi was horrific, but it was not an isolated event. In the last five years, political violence has skyrocketed on the right, and desire is growing on the left. The public’s willingness to support partisan violence in America now approaches levels recorded in Northern Ireland at the height of its troubles.

But the problem we face is not solely the number of incidents. It’s that violence has been mainstreamed on the right. It’s effectively become another partisan tool for too many in the GOP. Changing the climate that fuels political violence won’t be easy, but there are ways to do so, particularly by easing polarization so that mainstream Republicans step away from supporting a violent faction.

America has always had a high level of political violence compared to similar high-income, consolidated democracies. In the 1960s and 1970s, when such violence last peaked, it was committed by fringe groups, mostly on the left. In the 1980s and 1990s, extremist fringes on the right started growing. While violence was identifiably ideological, from left-leaning causes like the environment to anti-abortion activists on the right, it was not partisan. Supporting political violence could only hurt mainstream politicians, and it had nothing to do with the election calendar.

Today, violence on the left still looks like this. Progressives who support violence are disconnected from the Democratic Party and are generally disavowed by political leaders (though Democrats could do more to speak against the high levels of property violence that ravaged small businesses during the summer of 2020).

But on the right, support for violence is no longer a fringe position. Hate crimes remain the purview of the normal criminal demographic: unemployed and unmarried young men without kids. However, those joining violent political events like the Jan. 6 insurrection are more likely to be married middle-aged men with jobs and kids.  Those most likely to support violence on the right feel most connected to the Republican Party according to a November 2021 Bright Line Watch survey. This is not a marginal movement: It is people who see violence as a means to defend their values, an extension of their political activity.

Donald Trump isn’t entirely to blame for this shift, but he’s clearly super-charged it. Since 2016, violence on the right has followed the election calendar — rising and falling with predictability during periods when MAGA politicians fill campaign space with hate-filled, violent rhetoric to cement their base.

Many people who support violence would never actually commit it themselves. But when language that simultaneously depicts people as a threat and less than human becomes common, more aggressive and unbalanced individuals will act. Approximately 3 to 5 million Americans are willing to consider committing political violence, according to a poll conducted in the spring of 2022. Numbers like these mean that America is now at the point of what experts call stochastic terrorism — a situation in which one can’t predict who will commit violence, or exactly where or when, but it’s highly predictable that someone, somewhere, will take the bait and act against the target. While in the past, words directed at a long-standing punching bag such as Nancy Pelosi (or a new one like the FBI) remained rhetorical, now, the same ire can result in bloodshed.

This midterm season, violent campaign ads have targeted not just Democrats, but many Republicans who have supported U.S. democracy. Women and visible minorities are particularly targeted, as are party leaders: Death threats against members of Congress are 10 times higher than they were five years ago, and sometimes there’s action. Recall how GOP Rep. Steve Scalise was shot and nearly killed in 2017.

But even more pernicious to our democracy is that targets now include neighbors and local leaders. Election volunteers, school board members, public health officials, mayors — they are now part of a rolling group of targets whose lives can be ruined by a tweet depending on the latest conspiracy. Local office holders are often paid nearly nothing, while being asked to give long hours away from family to take part in endless meetings among haranguing neighbors. Add in death threats against oneself and ones’ children, and who will be left to tend to the everyday offices that a democracy needs?

Regular Americans won’t escape the growth in violence, because murder rates rise when political antagonism and a sense of government illegitimacy drops. It is no surprise that the murder rate doubled during the last period of political violence in the 1960s and 1970s, and had its highest one year growth rate in our history in 2020. Murder is up in red states more than in blue, and in rural areas as well as urban — no part of America is escaping the tide. There are many complex reasons for rising violent crime when other crimes hold steady, but since our founding, murder has risen alongside a distrustful political zeitgeist.

Americans do not need to accept this rising tide of violence as our fate. My last book showed how highly violent democracies — including our own — have brought violence down.

But it requires giving up the satisfaction of pointing fingers and finding fault, setting aside our polarization, and bringing society together to face down the violence. That sounds Pollyannaish, but it is something people have managed in countries that faced near anarchy and civil war on a vastly greater scale than what America is currently experiencing. It does not ask Americans to hold hands and sing kumbaya, but to look into the abyss of dead innocents, bombed buildings and broken economies, and realize, “We do not want this to happen here.”

Political violence is, by definition, inspired by politics. To roll it back, Americans need to disincentivize it. Right now, 90 percent of congressional races are so safe that they fear only a threat from their own ideological side. That’s driving extremism. We need to get rid of primaries in favor of ranked choice and other voting systems that force candidates to cater to the whole electorate.

But institutional changes won’t help if regular Republicans vote for MAGA candidates who normalize violence. Most are holding their noses and voting for their party because they are too polarized to vote for Democrats, especially progressive ones. They need to instead draw a line against violence and create a pro-democracy conservative identity to fight the MAGA faction. The business community particularly benefits from the rule of law, and it should be eager to back a conservative, non-violent type of GOP.

Everyday conservatives also need to do their part. One particularly pernicious culprit in violence is jokes and memes. Jokes are actually far more likely to normalize prejudice than an overtly prejudiced argument, because sharp-edged humor circumvents our brain’s usual pathways for rational thinking. The internet subculture of misogynistic, racist and violent half-jokes against Democrats thus plays a particularly dangerous role in normalizing ideas that many people wouldn’t entertain if forced to speak it in plain language. We need to request that friends and neighbors refrain from such casual harm — and demand it from our leaders. When a key figure on the right can tweet a joke about an 82-year-old man getting hit by a hammer, and thousands of people like it, that is a sign of real danger.

Democrats are not driving today’s political violence. But they are at least partly responsible for driving many people into the arms of the far right. Fear is a major cause of violence. As America undergoes immense change, from a fourth industrial revolution to remaking the concept of gender, many Americans are struggling to understand why they feel unmoored, anxious and behind. Snake-oil salesmen like Tucker Carlson offer the racist Great Replacement Theory as an explanation. Rather than provide a better story, the progressive left calls people names if they can’t march to a radically new tune fast enough. No wonder that even people of color moved in 2020 toward a right that offers understanding and a sense of community.

Large percentages of Americans are fantasizing about secession and cos-playing at warfare — but these fantasy worlds can become real. It is time to break this fever dream, and demand that politicians, friends, businesses and houses of worship come together against political violence.