Political Violence: Do Americans Recognize Their Slippery Slope?
With political violence rising in the United States, Americans who want to see their future only need to look next door.
The United States has a problem with growing political violence. It’s not an outlier. The trend is evident around the world. Polls suggest Americans are conflicted, acknowledging the threat to democracy, while reluctant to recognize the parallels with beleaguered governments elsewhere. They need to pay attention. The harbingers of their slippery slope are hard to miss.
That violence in democracies is ticking up isn’t in question. Consider what’s happening next door in the New Year alone. In Mexico earlier this month, a drug gang killed a dozen soldiers battling the military captors of its marquee name boss. In Peru this week, 47 protesters died in violent clashes with police over the president’s ouster and arrest after he tried to rule by decree. And a few days ago in Brazil, mobs stormed its Congress, presidential offices, and high court protesting the election defeat of the outgoing president who refuses to concede.
Recognizing that events abroad have implications at home, of course, requires paying attention. Most Americans don’t. According to Pew Research Center polling, less than one-in-five follow international news closely. The media moguls who own the news platforms aren’t helping. They read the tea leaves years ago, plumping the bottom line by paring their global coverage. The result: political violence abroad makes the front page or prime time for a day or two, then slips below the fold or shrinks to a three-minute segment on cable news if, that is, it’s covered at all.
What happens in Mexico when drug cartels challenge the government; or in El Salvador, when violence spikes because of its powerful gangs; or in Peru when social, economic and political divisions renew bloody conflict? True to their specialties, the experts, not surprisingly, narrow cast; they explain each country’s unique causes and prognoses giving a once-over-lightly to the broader risks and their implications. File Mexico and El Salvador under drugs and thugs. Peru and Brazil? Pick your file label—coup, chaos, or democracy Latin American style.
Rising political violence and its risks here, of course, hasn’t lacked for serious study by security agencies, law enforcement, think tanks, and other researchers. Homeland Security officials have highlighted white supremacists and other extremists as the leading domestic terrorist threat. Researchers have mapped their information ecosystems. And public policy specialists have testified before Congress on the need to strengthen laws that target private militias, protect the election system, and crack down on threats to government officials.
The facts at local, state, and national levels speak for themselves. From school board members to US senators, threats and intimidation of public officials including their families are metastasizing. According to a 2021 survey by the National League of Cities, 81 percent of local officials polled said they had experienced harassment, threats and violence. Well covered in a Time Magazine feature, last year witnessed some 9600 recorded threats against members of Congress, a ten-fold increase since 2016. In 2021, officials reported that threats against federal judges, some 4000 that year, had increased 400 percent since 2016 as well.
More to the point, acts of violence are rising. To be sure, the January 6th insurrection two years ago stands by itself as a signal event. But consider less publicized political violence in 2022: an attempted assassination of a mayoral candidate in Kentucky; the murder of a Wisconsin judge; an armed attack on an FBI office in Ohio; the San Francisco break-in and assault on the spouse of the then US Speaker of the House; and in Albuquerque New Mexico over the last few weeks, gunfire that hit the homes of four county and state elected officials. The incidents aren’t isolated crimes. They’re mile markers on the road to political instability and worse ahead.
Do Americans understand the trend and its risks to their democracy? Last year at least they had violence on their minds—60 percent of registered voters polled by the Pew Research Center said it was very important to their vote in the midterm elections. That said, when it comes to political violence, their views appear conflicted, if not outright confused. A survey by the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California/Davis last July found 20 percent willing to condone violence to achieve political goals. In fact, some 12 percent said they just might want to lend a hand.
In the final analysis, most Americans also don’t appear to be thinking through what rising political violence portends. An analysis on Fivethirtyeight.com last November by Kailegh Rogers and Zoha Qamar highlighted the point. While people expected violence surrounding the midterm elections, few were worried about its consequences. The writers cited an October New York Times/Siena poll: 71 percent of voters said democracy was at risk, but only seven percent said it was the most important problem facing the country.
The obvious is only obvious when it happens to someone else, the novelist Anthony Marra once wrote. The question is, are Americans capable of recognizing the obvious—their future—in the political violence next door?
Kent- Right on the money. It is mystifying why there is not a larger uproar about the violence in America.