23% of Americans support political violence ahead of the 2024 election, survey shows
23% of Americans support political violence ahead of the 2024 election, survey shows
A PRRI survey out Wednesday shows that nearly a quarter of Americans support political violence heading into the 2024 presidential election, as an overwhelming majority believe democracy is at risk.
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Did not read the entire article, but the first thing that stands out to me is the survey question itself:
Because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.
This language is extremely in line with fascistic rhetoric. So the people agreeing to this are likely Trump supporters. Maybe this is a good thing that most people think democracy is in trouble but only 23% of them think fascism is the solution.
One relevant quote:
Researchers found that one-third of Republicans support violence as a means to save the country, compared with 22% of independents and 13% of Democrats. And more specifically, Republicans who have favorable views of Trump were found to be nearly three times as likely as Republicans who have unfavorable views of Trump to support political violence.
That tracks 100% with my anecdotal feelings. There's one and only one guy on my block whose doorbell I'd be afraid to ring out of the blue. Guess what kind of signs are on his lawn?
The flammable kind? Only one way to find out!
LOL. :-D Despite the topic of the article and OPs repeated warnings that we should all be worried about violence from the left, I'm not ready to start vandalizing my neighbors over their views, satisfying as I'm sure that would be.
Before I'd do that I'd start putting up signs of my own that really piss off the US right like "Everyone is welcome here" and "Hate has no home here."
Maybe I'm missing something, but I can't seem to find evidence of OP's trepidation of the Left.
People on the left tend not to think of themselves as “true American patriots.”
How do you define patriot?
"But you know as well as I, patriotism is a word; and one that generally comes to mean either my country, right or wrong, which is infamous, or my country is always right, which is imbecile." - Patrick O'Brien
For me patriot means someone who wants to make their country better and they haven't give up on being apart of that improvement.
Improving your community, sure. But I don't believe in nation-states to begin with so why would I feel allegiance to one?
How does that affect your day to day life? For example, do you file taxes?
The nations might not be real but the jails sure are.
That's pragmatic. I can respect that.
Follow up question. Do you vote? And if so in what elections?
My guess is that if you vote at all you vote in local elections but not state and national.
I vote in all the elections because while the nation isn't real, the actions are. And because if I don't vote my mom will disown me. And I don't really think my vote does anything at a state or national level anyway.
The best analogy I can give is being an atheist in a religious dictatorship. If you go around saying "none of this is real and you're all insane" people get mad. Their power, while illegitimate, is very real and a lot of people endorse it.
That's interesting thanks for replying
To me that’s just a responsible citizen. A patriot generally has violent implications in my experience. Patriotism is willingness to fight for your country, good citizenship is willingness to make nonviolent sacrifices for your country
So for you patriot is a pejorative? But responsible citizen (or maybe just citizen) isn't?
To me patriot is a term I associate with American nationalism. I associate it with the revolutionary war and the militia movement not with the people chaining themselves to endangered trees to protect the beauty and biodiversity of their country or the people voting to pay more taxes so their poorest country people can eat or so everyone gets a better education
I'm just the opposite: for me, "patriot" has a positive connotation, while "nationalist" is a pejorative, so they're mutually-exclusive. The people chaining themselves to trees and voting for a better social safety net and education are the truest patriots there are.
Well, second only to folks who directly oppose nationalistic shit by doing things like refusing to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance (which was basically a product of McCarthyism). Those folks are even more patriotic.
Collective narcicism
The question that really needs to be asked is one capable of meaningfully distinguishing between those who support "resorting to" offensive violence in order to "save" the country from policy they don't like that was accomplished through legitimate means, and those who support legitimately resorting to defensive violence to save the country from the first group.
Good luck crafting such a question in such a way that the first group doesn't misrepresent themselves as belonging to the second, though.
The weird thing is that I'd bet a lot more people support some type of violence in order to reform all of our broken systems that clearly aren't being fixed by merely voting and protesting.
But the reasons for why our systems are broken are wildly different depending on which side of the political spectrum you fall on.
The Jan 6 insurrectionists were completely misguided, but they'd see a similar insurrection in support of reforming US government systems as an attack on the country itself, just as they are viewed by others.
How do we fix our problems when we can't even agree on what the problems actually are?
Steve Scalise was shot by someone who protested at Occupy Wall Street and volunteered for Bernie Sanders (source). I'm not blaming Bernie or Occupy but it isn't fair to say 100% of political violence is on the right. There's at least some on both sides.
Edit - feel free to downvote this opinion but all I ask is you make an argument. Why are you downvoting? Let's have a constructive conversation.
There are over 300 million people in the country. There's at least some of everything on each side of everything. That doesn't make it wrong to say political violence in the US is primarily a right-wing problem.
I'd agree that it's primarily a right wing problem. My point is that it isn't 100% a right wing problem and the willingness to use political violence is going up to at least some degree across all America.
It's a strawman then. Nobody in this thread, including the person you originally replied to, claimed political violence is literally 100% exclusive to the right wing. I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a single person anywhere who would make that claim in good faith.
And that's nothing new, either. Go to any place in any time period and you'll find some nonzero amount of political violence from any side of sufficient size. The major problem comes when a large proportion of one side starts thinking that political violence is okay. In the US today, that only describes the right.
https://www.axios.com/2023/10/25/support-us-political-violence-prri-brookings-survey
Support for violence has risen across the political spectrum. Republicans are MUCH more likely to support it but it has risen among independents and Democrats
Conservatives have worked very hard to teach me that I will be a victim of their violence, no matter what. My choice is to allow it or to resist. Resistance to violence involves violence. Do not cry for the enemy. They insisted upon this.
Conservatism is a plague of oppression long overdue for a cure.
Malcolm X gave a great speech called the Ballot or the Bullet. How would you personally achieve your goals?
Fucking LOL. This cunt felt the need to both sides with an anomaly from 5 years ago.
Everyone knows the party of "we are all domestic terrorists" make up 22 of the 23% who support political violence in this poll.
EDIT: Fascists gonna fash
what we know is that this does fall along party lines in a pretty significant way. Researchers found that one-third of Republicans support violence as a means to save the country, compared with 22% of independents and 13% of Democrats. And more specifically, Republicans who have favorable views of Trump were found to be nearly three times as likely as Republicans who have unfavorable views of Trump to support political violence. They also found that Americans who believe that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump were also three times more likely than those who do not believe the big lie to support political violence in an effort to save the country.
Political violence is political violence in my opinion
"We want to do violence to install a fascist regime" and "we might have to use violence to stop those people from installing a fascist regime" are not the same thing.
In your opinion what might be something that would cause you to use violence in a situation like that? What would it have to look like for you to actually perform a violent act?
Every act of violence from the left has been preceded by multiple acts of violence from the right.
Now that the right openly supports violence against the left, conservatives are a constant threat to the health and safety of everyone around them. Any violence against my enemy that mitigates the threat they pose is justified in my opinion.
Here's my constructive addition to your bad-faith conversation.
That's a shame about Scalise. People on the left should train more effectively so there are fewer survivors from our encounters with the enemy.
Are you a gun owner?
Yes.
Do you think you could shoot someone or a group of people like what happened at that baseball field? When Russia invaded Ukraine I knew lots of guys who were saying how they wished someone would try something like that here because they'd "fuck them up." I honestly don't know what it would take for me to pick up a gun and try to kill someone else. It's a tough question.
Can you honestly say the violence on either side is "the same"? Lol
No all I'm saying is that violence has come from both political viewpoints and that to me means political violence is on the rise to some degree all across the United States
Steve was shot because he's a FUCKING NAZI WHITE SUPREMACIST.
who shot him isnt relevant.
The shooter wasn't shooting at Steve Scalise specifically he was shooting at a Republican baseball team. He was shooting at republicans in general.
Did anyone say that 100% of political violence is on the right? It’s more like 90-95%, I would guess.
I wouldn't even know how to research that. I'd completely agree that the absolute vast majority of political violence is from the right but support of violence had risen across the board. More republicans support it (33%) than Democrats (13%) but independents support has risen too (22%).
You could start by reading what the FBI says about it.
Do you have a link? What I've been thinking about in my own head, for a while now, is if this is a leading indicator of future events or is this a flash in the pan. Republicans are much more like to commit violence and support violence but across the board the support of political violence has risen among all political persuasions.
I don’t. You’ll have to look for it.
Here’s something from Reuters though:
https://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-politics-violence/
much of today’s political violence is aimed at people – and most of the deadly outbursts tracked by Reuters have come from the right. Of the 14 fatal political attacks since the Capitol riot in which the perpetrator or suspect had a clear partisan leaning, 13 were right-wing assailants. One was on the left.
That's a really good article.
Some academics call this mindset America’s new “political sectarianism,” in which each party demonizes the other as traitorous enemies.
Stood out to me personally.
Their statistics of 20% matches what I've seen of 33%, 22%, & 13% percent of Republicans, independents, & Democrats respectively who support political violence. If you look in my comment history you'll see that I repeatedly say Republicans are the source of the vast amount political violence. I really didn't write my thoughts out as well as I could have but what I've been thinking about is how this acceptance has been on the rise and what could happen if it continues to rise. What if in five years it's 40%, 30%, & 20%?
99% on the right and 1% on the left is still both sides. But you wouldn't address both ends with the same urgency.
Yeah I really didn't word that as well as I should have. What I was thinking about was the overall rise of accepting political violence. 33% of Republicans, 20ish% of independents, & 13% of Democrats feel political violence can be justified. All those numbers are higher today than they were a couple years ago. What does that mean for our future?
I wasn't trying to imply that the far right isn't the vast majority of the violence or that the left is equally culpable.
How dare you word something badly on the Internet.
Yeah I getcha. One missing bit of data here is if they think the violence is justified to initiate or if it's justified to defend. It's a very key difference. I think the violence can certainly be justified if you're protecting people, but not if you're the one attacking people.
It would be very interesting to see the survey repeated and it tried to control for that variable.
Go far enough left you get your guns back
...as the saying goes.
Lol basically, the logic of Israel; the constantly violent party, and when the other side does anything remotely violent, claim that you are now justified in genocide. Fascists certainly are similar.
Well personally I don't support Israel and the vast amounts of military aid it gets. That aside what I'm doing in my own head is looking at trends now and how they might change and\or affect the future. This shows acceptance of violence is increasing across the board. I can't help but wonder if this is a flash in the pan or could we be moving towards a conflict at least similar to what Italy went through during its Anni di Piombo (Years of Lead ).