‘Anger and radicalization’: rising number of
Americans say political violence is justified
Survey shows a small but significant share of
Americans believe in use of force to attain political goals – on both the left
and the right
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content
Kira Lerner
Tue 25 Jul
2023 06.00 EDT
The June
federal indictment of Donald Trump is “radicalizing” support for the use of
force on behalf of the former president and current presidential candidate,
according to the author of a recent survey about threats to democracy.
A Planned
Parenthood clinic operates in Los Angeles, California, USA, 03 May 2022. In a
leaked initial draft majority opinion obtained by Politico, it was revealed
that the Supreme Court is poised to overturn the landmark Roe v. Wade decision,
which would end federal protection of abortion rights across the country.
Meanwhile,
on the other side of the aisle, support for violence to restore the federal
right to an abortion has also increased over the last few months, researchers
found, although there’s little indication that any organized groups support
acting on this belief.
The Dangers
to Democracy report indicates that a growing number of Americans support the
use of political violence as the 2024 presidential campaign heats up and
further indictments of Trump are probably imminent.
“The
indictment is radicalizing support for Trump, but that’s not the only source of
radicalization,” said Robert Pape, a University of Chicago professor who led
the research. “You’re seeing growing anger and radicalization on the left as
well.”
The number
of Americans who believe the use of force is justified to restore Trump to the
White House increased by roughly 6 million in the last few months to an
estimated 18 million people, according to the survey conducted by the
university in late June and shared exclusively with the Guardian.
Of those 18
million people, 68% believe that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump and
62% believe the prosecutions of Trump are intended to hurt his chances in 2024.
An estimated 7% of Americans now believe violence could be necessary to restore
Trump to the presidency, up from 4.5%, or 12 million people, in April.
But over
the same period, Trump’s general favorability slightly decreased among
Republicans, the survey found.
The
university’s Chicago Project on Security & Threats (CPost) research center
has been conducting Dangers to Democracy surveys of American adults on
political violence and attitudes towards democracy since shortly after the
January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol.
The most
recent report marks the first increase in radical, violent support for Trump
since April 2022, according to Pape, who directs CPost.
“The public
is more radicalized than it was in April and it’s really quite significant,” he
said. “We’ve been tracking this quite a while, and this is a really big bump.”
Still, a
radicalized public isn’t enough for actual violence to occur, Pape said. He
compared the support to kindling, but said Trump would have to give a speech or
rally inciting people to act at a certain time to light the fire, as he did in
Washington DC on 6 January 2021.
Democrats,
however, expressed support for political violence for a different purpose. The
survey found support for the use of force to coerce members of Congress to “do
the right thing” grew from 9% in January to 17% – an estimated 44 million
Americans – at the end of June, with the sharpest rise among Democrats. Support
for violence to restore the federal right to an abortion also increased during
this time.
“Things are
definitely heading in the wrong direction in terms of the radicalization of the
country and we need to be aware of that because there were some hopes that the
Trump indictment would actually reduce support for Trump,” Pape said.
Survey
respondents also said they view Trump as a bigger threat to democracy than
President Joe Biden, with a difference of 52% to 33%.
Researchers
also asked participants about support for dangerous conspiracy theories,
including whether they believe that a secret group of Satan-worshiping
pedophiles is ruling the US government. The number of people who believe that
statement – a major tenet of the QAnon conspiracy theory – increased slightly,
although the change was not greater than the margin of error.
The survey
also found that nearly 90% of Trump’s most radical supporters believe the
federal government is run by a “deep state” of immoral people.
With more
indictments of Trump likely to come in the next few weeks, both from the
federal government and the Fulton county, Georgia, district attorney, Pape said
he was concerned that further radicalization of the public is likely to occur.
As Trump
faces more complicated legal trouble and the 2024 election season gets under
way with the first GOP debate just one month away, the number of Americans who
believe that the 2020 election was stolen from him remains largely unchanged at
roughly 20%.
“Things are
going in the wrong direction of radicalization, and we haven’t even gotten into
the really heated part of the 2024 election season,” Pape said.
CPost’s
research is supported by the University of Chicago, the Pritzker Military
Foundation, the Hopewell Fund, and the Anti-Defamation League and contributions
from the CPost board of advisers
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