American Political Violence is on the Rise
A member of the National Guard patrols the U.S. Capitol on March 4, 2021. BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES
It is hard not to notice how political violence has increased in America these last few years. What was once an infrequent event has now become an almost monthly occurrence, and with threats against high ranking officials like Congresspeople rising almost tenfold, it’s clear that trouble is brewing in our society. There are a multitude of reasons for this change, however, and many of them stem from extreme political divisiveness and distortions of the truth.
A recent example of this was the attack on Paul Pelosi. On Oct. 28, 2022, an intruder entered the residence of Speaker Nancy Pelosi and savagely beat her husband with a hammer. During the attack, the intruder stated that he was looking for Nancy Pelosi and that he wanted her to tell him the “truth.”
A screenshot from a police body camera video shows David DePape holding onto Paul Pelosi, the husband of then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in the couple’s house on October 28, 2022, in San Francisco District Attorney/Handout via REUTERS
Statements like these follow rhetoric we’ve seen building up this last year, with politicians and sitting government officials being accused of lying to the American public about the results of elections, more specifically, the 2020 election.
Conspiracies surrounding the results of the 2020 election, which has been dubbed “The Big Lie,” have been a source of great controversy due to the unusual nature of the transition. Breaking from tradition, where the defeated candidate concedes the election upon the victory of the other candidate, former President Donald Trump never conceded and began to make debunked claims about voter fraud. These claims have led to several sinister incidents, all posing major threats to American democracy.
One major incident was the Capitol Riot. On Jan. 6, 2021, a mob protesting the results of the election chose to violently invade the US Capitol building. They carried with them weapons, zip ties, and a noose. Once inside, the rioters began looting possessions and searching for specific political figures to attack, acts which terrorized the congresspeople within and forced them to hide from their own citizens. It was the first mass occupation of the government’s seat of power in two centuries.
Another incident occured when a majority of House Republicans, 139 in total, voted to dispute the results of the election, specifically the Electoral College count. This was entirely unprecedented, and the timing of it holds irony as well–this vote occurred on Jan. 6, the same day as the riot. There has been no evidence of election fraud on a national scale, but the large number of Congresspeople who acted to feed this deceptive belief only serves to show how normalized the incitement of violence has become in America.
Events of this nature are significant for a multitude of reasons. Democracy is, at the end of the day, built on trust of institutions. And when people, especially powerful people, begin to lose trust in their institutions? Things tend to get rocky.
The Capitol Riot showcases this problem best. Spurred on by lies repeated by sitting congresspeople, mobs attacked the seat of power of the government. The attack was condemned, thoroughly, but still, there was a refusal by those who spouted these lies to retract their statements, something which fed the deception even further and created more political instability. A prime example of this was former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. In late 2021, Meadows wrote a book spreading misinformation about not only election fraud, but Jan. 6 as well. He stated that the attack was “organic” rather than intentional and topped it off with a false claim that almost every Trump voter believes the election was rigged. His writing indicated an effort to control the narrative surrounding the insurrection and alleviate blame on the part of the former President; however, these statements only serve to create more confusion in the minds of the American people.
Image from the January 6th Insurrection at the Capitol. Image Credit Business Insider.
Because of this dangerous rhetoric, there’s been an increase in political violence and calls for more over the last year. The Mar-a-Lago raid, for one, demonstrates this point. In August, officials were stunned when a search of the Trump-owned resort authorized by the FBI caused far-right extremists to push for “civil war,” a statement which goes far beyond normal political dialogue. It wasn’t just citizens who began to lobby violence, however. Senator Lindsey Graham, in response to the raid, stated that if Trump were to be prosecuted, there would be “riots in the streets.”
It’s hard to understate the impact of careless remarks such as these. When public political figures, especially respected ones such as senators, advocate for or threaten violence, it legitimizes the behavior of small groups of radicals and exponentially increases the chance of it happening again, on a larger scale and in our communities.
This is supported by a national uptick in violent threats against political officials since the Jan. 6 riot. In 2021, officials on every level, from local government to federal judiciary, reported receiving a greater number of threats than usual. With many of these threats stemming from claims repeated by elected officials, it’s clear that the normalization of political violence brings dire consequences.
Recently, we saw the impacts of this behavior at Davis. On Oct. 25, protesters and counter protesters who showed up to a conservative speaker’s event on campus started fighting, and the violence escalated to the point where the event had to be canceled. While no injuries were reported, fighting of this nature is evidence of a dangerous trend in our nation towards increased political violence.
Political violence nationwide has been trending upwards for the last few years, and lies about election fraud are only adding fuel to the fire. When people lose faith in the institutions that serve them, and government officials choose to ignore their concerns, political violence as a whole rises and spills out onto the streets. On both an individual and national level, we cannot allow ourselves to become desensitized to this kind of behavior. We must not allow baseless conspiracies which undermine the electoral system to be left uncriticized, or politicians to call for violence without accountability. The behaviors we’re witnessing on a national level are plainly undemocratic, and in my opinion, representative of overt normalization of violence in America. For the sake of our democracy, we must denounce these violent attacks and their causes, or things will get worse from here on out.
Edited by Abigail Loomis