Political violence is at historic levels in the US, and if recent events are any indication, things are about to take a turn for the worse just as we approach the 2024 presidential election campaign. This continues a trend that started in 2016, when politically-motivated violence spiked to levels not seen in decades, but what we’re seeing now seems to represent a shift in the trajectory of political violence — a shift towards more widespread, targeted, and high-impact violence. It’s the type of violence that accelerationist extremists have long espoused; the type that is meant to pave the way to another civil war.
In just the past few weeks, we’ve seen a rash of swatting incidents targeting political figures, along with bomb threats sent to government offices in at least 23 states, resulting in the evacuation of at least nine state capitals. Most recently, Donald Trump’s trial in New York — where he faces fraud charges — was briefly paused after the judge overseeing the trial received a bomb threat against his home in Long Island.
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These incidents are in line with a longer-term trend of increasing levels of political violence that began in 2016 and likely still hasn’t reached its peak despite reaching levels not seen in half a century. From 2021 through 2023, Reuters identified 213 cases of political violence in the U.S., representing “the biggest and most sustained increase in political violence since the 1970s.” At least 39 people were killed in these incidents, nearly all of which were perpetrated by people with right-wing political leanings. Compared to the last major peak of political violence in the 1970s, the aims, tactics, and style associated with political violence today are notably different. In the 1970’s, political violence in the U.S. was often perpetrated by left-wing radicals and focused largely on destroying property like government buildings, whereas the recent wave of violence from right-wing extremists is much more focused on harming or killing people. This may be due in part to differences in the broader political climate: traditionally, political divisions have been driven mostly by policy differences between those on the left vs. right, but today’s divisiveness tends to be rooted in beliefs that members of the opposing political party are evil actors working to destroy America.
It’s “right-wing terrorism” not political violence as if the whole spectrum is engaged in the same shenanigans.
9/10 times its a right wing lunatic, shooting up places, shooting up power infrastructure, attempting to bomb places. Its clear through policy and actions being right wing has a prerequisite of mental instability and are not the kind of people who can be allowed to have a voice on matters of the public or government at any level if we want a stable, prosperous country.
Thank you for making an excellent example of the problem as somebody on the right would say that you are incorrect and that the left is ruining the country by having two high taxes trying to benefit everybody and ending up like the Soviet Union.
I’m curious, did you read the article? Right-wing terrorism is a type of political violence. You’re commenting like the author is trying to both sides political violence but this entire article is about right-wing extremism. You’re correcting someone for saying the same thing as you.
Yeah, I did. The author uses political violence as the term throughout. The problem here is not what the author means but that they’re not directly addressing it in clear terms.
You had to guess/ask whether I read the article because the headline makes the source of the political violence ambiguous.
you can bet that an author pointing out a rise on the other side of the political spectrum would not go for muddy terms. This headline seen by a right wing person would just be something they would not click and assume it’s reassuring their fox news world view by a different outlet.
Well, I asked if you read the article because your comment seemed inappropriate for the material, suggesting you had maybe skimmed the summary and drawn your own conclusion. I thought it was kind of funny that you were disagreeing with someone who you didn’t realize you completely agreed with.
I guess I do just disagree with you though. I think if you knew the author you wouldn’t think that either. She’s a fairly well-known disinformation researcher who’s despised by the right and often criticized/harassed for not doing what you think she’s doing (but isn’t doing). Her response for not discussing political violence on the left is basically that, statistically, there really isn’t any. So I know she’s not both sides-ing because she’s said many, many times that there’s really just one side here. Here’s an article, titled 'Violent extremism in America is a far-right phenomenon", that discusses just that thing.
I think you misunderstood me?
I’m not saying the article is bad or wrong. I’m taking exception to putting kiddie gloves in headlines.
Think about the people who only read this concisely while browsing headlines. The headline is completely ambiguous and easily reinforces the person’s heels beliefs instead of laying out the important part of where it comes from.
This is before the author and content even comes into play.
Political violence is at historic levels in the US,
Im pretty skeptical of this tbh. Pretty sure the 60s/70s were considerably worse. And then the 20s…
But we should strive to be better
Lmao, where the fuck are you guys coming up with these article titles?
It’s pretty clear that America just cannot get along and should split allowing their opposition to freely move if they wish.
Edit: To clarify, America is too big at 330 million people with too many different opinions to make work properly in the long term as we can clearly see. America either needs to be split so that the population is smaller and therefore more stable or we need to have a radical dictatorship on one side or the other and that does not sound appealing. Russia is a good example of the latter while small countries are a good example of the former.
Edit 2: My thought is just to split the country into four, Northwest, Northeast, Southwest, and Southeast, because a person from Virginia really has nothing in common with a person from California. Their lives and cultures are just totally different.
Edit 3: This would also reduce the tax slaves forcing a smaller military and less interference in places we don’t belong.
The fascists are free to leave if they want.
They don’t get to take part of our country with them though.
a person from Virginia really has nothing in common with a person from California. Their lives and cultures are just totally different.
Seems like something the internet just says. Ive lived all over. I can find the same amount of cultural difference in a city, compared to states away.
I don’t agree with your conclusion but I definitely think the country is just too damn big, and the government was designed for a population 1% the size.
Clearly it doesn’t work, as evidenced by gestures at everything but everyone still wants to use the system that got us here to get us out.
People should be more focused on their local and state governments, rather than thinking the federal goverment was designed to govern the whole population
I fully endorse this. National and global media have broken a government that was intended to be a lot more bottom up than it is currently. It would cost too much to cover every state election with this much detail, and ratings would be terrible, so they focus on the big national stuff to get the biggest audience.
Exactly. If the system is not working, then what the hell makes people think it will work to fix us?
It’s like trying to repair a jet airliner with blacksmith’s tools
