A Disturbing Number of Americans Endorse Violence to “Stop Voter Fraud” and Return Trump to Power – By Mark Follman (Mother Jones) / Oct 21, 2022
New research shows the impact of the ex-president’s ongoing incitement.
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In the final weeks before the 2022 midterms, faced with multiple government investigations, Donald Trump has tripled down on a disturbing pattern of incitement. He continues to stoke grievance and fear and use inflammatory rhetoric that is likely to instigate random followers to violence, a technique experts call stochastic terrorism. In recent speeches, Trump has denounced “vicious” political adversaries as “thugs,” “zealots,” and “tyrants” and has warned supporters of a domestic menace: “Despite great outside dangers from other countries, our biggest threat remains the sick, sinister and evil people from within our own country.”
The ex-president has long used demonizing language to put targets on institutions and individuals, from the Justice Department and FBI to the New York attorney general and the GOP Senate minority leader; recently Trump declared that Mitch McConnell’s supposed defiance of him amounted to a “DEATH WISH.” The subsequent backtracking by a Trump spokesman, who implied Trump merely meant a “political death wish,” is part of the incitement technique—an effort to establish deniability, as I’ve detailed in a series of articles since 2020 on Trump’s use of such rhetoric. An especially troubling component is Trump’s dehumanization of his purported enemies, a tactic that researchers have found escalates the risk for political violence.
Trump knows he is not stoking this peril in a vacuum. Violent threats have soared around racial, gender, and various other political issues, and national media often highlight acute partisan polarization and debate about prospects for a coming “civil war.” Now, a new study published by the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California-Davis reveals a growing acceptance in the United States of political violence, particularly among Americans who identify as partisan Republicans. The UC-Davis team conducted the most detailed study to date on the phenomenon. What their broad national survey reveals is troubling to say the least.
