Is America trapped in a cycle of political violence? It certainly feels like it. In the span of just over a year, the U.S. has seen assassination attempts, some successful,
against President Donald Trump,
lawmakers from Minnesota and their spouses, the
CEO of UnitedHealth and
most recently, Charlie Kirk, a conservative activist and close Trump ally who was shot dead on Wednesday during an event at Utah Valley University. These attacks seemingly know no political or geographical bounds: They happen to figures on the left and right, in cities and states all across the country, both in private residences and in public spaces.
The root of much of the rise in political violence is the media. The advent of Television opened the door to information reaching the public in a bigger way but the real culprits for the strong rise in the strength of political biases (which lead to violence) are the biased and extreme political views seen in social media (Tik-Tok, Instagram, Facebook, etc.), which allow all people to make their voices heard to thousands of others, and the news media, which allows biased political views to be part of the news (such as with FOX and MSNBC).
Perceived as an equalizing force for disenfranchised individuals without a voice, the importance of social networks as agents of change cannot be ignored. However, in some societies, social networks have evolved into a platform for fake news and propaganda, empowering disruptive voices, ideologies, and messages. Social networks such as Twitter, Facebook, and Google hold the potential to alter civic engagement, thus essentially hijacking democracy, by influencing individuals toward a particular way of thinking.
New research explores why political violence is rising—and what we can do to stop it.
The attempted assassination of Donald Trump highlights a terrible truth: Political violence and support for political violence have been rising in the United States. Trump himself
may bear much of the
responsibility for this trend. His entry into American politics triggered a
sharp rise in violent rhetoric, which seems to have
led inexorably toward
violent actions. Acts of
stochastic terrorism—that is, violence by individuals operating outside of any organization—have proliferated, with the attempted killing of Trump only the latest example. In fact, threats against lawmakers
grew ten-fold since 2016. That trend crystallized on January 6, 2021, when Trump raised a mob of protesters who
attacked the U.S. Capitol in an effort to stop certification of Joe Biden as president. Five people died that day, and four responding police officers committed suicide within seven months of the attack.
Having said all of the above, this extreme rise in political rhetoric began in 2008 with the election of a Black President (Obama), which caused a rise in racism to bloom. In addition, it is also the fact that both parties have allowed the extremes of their parties to gain a big voice. This is more true with the Right, but the left has seen some of this as well:
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In addition, Trump has also been a strong reason for the increase of political violence, given that much of what he has done is bring hate, revenge, retribution and extreme views on issues where compromise is not possible. All of that causes people to get angry, frustrated, and immovable in their views.
Critics argue that Trump has helped fuel this collapse. Political scientists analyzing his speeches from 2015 to 2024 found a sharp rise in
violent vocabulary—from 0.6% in 2016 to 1.6% in 2024, surpassing nearly all other democratic politicians and approaching the levels seen in authoritarian regimes. In March 2024, Trump warned of a “bloodbath for the country” if he wasn’t reelected. Such language, while galvanizing to some, has been condemned by others as dangerously incendiary.
This graph shows that the facts shown above are true.
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The poll does allow for multiple choices. Let us all know what you think.
An Antifa-connected researcher with rabid bias against the right is held out as an expert on deciding who is extreme.
BETH BRELJE
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After Charlie Kirk was assassinated last week, conservatives noted that most political violence comes from the left. The left bristles at this fact and has responded by dramatically padding the numbers to pretend the reverse is true.
Consider a
Sept. 12 piece from The Economist claiming, “extremists on both left and right commit violence, although more incidents appear to come from right-leaning attackers.”
Right up front, the piece admits it used data “largely compiled by researchers whom sceptical (sic) conservatives would probably dismiss as biased.” The disclaimer is meant to inoculate The Economist’s audience to its sloppy reporting, as if challenges from conservatives will somehow prove The Economist’s accuracy.
Yes, readers should be beyond skeptical of the source in that piece, The
Prosecution Project. Its website claims to “track[] and provid[e] analysis of felony criminal cases involving illegal political violence, terrorism, and extremism occurring in the United States since 1990.”
The founder and executive director of the Prosecution Project is Michael Loadenthal, although the links naming the website’s leadership were broken Friday, meaning no names were visible. Google had not yet scrubbed Loadenthal’s name from searches.
IMAGE CREDITSCREEN SHOT/BETH BRELJE
Loadenthal is an “openly anarchist Antifa-affiliated … researcher at the University of Cincinnati who, by his own admission, is a far-left violent extremist,”
The Federalist reported in 2023.
So we have an Antifa-connected researcher with rabid bias against the right, held out as an expert on deciding who is extreme. It is like using a vegetarian to define which meat eaters are the most humane — none of them, says the vegetarian.
The Prosecution Project lists January 2024 charges against John Reardon of Massachusetts, who made antisemitic threats against synagogues and the Israeli Consulate. It notes, “Influenced by events in Gaza, he also said, ‘you do realize that by supporting genocide that means it’s ok for people to commit genocide against you.’” The
Department of Justice never identified Reardon’s political affiliation, but The Prosecution Project’s own account seems to indicate he was a pro-Palestine fanatic, a cause typically associated with Democrats. Yet The Prosecution Project identifies Reardon’s crimes as “rightist” because they’re “identity-focused.”
The group also lists 2022 Freedom of Access to Clinic Entrances Act charges against Edmee Chavannes — even though “Chavannes was found not guilty.”
The Prosecution Project even includes the posting of racist stickers in its tracker, as if that’s comparable to terrorism or violence. One wonders if the group will treat Democrats’ desecration of Charlie Kirk memorials with the same seriousness.
Most crimes involving race or abortion businesses are blamed on the right in the data, with nothing to back up those claims. Yet these issues and others often cross over to the left. The Federalist has reported on the
progressive anti-abortion movement, for example, and the left’s Marxist oppressor-versus-oppressed framework is manifestly racist.
Comb through the ridiculous data on The Prosecution Project’s website, and you will soon conclude it is worthless to everyone except leftist propagandists trying to downplay Charlie Kirk’s murder and flip the blame for violence in the U.S. to the right.
Similarly, a biased “study”
by Alex Nowrasteh at the Cato Institute was debunked this week
by Amber Duke at The Daily Caller.
Nowrasteh claims politically motivated violence is rare in the U.S., but that when it happens, “right-wing terrorists” are more often to blame than the left — that is, when you exclude the terrorists who killed 2,977 victims on Sept. 11, 2001, and exclude injuries, property damage, and people who were not killed. Thus, his criteria exclude the two assassination attempts on President Donald Trump, for example. Additionally, Duke found that some of the crimes Nowrasteh blamed on the right were at best questionable and at worst downright wrong.
Duke pointed to another lopsided study by the Anti-Defamation League, which also claims the right is to blame for increased political violence.
Ryan James Girdusky unpacked those magic numbers and noted glaring omissions. For example, the ADL left the murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson out of its study.
“The motivated reader can slice and dice these numbers in different ways, count marginal hate crimes as politically motivated terrorist attacks, assign different ideological motivations to the individual attacker, and must still conclude that the threat to human life from these types of attacks is relatively small,” Nowrasteh writes.
He is so wrong. Every crime sends ripples of consequences into the victims’ communities. At least half the nation feels victimized by the assassination of Charlie Kirk, and we are not counted in these studies.
Too many have seen or will see the video of that senseless moment when Kirk was silenced, and they will be changed by what they see. If you measure by ripple effect — if you measure by how many members of Congress
refuse to condemn the assassination — the left is killing it at killing us.
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