It's been a year since 5,000 people stormed the US Capitol in an attempt to overturn election results, leaving a handful of dead in their wake. This event should have made clear the futility of political violence in an era dominated by big inaccessible systems. But more Americans than ever now apparently believe that violence against the government may be justified. Based on a recent poll, the figure stands at about 34%. This breaks down along partisan lines to 40% of Republicans, 41% of independents and 23% of Democrats.
According to the Washington Post:
"The percentage of adults who say violence is justified is up, from 23 percent in 2015 and 16 percent in 2010 in polls by CBS News and the New York Times. A majority continue to say that violence against the government is never justified — but the 62 percent who hold that view is a new low point, and a stark difference from the 1990s, when as many as 90 percent said violence was never justified."
Whatever your politics, this strikes me as a worrying trend. It sets the stage for terrorism by establishing popular support for violent actions targeting symbols of unpopular policies. The policies themselves are of course inaccessible, as are most of the people who actually establish them. Violence can't touch them. Nonetheless, a third of Americans now appear likely to support violence against symbols of unpopular policies.
It doesn't help that the government's covid policies made everything worse without meaningfully impacting the pandemic. We're up to 850k deaths, leading the world by a large margin, proving that all the stay-at-home orders and school closures and vax mandates were little more than a very costly waste of time. Our fatal pandemic policy miscalculation combined with media censorship of dissenting opinions is exactly the kind of thing that radicalizes terrorists.
Imagine having a business ruined or losing a job because of pandemic policies. Imagine having a child harmed by a mandated vaccine and being silenced on social media for telling people about it. Imagine losing a relative to a drug habit that started with lockdown isolation. These things are happening to thousands upon thousands of Americans. Maybe millions. From my perspective, that's a powder keg.
Whenever this powder keg blows, the people who bear the brunt of it tend to be average people. First responders. Service workers. The radicalized actors themselves. I can't think of a single example of a terrorist action in modern history that produced a desirable political outcome. And yet, a third of Americans say they might support political violence.
There's no evident solution to this problem. The government will continue unaccountably harming people and some will respond with violence. But as a culture, it's in our power to erode the popular legitimacy of political violence, be it perpetrated by the control regime itself or by some radicalized lone wolf. What would happen if we all just decided that violence is never okay?
(Feature image from Pixabay.)
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