As director of the Project on Security and Threats at the University of Chicago, Pape says a recent U.S. poll shows striking results consistent with the type of violence seen at Trump’s Pennsylvania rally.
The suspect who tried to kill the former president there and wounded him with a bullet to the ear was shot dead moments later by US Secret Service agents, in the midst of a shootout that left one spectator dead and two other men seriously injured.
Trump rival President Joe Biden and representatives from across the US political spectrum have condemned political violence, and investigators have begun to investigate the motives behind the attack.
However, Pape maintains that What happened is part of a pattern of “increasingly extreme” events in the US. and suggests that the country’s political leaders clearly call on their followers to redirect their anger toward voting rather than violence.
“We have crossed the threshold and now we may have a spiraling cycle of political violence, because we are entering this highly volatile electoral season,” Pape warns in an interview with BBC Mundo.
The following is a summary of the telephone conversation with this expert:
As a political scientist who has studied political violence in the US, how would you describe what happened this Saturday?
Unfortunately, it is quite in line with a national survey on political violence that I just conducted at my center at the University of Chicago.
We have been tracking support for political violence among the American public for three years, basically since January 6 (2021, the date of the assault on the Capitol by Trump supporters).
We just completed a new survey conducted on June 24th and found some pretty shocking results.
Our poll found that 10% of American adults, or 26 million adults, support the use of force to prevent Trump from becoming US president.
And what we’re seeing with the assassination attempt on Trump is a manifestation of that fairly significant fraction of the American public that is violently angry at Trump.
[Por el momento se desconoce qué motivó al atacante]
But it’s one thing to express that in a national poll, which is already important. And another thing is an incident like the one that happened at a Donald Trump rally when someone tried to kill him. Are you surprised by what happened?
No, unfortunately, I’m not surprised.
Last week I briefed law enforcement in the US on the results of our survey. So I was already quite concerned. It takes some time to really analyze the data. So as soon as we saw it, we started briefing law enforcement.
These were the kinds of things that really worried us when we saw those numbers. So no, I can’t say I’m surprised. Unfortunately, this is directly in line with the results of our recent survey.
And what was the reaction of law enforcement agencies to whom you informed them of these results?
They were just starting to act. Normally you start with one circle and then move on to others. Everything was just getting organized when events unfolded so abruptly and quickly that it was difficult to publicize our survey.
But that is happening now. The editorial board of The New York Times He just made a mention regarding our survey, so there’s a bit of information starting to circulate, and I’ve done quite a bit in the last few hours to speed that up as well.
You mentioned the results of the survey in terms of Americans’ attitudes regarding political violence once morest President Trump. Do you have results in the opposite direction?
We also found that 7% of American adults support using force to restore Donald Trump to the presidency.
So we actually have two radicalized wings of the American public: 10% supporting force to prevent Trump from becoming president and 7% supporting force to restore Trump to the presidency.
This is important because it can lead to spirals. We have to worry in the future not only regarding further attacks on President Trump, but retaliatory attacks for the attack on President Trump.
We are in a very precarious world. Once we have the fact itself, we have crossed the threshold and now we may have a spiraling cycle of political violence, because we are entering this highly volatile election season, and this will not end for many months. And those spiraling dynamics might play out over those months.
Where would you place the beginning of this spiral of violence in American politics?
You can trace it back to the pandemic, with the riots over George Floyd. About 7% to 10% of the George Floyd protests had riots.
A few months later we had January 6, which was a massive riot once morest the US Capitol.
Last fall and then in the spring we saw massive pro-Palestinian riots on American campuses, many of which were really violent protests, with buildings being stormed, although not all of them were violent protests, of course.
And at the same time, in recent years, we have witnessed increasing threats of violence once morest members of Congress, both Democrats and Republicans.
We also saw lone wolf attacks. One once morest US Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh in 2022. Last summer we saw a lone wolf doing reconnaissance near former President Barack Obama’s home in Washington.
What I have just recounted are our facts over the last few years and they show a really increasing pattern, not only of support for political violence that we find in our surveys, but now manifestations of political violence.
The facts are becoming more extreme. This is the first time we have seen an assassination attempt once morest a president or former president since 1981, more than 40 years ago. We are going through a fairly intense cycle of political violence in the US, and now it has just gotten worse.
You just referred to the assassination of President Ronald Reagan in 1981. To what extent is this situation you describe in the United States exceptional in the country’s political history?
We do not have a real history of intense political violence, except for the most recent one that began four years ago with the pandemic, a significant increase in political violence that continued and manifested itself in different ways.
In the US, we don’t see a single manifestation of political violence over the last four years; we see a variety of different manifestations, all of them supported by growing support for political violence among the American public.
What unites all of this is our polls. That’s why we do them, because they are the basis of all these manifestations of political violence.
At the same time, politicians from across the US political spectrum, starting with President Biden, but also former Presidents Obama, George W. Bush and Jimmy Carter, have condemned what happened. Many political figures say that there is no place for political violence in the US. Could this be an opportunity to somehow draw the line between what is and is not acceptable in American democracy?
Yes, that may be the case. And what we are also seeing is that many political leaders are paying attention to our surveys and to the advice we have been giving for months and years, in the sense that political leaders need to do more to condemn political violence.
It is really important that we have seen President Biden, Vice President Kamala Harris and other top political leaders condemn the assassination attempt on Donald Trump.
It will also be important for Republican leaders, in particular, to proactively condemn any violent retaliation for the attempted assassination of Trump.
Because it is important not only to make statements today. It is important that we realize that we are going through this very intense political season that will last for months.
And that is why we need every major politician at every level in the U.S., national, state and mayors, to make statements condemning political violence on a weekly basis as we navigate this intense political season.
We also need statements that go beyond condemning violence, but that explain that anger must be redirected towards voting.
The goal should not simply be to convince people to stop being angry. The goal should be to encourage people to redirect their anger from violence to voting, which would be an acceptable and legitimate way to express their anger.
That’s what we have to do here, once more and once more and once more, not just as an isolated event. We crossed the threshold. This adds to a mountain of political violence that we have been experiencing.
So now it’s important that this be part of the language of our politicians throughout the electoral process.
Some allies of former President Trump, including a Republican congressman and senator, have indicated that President Biden’s campaign provoked this incident. How dangerous can such statements be and how might they resonate with former President Trump’s base?
There is no doubt that political rhetoric can stimulate support for political violence and, therefore, political violence itself. We have established this in academic studies for quite some time.
The key thing is that leaders, while making statements once morest their political opponents, immediately say that all anger must be directed at voting, not violence. And that they do not assume that their listeners will assume that violence is out of the question. This is one of the great lessons we learn once more and once more.
It is very important to recognize that political leaders cannot assume that all their listeners will listen to them with positive intentions. That is why they have to come out and say that when they criticize their opponent, that criticism should be directed at voting, not violence. And that is something new. Politicians are not used to doing that.
Do you think there’s anything in terms of political rhetoric, anything that President Biden’s campaign has done that can be blamed?
I’m not going to play the blame game, because that would mean we would have to do scientific studies to prove it, and not just react lightly.
Politicians can do it, and ordinary Americans can do it. I’m a student of political violence, so I have to stick to the scientific evidence.
What is important now are the other things I have said regarding the measures to be taken to counter political violence.
And I would like to point out that President Trump and President Biden have spoken following the attack, and that is really important, because that only happens if both Trump and Biden are willing to work together to calm these waters. That is very important.
Do you expect more incidents and more violence? Or is this still to be seen?
We don’t have a crystal ball, political science doesn’t work like that. What we have is a lot of combustible material that can be ignited. And rhetoric can ignite that combustible material into violence.
We are in a precarious period. There is no solid prediction we can make. Anyone trying to make a solid prediction is not being scientific.
What we can say is that we are going through a very dangerous red zone. And because we are going through a red zone, we have to take those precautionary measures and not take for granted that everything will be fine.
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