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Political violence in America

Over at National Review, Noah Rothman laughingly calls yesterday's wannabe assassin of Donald Trump "a highly impressionable figure radicalized in the support of progressive causes":

That might shock the press, but finding a single Trump supporter who is surprised by Sunday’s news would be a struggle. The political media are constantly on the lookout for right-wing violence; but much of the “sustained spate of political violence” to which Americans have been treated over the course of this election cycle has come not from Trump’s supporters but from his opponents.

Rothman's evidence is largely related to the pro-Palestine demonstrations on college campuses earlier this year. Fair enough, I suppose, although the protesters were considerably more concerned about denouncing "Genocide Joe" than Donald Trump.

But Ryan Wesley Routh didn't "support progressive causes" unless Rothman considers being pro-Ukraine progressive. Aside from that, he was apparently in favor of Obama's Iran deal and distraught by Biden's withdrawal from Afghanistan. He voted for Trump in 2016, Tulsi Gabbard in 2020, and supported Vivek Ramaswamy and Nikki Haley in 2024. This is hardly the portrait of a radicalized progressive.

More to the point, the reason the media spends a lot of time reporting on right-wing violence is because there's a lot of right-wing violence:

During the 2020 election, violent rhetoric on Twitter came overwhelmingly from conservatives:

This is not the 1960s. It's the 21st century. And in the 21st century extreme conservatives are overwhelmingly more violent in both word and deed than liberals. Donald Trump talks of retribution. Laura Loomer wants his Democratic opponents executed. White supremacist groups threaten violence and carry out their threats with dismal regularity. Gun supporters endlessly promise "Second Amendment solutions" toward people they dislike. And polls regularly show that Republicans are far more likely than Democrats to believe violence might be necessary to save America:

Liberals simply aren't the main source of aggressive rhetoric or violent action in the contemporary United States. That's why everyone focuses more on conservative violence: because there's more of it.

It's the same reason the press focuses more on Trump's lies than Kamala Harris's lies: because Trump lies with wild abandon and Harris doesn't. It's got nothing to do with bias, just reality.

48 thoughts on “Political violence in America

  1. Justin

    It’s not political violence. It’s unhinged gun nuts with a variety of obsessions and delusions. They have the same motivation as your average teenage school shooter or gang wannabe.

  2. S1AMER

    Kevin's facts are, well, factual. Which makes them generally meaningless to Trump and his base base.

    Trump is pushing hate and fear, which always have more power in winning over voters than hopes and dreams. Always.

    1. Srho

      "Google searches for 'how to kill someone' surged during Covid"

      Feh! Used to be, everyone knew how to kill someone. Schools taught it. Churches taught it. Americans have gone soft. 😕

      1. ScentOfViolets

        I remember watching the "Eight Silent Ways to Kill a Human With a stick of gum" from the "__ Silent Ways to Kill a Human with a __" filmstrip series in the third grade. Street Smarts! We usually saw those right after one of those get under your desk to protect yourself from the atomic bomb drills.

  3. n1cholas

    The conservative media will always treat conservative violence against the Left as less problematic than Left violence against the Right.

    Because the media is conservative and naturally allied with the Right.

    It ain't rocket science, Elon understands it, just look at his deleted Twitter post.

  4. cephalopod

    I remember waaay long ago there was an "analysis" of the political leanings of who went on the TV politics shows (like Face the Nation). It claimed that the majority of guests were liberal. It did this by labeling people like John McCain as liberals, even though he was a Republican Senator.

    In the years since, countless Republicans have been relabeled as RINOs, including major Republican politicians.

    And now we've had two white guys with guns take shots at a President they previously supported, so they get hit with the Republican version of the "no true Scotman."

    It's pathetic, and anyone outside the movement sees it for what it is. Beyond that, regular Americans watch gunmen with assault rifles spread terror in schools, grocery stores, neighborhoods, etc. They don't have much sympathy left for when someone like Trump, who has a huge security detail and bears responsibility for America's gun problems, has to live in the same world with the rest of us.

      1. lawnorder

        Except that he voted for Trump and, after becoming disgusted with Trump, continued to support Republican presidential candidates.

        1. MF

          As soon as you see something like this you know it is a lie. Ballots are secret.

          It is possible he said at some point that he voted for Trump. If so, please provide your evidence.

          Please also provide your evidence that he supported other Republican candidates except as alternatives to Trump. (So supporting Trump's primary opponents doesn't count. Supporting a Republican against a Democrat counts.)

          1. jdubs

            Poor, weird dudes sitting in their basement, hovering over the keyboard, pounding away at the keys, laser focused on such weird stuff.

            OMG he donated some money, here is my list of 75 CriteriA that you must liST to DispROve my laTEesT rant! THIS IS CRITICal!
            GO GET TO WORK I will wait!

            Lol, what a weird life.

              1. Five Parrots in a Shoe

                Well, yah. The D's used to be the white supremacist party, and the R's used to be the civil rights party. The two did their switcheroo on July 2, 1964. Yes, that specific day, when President Johnson signed into law the Civil Rights Act.

          2. Five Parrots in a Shoe

            MF,

            Whatever you do, do NOT look at Routh's track record on social media. You don't want to have to admit you are wrong.

  5. Joseph Harbin

    When a young man took a shot at Donald Trump in July it was the first time political assassination, attempted or otherwise, had intruded into presidential politics in more than 40 years. Now it appears to have happened a second time in two months. What’s going on here?

    That's from Josh Marshall, of all people, who really ought to know better.

    Political violence is never cool but let's stop pretending it only happens when Republicans are the targets. For those with faulty memories, there is always a Wikipedia page.

    Assassination attempts, plots, and attacks since Reagan:

    George H.W. Bush: 0 (plus 1 post-presidency)
    Bill Clinton: 4 (plus 1 post-presidency)
    George W. Bush: 1 (plus 2 post-presidency)
    Barack Obama: 9 (inc. 1 as president-elect; plus 2 post-presidency)
    Donald Trump: 2 (plus 2 this year)
    Joe Biden: 1

    Per R presidential term: 0.75
    Per D presidential term: 2.8

  6. msobel

    "It's got nothing to do with bias, just reality."

    Yeahbut. To quote that well known philosopher, Colbert, ""reality has a well-known liberal bias""

  7. orion

    Democrats talk about what a danger Trump is to America based on his threats to lock people up, arrest protestors and journalists, not to mention the "peaceful" demonstration of Jan 6 by so many patriots. Talking about what he said and how it's at variance with our standards is not inciting violence, but he would like to silence democrats by saying so. One can't be cowered by reality, especially when it seems violence to him is a resource to be manipulated in his favor.

  8. Jim Carey

    It has everything to do with bias. Where there is no bias, conflicts are resolved one-by-one in the sequence in which they emerge. Where there is a growing inventory of unresolved conflicts, there is bias.

    Yes, the Republican party went to the dark side a long time ago, but there's bias on both side, and that's the only reason why Democrats aren't destroying Republicans in the polls given everything that's going on.

    And, no, what I'm saying is not bothsiderism. Saying "it's okay for us to be biased, but not them because their better at it than us" is sophistry.

    1. kahner

      yeah, but mostly he sound like a dude with long term mental illness whose political ideology is incoherent and in relation to this assassination largely irrelevant to analysis of root causes.

      1. painedumonde

        This is probably close. There is most likely a mish mash of Eastern ideology and philosophy dolloped in as well. Scatterbrained...

  9. Goosedat

    Compared with the Nationalist Review, the Azov Brigade and other Banderite orgs are progressive. To be fair though, the Banderite orgs are aligned with America's liberal imperialists.

      1. LactatingAlgore

        they're not his enemy.

        drum is a bogstandard maths & engineering guy who is glibertarian in his general orientation.

        national review is just highbrow free republic.

  10. Al S

    Hard to take any of the so-called “data” seriously when it is so easily debunked. Only 2 deaths caused by left wing violence in 2020? There were 19 deaths caused by the George Floyd Riots alone! What a joke.

    And Kevin’s bias on the subject is obvious too. Kevin’s like “gee, who knows if the assassin is left wing or right wing”? Meanwhile the assassin is driving a truck with a Biden-Harris bumper sticker! Yup, according to Kevin it’s a giant unknown. lol.

    1. Ogemaniac

      “There were 19 deaths caused by the George Floyd Riots alone! What a joke.”

      Very few of them were political in nature. Most were just random street crime.

      1. jdubs

        When the focus of your political tribe is war on both the liberals and colored people, skin color is hard for some people to separate from politics.

      2. MF

        Interesting how you define murders during left wing riots as random street crime but murders during right wing riots (ie. Unite the Right) as right wing violence.

        1. kennethalmquist

          James Fields driving a car into a crowd of counter-protestors at the Unite the Right rally wasn’t “random street crime.” Fields admitted as much when he pleaded guilty to multiple hate crime counts.

          You don’t identify any specific killings during left wing riots for comparison.

  11. pjcamp1905

    Last weekend, two hospitals in Springfield were locked down after bomb threats. Other threats received by Springfield officials have forced government buildings to close, two elementary schools to be evacuated and the students moved to a different location, and a middle school to shut down altogether.

    But I'm sure that has nothing at all to do with Vance/Trump rhetoric.

    JD Vance says he has no problem with lying if it attracts media attention. Perhaps National Review would care to look into that.

  12. Ogemaniac

    You can go on Facebook, Etsy, etc and buy t-shirts calling for Harris’s assassination. They will not be removed if you report them.

  13. sonofthereturnofaptidude

    Right-wing conservatives deny that political violence comes from right-wing extremists for the same reason that they deny that they espouse racist policies: it's true.

  14. D_Ohrk_E1

    Republicans are absolutely certain that liberals are trying to kill Trump. This doesn't make sense.

    Liberals know his replacement, Vance, is just as much of an asshole and lacking in principles. This lack of principles and being an asshole is exactly what Trump wants in his acolytes. They also know that political violence begets political violence.

    What Liberals want, more than anything else, is to beat Trump thoroughly and clear out MAGA from government.

    No evidence will convince them otherwise.

    It doesn't occur to them that there's 0.001% of conservatives who hate Trump and want to take him out, on the belief that absent Trump, certain GOP values will be restored.

    TWICE, this has been the case, and they still don't get it.

    Fucking idiots.

    1. cld

      They're the kind of people who think making a martyr out of Trump will cause some kind of mass uprising, a la John Brown, that will result in one or another of their favorite apocalyptic fantasies coming true, because everything will be easier to understand that way and he can reasonably shoot people.

      (now that I think of it this is the kind of character played by Tim Robbins in Spielberg's War of the World's, who, it's not two days after the invasion and he's living in his cellar and totally bought into how this is all the normative state as if he's been there for decades, because this is what he's always been dreaming of).

  15. Josef

    The last thing I would want is for Trump to become a martyr. His Assassination is the worst thing that could happen. Vance on the other hand, would probably like nothing more than for that to happen.

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