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Composite: The Guardian/Getty Images
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The fight for democracyUS politics



‘ANGER AND RADICALIZATION’: RISING NUMBER OF AMERICANS SAY POLITICAL VIOLENCE IS
JUSTIFIED

Survey shows a small but significant share of Americans believe in use of force
to attain political goals – on both the left and the right


The fight for democracy is supported by

About this content
Kira Lerner
Tue 25 Jul 2023 11.00 BSTLast modified on Wed 26 Jul 2023 02.30 BST
 * 
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 * 



The June federal indictment of Donald Trump is “radicalizing” support for the
use of force on behalf of the former president and current presidential
candidate, according to the author of a recent survey about threats to
democracy.

Third man arrested in firebombing of California Planned Parenthood clinic
Read more


Meanwhile, on the other side of the aisle, support for violence to restore the
federal right to an abortion has also increased over the last few months,
researchers found, although there’s little indication that any organized groups
support acting on this belief.

The Dangers to Democracy report indicates that a growing number of Americans
support the use of political violence as the 2024 presidential campaign heats up
and further indictments of Trump are probably imminent.

“The indictment is radicalizing support for Trump, but that’s not the only
source of radicalization,” said Robert Pape, a University of Chicago professor
who led the research. “You’re seeing growing anger and radicalization on the
left as well.”

The number of Americans who believe the use of force is justified to restore
Trump to the White House increased by roughly 6 million in the last few months
to an estimated 18 million people, according to the survey conducted by the
university in late June and shared exclusively with the Guardian.

Of those 18 million people, 68% believe that the 2020 election was stolen from
Trump and 62% believe the prosecutions of Trump are intended to hurt his chances
in 2024. An estimated 7% of Americans now believe violence could be necessary to
restore Trump to the presidency, up from 4.5%, or 12 million people, in April.

But over the same period, Trump’s general favorability slightly decreased among
Republicans, the survey found.

The university’s Chicago Project on Security & Threats (CPost) research center
has been conducting Dangers to Democracy surveys of American adults on political
violence and attitudes towards democracy since shortly after the January 6
insurrection at the US Capitol.

The most recent report marks the first increase in radical, violent support for
Trump since April 2022, according to Pape, who directs CPost.

“The public is more radicalized than it was in April and it’s really quite
significant,” he said. “We’ve been tracking this quite a while, and this is a
really big bump.”

Still, a radicalized public isn’t enough for actual violence to occur, Pape
said. He compared the support to kindling, but said Trump would have to give a
speech or rally inciting people to act at a certain time to light the fire, as
he did in Washington DC on 6 January 2021.

Democrats, however, expressed support for political violence for a different
purpose. The survey found support for the use of force to coerce members of
Congress to “do the right thing” grew from 9% in January to 17% – an estimated
44 million Americans – at the end of June, with the sharpest rise among
Democrats. Support for violence to restore the federal right to an abortion also
increased during this time.

“Things are definitely heading in the wrong direction in terms of the
radicalization of the country and we need to be aware of that because there were
some hopes that the Trump indictment would actually reduce support for Trump,”
Pape said.

Survey respondents also said they view Trump as a bigger threat to democracy
than President Joe Biden, with a difference of 52% to 33%.

Researchers also asked participants about support for dangerous conspiracy
theories, including whether they believe that a secret group of Satan-worshiping
pedophiles is ruling the US government. The number of people who believe that
statement – a major tenet of the QAnon conspiracy theory – increased slightly,
although the change was not greater than the margin of error.

The survey also found that nearly 90% of Trump’s most radical supporters believe
the federal government is run by a “deep state” of immoral people.

With more indictments of Trump likely to come in the next few weeks, both from
the federal government and the Fulton county, Georgia, district attorney, Pape
said he was concerned that further radicalization of the public is likely to
occur.

As Trump faces more complicated legal trouble and the 2024 election season gets
under way with the first GOP debate just one month away, the number of Americans
who believe that the 2020 election was stolen from him remains largely unchanged
at roughly 20%.

“Things are going in the wrong direction of radicalization, and we haven’t even
gotten into the really heated part of the 2024 election season,” Pape said.

CPost’s research is supported by the University of Chicago, the Pritzker
Military Foundation, the Hopewell Fund, and the Anti-Defamation League and
contributions from the CPost board of advisers

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