In America, Are We 'Our Own Worst Enemies'?

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

Comedian Taylor Tomlinson is coming to the Athenaeum Center, taking us on a tour of her brain and through her new book, Actually Never Mind. That's Thursday, September 24th. Tickets at wbez.org/events.

Sasha-Ann Simons (0:27)

Hey Chicago, I'm Sasha-Ann Simons, and this is In the Loop.

Be sure to listen all the way through the podcast for a breakdown of the day's top local stories. But first, what if the biggest threat to American democracy isn't a fringe militia group like the Proud Boys or Oath Keepers, but our own neighbors? Well, that's the core question in a new book, Our Own Worst Enemies, from UChicago political scientist Robert Pape. He says we're living in the age of something he calls violent populism, where political violence and the support for it are growing on both the left and the right.

In this episode of the pod, we sit down with him to hear more of this take and discuss what violent populism might mean for our collective political future. At the table, Robert Pape, political science professor at UChicago and author of the new book, Our Own Worst Enemies, America in the Age of Violent Populism. It's out tomorrow. I started off the conversation by having Professor Pape tell us more about that term, violent populism. Here he is.

Robert Pape (1:32)

Political violence, extremism, hate, whatever name we want to give to it, is evolving.

For decades, for most of our lifetimes, we're used to seeing the stories about the attacks on African-Americans, on Jews, on immigrants. And that hate is with us today. But there's a new layer. There's a new phenomenon that is also occurring side by side and absorbing and spiraling with that hate that we have seen for decades.

And this is where political violence, extremism, hate has moved from the fringe to the mainstream. For five years, I've been understanding that shift. I've been focusing on doing deep research. And it not only tells us more about the contours of what we face, but it reveals new untapped sources of what we can do about it.

Sasha-Ann Simons (2:30)

So why publish a book about this?

Robert Pape (2:32)

Because the key to political violence in our world today, Sasha, is that tens of millions of Americans on both sides of the aisle support political violence. We've seen this unfold in multiple ways over the last five or six years. But there's good news, Sasha.

Seventy percent of Americans abhor political violence.

That is the untapped resource, and that is what this book is written for them. It is not written for the FBI. I spent years working with the FBI already. It's not meant for the senators and congressmen. I'm already going to Washington on almost a weekly basis, Sasha. This is not that. This is not an academic tome that's over there for somebody else. This is for the 70% who abhor political violence in our country to understand what's going on and what they can do about it.

Sasha-Ann Simons (3:39)

And this increase in regular folks, as you mentioned in your book, people with 401Ks and nice homes, seeing that, thinking that violence, political violence is okay, how is that more dangerous than what we might have become used to, where it was just sort of an extremist thing?

Robert Pape (3:56)

So when we see a Luigi Mangione born of privilege, generational wealth in Philadelphia, or the third would be Trump assassin, Cole Allen, or the doctors who comes from the Tony Torrance California Caltech educated, or the 45% of those who stormed the Capitol who are doctors, lawyers, CEOs. When we see this support for political violence and the perpetrators themselves coming from the mainstream acting as the Robin Hoods that are going to rescue us, what this does is it nudges many others over the edge. People who might have been volatile, but not gone over the edge to violence, this is what nudges them over the edge because of the perception of social approval. It is now okay to act out the political grievances in this way. So this makes it far more dangerous. However, I just want to keep circling back, Sasha, that what we need to understand is we spend a lot of time talking about the perpetrator. This book will probably blow people away once you really see the full pattern of mainstream and upper class who's been involved in this.

But going even further, Sasha, there's again circling back, 70% of Americans, they want nothing to do with this. These are on both the right and the left, and of course, in the center. These are the people we don't talk to. These are the folks we really just say, oh, well, that's all nice and everything. But these are the folks who are the real weights of our democracy. They are the democracy in action. They are going to the No Kings protest and doing zero political violence. Think about that, seven million people, all those people in Chicago last October, and zero political violence at those No Kings protest.