Modern Wisdom: Robert Pape on America’s Escalating Political Violence

Chris Williamson (0:01)

So I've been thinking about this concept that's been making waves lately—violent populism. Robert Pape from the University of Chicago has this stark warning about American democracy, and it's not what you'd expect.

What do you mean? I thought the usual concern was foreign interference or cyberattacks. That's exactly the point. Pape says the number one threat to America isn't from a foreign government at all. It's from tens of millions of Americans who support political violence. He's arguing this is a completely new era we're entering. Tens of millions? That seems extreme. Are we talking about the usual polarization and protests?

No, and that's the critical distinction Pape makes. Ordinary populism can be peaceful—it produces protests, anger, political change. But violent populism is different. It transforms resentment into actual approval for force. And that approval creates a social climate that nudges unstable people toward action. Okay, but what's the evidence here? How does he measure something like that? The numbers are striking. His team at the University of Chicago Project on Security and Threats has run repeated national surveys for years. In their newest data, 25 percent of American adults support using force to prevent Trump from being president. That equals roughly 65 million adults. Wait, 65 million? And what about the other side?

Sixteen percent support Trump using the military to suppress Democratic protesters. When you combine both sides, the scale becomes enormous. But here's where it gets even more disturbing—the wording matters. When people are pushed to explain what "use of force" means, 55 percent of the time they mean assassinating President Trump with rifles. That's terrifying. So when does Pape think this violence is most likely to happen?

He argues we're entering what he calls America's domestic escalation trap, where the fiercest violence may come not on election day, but around the counting and certification of votes.

Think about the pattern we've already seen with January 6 and the George Floyd protests. That raises an interesting question though. Is one side more violent than the other? Pape actually rejects that narrative. He describes both left and right as capable of excusing violence committed by their own side while condemning the other.

He says the timing of data matters and that the nature of political violence has changed sharply over the last decade. So is Trump the cause of all this? That's what makes Pape's analysis deeper than surface-level politics. He says Trump is a symptom of these changes as much as he is a cause.

He points instead to long-running demographic anxiety, wealth shifting toward the top 1 percent, and the fear that one's way of life is being erased.

Social media must play a role in amplifying this, right? Absolutely, but Pape says the fuel was already there. Social media just amplifies the fire. And here's his final warning that really stuck with me: "The people who sympathize with violent extremists are, by far, the bigger problem." It's not just about the extremists themselves anymore—it's about mainstream acceptance of violence as a political tool.