Our Own Worst Enemies: Robert Pape on America’s Age of Violent Populism

Andrew Keen (0:00)

Hello, my name is Andrew Keen. Welcome to Keen On America, the daily interview show about the United States.

Hello, everybody. Last month, we had the very distinguished American novelist, Kurt Andersen on the show. His new novel is called The Breakup. And it imagines a future breakup of the United States, which is triggered in many ways by what Kurt calls low-level violence. Many others think of a potential American Civil War in terms of very high-level violence. Some of you may have seen Alex Garland's movie Civil War in 2024, which imagines a full-blown Civil War in the United States, which results in its breakup. Garland and Andersen, of course, are fictional artists. My guest today is very much focused on the facts of violence. Robert A. Pape has been teaching violence and researching it at the University of Chicago for the last 30 years. He heads up at the University of the Chicago Project on Security and Threats.

And he has a new book out today. Our Own Worst Enemies, America In The Age Of Violent Populism. He's joining us from Chicago today. Robert, congratulations on your new book. I'm not sure if you ever saw Garland's movie or had a chance to read Kurt Andersen's book about the breakup, which imagines a post-union United States. But what comes first, Robert? The theory, the ideology, the disagreement, or the violence?

Robert Pape (2:09)

Oh, absolutely. What comes first is major political violence.

And I think that this is what is very important to understand, is that although, of course, we can talk about a future civil war, and we can talk about the United States breaking up, that's a future that is certainly out five or ten years from now. That's not happening in the next few months here. That's not happening in the next year. But that doesn't mean what's happening in the next few months and next year don't matter. You see, if we have another January 6th, and this time it could be by either side, then that doesn't mean we're having the civil war scenario. It does mean we're well underway to ending our democracy.

So we need to understand that the real threats to democracy are not fictional threats. They're not five or ten years out, but they're right here coming in front of us. And democracies don't die silently, sleepwalking. Democracies die by going through periods of pretty serious political violence. That's what I call the era of violent populism that we're now in.

And this is right in front of us. This is not a danger that's five or ten years away. This is not something we have to hypothesize about. This is something that's right here now. And that's why it's important to focus on the here and now. And we're about to come to probably the most dangerous elections in our lifetimes. And that's only six weeks away.

Andrew Keen (3:48)

Well, we'll talk about those elections in a few minutes. As you know, the subtitle of your book is America in the Age of Violent Populism. Don't need me to tell you, Robert, that the history of America is very much one of violence.

You're a researcher, you're a quantitative fellow. You've been doing your research and counting up the violence. Is America today more or less violent than it's been historically? I mean, of course, it experienced its own remarkably violent civil war as well.

Robert Pape (4:21)

Yes. Well, so of course, we can look at the American Revolution 250 years ago, the American Civil War 160 years ago and say, well, we have a history of, but no, no, no, this is the wrong set of benchmark. It's all true, of course.

I'm not saying those facts are wrong. What we have typically experienced for decades is violent extremism, political violence, hate against African Americans, against Jews, against immigrants, that has been on the fringe. Think of it as a fringe. And that hate is still with us today. I don't mean to say it's gone. But what we're experiencing in the last six or seven years is another level of violence beyond that.

And that is the era of violent populism. And it's happening on both the right and the left. And it's not quite historically unprecedented, but we haven't seen this level of violence, political violence, since the 1960s. So it is historically not quite unprecedented, but truly historically high. And those are the dimensions I want to talk to you about.

Andrew Keen (5:45)

Go back to the 60s, then, Robert. What happened then, and how does it compare? How did the 2020s compare to the 1960s, when it comes to violence and maybe what you call violent populism?