MARY LOUISE KELLY, HOST:
It is no secret that acrimony in America is running high. Now, more Americans say violence might be necessary to get the country back on track. That is one alarming finding from a recent NPR/PBS News/Marist poll. NPR's Domenico Montanaro has more.
DOMENICO MONTANARO, BYLINE: In our poll last year, 19% said violence might be necessary to get the country back on track. Now, nine months into President Trump's second term, it's up to 30%.
UNIDENTIFIED POLL RESPONDENT #1: I do think that violence makes logical sense.
UNIDENTIFIED POLL RESPONDENT #2: I don't advocate for violence. And yet, when you seem to have no other recourse...
KEITH HERPY: The only reason why we would have to have violence in order to get the country back on track is to protect ourselves.
MONTANARO: That's a Democrat, an independent and a Republican who participated in the survey. Two of them asked NPR not to use their names because they're concerned about threats for expressing their views on this topic. The poll found that Democrats drove the uptick in acceptance of violence, going from just 12% last year to 28% now. Republicans, though, were slightly higher at 31%. The Democrat we talked to is from Florida. She sees violence as potentially necessary because of growing inequality in the country.
UNIDENTIFIED POLL RESPONDENT #1: Do I think that violence would shake things up and make it where the untouchable elite class feel some responsibility towards their fellow man? Yeah, I support that.
MONTANARO: The independent interviewed is from Missouri. He blames Trump for the rise in the potential need for violence.
UNIDENTIFIED POLL RESPONDENT #2: You need some kind of recourse to protect yourself, protect your family, protect neighbors, protect your communities.
MONTANARO: He sees Trump as moving the country in an authoritarian direction. He points to mass deportations and the ordering of the National Guard into cities and states that don't want them there.
UNIDENTIFIED POLL RESPONDENT #2: They're cracking down on what seems to be any form of resistance.
MONTANARO: Keith Herpy, a Republican from Georgia, sees things very differently. Of the National Guard, he says...
HERPY: Some people might view that as violence. I don't. I just - putting down an insurrection, you're doing your job.
MONTANARO: He puts the blame for political violence squarely on the other side.
HERPY: The Democrats are the ones who are obviously, for anybody who's paying attention, the ones who are violent. And the only reason why we would have to have violence in order to get the country back on track is to protect ourselves from the Democrats.
MONTANARO: He cites conservative activist Charlie Kirk's assassination and some who celebrated it on social media as evidence of violence coming from the left. There are concerns about a rise in left-wing violence this year, but historically, cases of right-wing violence have far outpaced those from the left. In recent years, there have been plenty of examples of political violence targeting those on the left and right, from the killing of a Democratic lawmaker in Minnesota earlier this year to the two assassination attempts on Trump last year.
ROBERT PAPE: You are in now what I call the grip of violent populism.
MONTANARO: That's Robert Pape, a professor at the University of Chicago who studies political violence.
PAPE: We find that increasingly, each side sees each other as a danger, and each side sees itself as a victim.
MONTANARO: None of the poll respondents NPR interviewed said they'd commit violence themselves, but Pape worries what an acceptance of violence could lead to.
PAPE: The more support there is for political violence, the more volatile actors who might be on the edge of committing violence for their own psychosocial reasons will be nudged over the edge by the perception they're doing a community good.
MONTANARO: This rise in acceptance of violence also mirrors a decline of trust in politics and political institutions, and if that continues, then it'll be harder for the system to work peacefully.
Domenico Montanaro, NPR News, Washington. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
