The Southern Poverty Law Center has its “hate map” of conservative groups that it hopes to marginalize if not kill off entirely. Meanwhile, the feds are looking for vicious, bloodthirsty right-wingers under the bed. But a university survey recently found that the left is more prone to political violence than the right. It’s exactly what we have come to expect from a group that is so sure of its superiority and the importance of its agenda that it’s willing to break an infinite number of eggs so that it can make its authoritarian omelet.
The University of Chicago Project on Security and Threats’ June survey of 3,543 adults has produced a lot of data noise but it also includes some useful information. Of course the media want to ring the bells over one finding in particular: an increase in the percentage those who agree that “the use of force is justified to restore Donald Trump to the presidency.” According to the project, in early April only 4.5% of those polled agreed with that statement. By late June, though, it had risen to (a rounded-up) 7%, “the equivalent of an estimated shift from 12 million to 18 million American adults.”
The media-wide implication is that the growing support for using force to put Trump back in the White House is fueled by the extremism (and dare we say “semi-fascism”?) of Republicans and MAGA followers. A prime example of this bias is found in the headline over a story in The Hill. It reads “More say violence could be necessary to restore Trump to White House.”
A closer look at the data, however, show both Democrats (4.5%) and independents (7.8%) agree with the statement. So it’s not just Republicans who would be sympathetic to the use of force in favor of Trump. Isn’t that a point worthy of highlighting?
There’s another figure that raises concerns that the media don’t seem to care much about: 9% of Democrats “strongly” agree that “the use of force is justified to prevent Donald Trump from becoming president,” and another 7.1% merely agree. That’s a total of 16.1%, compared to the total of 9.5% of Republicans who strongly agree or just agree that force is justified to hand the presidency back to Trump.
Again, isn’t this a fact that needs to be emphasized?
Seems that the University of Chicago Project on Security and Threats didn’t want that known as well, since the only mention of it was in a data table buried in the report. At the same time, it played up the increase in the numbers of those who would abide by the use of force to reinstate the Trump presidency, claiming that it “likely reflects the response of more intense commitment to Trump following the announcement of the federal indictment against him.”
Democrats’ inclination to use violence to achieve their goals was also seen in the results of other questions:
- More than 16% of Democrats think force is justified to restore the federal right to abortion.
- More than 22% Democrats agree that “the use of force against the police is justified to prevent police brutality against black Americans and other minorities.”
- More than a quarter of Democrats would approve of the use of force “to protect the voting rights of Black Americans and other minorities.”
To paraphrase novelist Tom Wolfe, the dark night of political violence is always descending on conservatives and Republicans, and yet it’s primarily a hallmark of progressives and Democrats.
— Written by the I&I Editorial Board
