A PRRI survey out Wednesday shows that nearly a quarter of Americans support political violence heading into the 2024 presidential election, as an overwhelming majority believe democracy is at risk.

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[–] 106 points 2 years ago (76 children)

Did not read the entire article, but the first thing that stands out to me is the survey question itself:

Because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.

This language is extremely in line with fascistic rhetoric. So the people agreeing to this are likely Trump supporters. Maybe this is a good thing that most people think democracy is in trouble but only 23% of them think fascism is the solution.

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  • [–] 46 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    One relevant quote:

    Researchers found that one-third of Republicans support violence as a means to save the country, compared with 22% of independents and 13% of Democrats. And more specifically, Republicans who have favorable views of Trump were found to be nearly three times as likely as Republicans who have unfavorable views of Trump to support political violence.

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  • [–] 22 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    That tracks 100% with my anecdotal feelings. There's one and only one guy on my block whose doorbell I'd be afraid to ring out of the blue. Guess what kind of signs are on his lawn?

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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago (1 child)

    The flammable kind? Only one way to find out!

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  • [–] 8 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    LOL. :-D Despite the topic of the article and OPs repeated warnings that we should all be worried about violence from the left, I'm not ready to start vandalizing my neighbors over their views, satisfying as I'm sure that would be.

    Before I'd do that I'd start putting up signs of my own that really piss off the US right like "Everyone is welcome here" and "Hate has no home here."

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  • [–] 10 points 2 years ago* (1 child)

    The question that really needs to be asked is one capable of meaningfully distinguishing between those who support "resorting to" offensive violence in order to "save" the country from policy they don't like that was accomplished through legitimate means, and those who support legitimately resorting to defensive violence to save the country from the first group.

    Good luck crafting such a question in such a way that the first group doesn't misrepresent themselves as belonging to the second, though.

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago

    The weird thing is that I'd bet a lot more people support some type of violence in order to reform all of our broken systems that clearly aren't being fixed by merely voting and protesting.

    But the reasons for why our systems are broken are wildly different depending on which side of the political spectrum you fall on.

    The Jan 6 insurrectionists were completely misguided, but they'd see a similar insurrection in support of reforming US government systems as an attack on the country itself, just as they are viewed by others.

    How do we fix our problems when we can't even agree on what the problems actually are?

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