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Jeff Selinger is an associate professor of government and legal studies at Bowdoin College. He is a member of the Maine chapter of the national Scholars Strategy Network.
I know the drill; so do you. A politically motivated threat or act of violence makes it into the headlines: Time to wheel out the stuffy, know-it-all historian or social scientist to offer some perspective.
Today, I am that stuffy know-it-all social scientist — and I check all of the boxes. I have a degree in political science; I’ve written a book about the history of political violence and party competition in the U.S.; I’m an academic who loves the sound of his own voice; and my teenage kids would describe me as stuffy — on a good day.
The threat or act of violence that precipitated this column: U.S. Rep. Jared Golden’s decision not to seek reelection — due, in part, to ongoing threats to his family. This, of course, is bad. But you don’t need me to tell you that. What can I add to the conversation in Maine and across the country? Some things I could tell you about:
That our system of government was designed, in no small part, to neutralize the violence of an organized movement led by over-taxed and indebted agrarians. Acts of violence were triggered, in part, by steep tax increases raised in the aftermath of the Revolutionary War (tax rates tripled or quadrupled in almost every state). Tax policy contributed to the economic depression of the 1780s which, in turn, sparked an insurgency that threatened to envelop the whole country.
I could comment on the long and evolving history of racialized political violence, from the records of slave patrols and plantation overseers to the lynchings and terrorism perpetrated by the White League, the Red Shirts, and the Ku Klux Klan. I could also discuss the history of intimidation tactics used against labor organizers.
Political violence today, however, is so much different that one might wonder what’s to be gained from an historical perspective. Three differences stand out.
First, unlike the episodes mentioned above, political violence today is often disconnected from policy and/or socio-political goals (e.g. lowering taxes, subordinating racial minorities, etc). Instead, it is often performative and premeditated to “go viral.”
Second, political menace (threats of violence) and political violence today are rarely organized (the insurrection effort on Jan. 6, 2021, however, is a very important exception). The growing trend of lone wolves acting in isolation is a particularly chilling feature of the violence we’ve seen in recent years.
Lastly, most incidents appear to be responsive to messaging from political leaders and online influencers demonizing disfavored groups through mass media — social media in particular.
It should go without saying (but I’m gonna say it anyway) that any act of political violence is too much violence. Fairminded observers should also note that threats and acts of violence emanate from the extremes on both the left and the right. Finger-pointing about which “side” deserves more of the blame misses the fundamental point.
Unfortunately, the disparity between the two “sides” has grown increasingly stark in recent years. Following the assassination of Charlie Kirk, elected leaders of the Democratic Party forthrightly condemned the heinous act. Sure, in a country of over 300 million people, the blizzard of ugly messages posted online about Kirk’s murder should not come as a surprise.
But the contrast in messaging between Democratic and Republican Party leaders couldn’t be clearer. To give just a few examples, when a Democratic state legislator and her husband were murdered in June by a man with a hit list of Democratic legislators in his car, Sen. Mike Lee, R-Utah, posted a joke on X. When Nancy Pelosi’s husband, Paul, was nearly murdered in his townhouse by another lone wolf who had been radicalized online, Rep. Clay Higgins, R-Louisiana, Greg Steube, R-Florida, Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Georgia, and Elon Musk posted scurrilous rumors either insinuating or stating outright that the assailant was Paul Pelosi’s homosexual lover. What is more, President Donald Trump, who has been the target of multiple lone wolf assasination attempts, has repeatedly celebrated acts of political violence and continues to both promote the Big Lie that led to Jan. 6th and to deny the violence, which we all witnessed with our own eyes on that day.
What political leaders say about violence perpetrated by individuals in their own ranks really matters. De-escalatory messaging has been shown to reduce the incidence of political violence; messages that fan the flames have the opposite effect.
Our collective failure to address the menace that chills the environment where members of Congress like Jared Golden live and work corrodes our representative system of government. This corrosion will continue to deplete the vitality of our public life if we fail to hold our most powerful political leaders to higher standards.