County chairs on political violence

Some cross-party agreement, and some things to worry about

Tolerance for political violence is obviously of great concern in American politics, particularly as we head into a heated and very competitive presidential election year. In my most recent survey of county party chairs (conducted across both parties), I decided to ask several questions about political violence. The results suggested a surprising amount of similarity across party lines and widespread rejection of explicit violence, although at least some reasons to be concerned.

In my questions, I was curious about two particular dimensions of political violence, borrowing the framework that Lilliana Mason and Nathan Kalmoe used in their book Radical American Partisanship. The first dimension is the idea of “moral disengagement.” It is not actually endorsing violence against the other party, but rather seeing the other party’s members as less than fully human and less deserving of empathy. I asked whether they agreed with the following statements:

• “Many [in the other party] lack the traits to be considered fully human -- they behave like animals.”

• “Some of my party’s political opponents are like vermin and pose a greater threat to the United States than do countries like China, Russia, or North Korea.”

While there are some conceptual similarities between these two statements, you’ll probably notice that the second one is almost a direct quote from Donald Trump’s post on Truth Social last month.