One in five adults in the United States will be willing to tolerate political violence. They say they are capturing the extremist escalation exhibited during the January 6 attack, according to a new national survey commissioned by public health experts. Houses of Parliament.
An online survey of more than 8,600 adults in the United States was conducted by research firm Ipsos on behalf of the University of California, Davis’ violence prevention research program from mid-May to early June and announced its results on Tuesday. ..
A group of 20.5% of those surveyed said they were willing to tolerate such violence, with the majority of the group saying that “generally” the use of force was at least “justified.” Did. The remaining 3% responded as follows. Such violence was “normal” or “always” justified.
Approximately 12% of survey respondents said they would at least be “somewhat willing” to resort to violence against themselves in order to intimidate or intimidate others.
Also, nearly 12% of respondents believed that the use of violence was at least “justified” if it meant returning Donald J. Trump to the president.
Important revelation from the January 6 hearing
“This was beyond my darkest expectations,” said Dr. Garen J. Wintemte, director of the University of California, Davis anti-violence program and doctor in the emergency room, in an interview Wednesday. ..
However, some experts focused on political violence are far more cautious about reports that it is widespread, and estimates tend to exaggerate the issue in the face of intense media coverage of the issue. It states that there is.
Political violence accounts for more than 1% of violent hate crimes in the United States, according to a survey conducted by Polarization Research Lab and Dartmouth College last December. The report allows for self-reported attitudes regarding multiple interpretations of political violence, using ranges such as “somewhat justified,” “usually justified,” and “always justified.” I found that the research to do is biased upwards.
Still, the prevalence of radical views on violence reflects an increasing number of threats and heading attacks to elected officials who have disrupted government operations, including Congress’s recognition of the results of the 2020 presidential election. doing.
“These findings suggest continued alienation and distrust of American democratic societies and their institutions,” a researcher at the University of California, Davis said in a manuscript. “A significant minority of the population supports violence, including deadly violence, to achieve political objectives.”
Within four months of the November midterm elections, researchers did not want to wait to share their findings and took the extraordinary step of publishing them in a preprinted manuscript, according to Dr. Wintemte.
“I don’t have much time,” he said.
When asked, “Is it more important to have a strong American leader than democracy?”, More than 40% of polls agreed in some way, from “somewhat” to “very strong.” I answered. A similar percentage agreed to some extent with the racist doctrine of replacement theory that “in the United States, natively born whites are being replaced by immigrants.”
“I remember wondering what I could find here just by writing these words on paper,” Dr. Wintemte said of the research question.
Some experts on the investigation of political violence who were not involved in the investigation warned on Wednesday that estimating data for the entire US population could be misleading. They said that attitudes towards violence do not always lead to action.
“How can we prevent normalization of the belief that violence is accepted, even when we are studying violence?” Executive of the Bridging Divides Initiative, a nonpartisan research group based at Princeton University. Director Shannon Hiller said.
In 2021, US Capitol police investigated 9,625 direct threats to lawmakers and other cases related to statements and actions, according to official data. This is an increase of about 12% from 2020. The number of cases has steadily increased over the past five years, more than double the total in 2017.