Despite Trump shooting, political violence is actually rare in the U.S.

After the attempted assassination of former President Donald Trump, it seemed for a moment as if all the warnings about the dangers of political polarization and the creeping normalization of political violence had come true in a horrifying way. Many Republicans were quick to blame Democratic rhetoric calling Trump a threat to democracy. Many Democrats responded that Trump himself has done more in his own rhetoric than any other American political figure in recent memory to normalize violence. Both sides seemed to agree that America is teetering on the brink of political apocalypse. But is the fear justified, or is it a false alarm?

Perhaps the answer is “both.”

It now seems likely, for instance, that the attempt on Trump’s life — which tragically resulted in the death of a rally attendee and injuries to two other people — was not related to political discourse at all. The shooter, 20-year-old Thomas Matthew Crooks, who was killed by a Secret Service sniper, had searched online for information on both Trump and Biden campaign events; former high school classmates don’t recall him expressing any political views and say he was disdainful of politicians in general. While his motive is still unknown, it appears that, as with a number of other attempted assassinations in recent history — such as the shootings of President Ronald Reagan in 1981 and Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords in 2011 — the underlying cause was mental illness.

Of course, this hasn’t stopped conspiracy theories from sprouting. Some on the left are convinced that the assassination was staged to boost Trump’s chances in the election, while some on the right are speculating that the Secret Service or the FBI was in on an assassination plot. But overall, calm has been restored, and the shooting is receding from public attention much faster than one might have expected.

Carnegie Endowment scholar Rachel Kleinfeld, who studies political violence and extremism, has said that while actual political violence is scarce in the United States today, threats of violence have definitely proliferated. Political rhetoric has certainly gotten much more extreme in recent years — and yes, Trump has greatly contributed to this trend. On the right, talk about civil war and violent resistance to “tyranny” has become disturbingly common. The left has had its own problems with excuses for riots and comparisons of political opponents to Nazis — though at the moment, the Republicans certainly have the edge over Democrats in extreme rhetoric from prominent figures in the party. As for actual political violence, nothing in recent history comes close to the Jan. 6 Capitol Hill riot.

Writing in The Atlantic, political scientist Graeme Wood points out that the United States has very little political violence compared to many other countries — not only in Asia and Latin America, but even in Europe. We also have much less political violence than we had in the 1960s and 1970s. Today, social media may amplify violent and hateful language in ways that didn’t exist 50 or 60 years ago, but that still falls far short of widespread domestic terrorism.

That doesn’t mean we should be complacent about rising extremism, or increasing polarization and the tendency to dehumanize political opponents. These trends are dangerous, and we should all be working to reverse them. However, we need to cool down not only the temperature of political discourse but the temperature of panic.  

Opinions expressed by Cathy Young, a writer for The Bulwark, are her own.

By Cathy Young

Cathy Young is a writer for The Bulwark.