U.S. faces new era of political violence as threats against lawmakers rise

Liliana Mason, a political science professor at Johns Hopkins University and co-author of Radical American Partisanship: Mapping Violent Hostility, Its Causes, and the Consequences for Democracy, said the phrasing of survey questions on political violence can drastically affect results. But having studied such polling since 2017, Mason said it is clear that support for political violence is indeed on the rise in the US.

“I think of it as pretty low numbers of people who actually approve of violence at all,” Mason said. “The problem is that, if you go from 7% to 20%, that means that there are certain social spaces where the norms around anti-violence are eroding.”

The impact of that trend can be seen at every level of American government, from the halls of Capitol Hill to local polling places.

The US Capitol police reported 9,625 threats and directions of interest (meaning concerning actions or statements) against members of Congress last year, compared to 3,939 such instances in 2017.