Chris WilliamsonDemocrats vs Republicans: Who Is Actually More Violent? - Robert Pape
Chris Williamson
A New Era Of Violent Populism 0:00
Robert Pape argues that the number one threat to America is not a foreign government or a fringe militia but the tens of millions of Americans who now support political violence. He calls this new period violent populism, distinguishing it from the sporadic political violence that has appeared throughout American history, including the 1920s and 1960s. What makes this moment different is that support for political violence has become lodged in the mainstream of society, and Pape says the current period is a historical anomaly rather than a continuation of past patterns. He points to a string of recent events as evidence, including three assassination attempts against Donald Trump, an attack on Nancy Pelosi's husband, an arson attack on Pennsylvania governor Josh Shapiro's occupied home, and the assassination of Charlie Kirk on September 10, 2025 while he was debating students on a college campus. He also notes that although most of the 2020 George Floyd protests were peaceful, 5 to 7 percent of the 28 million participants were involved in violence, a large absolute number.
Support For Political Violence Surges 7:31
Pape describes survey data from the University of Chicago's Project on Security and Threats, which has run 21 national surveys over five years. Support for using force to remove Trump from office rose from around 6 to 9 percent in earlier years to 14 percent just before Kirk's assassination, and then jumped to 25 percent of American adults, roughly 65 million people, including 44 percent of self-identified Democrats. Follow-up focus groups and survey experiments found that 55 percent of those endorsing this "use of force" meant something like the Butler assassination attempt with rifles, not just protest. On the other side, 16 percent of Americans, mostly Republicans, support Trump using the military to suppress Democratic protesters, about 40 million people. Combined, this suggests around 100 million Americans support some form of political violence heading into the midterms, which Pape calls the most dangerous elections in living memory, with the greatest risk centered on vote counting and certification, likely around January 6, 2027.
Rethinking Left Versus Right Violence 15:32
Pape challenges the common claim that domestic political violence overwhelmingly comes from the right. He says studies reaching that conclusion were accurate up until about ten years ago, but the picture depends heavily on the time frame chosen. Looking back to 1990, right-wing lone-wolf violence dominates, but starting from 2015 onward, the balance shifts toward a heavier mix from the left, roughly balanced between both sides. These studies typically exclude crowd violence like January 6 or the George Floyd unrest, focusing only on lone-wolf attacks. Pape says this shows the nature of political violence has genuinely changed since Trump's first term began, with much of it now either pro-Trump or reactive against Trump, a dynamic he describes as anti-Trump versus anti-anti-Trump, rooted in deeper social changes that he says are pushing the country toward a tipping point.
Comparing Right and Left Political Violence 20:31
Robert Pape explains that he has spent decades studying political violence on both the right and the left, including the three would-be assassins of President Trump, Luigi Mangione, and the assassin who killed Minnesota leader Hortman before also killing her husband. He says that in terms of basic operations there is a lot of symmetry between right and left violence, without meaning to claim moral equivalence. The key insight he stresses is that mass support fundamentally changes the scale of political violence a country can expect, a pattern he has also seen in Northern Ireland in the 1970s and 80s and in Lebanon. Mass support nudges volatile individuals, who often already carry personal pain, over the edge by giving them an added motive of social approval, which he says social media accelerates like gasoline poured on a fire.
Pattern Behind the George Floyd Protests 24:31
Pape describes tracking protests daily across the top 50 cities in the United States through his research center, the University of Chicago Project on Security and Threats. During the summer of 2020, after George Floyd's death, most protests were peaceful, but a clear pattern emerged: peaceful daytime protests, often starting around 1pm in downtown squares, would splinter after dark, with breakaway groups burning police stations and destroying businesses. He estimates 20 to 25 million Americans took part believing it was purely peaceful, while roughly 5 to 7 percent of participants engaged in violence, mostly at night.
Inside the January 6 Timeline 27:31
Pape lays out January 6 in detail. About 120,000 people gathered at the Ellipse to hear Trump, who spent his speech reciting state-by-state claims the election was stolen, then turned the crowd's focus onto Mitch McConnell and especially Mike Pence, before saying he would march with them to the Capitol. Within fifteen minutes the crowd began moving, and about 10,000 people burst through bike-fence perimeters guarded by 200 police. Around 2:15, as Pence certified the election, Trump posted that Pence had let them down, and the crowd broke into the building itself. Of the 120,000, some 1,600 people actually forced entry, beating police with flagpoles and bike racks, a number Pape's center verified through case-by-case review of over 10,000 court documents. Trump did not call the crowd off for about three hours, later pardoned all 1,575 prosecuted participants, and has continued praising the events on Truth Social, which Pape says radicalized much of the MAGA movement afterward.
Campus protests after October 7 37:31
Robert Pape describes large-scale surveys of over 5,000 college undergraduates and 5,000 ordinary adults conducted during the wave of protests that followed October 7, 2023 and ran through spring 2024. He calls this another instance of violent populism on the left, though less violent than the George Floyd protests, which involved burning police stations and cars and destroying businesses. Students reported real fear on campus, but the campus unrest did not reach the same level of physical destruction.
Violence on both sides today 41:00
Pape argues that what makes this era distinct is that violent populism now appears on both the right and the left, unlike the 1960s, which was mostly left-wing, or the 1920s, which was mostly right-wing. He notes that people on both sides tend to excuse violence committed by their own supporters and that media coverage follows a predictable formula, attributing left-wing attackers to mental illness while framing right-wing attackers by political motive, or vice versa depending on the outlet.
The new profile of political violence 45:00
Pape says the old stereotype of a violent extremist, an unemployed, rural young man in a militia, held true from 1990 to around 2015 but changed sharply afterward. The new profile is well-educated, middle-class, with a nice home and a 401k. He points to Luigi Mangione, from generational wealth and an Ivy League graduate, and Cole Allen, a 31-year-old engineer who described feeling called to respond to injustice. Among the 1575 January 6th defendants he studied, 45 percent were business owners or professionals such as doctors and nurse practitioners, and only 10 percent belonged to militia groups, contradicting early media narratives.
Why people with something to lose act 49:30
Pape explains that these are people with something to lose, not marginal figures, drawing on examples like the well-off January 6th defendants from nice Texas suburbs rather than poorer areas. He suggests they act because they fear losing everything soon, citing East Palestine, Ohio's pollution disaster, where Democratic leaders showed little sympathy, and Democratic fears that Republicans will erode birthright citizenship. Both sides, he says, are increasingly afraid the other side winning will destroy their future.
A silent majority against violence 52:31
Pape and the host discuss how radicalization spreads like a wildfire, fueled by nonstop social media amplifying extreme comments, while political leaders rarely push back. Surveys consistently show 65 to 70 percent of Americans reject political violence, forming a silent majority without a strong vehicle or leader to express that view, leaving podcasts as one of the few places this sentiment gets voiced.
Sentiment versus action 55:30
You hear a distinction drawn between simply supporting political violence and actually carrying it out. Roughly 25 to 30 percent of people support political violence in some form, but that number alone does not tell you whether violence will happen. What turns widespread sentiment into real action is compared to a wildfire: dry, combustible material can sit for months doing nothing, until a single spark, like a dropped cigar butt, sets it off instantly. January 6th is offered as the example, where months of anger over claims the election was stolen built up as the dry wood, and Trump's speech at the ellipse became the spark.
Evidence linking support to violence 1:03:59
Asked whether people who support political violence are also more likely to commit it, the answer given is yes, though proving the overlap requires specific cases rather than loose connections. The man who attacked Paul Pelosi with a hammer later apologized on a local radio interview from jail for failing to kill Nancy Pelosi, showing he saw himself as part of a cause and a community. Cole Allen, the third would-be attacker of Trump before an assault at a dinner, sent a manifesto describing himself as a social justice warrior making sacrifices others wouldn't. Manifestos are described as tools for connecting the attacker to the community they believe supports them, often paired with personal apologies to loved ones. The Irish Republican Army in Northern Ireland is cited as growing directly out of rising Catholic public support for political violence starting in 1969, and the Weather Underground in the 1960s carried out over 20 bombings partly expecting more public backing than they ultimately received, eventually disbanding when that support failed to materialize.
A demographic driver of populism 1:06:31
The trend of violent populism is spreading to other mature democracies, including Canada, Germany, Britain, and France, though with some lag. In Germany, research briefings reportedly helped German officials disrupt a plot to assassinate the chancellor. The main driver in the United States is described as a demographic shift, from 76 percent non-Hispanic white in 1990 to 57 percent today, projected to reach 49 percent within 15 to 20 years depending on deportations, a sharp break from roughly 80 to 85 percent white going back to 1776. This shift is tied to Trump's rise on immigration and to opposing camps, some wanting to reverse it and others to accelerate it. People who believe whites are being deliberately replaced by the Democratic party are said to be four times more likely to support political violence for Trump.
Two Social Changes Driving Violence 1:13:01
Pape lays out a second major social shift beyond demographics: a massive transfer of wealth to the top 1 percent starting in the late 1980s, when that group held about 17 percent of America's wealth. Today it holds 26 percent, meaning everyone else has lost ground even as the economy grows. Rent and housing costs feel harder to manage because people are not just failing to gain on their parents, they are falling behind them. This creates what Pape calls a negative-sum society, where both political sides fear losing more each year, and each fears the other party winning power and using it to help their own at the other's expense.
Three Stages Toward Political Violence 1:16:30
Pape describes a three-stage danger tied to the coming midterms and the 2027 seating of Congress. Stage one is a legitimacy shock, a razor-thin election result that leaves the losing side convinced they were cheated. Stage two is the focal point moment of actually seating Congress, when the losing side may refuse to accept it, echoing January 6. Stage three, if that flashpoint repeats, is prolonged violent opposition rather than a single event. He notes Trump has already discussed invoking the Insurrection Act and using the military against protesters, and warns that no political leaders are restraining their own side's violent rhetoric, only calling out the other side.
Past Warnings That Came True 1:19:32
Pape recalls warning in June 2025, before the Hortman assassination, that political violence was imminent, and again warning in fall 2022 before the Pelosi attack. He has advised every White House administration since 2001, and says he is now sharing publicly what he once presented only in private, closed-door briefings.
Foreign Manipulation Is Modest 1:25:32
Asked whether America's civil discord is self-generated or foreign-manufactured, Pape points to University of Cambridge research into Russia's Internet Research Agency after the 2016 election, which found foreign influence could amplify existing divisions by roughly 10 to 20 percent but could not manufacture them from nothing. He argues America is largely its own worst enemy, though he flags that AI could change this in the future. He then points to Iran's viral Lego-style propaganda videos mocking Trump during the spring Iran war tensions as a clear example of state-sponsored manipulation, though survey data on Iran war support shows opinions were shaped mainly by pre-existing domestic divides tied to violent populism.
No Rally Around The Flag 1:31:00
Support for the Iran war is splitting along existing political divisions, which breaks a pattern going back to the 1950s. Every war since World War II has produced a short-term rally around the flag, where even the opposing party temporarily backs the president. This is the first war where that has not happened. Republicans are not being moved by Iran-linked propaganda; those who are upset are upset about Israel, not persuaded by foreign messaging. Pape says there is no evidence foreign powers can shift the American public significantly, let alone 180 degrees, and the failure to move the MAGA constituency means Trump himself isn't being moved either. He adds that Russia and China benefit most from America's internal division, since a divided, distracted country pays less attention to international affairs and makes foreign policy mistakes. He believes this domestic focus, including Trump's attention to symbolic issues like renaming places or building a ballroom, reflects Trump's skill at reading what ordinary and low-propensity voters actually care about, calling him possibly the most effective vote-getting politician since Ronald Reagan.
Splitting The Causes 1:36:32
Asked how much of the civil unrest traces back to Trump himself, Pape assigns roughly 50 percent to the underlying social changes he has described, 25 percent to Trump specifically, and 25 percent to social media and other factors. He notes this is an unwelcome answer for both Trump's critics and supporters, since both sides prefer to inflate his personal influence, and parents in focus groups tend to overweight social media because they worry about their kids' exposure to it.
Deplatforming Didn't Fix It 1:38:01
Pape argues social changes, not individual leaders, drive lasting political violence, pointing to Lebanon's decades of civil war and Israel's internal demographic tensions as examples unrelated to any single figure. He recalls media editorial boards in 2022 dismissing his research, insisting that deplatforming Trump and Tucker Carlson would resolve the problem. Both were deplatformed, yet the underlying anger did not diminish, and those same outlets have since published his work. He sees the same social-change issues fueling the rapid rise of figures like Mamdani on the left, much as they fueled Trump's rise, calling this the era of violent populism now tearing the country apart.
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