Trying to Understand Political Violence in the US

Archon Fung: Hey, everyone. You’re listening to Terms of Engagement. My name is Archon Fung. I’m a professor at the Kennedy School and the director of the Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation.

Stephen Richer: And I’m Stephen Richer. I’m the former elected Maricopa County recorder, and now I’m a senior practice fellow at the Ash Center at Harvard Kennedy School.

Archon Fung: And as always, we’re talking strictly as individuals, not for any part of the institution at all.

Stephen Richer: And today we’re going to be talking about political violence, which is, of course, the topic du jour. This comes on the heels of the assassination of Melissa Hortman in Minnesota. This comes on the heels of the shooting of two Israelis. Israeli embassy staffers, and it comes on the heels of the assassination of the United Healthcare CEO. That was part of a purported political message. And of course, it follows last week’s assassination of Charlie Kirk on the campus of Utah Valley University in the Utah Valley, which is just about thirty to forty-five minutes south of Salt Lake City.

There’s always a human element to these. Charlie, I first met about thirteen years ago, and I’ve watched his journey, and we’ve had agreements, we’ve had some disagreements, but just to keep in mind that there is always a human component of this. But to help us out when talking about this important topic and this very sobering topic is going to be Professor Alex Keyssar you want to introduce Alex.

Archon Fung: Yeah absolutely Alex Keyssar is a good friend and a colleague here at the Kennedy School he is a historian of american politics he’s written uh several path-breaking books including the right to vote and why do we still have the electoral college. He is the Matthew Sterling Professor of history and social policy here at the Kennedy School welcome Alex.

Alex Keyssar: It’s a pleasure to be here with you too although not not a pleasurable subject to be discussing. Yeah, great.

Archon Fung: I wanted to stage set a little bit. Our purpose in the next thirty minutes, of course, is to understand the recent events and set them in the broader context of trying to understand political violence in the United States. I think my first kind of proximate exposure, not that proximate. Alex and Stephen both know that I grew up in Norman, Oklahoma, which is about twenty miles south of Oklahoma City. And I was in graduate school here in Boston in 1995 when the two people had blown up, blew up the Edward R. Murrow building. And to this day, that remains the most significant act of domestic political terrorism and in the wake of the destruction of the Murrow building in which a hundred and seventy people died and I think eight hundred were injured I wrote an op opinion piece for my hometown newspaper the Norman Transcript that said hey we don’t know who did this And so we should suspend judgment until we know more and we can have a discussion, decide what to do. And everyone at the time was certain that in the immediate aftermath that it was Middle Eastern terrorists. And of course, it was not. It was Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, who were parts of the militia movement at that time, or at least adjacent to it. And when I wrote that piece, a couple of people from Norman said, hey, you really shouldn’t send that because a lot of people are hurting. They don’t need to hear your scolding or caution or whatever it is. And it just reminds me that we all need to take a step back, breathe deeply and try to understand what’s happening and knowing that in the immediate aftermath of these things, a lot is unclear.

Stephen Richer: So the first question I have for Alex is the thing that the Internet’s talking about, which is, is political violence on the rise? The Internet certainly seems to think it’s so. We can certainly point to a lot of high profile incidents to suggest that it’s on the rise. But is there any hard statistics in terms of this period in time versus past periods in American history?

Alex Keyssar: It’s a question that is being widely asked. And I have to say, I don’t think there’s any clear answer to that. I’m feeding back, you can isolate some periods which seem calmer, but we are a violent country with a history of violence. Certainly, since the Civil War and in the decades leading up to the Civil War, we have a long history of assassinations and attempted assassinations. Look at the number, you know, more than ten percent of our presidents have been the targets of assassination attempts, the attempts, not unsuccessful ones. And I think when I think back over recent decades, you know, I can I can slice the numbers to make it come out different ways. But no, we are I don’t think that there’s a rate of political violence. I also think we want to be careful among ourselves and with every in defining what we mean by political violence.

Stephen Richer: So let’s do that. What distinguishes political violence from… The reality is that in the south side of Chicago, where both Archon and I lived at one point, there will likely be an incidence of violence today.

Archon Fung: Every day.

Stephen Richer: But that’s different from political violence. So how do most scholars in the field define political violence?

Alex Keyssar: Well, I think they tend to define political violence as violence that intends to serve a political purpose by affecting political actors or affecting policy in one way or another. But I think we also tend, and probably rightly so, to see political violence as also an expression of rage and hurt about political actors. I think an important distinction that I would make within this realm of political violence I mean I mean there you know there are borderline things for example is a school shooting political violence. I’m not sure how exactly how I would answer that because um it is political in a way, although it’s certainly not the same thing as an assassination.

Stephen Richer: So my gut would say a school shooting is somebody’s expression of outrage of dissatisfaction of usually mental health issues. But it’s different from the shooting of the United Healthcare president because that was intended to make a statement about our healthcare system or about the reimbursement rates of United Healthcare. So I view those as very different, but there’s undoubtedly some gray areas. But I was struck by your definition. To me, using violence to send a political message sounds no different than terrorism, which is using fear or violence to achieve your political ends is this different from terrorism.

Alex Keyssar: Let me introduce one more distinction at the risk of sounding like I’m nitpicking which is that I think that there is an important distinction between um violence carried out by individuals and violence uh carried out by groups with planning I think that, I think that with terrorism, as you describe it, you can see both versions, but I think most of us tend to think of terrorism as organized groups perpetrating. They could be small groups, but that is a group action, a group planning that is doing something that will frighten people and potentially change policy.

I think that one of the notable things, and then when we look at the recent example with Charlie Kirk, one of the notable things, as I reflected this past week about the history of assassination attempts and assassinations in the United States, is that they are overwhelmingly not group efforts. It is isolated individuals who often have a grievance and a disturbance. You know, of some sort. But we really you know, I think the closest thing we might come to seeing a major assassination as being the result of a collective action might be the assassination of Martin Luther King. And then even though the assassin was something of a lone wolf, he was coming out of a southern tradition of violence against Black people. But most assassinations are individual acts, whereas I think terrorism, usually we think of as being as being planned and collective.

Stephen Richer: 9/11, Al Qaeda, Luigi killing the United Health Care CEO was just Luigi with his own personal thoughts, not towards the organizational end. But I want to go back to what you said at the beginning. Does this moment feel similar to the aftermath of the Oklahoma City bombing?

Archon Fung: That’s interesting. I think that in some respects, why I brought up Oklahoma City was that these dramatic events of political violence, I think we have a strong temptation to read our prior expectations and political biases into them. And I think we see quite a bit of that happening right now. I think it’s unlike the Marathon bombing or the Oklahoma City bombing in that it has fueled polarization and social disagreement rather than and 9/11. Harmony. Yeah. Harmony and unity. And so I think that that feels different to me, quite different.

Stephen Richer: And we’re here in Boston, the Boston Marathon. My perception, not living here at the time, was that nobody was saying, hey, this guy might have had a point or, hey, those runners had it coming or.

Archon Fung: Nobody was saying anything like that. Everyone was saying.

Stephen Richer: We need to do better as a species, as a country, as a humanity.

Archon Fung: Yeah. But that might be more like the assassination of Malcolm X or MLK or even Bobby Kennedy. I don’t know, Alex, in those prior incidents, do you have a sense of whether those are unifying events or polarizing events? That was a very divided time, like this time.

Alex Keyssar: Yeah. I think that those three events that you mentioned were quite different. The assassination of Malcolm X was its own particular event, and the major impacts were within certain circles that were already politically divided. I think that the assassinations of Martin Luther King and of Bobby Kennedy were… events that on the whole brought a kind of united reaction. Although surely many people in the South may have quietly celebrated. The assassination of King comes after this tremendous surge of desegregation and the passage of laws. that are transforming the South. But I think that both the King and Robert Kennedy’s assassination, which also echoes the assassination of his brother five years earlier. So my recollection, and I’m old enough that I do directly recognize events, is that we were all pretty numb by June of 1968. But but the reaction was largely unified.

Archon Fung: So I want to run a couple of clips. The first, there have already been remarkable statements from different leaders and public personalities about Charlie Kirk’s assassination. The first one is from the governor of Utah, Spencer Cox. And so if you could run that one.

Spencer Cox: I think we need more moral clarity right now. I hear all the time that words are violence. Words are not violence. Violence is violence. And there is one person responsible for what happened here. And that person is now in custody and will be charged soon and will be held accountable. And yet all of us have an opportunity right now to do something different.

I want to thank my fellow Utahns. know this bad stuff happens um and uh for for thirty three hours I was I was praying that uh that um if this had to happen here that it wouldn’t be one of us that somebody drove from another state somebody came from another country. Sadly, that prayer was not answered the way I had hoped for, just because I thought it would make it easier on us if we could just say, hey, we don’t do that here. And indeed, Utah is a special place. We lead the nation in charitable giving. We lead the nation in service every year. But it did happen here. And it was one of us.

Archon Fung: So I thought that was remarkable. attitude of generosity. He is one of us committed this terrible act.

And just to give us a little more to reflect on, the second clip is the day, I believe it was aired the day after Charlie Kirk was assassinated. And this is Stephen Miller on Fox News. And I think probably most of the people tuning in will know that Stephen Miller is often thought of as the most influential advisor in the Trump administration. So here’s Mr. Miller.

Stephen Miller: These are radicalized people. There is a domestic terrorism movement in this country. And let me tell you something I’m not sure with anybody, but the last message that Charlie Kirk gave to me before he joined his creator in heaven, was he said that we have to dismantle and take on the radical left organizations in this country that are fomenting violence. That was the last message that he sent me before that assassin stole him from all of us. And we are going to do that under President Trump’s leadership. I don’t care how it could be a RICO charge, a conspiracy charge, conspiracy against the United States, insurrection. But we are going to do what it takes to dismantle the organizations and the entities that are fomenting riots, that are doxing, that are trying to inspire terrorism, and that are committing acts of wanton violence. It has to stop. And my message is to all of the domestic terrorists in this country spreading this evil hate, You want us to live in fear? We will not live in fear, but you will live in exile because the power of law enforcement under President Trump’s leadership will be used to find you, will be used to take away your money, take away your power, and if you’ve broken the law, to take away your freedom, Sean.

All said, Stephen Miller.

Stephen Richer: So obviously we see the schism there between how people are responding, at least from the political right. Governor Cox saying that this should be a moment where we should have reflection, we should have harmony, we should be talking with Democrats. Stephen Miller obviously saying that this arose out of the, as he terms it, radical left and is a force to be reckoned with, but is a force to be combated with and is forced to be defeated. My question, Alex, for you is, does choosing one of those paths have a material impact on the future, or is it going to be about the same in terms of future political violence, regardless of whose rhetoric you listen to?

Archon Fung: Yeah, it doesn’t matter what people say. I mean, there’s been a lot of talk we’d like, or at least I would personally like more people to talk like Spencer Cox, but maybe it doesn’t make a difference.

Alex Keyssar: Well, I think, you know, I mean, I mean, I’m not a prophet. I can’t produce. I can’t. I can’t.

Stephen Richer: You told me. You told me another answer.

Alex Keyssar: Sorry, I was misrepresented.

But I, you know, I don’t know whether the Spencer Cox approach can make things better, but I’m reasonably confident that the Stephen Miller approach can make things worse. Um, I think, I think that what, what happens with statements like that coming from any side in any such situation is that it provides a kind of permission or a sanction for violence against for another round of violence against the purported, um, perpetrators, um, over the side. I mean, you know, Archon, you mentioned right at the outset, the, the Oklahoma city thing. And I remember very clearly. the certainty with which our pundits and wise people declare that this was Middle Eastern terrorists. And I don’t know or don’t remember whether there were any retaliatory acts that happened. But I think that one of the concerns that I have in the current situation is that this event, this assassination, could be utilized to heighten the temperature. And I think that, you know, you asked me earlier whether rates of political violence are higher now than they were in the past, and I sort of fudged on it in part because any period I think about has a pretty high rate of political violence. But I do think that the level of hostility and the level of public antagonism in our public discourse and the level of hostility and anger that even comes out of the government itself is relatively, I don’t want to say it’s unprecedented, but I’d say it’s relatively unusual.

Stephen Richer: It’s interesting because before Governor Cox said this is us as Utahns or us as Americans, he said the only person responsible for the assassination of Charlie Kirk was the shooter himself, the alleged shooter himself. We have a legal process, obviously. So that sort of runs in conflict with what you, that almost excuses in advance comments like Stephen Miller’s, which is that according to that theory, no one would be responsible for that, no matter how much you might stoke the flames. And I’m not sure I believe that. Dealing with a lot of the anger and vitriol and some of it violent in the aftermath of the 2020 election. I certainly felt like people who were saying false things about my actions, saying false things about what the staff did in Maricopa County, bore some responsibility. But I also didn’t want to deprive the ultimate agency from the bad actor, the illegal act himself. So I don’t know what that balance is. Do you have do you have a gut feeling on like how much are talking heads on cable news responsible for this idiotic young man taking a shot at Charlie Kirk?

Archon Fung: So some people studying political violence have this term stochastic terrorism, where stochastic means kind of random. You don’t know who’s gonna do it. It’s gonna be somebody, probably with some mental health issues and some other things. But you can change the probability distribution of somebody actually doing, hurting other people, killing other people through the rhetoric and the kind of talk environment that’s out there. So I think the talk environment, I personally think it does set the conditions, and the people creating that talk environment bear some responsibility for turning up the temperature. I think Governor Cox’s appeal, I really appreciate, is a deep moral appeal to responsibility. We are all responsible for our actions. I heard him. Part of the responsibility is for what we say and do each of us at this moment. That’s the only thing we can really control is what I thought.

I have a kind of a darker possibility that a lot of people are saying at this moment, you know, freedom of expression, we should be able to disagree, but it need not turn into violence. I wonder if that’s actually true, that in moments of deep, deep disagreement as we have now, as we did before the civil war, maybe there just will be violence in the face of that disagreement about who counts as being an equal. I mean, it’s, I hope that’s not true, but I want Alex, do you think that that’s true? And can you think of moments of like when we’ve disagreed so fundamentally? Have we been better or worse at working that out with words rather than fists, or even worse, bullets?

Alex Keyssar: You know, I mean, again, I can think of examples on both sides, but I think that we have been better at working things out in terms of society as a whole or politics as a whole, but there are exceptions. And let me give an example. During the Great Depression, you know, the 1930s, this is a period when there is a tremendous amount of hardship, when there is very sharp political conflict. I mean, not only between FDR, the Democrats, and the Republicans who have been in power for the preceding decade, but there are left-wing sections, and then, there are emerging right-wing fascist movements in the late twenties and in the 1930s. But most of it, most of it produced political organization. There is some organized political violence. And again, it goes back to our definitions. When Ford Motor Company hires a private army to beat up workers who are on strike, is that political violence? I’d probably be inclined to say it is. But I think that that was a period when you think about what the potentials were for conflict and the rhetorical conflicts that were existing in the equivalent of chat rooms at the time. I think that the actual violence, the number of people who went out and actually did it and were responsible was relatively small.

Archon Fung: Yeah, that’s a great analogy. I mean, not only could, people did fill Madison Square Garden with card-carrying fascists. So that is an extreme level of disagreement, but it didn’t break into war like it did in the Civil War. I mean, and I wonder how much the leadership matters. I mean, Lincoln’s first inaugural is… one of the most beautiful political speeches there is. The mystic chords of memory will surely be touched once again by What are they touched by? Couldn’t do it. Will yet swell with the chorus of the Union, when again touched as they will surely be by the better angels of our nature. And then a few months later, the Civil War breaks out. So I don’t know how much the leadership can accomplish.

Stephen Richer: Okay, so we set aside that, unfortunately. But how would you say we’ve done? as a society, as a political leadership class, responding to what happened last week?

Archon Fung: Poorly. I mean…

Stephen Richer: You think poorly? Who are the Spencer Cox’s? I mean, you think better?

guess I’ve been at least pleased to see… broad condemnation from, I would say, any ranking Democrat.

Archon Fung: That’s true. That’s true.

Stephen Richer: Everyone from Obama to Biden to in Arizona, I saw all the statewide Democrats say things. And so I view that as as a positive. But of course, if you go online, you can find plenty of people that maybe aren’t portraying humanity in its most favorable light at the time, or conversely, others who are saying, this is the moment for war. And the first shot has been fired in what has to now be a battle. So I don’t know. My gut is that we’re doing okay so far. But what I’ve been… maybe more struck by is this feels different. This feels different than the Minnesota shooting. This feels different than the United Health. How does it feel different to you? What are the dimensions? For whatever reason, this feels bigger. And I don’t even know what the historical analogy is, but I do not think that a lot of people would say we forgot it. We moved on from Melissa Hortman in Minnesota too soon. We made ourselves feel OK. I think so. I don’t think that we will move on from this one in two months.

Archon Fung: Why is this bigger? I mean, Charlie Kirk, he was a singularly effective youth leader and youth engager in a way. I mean, much more than Melissa Hortman in terms of like broad impact on engaging and moving. Is it the sheer profile of who he is?

Stephen Richer: It’s the volume I think that he was a highly polarizing figure so so that maybe teases out more of those and then I think his influence, his connection to the administration many of whom are going to memorialize this yeah and so whether it…

Archon Fung: He was friends with many people.

Stephen Richer: Many of them, including the president and the president’s kids. And so whether or not this leads to positive conversations or negative conversations, I think that what happened last week is going to have a lasting impact. impact on the political conversation in the United States at least for the next year yeah I have a question for both of you in in the sense of how we should be talking about it as individuals and perhaps social media participants I think part of the unity that comes to that is when people come together after an assassination or political violence, part of it is often accompanied by putting the best light on the person who was assassinated, the victim. You don’t. talk about all of Martin Luther King’s foibles or et cetera, there’s a big discussion now about whether one should do that with Charlie Kirk. Is he the person who’s the defender of free speech and was engaging people when many of us perhaps are afraid to, or at least in that way?

Stephen Richer: Or was he contributing to this powder keg environment?

Archon Fung: And do we hold him accountable for what he actually said? Or is it better for us as a society to say we’re not going to people are better than their worst act or the worst thing that they say?

Stephen Richer: I don’t know. For society, what’s best? Me personally, I’ve said that there’s no profit in saying anything critical of the dead. They’ve suffered the ultimate price. And so just sort of move forward with an either grief for him or if not that grief for humanity and present your better angels. But I do know that there are a lot of people who are saying, you know, like this is a historical now at this point.

Archon Fung: Yeah. Alex, what do you think? I mean, as a historian, you probably have an epistemic view about this, but like generally, should we be putting a, the best light on Charlie Kirk or, or a good light and, and pasting over some of the deep disagreements that some of us may have had with what he said.

Alex Keyssar: I think that pasting over deep disagreements is rarely a good idea because those things come, come back, come back to haunt you. Um, I also think that, and I think this goes back to what Stephen said earlier about this feeling like this is a bigger deal or more important, is that I think that the spirits that have been unleashed by this are out there. I don’t think we can put the genie back in the bottle. And I think that political leaders trying to sort of calm the waters or I think that, you know, I’m not sure there’s anything that anybody can do, you know, at this point, unless there was a widespread bipartisan national commitment to lowering the temperature. And that’s not there. And that is not there. I mean, what I see in my perceptions is that, if anything, the opposite, that a lot of people are interested in using this to continue underlying arguments that have been there for a number of years.

Archon Fung: Well, we are out of time. We have a commitment to thirty minutes. Alex, thank you so much. This is by far the most sober, somber discussion that we’ve had and incredibly helpful and enlightening. And we will be doing all we can, which is not very much, to lower the temperature and try to have serious discussion and disagreement and find common ground when we can. Thank you very much, everyone, for tuning in.

Stephen Richer: Thank you. And I’ll just say that, Alex, I don’t think this is the last time we’ll be talking with you. I think that this will remain a topic, I hope, just in the abstract, in the theoretical, rather than following another incident. But we’ll tap on your expertise as needed.

Alex Keyssar: You know where I live, and I’m happy to join you in conversation about this or other, perhaps more hopeful matters.

Archon Fung: Thank you very much, Alex. And a huge thanks to Sarah, Colette, and Courtney for making Terms of Engagement possible.

Hope to see everyone next week.

Thank you.