A perfect storm of political violence is upon us. The horrific Oct. 28 attack on Paul Pelosi, husband of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, at their San Francisco home is the latest sign. MAGA forces have heightened the danger by blaming their rivals for the violence that their own lies have created.
The monumental marker of our broader descent into disorder, of course, is the violent Jan. 6 siege on the US Capitol. But nearly as dangerous is the way the Republican National Committee normalized that insurrection as “legitimate political discourse.” No wonder we’ve witnessed a militants’ conspiracy to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer of Michigan, armed “drop box” monitors in Arizona, and a tenfold increase in violent threats to members of Congress.
Legitimizing violence makes it an acceptable tool on all sides of the political spectrum, but William Braniff, leader of a Department of Homeland Security group that studies terrorism, testified before Congress: “Among domestic terrorists, violent far-right terrorists are by far the most numerous, lethal, and criminally active.”
History teaches that tides of violence get turned, although when and how is never predictable. Historian Richard Hofstadter observed decades ago that Americans have a “remarkable lack of memory” when it comes to violence, conveniently ignoring that it is woven into our national DNA.
To remember that truth is to follow the Trail of Tears and the killing and displacement of America’s native population. It is to recall that more Americans died in the Civil War than in all other wars we have ever fought — and that the Civil War’s end was followed not by peace but by Jim Crow and the systematic lynching of Black people. The United States has a bloody labor history too, with armed battles in the 19th century between strikers and Pinkerton mercenaries hired by industry tycoons. And, of course, the Vietnam War abroad saw violence at home, including the bombing of an Army research center at the University of Wisconsin and the Ohio National Guard killing of four student protesters at Kent State.
We are by now familiar with the forces that converged to make today’s especially virulent resurgence of violence possible: One of our two political parties is now built on dividing America based on “us vs. them” narratives; on promoting the Big Lie that the 2020 presidential election was stolen; on amplifying that lie through social media; and on insisting that violence is justifiable. Add to that a world roiled by inflation and economic woes. Fascism has always found fertile ground when displaced populations experience extreme economic vulnerability.
The point of remembering our agitated past is to gain hope, not despair. Political violence has always been stoppable. The civil rights movement took people into the street and awoke courts and the country. Legislation passed to protect working people. Vigorous law enforcement sent domestic terrorists, left or right, to prison. Such accountability is essential if the rule of law is to survive.
The precondition of accountability is confrontation with reality and an unblinking willingness to lay blame where it belongs. Trump champions the opposite. In 2016, he made division and dehumanization his theme by calling Mexican immigrants “rapists.” He continues to this day, calling the FBI that is beginning to hold him to account “vicious monsters, controlled by radical-left scoundrels,” mocking Pennsylvania Lieutenant Governor John Fetterman as “a lunatic,” and labeling President Biden “an enemy of the people.”
Trump’s unhinged rhetoric taps into a long nativist undercurrent that runs through the bloodstream of American history, from slavery to the Chinese Exclusion Act and the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II. Tucker Carlson, the Republicans’ media ally at Fox News, has done untold damage promoting the rightist “Great Replacement Theory.” It fans fear that Jews and people of color are coming after “your” place of privilege. Reversal of social status by a once-dominant group is a key factor that historian Barbara Walter cites as an igniter of civil war.
Words have consequences. It was Trump’s Big Lie that the 2020 election was stolen that fueled the violence on Jan. 6. Republican leaders, with few exceptions, have repeated that false narrative and made it the platform for their campaigns. Sixty percent of Americans will have an election denier on their ballot on Nov. 8. The way fake narratives go viral is no mystery: Well-understood social media algorithms spread deliberate disinformation to those vulnerable to mistruth. The Pelosi assailant reportedly “subscribed to the discredited narrative that the 2020 presidential election was illegitimate ... expressed antisemitic views and appeared to embrace the QAnon movement,” according to Politico.
Unlike many other countries in the world, past and present, ours has been blessed with a constitutional structure that, for all its built-in compromises and flaws, at least has held the worst at bay. The military has stayed under civilian control and out of domestic conflict, and we have developed serviceable tools to push back the rising tide of bloodshed. Unfaltering prosecutions will be a powerful deterrent. Jan. 6 Oath Keepers are on trial for seditious conspiracy. Plotters against Whitmer have been convicted. On Oct. 28, the Justice Department announced the guilty plea of a man who had threatened to kill Democratic Representative Eric Swalwell of California.
The law provides other means to rein in deranged personalities who use deceit to do untold harm. On Oct. 12, a jury rendered a $965 million verdict against right-wing talk show host Alex Jones because his lies about the parents of children killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School prompted listeners to make threats of violence against the parents.
Another promising development is the likely passage of a law to protect the private personal information of federal judges from the rising tide of vicious threats and attacks by those angered by their rulings. Legislation to regulate media algorithms that amplify hatred in order to maximize profits is not beyond reach if ordinary Americans speak out and vote against mayhem and misinformation.
History has a message: We have competing traditions to choose from. In one, violence settles conflicts and fiction overcomes facts. In the other, the rule of law and truth hold sway and power transfers peaceably. There is no time like the present to choose our better history.
Laurence H. Tribe is the Carl M. Loeb university professor of constitutional law emeritus at Harvard University. Jeffrey Abramson is a professor of law and government emeritus at the University of Texas, Austin. Dennis Aftergut is a former federal prosecutor, currently of counsel to Lawyers Defending American Democracy.