It was the January 6 storm in the US Capitol and the ambush of a female US Senator in a bathroom, isolated incidents? Or were they harbingers of pervasive anti-government sentiments that deem it permissible to take action against opposing political ideologies?
Fresh research in public opinion suggests it may be the latter: nearly a quarter (23%) of US residents—both liberal and conservatives—agree that violent protests against the federal government are ever justified. This was particularly true among men and 18- to 29-year-olds. Women and the elderly were less likely to support aggressive measures.
The research was conducted nationwide by the Covid States Project, a collaborative effort by Northeastern, Harvard, Northwestern and Rutgers universities. The online poll lasted about a month, starting shortly after Christmas and continuing several weeks after the one-year anniversary of the Capitol invasion.
The findings suggest that resentment towards the government was a recent phenomenon, as reflected by a number of notable incidents such as Virginia's wife who threatened to bring loaded guns to her children's school because of a mask requirement.
But hostility to government in general can be traced back to the Revolutionary War.
“Violence against the government causes something that is harmful, that harms people,” says David Lazer, distinguished professor of political science and computer science. Photo by Adam Glanzman/Northeastern University
“Our founding documents referred to the justification for throwing off the yoke of an unjust government when it no longer serves the interests of the citizens,” he says Alauna Safarpourwho works at Northeastern's Network Science Institute in Boston. “That's probably what we're looking at in terms of whether violent protest is ever justified.”
This particular phrase –never justified— was the prevailing sentiment among liberals and conservatives in the study. The partisan gap was modest. 28% of liberals say the violent protest is “justified,” compared to 25% of conservatives.
However, when the researchers replaced “when” with “now”, only 10% of people were in favor of violence. Republicans were seven percentage points more likely than Democrats to support immediate violent action, largely because Democrats hold all the levers of power in Washington.
So 67% of those who say it's justified to protest violently here and now say the federal government is an appropriate target. Most of them were Republicans.
More Democrats directed their anger at their state government (43 percent vs. 26 percent), according to the poll.
“More state governments are controlled by Republicans,” he explains David Lazeruniversity distinguished professor of political science and computer science at Northeastern, and one of the study's authors.
Independents were more hostile to local governments than either major political party.
Republicans were much more likely to say that violent protest against their state government is justified when it is controlled by a Democratic governor (37%) than when it is run by a Republican governor (18%), the study found.
Democrats, meanwhile, were just as likely to support protests against their state government regardless of whether their state is governed by a Democrat or Republican governor (42% vs. 47%, which the researchers describe as an insignificant five percentage point difference units).
The study did not explicitly ask the 23,000 participants what types aggressive steps against the government would be permissible – pitchforks and lighted torches or something more drastic. Safarpour says recent examples of political violence have run the gamut from attempts to kidnapped the governor of Michigan to January 6 to threats against the electoral officials of the state.
“That was the context we were asking about in the research,” he says.
Adds Lazer: “Violence against the government causes something that is harmful, that harms people. So that seemed like a good line to get to where we are as a country.”
Trust in democratic institutions – government, media, elections and so on – has been steadily declining for decades, but has become more pronounced in the past decade, researchers say. They show theirs previous research This shows doubts among a large portion of the population whether President Joe Biden actually won the 2020 election. “Many people also believed that Barack Obama was not born in the United States,” Lazer adds.
If people believe that ballots are not counted properly, then democratic institutions by definition are eroded, the researchers say. But they see reason for optimism in the fact that the 2020 presidential election drew a record number of voters.
“If democratic institutions had been so eroded that there was a significant lack of public trust, then we wouldn't have seen so many people voting in the midst of a pandemic,” says Safarpour. “And we may see strong turnout for the midterm elections. That gives me hope.”
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