Days before what appeared to be the second assassination attempt on President Donald Trump, Colin Clark was in New York meeting with experts for the Global Summit on Counterterrorism and Political Violence.
Clark, research director at the Soufan Group, a security and intelligence consultancy, said the sense of fear was shared even then.
“There’s a real sense of urgency and concern surrounding this upcoming election that there will be more political violence,” he said.
The events of this weekend have only intensified that ominous feeling.
On Sunday, 58-year-old Ryan Routh allegedly tried to assassinate the former president while he was playing golf at a club in Florida. Routh appeared in federal court on Monday, but so far law enforcement officials have not revealed a motive for the attack. But the incident has intensified concerns about rising political violence in the United States and the possibility that it could worsen in the remaining weeks until the election.
“I’m very pessimistic about where we’re headed heading into November,” Clark said.
Increase in political violence
While the United States has a long history of political violence, multiple sources say the scope and frequency of political harassment, intimidation and violence is reaching new levels. Gary Lafley, a professor of criminology at the University of Maryland and former director of UMD’s National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Counterterrorism (START Center), said the center’s data shows the trend began nearly a decade ago.
A database that tracks terrorism incidents around the world shows that the 1970s was the height of political violence in the United States, with a wide range of groups — Puerto Rican separatists, domestic terrorists like the Ku Klux Klan, anti-Vietnam War agitators, and the far-right extremist Jewish Defense League — committing criminal acts to force policy change or sow fear among the public, but the numbers declined sharply in the decades that followed.
“In the 2000s, there were years when the database didn’t include any incidents that could be considered terrorist attacks in the United States,” Lafley said, “and then around 2015 and 2016, we started to see an uptick.”
Lafley said there was a striking difference between the ideology underlying the attacks of the 1970s and those of the past decade.
“In the ’70s, most of the activity came from left-wing groups,” he said. “In fact, it’s the right-wing groups that are playing a big role now.”
Everyday political violence
But beyond incidents deemed terrorist acts, there is growing recognition that everyday political violence is on the rise. For two years, the Bridging Divides Initiative and CivicPulse have conducted quarterly surveys of local elected officials to assess the levels of harassment, intimidation, and violence they experience. They found that baseline levels of hostility toward these officials are consistently high.
“This is part of a larger atmosphere that exists in this country where no matter what position you take, no matter what you do, you can be perceived as having some kind of political connection,” said Jason Blazakis, director of the Center on Terrorism, Extremism and Counterterrorism at Middlebury International University.
Vlazakis said the developments are part of a dangerous mess that has ordinary Americans becoming targets of a politically charged so-called “culture war.”
“That atmosphere, combined with a polarized election and the global political climate with the rise of conspiracy theories, misinformation and disinformation, creates a very dangerous environment,” he said. “Then you add to that a gun culture and easy access to guns.”
Lighting the Fire
One of the most worrying aspects of this rise in political violence is the role that public figures have played in spreading conspiracy theories and lies, such as during a nationally televised debate between Trump and Vice President Harris, where the former president repeated a false story about immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, days after bomb threats against city facilities and schools continued and Haitian immigrants reported feeling unsafe.
Following Sunday’s assassination attempt on President Trump, Elon Musk published, then deleted, a post on his social media platform, X, that was perceived as a call for an assassination attempt on Ms Harris and President Biden. Musk claims the post was intended as a joke.
In the counterterrorism world, such statements by influential figures can have real-world consequences – this is known as “probabilistic” terrorism, Vlazakis said.
“Probabilistic terrorism is terrorism that is not necessarily motivated by a particular trend or ideology, but terrorism that is driven by rhetoric, where individuals are inspired to carry out attacks based on the dog whistles of a charismatic leader, for example,” Vlazakis said.
But Clark said probabilistic terrorism is complex, and those spreading conspiracy theories and sensationalist narratives often deny any connection to potential subsequent violence.
“There’s very little incentive or borderline tendency to push supporters into the mindset that any kind of violence is actually noble in some way,” Clark says, “but when questioned, they easily back away and say, ‘No, no, it was just, you know, heated rhetoric,’ or ‘I was just trying to mirror what they were saying about me.’ No one is taking responsibility for this, but we know that words have consequences, especially when people are outraged.”
Concerns for the coming weeks
So far, there have been few signs that Trump’s campaign and leading voices on the right are backing away from public rhetoric that deepens division and discontent. On Tuesday, Trump again repeated the lie that Democrats stole the 2020 election and vowed to prosecute “to the fullest extent of the law” individuals who played an alleged role if he returns to the White House.
Experts like Vlazakis worry that efforts to curb political violence will be left primarily to law enforcement to detect and prevent it.
“My biggest concern is that these two assassination attempts will inspire others to do the same thing,” Vlazakis said. “At the same time, politicians’ rhetoric will only get more heated, which could inspire people to commit some kind of violence.”
But preventing such attacks is becoming a harder task, said Clark, who said he doesn’t believe organized paramilitary groups or people posting prominently online are a big concern here.
“What I’m more concerned about are the silent militias who have guns and are very Second Amendment pro-life,” he said, referring to the Second Amendment, “who keep their mouths shut and don’t say anything. To me, these are people like (Oklahoma City bomber) Tim McVeigh, people who are really serious and could really do harm to this country if they wanted to.”