Authored by Mark Penn & Andrew Stein via RealClearPolitics,
Even back to the days of Charles Manson, a violent cult leader, there were pockets of people who cheered and reveled in violence. But all too common today are the groupies who adulate the CEO killer, the social media maven who praises the assassination of Charlie Kirk, or the miscreant who says they wish presidential assassins had been successful.
In today’s social-media fueled world, every heinous act of violence spawns a great majority of people of condemn it and a smaller counter-reaction of people who cheer it and call for more. Maybe this was always the case, but those who supported such violence could not as easily band together as they can today. Social media allows the violence lovers to find like-minded individuals, legitimizing their response, further encouraging future violence.
Kirk held no elected office. His only weapons were words and open debate. Despite this, nearly one in five Americans shockingly declared in surveys that his assassination was justified, according to a Harvard CAPS Harris poll. The path to such thoughts is clear. The opposition on the left characterized Kirk’s positions as “hate” despite his willingness to debate anyone anywhere. Once his speech was then characterized as violence – the resultant deadly violence became justified.
Almost 3 in 4 voters (72%) decry today’s polarizing political rhetoric as a cause of contemporary violence, and over 4 in 5 state it is unacceptable for their own political party to use violence to achieve its aims.
Notably, though, 74% of GOP voters see Democrats’ rhetoric as too extreme, compared to just the 27% who call their own party extreme. The effect is mirrored on the other side of the aisle, with 84% of Democrats calling the GOP too extreme, but a mere 33% saying the same of their own party. This drive of the parties to polarize the electorate rather than convince swing voters is reflected in the current pointless government shutdown. The political coin of the realm these days is in satisfying the base with increasingly incendiary words and actions.
That said, voters from all sides agree on the destructive role of social media, with 64% stating that social media encourages violent behavior.
A solid 85% agreed that talking heads in the media celebrating Charies Kirk’s death were inappropriate. At the same time, though, voters are strong believers in the First Amendment. Of the same group, 54% stated that Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show should not have been suspended over Kimmel’s comments about Kirk’s death, and 58% even supported his return to late-night television.
And that’s the thing about the First Amendment – it requires some level of self-restraint and responsibility, or it becomes the amendment that allows society to destroy itself. Or it allows the forces who want to destroy society to masquerade as merely those who would question it. It requires vigilance in allowing political debate but also in finding fair limits.
The Jay Jones scandal is a case in point. He called for the killing of his political opponents and appeared to be quite serious about it. Predictably, he called them Hitler and said that it should be done with two bullets to the head. Despite these inflammatory sentiments, Jones remains committed to his bid for – of all jobs – attorney general of Virginia. It’s difficult for us to understand how someone willing to threaten killing his political opponents remains an appropriate candidate for attorney general.
Gov. JB Pritzker of Illinois and others are villainizing the ICE agents in dire language that is an open invitation to violence. On ICE agents, Pritzker claimed “They were going after a few gang members, and instead, they broke windows, they broke down doors, they ransacked the place … They are the ones that are making it a war zone.” ICE agents are being accused essentially of kidnapping people randomly on the street based on racial profiling and “disappearing” them as was done by the Argentine junta, and the result is encouraging violence against federal officials.
It’s easy to condemn violence, but harder to do something about it. For starters, we need a bipartisan group of lawmakers to come together and stand clearly and unequivocally for bringing down the political temperature. They should agree on a set of basic principles outlining the bounds of attack language, which must include no longer calling opponents “Hitler” and other names that function to justify violence. They should condemn the recent political assassinations and attempted murders unequivocally – without exceptions or thinly veiled justifications. Finally, these lawmakers should call on the remainder of Congress to sign on to these principles as a clear rebuke of political violence and extreme rhetoric.
Second, they need to draft legislation that makes social media responsible for hosting and spreading calls for violence. Section 230 needs to be rewritten to give social media platforms an explicit obligation to promptly remove content that calls for violence. That won’t cure the problem, but it will put the social media channels on notice that they need to be vigilant about removing at least the most extreme rhetoric within 24 to 48 hours.
And third, the White House should establish a serious bipartisan, anti-political violence commission to probe the recent rise in political violence more deeply and attempt to explain to Americans how we cannot let our political differences degenerate into chaos. It should explore the violence-based underworlds on both the right and the left.
The Kerner Commission’s 1968 report painted an image of two Americas – one white and one black – that had a profound impact on the country at the time. And yet today, there are once again two Americas – one red and one blue. We need to make a good faith effort to bridge the gaps in ways that preserve and promote the ballot as the answer, not the bullet.â?¯The test will be whether such a commission could ever agree on one joint and final report.
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