Survey finds alarming trend toward political violencehttps://health.ucdavis.edu/news/survey-finds-alarming-trend-toward-political-violenceA new report published as a preprint on medRXiv.org from researchers at the UC Davis Violence Prevention Research Program (VPRP) reveals alarming trends in attitudes toward violence, including political violence, in the United States. The survey is the first of its kind to explore the participants’ personal willingness to engage in specific political violence scenarios.
“We expected the findings to be concerning, but these exceeded our worst expectations,” said Garen Wintemute, lead author of the study. Wintemute is an emergency department physician and director of the Violence Prevention Research Program and the California Firearm Violence Research Center at UC Davis.
The survey questions focused on three areas: beliefs regarding democracy and the potential for violence in the United States, beliefs regarding American society and institutions, and support for and willingness to engage in violence, including political violence. Some key findings from those surveyed:
• 67.2% perceive there is “a serious threat to our democracy.”
• 50.1% agree that “in the next several years, there will be civil war in the United States.”
• 42.4% agreed that “having a strong leader for America is more important than having a democracy.”
• 41.2% agreed that “in America, native-born white people are being replaced by immigrants.”
• 18.7% agreed strongly or very strongly that violence or force is needed to “protect American democracy” when “elected leaders will not.”
• 20.5% think that political violence is at least sometimes justifiable “in general.”
Among participants who considered political violence to be at least sometimes justified to achieve a specific objective, 12.2% were willing to commit political violence “to threaten or intimidate a person,” 10.4% “to injure a person,” and 7.1% “to kill a person.”
Among all participants, nearly 1 in 5 thought it was at least somewhat likely that within the next few years, in a situation where political violence was justified, “I will be armed with a gun.” Four percent thought it at least somewhat likely that “I will shoot someone with a gun.”
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News story linked below...
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/jul/19/one-in-five-us-adults-condone-political-violence-survey
