The Republican National Committee recently voted to censure two of its members, Reps. Liz Cheney of Wyoming and Adam Kinzinger of Illinois, over their participation in the House panel investigating the Jan. 6 insurrection. According to the RNC resolution, the investigation persecuted people who had engaged in “legitimate political discourse.”
This went too far for several Republican senators, who publicly rejected the claim. Sen. Susan Collins (Maine) called it “absurd,” while Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.) reminded the RNC that the Jan. 6 attack was a “violent insurrection.” Sen. Mitt Romney (Utah) called the resolution “stupid.”
It is easy to read this exchange as simple party infighting, and to consider its consequences solely in terms of Republicans’ political strategy. Sen. John Thune’s (R-S.D.) objection, for example, was electorally focused: “If we want to win the elections in November, there are better things for us to be focused on.”
But condemnations of violent rhetoric are far more important than some politicians realize. Political leaders have powerful influence over national attitudes, including about the prospect of political violence. In our forthcoming book “Radical American Partisanship: Mapping Violent Hostility, Its Causes, and the Consequences for Democracy,” we use public opinion research to show that national party leaders can reduce the public’s violent attitudes by explicitly rejecting violence.
Our research shows that the vast majority of Americans reject political violence today, but a notable fraction do not. Exact numbers are difficult to pin down — people’s answers on surveys vary depending on the types of violence and political contexts they are asked about. But it’s clear that millions of Americans see some justification in their party using violence to advance its goals.
In several surveys between 2017 and 2020, we found little difference between ordinary Democrats and Republicans in their low but rising support for violence. That changed in 2021 after Democrats won control of the presidency and Congress: More Republicans endorsed political violence than Democrats, by several percentage points. Though these attitudes are influenced by many forces (such as aggressive personality traits, identification with the party, winning or losing power), leaders can fan or douse the flames with their own rhetoric.
We embedded randomized controlled experiments in our 2019 and 2020 national surveys to test how people respond to real messages from Joe Biden and Donald Trump that explicitly reject political violence. Then-candidate Biden said, “Violence directed at anyone because of their political opinions is never acceptable, regardless of what those beliefs might be.” A White House news release, attributed to Trump, stated: “I condemn in the strongest possible terms all acts of violence. That has no place here.”
These explicit denunciations of political violence significantly reduced the public’s support for violence, especially among people who identified strongly with their party. Even an opposing leader denouncing violence reduced violent attitudes — and this held true among the strongest partisans. A recent study by researchers at Stanford and Northwestern suggests that viewing opponents as less violent reduces partisans’ own support for violence, reducing fears for their safety.
Other political figures also have an important role to play: We conducted another experiment in June, which found that anti-violence statements from McConnell and Fox News host Sean Hannity reduced violent views similarly among Republicans and Democrats.
Violent attitudes aren’t violent actions. Despite some parallels in violent partisan attitudes, right-wing violence is predominant, and, likewise, the rising flood of recent threats against local and national officials has come mainly from the right. One reason may be that Republican leaders rarely condemn their colleagues for using violent rhetoric — or, for that matter, the threatening and violent acts of their followers.
Political leaders set norms for attitudes and behaviors among their followers. If their silence in the face of violent behavior seems to tacitly encourage it, it’s far worse when leaders tell followers where and when to gather and then exhort them to fight. McConnell diagnosed it well when he described the Jan. 6 insurrection this way: “The mob was fed lies. They were provoked by the president and other powerful people, and they tried to use fear and violence to stop a specific proceeding of the first branch of the federal government which they did not like.” That is what happens when leaders tell their voters that violence is acceptable: Voters take them seriously.
Violence is not new in American politics: Our country has seen dominant racial and religious groups use violence alongside conventional politics to seize illegitimate power, often through the vehicle of a political party (e.g., during the Civil War, anti-Reconstruction violence and Jim Crow); political leaders often played key roles in inciting and organizing violence. Nor is political violence the only (or even the biggest) threat to American democracy: Barriers to full voting participation, partisan gerrymandering and other mechanisms enabling minoritarian rule, while legal, also erode values of democratic elections and equal rights.
Still, democracy rests on a strong norm against violence following election losses. When leaders weaken that norm, the most radical Americans feel emboldened to act — and when their social circles have been persuaded to accept violence, such partisans will encounter less resistance.
Our research points to the critical role Republican leaders play in reducing extremism in their party: They have the power to reduce the threat of political violence by explicitly rejecting it.
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