Millions of mainstream Americans have now crossed a lethal threshold. According to University of Chicago Professor Robert Pape, the leading expert on political violence, 14-21% of American adults find political assassination acceptable. On The Daily, Pape detailed that among those who endorse the “use of force” in politics, over half specifically mean assassination. This support has doubled since the Biden administration, translating to roughly 20 million people who found recent attacks on figures like Charlie Kirk acceptable.
“The sheer numbers are staggering. We’re not talking about a fringe of 10,000 or 100,000. We are talking about tens of millions of Americans on both the right and the left that are accepting of political violence.”
- Robert Pape, The Daily
The profile of the political extremist has transformed. Pape’s analysis of January 6th arrests revealed a new archetype: business owners, doctors, and CEOs. Only 10% were militia members. This shift reflects a wider era of “violent populism,” where educated, middle-class citizens fear being permanently locked out of power during a white-minority demographic transition and after decades of wealth concentrating in the top 1%. Pape calls these the “fire” that social media rhetoric merely fuels.
This existential dread is fracturing the political right. On The Tucker Carlson Show, pollster Rich Baris described a generational split breaking the MAGA coalition. He noted that Representative Thomas Massie was crushing his opponent with millennials 3-to-1 before $35 million in donor ads drove older voters to defeat him. The episode framed Trump’s pivot to covering up Epstein files and cheerleading foreign wars as a “cold-hearted globalist betrayal” that broke his bond with his base.
“If the GOP continues to steamroll these [younger] voters to please aging donors, it won't be able to win a general election in a decade.”
- Rich Baris, The Tucker Carlson Show
Immediate de-escalation depends on elite rhetoric. Pape’s research found that after President Biden condemned violence following the 2024 attempt on Trump, public support for force dropped by 20%. He argues the 75% of Americans who abhor violence must pressure leaders for joint, bipartisan condemnations to revoke the social license for assassination. Without it, the coming midterms will be the most dangerous in his lifetime.
The playbook for exploiting this volatile landscape is a century old. On Behind the Bastards, host Robert Evans detailed how oil billionaire H.L. Hunt pioneered the modern partisan media model in the 1950s, using rigged debates to delegitimize the mainstream press and selling health supplements to fund his propaganda. His template - pairing charismatic conservatives against unappealing liberal foils - created the visual language of political victory that endures today, proving the infrastructure for mass persuasion is well-established.
