When Political Violence Becomes Acceptable

When political opponents become existential threats, violence can begin to look like virtue.

Brian C. Joondeph | October 5, 2026

America traditionally has had a rather simple method for dealing with politicians we don’t like.

We vote against them.

We argue, campaign, write letters, give speeches, hold rallies, donate money, put obnoxious signs in our yards, and ultimately go to the ballot box.

What we don’t do is shoot them.

Or at least that used to be the understanding.

Some disturbing new polling suggests that boundary is eroding. The Overton Window on political disagreement is shifting. 

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University of Chicago political scientist Robert Pape, director of the Chicago Project on Security and Threats, recently described new survey results indicating that 25 percent of American adults support “the use of force to prevent President Trump from being president.” Among self-identified Democrats, the share was an astonishing 44 percent.

That isn’t some tiny collection of basement-dwelling extremists.

It is nearly half of Democrats surveyed.

And what exactly does “force” mean?

Pape says his research group has explored that question through focus groups and survey experiments. Among those endorsing force against Trump, he says 55 percent understood it to include assassinating the president with a rifle, as in the attempt in Butler, Pennsylvania.

We are a long way from disagreeing about marginal tax rates or military budgets.

Political violence should be unacceptable regardless of whose fist, rifle, Molotov cocktail, or government bayonet is involved.

But the extraordinary growth in support for force specifically to remove Donald Trump raises another question.

Perhaps part of the answer is hiding in plain sight.

For years Americans have been told that Donald Trump isn’t merely a bad president or a politician with bad ideas. He has been compared repeatedly to Adolf Hitler and his rhetoric to that of Nazi Germany, as in this example from The Atlantic.

The Biden campaign even published a 2023 graphic titled “TRUMP PARROTS HITLER.” Democratic politicians and political organizations have made similar comparisons, and Kamala Harris publicly agreed during the 2024 campaign that Trump could be described as a fascist.

Those are not ordinary political insults.

Hitler isn’t remembered as a German........

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