Nearly a quarter of Americans (23%) agree that “because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country,” according to the survey. This is up from 15% in 2021.
In a statement, PRRI researchers say they have asked about this in “eight separate surveys since March 2021.” They said that “this is the first time support for political violence has peaked above 20%” in their survey results.
While Americans across the political spectrum feel democracy is at risk next year, support for political violence runs mostly along party lines.
Currently one-third of Republicans support violence as a means to save the country, compared with 22% of independents and 13% of Democrats, the survey found. More specifically, Republicans who have favorable views of Donald Trump were found to be “nearly three times as likely as Republicans who have unfavorable views of Trump” to support political violence.
Compared to past surveys, researchers also found an uptick in support for conspiracy theories among Americans — specifically QAnon. According to PRRI, there has been a significant increase in “QAnon believers (from 14% to 23%),” as well as a “a decrease in QAnon rejecters,” since 2021. However, Republicans are still twice as likely as Democrats to agree with the core beliefs of the QAnon conspiracy theory.
A political system is a social contract that requires people to believe that the system is fundamentally fair. Once sufficient numbers of people become convinced that the system is rigged and it’s not working in their interest then all bets are off.
Cults like QAnon and opportunists like Trump didn’t just appear out of nowhere. The difference is that increasing numbers of people are seeing their material conditions deteriorate having lived through three major crashes in as many decades. People are increasingly coming to understand that the system is not working in their interest. However, they lack political education to understand what the actual problems are, and so they flock to whoever is openly saying that the system is broken because that’s one truth they’ve come to believe.
As material conditions continue to decline in US, more and more political radicalization will occur and eventually violence will erupt.