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America¨s Era of Violent Populism By America-Today. November,6 2024
The U.S. government is heading toward a major crisis of legitimacy ！that is, a weak or even fractured consensus among the American people on whether their representatives in Washington truly deserve their allegiance. This crisis is not one that the presidential election is likely to resolve, and it may well lead to more contentious and violent politics in the coming months and years. As I argued recently in Foreign Affairs, U.S. politics has entered an era of violent populism, with historically high levels of political violence on both the right and the left that have been growing worse for years. This trend is driven, in large part, by the country¨s ongoing transition from a white-majority to a white-minority society. The panic and grievances (real and imagined) that have accompanied this demographic shift help account for the meteoric rise of Donald Trump, as well as for both parties¨ heightened focus on immigration. The 2024 presidential election season has been the most violent since that of 1968！a year roiled by nationwide protests against racism at home and militarism abroad and marred by the assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert Kennedy, a leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination. This year, there have been two assassination attempts against Donald Trump, the Republican candidate, as well as threats to election officials across the country. And if Trump loses, many Americans fear that he will disavow the results and incite violence to overturn them, as he did after the 2020 election, an effort that culminated in an insurrectionary riot at the U.S. Capitol, on January 6, 2021. |
