Studies show that most people across the political spectrum abhor it. So what might explain the disparity?

In the wake of the mass shooting in suburban Virginia last week that left House majority whip Steve Scalise (R-LA) and three others wounded, conservatives have been furiously waving the bloody shirt. With left-wing hate filling half the screen, Sean Hannity blamed Democrats, saying they “dehumanize Republicans and paint them as monsters.” Tucker Carlson claimed that “some on the hard left” support political violence because it “could lead to the dissolution of a country they despise.” Others have blamed seemingly anything even vaguely identified with liberalism for inciting the violence—from Madonna to MSNBC to Shakespeare in the Park.

This is all a truly remarkable example of projection. In the wake of the shooting, Erick Erickson wrote a piece titled, “The Violence is Only Getting Started,” as if three innocent people hadn’t been brutally murdered by white supremacists in two separate incidents in just the past month.

In the real world, since the end of the Vietnam era, the overwhelming majority of serious political violence—not counting vandalism or punches thrown at protests, but violence with lethal intent—has come from the fringes of the right. Heidi Beirich, director of the Southern Poverty Law Center’s Intelligence Project says that “if you go back to the 1960s, you see all kinds of left-wing terrorism, but since then it’s been exceedingly rare.” She notes that eco- and animal-rights extremists caused extensive property damage in the 1990s, but didn’t target people.

Meanwhile, says Beirich, “right-wing domestic terrorism has been common throughout that period, going back to groups like to The Order, which assassinated [liberal talk-radio host] Alan Berg [in 1984] right through to today.” Mark Pitcavage, a senior research fellow at the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, told NPR that “when you look at murders committed by domestic extremists in the United States of all types, right-wing extremists are responsible for about 74 percent of those murders.” The actual share is higher still, as violence committed by ultraconservative Islamic supremacists isn’t included in tallies of “right-wing extremism.”

A 2015 survey of law-enforcement agencies conducted by the Police Executive Research Forum and the Triangle Center on Terrorism and Homeland Security found that the police rate antigovernment extremists as a greater threat than reactionary Islamists. The authors wrote that “right-wing violence appears consistently greater than violence by Muslim extremists in the United States since 9/11, according to multiple definitions in multiple datasets.” According to the Department of Homeland Security, “Sovereign Citizens”—fringe antigovernmentalists—launched 24 violent attacks from 2010 through 2014, mostly against law enforcement personnel. When Robert Dear shot and killed three people at a Colorado Springs Planned Parenthood clinic in 2015, it became the latest in a series of bloody attacks on abortion providers dating back to Roe v. Wade in 1973. In the 30 years that followed that landmark decision, providers and clinics were targeted in more than 300 acts of violence, including arson, bombings, and assassinations, according to a study by the Rand Corporation.

But while the extreme right has held a near-monopoly on political violence since the 1980s, conservatives and Republicans are no more likely to say that using force to achieve one’s political goals is justified than are liberals and Democrats. That’s the conclusion of a study conducted by Nathan Kalmoe, a professor of political communication at the University of Louisiana. In 2010, he asked respondents whether they agreed that various violent tactics were acceptable. Kalmoe found that less than 3 percent of the population strongly agreed that “sometimes the only way to stop bad government is with physical force,” or that “some of the problems citizens have with government could be fixed with a few well-aimed bullets.” He says that while “there were tiny [partisan] variations on these specific items,” they weren’t “statistically significant on average.”

Ideology alone isn’t a significant risk factor for violence. “There’s a much stronger factor of individual personality traits that predispose people to be more aggressive in their everyday lives,” Kalmoe says, “and we see that playing out with people who engage in political violence.” Mass shooters are often found to have had histories of domestic violence, and that was true for James Hodgkinson, the shooter who attacked the congressional baseball practice in Virginia. Kalmoe says, “we often see that violent individuals have a history of violence in their personal lives. People who are abusive, or who have run afoul of the law in other ways, are more likely to endorse violence.”

Political animosity is similarly bipartisan. According to Pew, roughly the same number of Republicans and Democrats—around half—say they feel anger and fear toward the opposing party.

Which raises an important question: If red and blue America fear and loathe one another equally, and a similar number believe that political violence is acceptable, then why is there so much more of it on the fringes of the right?

Part of the answer lies in a clear difference between right and left: For the past 40 years, Republicans, parroting the gun-rights movement, have actively promoted the idea that firearms are a vital bulwark against government tyranny.

(...)

Yes, why address the substance of the point, the years of leftist violence against the right, when you can avoid it with side topics?

Cool story bro. Convenient you can write it all off. What about the years of violent attacks before just this month? You can attribute attacks on the left to the right and even specific people on the right, but when the right is attacked we need "proof" huh? I like the touch of calling the "ricin" a "threat", but these nonfunctional props are "bombs" and he is a "bomber" in spite of nothing even exploding or even appearing to have been the intent (again not justifying it, just a fact).

It is almost like you see your own hypocrisy then directly accuse me of exactly the dissonance you are experiencing, before I even directly point it out, in order to force a 3rd party to experience your own dissonance for you via projection. Nah...couldn't be.  

Wikipedia... that's... that's impressive. You just totally convinced me.

Yes, Exactly. Now you are going to tell me that the words he used incited ANTIFA to violence therefore he is responsible, while ignoring hundreds of calls for violence on the left since then, as well as increasing, regular violence from the left. That damn Trump, upsetting people so much they get violent! You know its his fault they got so upset they punched an old lady. She was clearly a Nazi so it was ok.

Famous left winger, Captain America.

I think that a person cannot create artificial intelligence smarter than himself in all respects. You can make a robot that will surpass the person in speed. But you will not be able to create an artificial intelligence that would have creative thinking. It is possible to write to the code only that which is manually executed by a hard algorithm.

I am not surprised if after some days news floating around that perpetrator is mentally disturbed.

This is really a bold idea. But you don't understand the importance of religion. Religion is the most basic step in science. The future world must be subverted. But it all stems from the early imagination. In short, religion is very important to the meaning of science.

Christian Nationalist Robert Bowers yelled “All Jews must die” before opening fire at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh, killing at least eight and injuring many more...

You have to invent new Physics or invalidate the existing models for the simulation to be possible.  As I said, that is very, very unlikely.  But not impossible.

Same odds as the existence of supernatural forces.

I pointed out where our current Physics models are at odds with the simulation argument.  I hope you understand that much.

We have no evidence, our current models are at odds with this argument, so what conclusion can you draw?

I'm afraid this simulation argument is in the same realm as the existence of some pantheistic God.

If you want to disagree with me, provide a rebuttal of my points against the simulation.  Not just disagree with me, because your imagination tells you so.  BTW, the guy in your video does not think we are in the simulation.  You have to bend Physics to make this work, and he knows that.

the guy in your video does not think we are in the simulation.  You have to bend Physics to make this work, and he knows that.

Sure chief. You sound like notbatman.  Read my previous post tiger.

Tell me, when did Trump call for violence?

Knock the crap out of him
I'd like to punch him in the face
I woulda been boom boom boom, beat the crap outta him
I don't know if I'll do the fighting myself, or if other people will
Maybe he should have been roughed up because it was absolutely disgusting what he was doing
If you see somebody getting ready to throw a tomato, knock the crap out of him
I'd like to punch him in the face
Try not to hurt him, if you do I'll defend you in court
In the good old days this doesn't happen, because they used to treat them very very rough... we've become weak
And you know what?  The audience swung back, and I thought it was very very appropriate
Nobody wants to hurt each other anymore
I've instructed my people to look into it (referring to paying the legal fees of of someone who assaulted a protester)

He is not saying that it can be done.  He is saying IF it can be done, then how big the computer would have to be, how much memory and processing speed you would need; issues with reading from the event horizon etc.

You are just too excited about this idea.  Do you want the reincarnation to work this bad?  C'mon, don't abandon your reason.

Good night, sleep tight. LOL.

The Standard Model cannot be simulated.  Look up the Nielsen–Ninomiya theorem.

Physics seems to be telling us that it's possible to simulate the entire universe on a computer smaller than a universe
If we go along with this crazy notion, how powerful would that computer need to be?
And how long would it take?
Believe it or not, we could figure it out.
Look, I'm not saying the universe is a simulation
I mean, it might be, I'm just not saying it.
And, perhaps, it doesn't make any difference.
(...)
(watch the video)

What physical evidence do you have that we are in a simulation?

I didn't even know there was a term for this sort of news, thanks for that by the way!.

But yes, I do fully understand the whole rich people don't open their mail thing. You would just think whoever was sending this, if they were ACTUALLY TRYING TO SUCCEED, would do their research into that and it would foil their plan in their head. This person is either incompetent/dumb, or this was planned to create chaos. Who knows which one though.

Since 1977 there have been eight murders, 17 attempted murders, 42 bombings, and 186 arsons targeted at abortion clinics and providers across the United States