Political Violence and Disciplined Non-violence

Polarization is now our national political practice, ahead of being in discourse together, doing the hard work, and solving problems

The era of Donald Trump has produced escalating political violence in the United States. Political toxicity has replaced political discourse. Our political trajectory is bending towards attacking those who dissent or even just disagree, politically AND personally–using both ugly words and threatening actions. Earlier this week, speaking at the White House, Trump said, “I was the hunted. And now I’m the hunter. It’s a big difference.”

Polarization is now our national political practice, ahead of being in discourse together, doing the hard work, and solving problems.

The threats and use of violence is central to the authoritarian playbook in history, in the United States and around the world. Throughout Trump’s political career he has endorsed and encouraged political violence against his opponents including using violent and dehumanizing rhetoric, inciting the January 6th insurrection, and then later pardoning more than 1,500 participants– many convicted of violent and destructive crimes.

Data from the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) shows that attacks and plots against political and government targets increased 1,150% compared to all of such criminal activity in the two decades prior to the Trumpian era. Republican lawmakers are now kept in line, not just by primary threats, but by threats against them and their families from the Trump base. Some have admitted they are afraid of "retaliation” which they believe is real. Judges who uphold the rule of law and challenge Trump have also been targeted with personal threats against them and their families.

On Wednesday, I heard from a dear Senator friend that many Senators and other elected officials are receiving unsolicited meal deliveries to their homes– a tactic to threaten elected officials to show that people know where they live.

Yesterday we celebrated Juneteenth, now a federal holiday to commemorate the final enforcement of the Emancipation Proclamation in Texas on June 19, 1865. Slavery in the United States was, at its core, political violence against other human beings deemed not to be human.

Globally and historically, authoritarianism has consolidated power with the use of violence. And the violence is always justified with the use of lies, disinformation, and conspiracy theories which now spread like wildfires in our connected age. The lies and violence Trump and his surrogates are injecting into our public life is not a new strategy, but an established practice by lawless dictators–who use the slogans of “law and order” to gain power over others.

We see this practice now in play everyday in Los Angeles, where Trump has mobilized the National Guard of California in opposition to the Mayor and Governor. Now, he has doubled down on inciting violence in the streets of LA by deploying the U.S. Marines against domestic populations of immigrants and their families. The politicization of the military on behalf of a dictator’s agenda is another long-standing strategy of would-be authoritarians. I believe that Los Angeles is just the first example of the deployment of Trump’s militarized regime against immigrants and other dissenters. It won’t be the last.

This past weekend, over 5 million peaceful protesters gathered in over 2,000 cities for No Kings Day, a massive display of opposition to Trump’s authoritarian rule. In a very insightful essay in the New York Times entitled Only Non-violence Will Beat Trump, some powerful research shows that protests are most effective when they remain non-violent.

The authors cite the findings of political scientists Maria Stephan and Erica Chenoweth that show “when states crack down violently against non-violent protesters, it often backfires.”

Unnecessary violence from the government, or from protesters, will turn people away from the purposes of either. But political violence is also always very personal, and that’s what I address in the podcast embedded here in this column, which tells a family story for me.

When I heard Saturday morning about the horrific political assassinations overnight in Minnesota I immediately reached out to Peggy Flanagan and her family. Many years ago, Peggy asked me to become an adopted father for her, and in the years since, she and her family have become part of our family, sharing traditions and vacations. As I reached out to my family in Minnesota, Peggy , her husband Tim, and her 12 year-old daughter, were huddled inside their home, surrounded by police officers for needed protection, The assassin was still at large and Peggy, chillingly, was on the assassin’s hit list that the police found on the back seat of the car he abandoned.

Peggy serves as Lt. Governor of Minnesota and is the highest ranking indigenous executive elected official in the country. She is a member of the Ojibwe tribe and a citizen of the White Horse Nation, and is now running to represent Minnesota in the U.S. Senate. Fear came when Peggy found out she was on the assassin’s target list, but she experienced an even a deeper sadness when she was told that she lost a very close and dear friend and mentor.

Melissa Hortman, Speaker of the Minnesota House of Representatives, and her husband Mark were assassinated in what Gov. Tim Walz called an "act of targeted political violence."

There would be no more conversations between Peggy and Melissa as mothers sharing the challenges of raising girls in a time like this. For Peggy and Melissa, fighting successfully for the lives of children and their parents was their personal and political vocation. And now, in the aftermath of this horrific violence, Melissa’s own children were left without their parents who were shot and killed in the middle of the night.

Political violence has now made public service a risk. But in the midst of such deep sadness and real fear in the Flanagan household, Peggy has been clear, “We can’t become intimidated by this act of terrorism. This will not stop me and it should not stop you.” When I reflected on that powerful quote with Peggy, she quickly responded, “But I’m still really scared.”

We talked about how public service now requires both sacrifice and risk. Peggy also spoke to challenge all political leaders not to “throw gasoline on fires” but rather to “calm things down” as we debate public policy. Violent words lead to violent deeds, as we witnessed in Minnesota last weekend.

I was further horrified when a column appeared today in the New York Times by David French who, like me, comes from the evangelical faith tradition. Titled “The Problem of the Christian Assassin” describes how Vance Boelter, the alleged killer, was not only a passionate Trump political supporter but was also part of a group connected to the New Apostolic Reformation, NAR, a loose collection of churches and groups in the independent charismatic movement who are now deeply imbedded in the Trump White House, and often call democrats “demoncrats.” Says French, “In other words, Boelter wasn’t just a political assassin: he was a Christian assassin– and a person deeply connected to one of America’s most radical religious movements.

Political violence has to change us all. The embrace of political violence by the President of the United States and his MAGA movement must lead us to learn, train for, and practice non-violence like never before. Truth-telling and protest with a commitment to disciplined non-violence will become central again for us. Such movements, throughout history, have toppled authoritarian regimes around the world and will do so again–including right here and now in the United States of America.

Learn that history, train for non-violence, and remember that God is still God. God is eternal while every dictatorship and every earthly kingdom eventually fails.

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